Memorable New Years...

Dear family,

This has been a very memorable New Year week. Probably one of the most memorable New Year weeks I will ever have. There has been joy, sadness, sicknesses, lots of food, and some pretty spiritual experiences.

One funny thing that I just got a hoot out of was that the family we ate lunch with on Tuesday gave us ice cream for dessert and you wanna know what they served on top of the ice cream? maple syrup.. Haha it reminded me of ELF. There are many "american" products that are still pretty new here in Chile.

So my skin condition has been pretty bad. I've had some weird medicines that have left my face red, splotchy and burned. So I look like I got beat up or severely sun burned. That´s been fun for all the people we meet.

Wednesday was not a very lucky day for me. I woke up feeling pretty sick and weak. Then we rode our bikes for like an hour to lunch anyway. After lunch my tire was flat, so we had to fix that. Then as we were heading to a Family Home Evening we had planned later that night I ran over a big fat thorn that popped my tire again. So we had to walk our bikes home, luckily only about forty minutes away on foot. We dropped our bikes off at the house and then took a bus to the family´s house we were going to. As we got off the bus I rolled my ankle horribly (the next day it was all swollen and bruised). A Chilean lady at the house soaked my foot in salt water and then wiped it down with vinagre. That was nice of her. Haha. But in all it was not a very fun day.

On New Year´s eve we were told that we had to enter into the house at 8:00. We finished lunch in our own house at about 4:00 and were not too excited to go out and work. We didn't have appointments, our investigators were out of town, it was New Year´s Eve and we weren't looking forward to knocking doors. We headed out anyways and started to knock in a sector called Patricio Gana. The first five house didn't even open the door. The sixth house said no. But the seventh house let us in -Jaime. Then we went and contacted Sara, an investigator of ours that we hadn't seen in weeks. We asked her for references and she gave us two. We taught one of them, Monica, and her daughter. We asked her for references and she told us of a neighbor she worked with. We went to the house and found a different family that let us in. They had never let missionaries in before, but after we prayed with them they said it felt like a cool breeze came in and took all the bad feelings out of their home. They said a weight had been lifted and they felt great. They told us we are always welcome in their home now. In about two and a half hours we did some WORK. It was great to see that the Lord had people prepared to listen to us and that because we went knocking doors for just a few hours on New Year's eve we found some great new investigators.

Today I've been kinda sick to my stomach and with a fever, but I´m doing ok. Life has been a little rough, but I just keep trying to look at all the blessings I have around me. Thank you for you letters and support.

Love,
Elder Mooney

PS - Please pray for Javiera Olivarez, Sebastian Machuca, Ivan Lopez, Alejandro y Ximena, Mauricio Cortez, and all of Pirque!