Mooney on a Mission

Elder Mooney is home!

2011-08-09T19:41:00.000-07:00

waiting at Sky Harbor Airport

this was the first version of cousin Danny's sign

Practice Run

We didn't even recognize that Chilean coming off the plane

Little sis Diana got the first hug

Sister Becky and a very friendly airport employee

Mom may have been the most excited!

Dad was pretty excited as well

Mom and Becky couldn't help but cry a little

Return missionaries, his cousin Taylor

We made quite the scene at the airport

Hunter and Diana, Matt's little sisters

The welcome home banner

A final email - and a powerful Testimony

2011-08-01T09:19:00.000-07:00

Dear family and loved ones,

Wow.. The mission is almost over. This will probably be my last email home as a missionary. Last night and this morning I was looking through all of my pictures that I have taken here in the mission and it is hard to believe that the two years are coming to an end. Now that I am about to go home it is easy to say, yeah, the mission just flew by. Truth is though, when I think about the places I have been, the people I have met, and the lives I have influenced it seems that I have managed to cram in a life time of experiences into just two years. It also feels like I haven´t seen my family or home in ten years or so. Time in the mission is a very strange concept.

Many interesting and fun things have occurred this past week, but I figure I will just tell you all about them when I get home. More then anything I just want to let you all know that I love you all very much. I want to thank each and every one of you for supporting me over these past two years and for helping me to stay strong and faithful to this sacred calling of serving a mission.

I want you to know that even though the mission has been one of the most difficult experiences of my life, I have seen and felt the love of God more in these couple of years then any other time in my life.

God exists and loves us very much. If anyone is unsure of that, get down on your knees and ask him if he exists in sincere prayer. I promise you that he will answer.

I know that Christ is our Savior. I can feel it. I know it is true and that is the only reason I keep the commandments and strive to do better each day.

Christ´s church is on the Earth today. The fulness of the Gospel was restored to the Earth by the prophet Joseph Smith. It is hard for me to understand why anyone would not accept him as a prophet of the Lord. He lived and died dedicated to the Lord and his work. That same work continues to spread throughout all the earth in these days and will continue to spread until the coming of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

The Holy Ghost is real. He testifies of all truth and by him we can come to know the truth of all things. If we trust in him we will never be lead astray. I like to look at it this way. Life is difficult no matter what. It is difficult for the righteous and for the wicked. We can either struggle, suffer, and fight through the problems of this life alone or we can struggle, suffer, and fight through the problems of this life with God´s love, help, and comforting Spirit. I personally choose to have God´s help. Not to mention, life is better when you follow God´s commandments.

It has been a privilege and blessing to serve the Lord as a missionary here in Santiago Chile. I will never forget the lessons I have learned while being on the Lord´s errand.

Again, I want to thank each and every one of you for helping me to become the person I am today. I guess I will be seeing you in about a week. How exciting is that! :)

Love you,
Elder Matthew D. Mooney

Pretty stinkin' crazy.

2011-07-27T20:11:00.000-07:00

Dear Loved Ones,

Well this should be my second to last email home. Pretty stinkin' crazy. I am super excited to come home, but now that it's almost here I feel kinda weird and nervous. I am super excited to go see Captain America with the family Dad and I'm also excited to go to Iceberg with Diana. It's all going to be 2 good.

This past week I have been having some crazy dreams. In a lot of my dreams I have been inviting people to church and inviting them to be baptized. The other day I had a very stressful dream about trying to find baptismal clothing. I have also been sleep talking quite a bit. Two night ago my companion said he woke up to me imitating Beaker from the muppets saying "mee mee mee mee mee I'm Beaker." Haha sounds pretty random, but I'll explain to you later why. My companion is Beaker from the muppets.

On Friday President Laycock came to our pension and studied with us. We did an in depth study of Isaiah. It was pretty legit. Then the four of us had personal interviews with President. My interview was pretty quick. Ten to fifteen minutes. My last week in the mission I will have my official going home interview. The longest interview in our pension lasted about an hour and fifteen minutes. Pretty long. After we were done with interviews we ate lunch and then went to the church for Claudina's baptism. She is now officially baptized and confirmed. We are super excited for her. She and the family are doing wonderfully.
Our Bishop here finally returned from the United States. He is a very humble nice guy. I really like him. His family and a few other gringo families have been returning from vacations so that has been pretty fun.

In all things are going pretty well. We are still finding some new investigators. We have Kati who should be preparing herself for baptism, but is just difficult to keep track of. The work is going well though.

Oh, so let me explain what it means to die in the mission. To "die" in the mission is to become so tired and worn out mentally and physically that you no longer have a desire to work. It's to just get lazy at the end of your mission. Sounds pretty drastic, but it happens to plenty of missionaries their last change. It is kinda difficult though to keep working and finding new investigators when you know that you will never have the opportunity to see their progression. You just have to remind yourself that your efforts in finding that person could change their eternal destiny. That it doesn't matter who teaches them, just as long as they are taught. Don't worry though. I am still working and not "dead" yet. All the return missionaries like to bug me though by telling me that I am dead and trunky. So that helps. Haha

Well thank you for all your love and concern. I miss you all very much and hope that everything is going well back home. Thank you for everything.

Love,
Elder Mooney

Chicken livers & Pizza Hut

2011-07-27T20:09:00.000-07:00

Dear friends and family,

Things here in Santiago, Chile are going just fine. The weather has been pretty nice. It´s cold and rainy, but nothing too horrible. It snowed a lot up in the mountains and they say there is a good possibility that it rains in our sector as well. That would be pretty awesome. I can´t even imagine 100 degree weather back home in Arizona. I´m gonna die. Well, maybe not die, just get pretty sunburned because I´m pretty pale right now.

This past week we had some pretty awesome experiences with finding people. We found an awesome less active lady and her 12 year old son who is not a member. She wants to get married to her "pareja" or living partner and she wants her son to be baptized. We also found a really nice Peruvian family just by knocking a few doors in between appointments instead of just waiting in the person´s house. The person we are most excited for at the moment is Claudina. Claudina is the investigator who was married the other week. She is getting baptized this Saturday and Brother Ojeda (the convert assistant ward mission leader) is throwing a big after party in his house for her and all the guests. It is amazing how strong of a testimony Claudina has, as well as her husband Cristian. They understand everything so well. It´s as if they had been members their whole lives. So we feel pretty blessed to be the missionaries who get to witness their wedding and her baptism.

The food has been pretty crazy this week. One day we had to carry lunch to the house and it was rice with chicken livers. Another day the members forgot and they gave us $40 to buy lunch so we bought Pizza Hut. The sad thing is $40 only buys two pizzas and some cinnamon sticks here. Then yesterday we had lunch with the White Family again. They gave us pot roast with carrots and potatoes. Pretty awesome. I feel like I am halfway back in the states at times, then I realize that I am still far from it.

Everything is going well though. I´m trying really hard not to DIE my last 3 weeks. It is really hard to stay focused, but we just keep working and the time flies by. So please keep praying for me and our investigators. Thank you for everything. I love you all!

Elder Matthew D. Mooney

Lots of Stuff!

2011-07-14T16:26:00.000-07:00

Dear family,

Well this has been a long week. Teaching wise, we didn't seem to get very much done, but a lot of stuff happened this week. On Friday night we were able to go to a wedding in the chapel. Their names are Claudina and Cristian. An investigator who has been attending church for a long time finally got married to her inactive husband. It was way fun to see them get married and to hear how they are excited to start coming to church as a family now because they no longer feel guilty. On Sunday them and their two kids all sat together and attended all the meetings. The wedding was super fun though. Kinda small, but we ate tons of food. They made us eat more then we even wanted to. Claudina should be getting baptized this next Sunday!

On Thursday night we celebrated the birthday of our mission leader's baby boy Matthew. He turned 1. So we ate cupcakes and cookies and cream ice cream. It was awesome. On Friday and Saturday we celebrated Elder Miller's birthday by bringing him to a mini surprise party and by making him a chocolate cake. That was pretty fun. He seemed pretty bummed out at first that nothing cool was going to happen on his birthday, but after that I think he felt fine.
Our investigator Kati has been feeling kinda off and on sick this past week so we haven´t been able to teach her much. We really need to just sit down and teach her so that she can get baptized. We are excited for her.

On Saturday Elder Owen and I helped Hermano Ojeda fortify his stone wall by making a mini cement wall. Surprisingly I really enjoy working with cement. I find it to be pretty fun.
Today we were going to go to this place called El Cerro Santa Lucia. I guess it is a big hill and at the bottom there is a big market where you can buy lots of souvenirs and stuff. Unfortunately it was raining in the morning. So instead my companion went to go buy new shoes to match his fancy new suit and the other Elders went to try and return their $500 pens they bought. Yes $500 pens. Kinda nutz.. So this hasn't been that fun of a day.

Well I love you all tons and please keep praying for me. Thank you for everything.

Love,
Elder Matthew D. Mooney

Hey, it appears that I forgot to mention that I had the opportunity to baptize someone on Sunday as well. His name is Benjamin Riquelme. He is 15 years old and his older sister is an active member of the church. The other missionaries have been teaching him for a while, but for some reason he wanted me to baptize him. It was kinda random, but I was happy to do it. (There is a lot more to the story, but I'll tell you when I get home). I had to baptize him twice because he was so dang tall and wouldn't go all the way under the water. Haha but it was a fun experience.

Fotos from LaDehesa

2011-07-14T16:22:00.000-07:00

4th of July in Dehesa!

2011-07-14T16:20:00.000-07:00

Dear family,

Things here in La Dehesa are pretty different. We see Porsches, Jaguars, Lamborginis, and all other types of beautiful cars up here. Our sector is gigantic. It might be bigger then Pirque. Not sure. It is huge though. I still don´t even know half of my sector yet. It has been extremely fun though. I love my companions, I love the ward members, and I only have 5 weeks left in the mission. Life is good.

One thing that is pretty legit here is that our mission leader´s name is Brother Abe Smith. He is from Mesa, AZ. He works for the US Airforce and is here in Chile for a few years sharing ideas and helping out. It felt amazing to have a mission correlation where the mission leader actually writes stuff down, plans activities, prays to receive revelation during the week and then shares his ideas with us in the correlation. They even plan out baptisms here. In advance! Supposedly the Bishop is from the states, one of his counselors is Chilean but has lived in Switzerland as well as the states. And yesterday for our Sunday lunch we had an early 4th of July Celebration! We ate with the White family and the Headquist family. Gringo families. We took pictures with them and the food to show you what it was like. We ate BBQ chicken, chicken wings, potato salad, corn on the cob, salad with dressing, and Apple pie with vanilla ice cream for dessert. It was a super weird feeling. Spanish was not spoken the entire time. I realized that it is super easy for me to have conversations in english, but introductions and saying goodbye to people in english feels really awkward. Praying in english is nearly impossible. I love the new sector though and the ward is great.

One of our investigators here is Kati. I don´t remember if I told you about her last week. She is from Colombia and is very black. She is super nice and super cool. She has a little baby girl named Milady (my lady). At the moment she is living and working in the house of a recent convert here named Hno Ojeda. He is the assistant to the ward mission leader and is awesome. He hated the church at first. His son secretly filled out his mission papers and then went and told his dad with the help of the bishop. They had a huge fight, but somehow overtime he changed and was baptized a little over a year ago. He is incredible. The rest of his family still isn´t too into the church yet, but he is working on them. He hired Kati to help her out and now he is working with her spiritually as well. She had a baptismal date a couple weeks ago, but we are putting her baptism off till the 24th so she can understand and be converted fully before her baptism.

We also have a kid named Kevin that has a baptismal date, but needs to go to church. Then we have a lady named Claudina that will be getting married on the 8th. She will also be getting baptized soon.

Things are going great though. My companion Elder Stephen Owen is pretty much a clone of Jared Bishop. Haha he reminds me of Jared all the time. Facial expressions, jokes, everything. The only difference is he has an accent. So you can imagine that we have had some fun. Elder Miller and Elder Daines are crazy too so between the four of us there is always something going on. We are trying to be good examples for them and have a lot of fun.
Thank you for your emails. I love and miss you all a lot. I hope that California has been treating you all very nicely. You are the best!

-Elder Mooney

Fotos

2011-07-14T16:18:00.001-07:00

Changed AGAIN!

2011-06-27T15:58:00.000-07:00

Dear family and friends,

Well this is the first letter of my last change. It´s kinda a weird feeling being in my last change. Today a bunch of my mission friends gave their farewell testimonies and are going home. It´s kinda sad to see them all go. Elder Afeaki and Elder White, two elders from my MTC district are also going home early this change so they gave their testimonies as well. It was an emotional morning, especially for President Laycock because such a large number of his "children" are now going home.

As for the changes, unexpectedly I was changed AGAIN. Three changes, three sectors, and three companions. Kinda a strange way to end the mission. I guess the Lord is just trying to keep me on my toes. I was kinda bummed for about thirty seconds last night, but got over it pretty quickly. I am now in a sector called La Dehesa. It is in the Las Condes Stakes. I am pretty much in one of the richest (fancy pants) sectors in our mission now. Supposedly there are six gringo families in our ward who all speak English. The bishop is from the states, as well as the mission leader and a few others. The Elders here are telling me that we will be eating some of the best lunches I have ever seen here and on occasion dinner as well. (There goes away any hope of coming home in shape..) My companions name is Elder Owen. He is from Louisiana and has already been zone leader here for two changes so at least he knows whats going on in the sector. We live with and share the sector with two other elders, Elder Miller and Elder Daines. I think that this is going to be a very fun place to end my mission.

I want you to know that I can feel and sense that the Spirit truly does guide this work. I can see the Lord´s hand helping us in all things and that through our obedience we receive blessings. I know this work is true and that Christ lives and directs his church through a living prophet. It feels great to be a part of such a marvelous work.

Well I love you all and miss you so much. I hope you have a great trip to California without me. Hopefully it will be the last trip to California without me as well. You are the best family every. Keep the Faith!

Love,
Elder Matthew D. Mooney

It's all worth it in the end.

2011-06-20T10:04:00.000-07:00

Querida familia,

Well first off I would like to say HAPPY FATHER´S DAY DAD!!! Wish I could've been home to give you a big hug, but that will just have to wait till August. I hope you had a great Father´s day. I imagine you ate pretty well and received a few cool gifts. I just want to thank you for being an amazing father and a great example to me. I think back through my life and I can´t remember you even once setting a bad example for me. I know that I am where I am today thanks to you and Mom. You are the best. I love you Dad.

I love the rest of you as well and miss you very much. This past week was a pretty rough week. It rained several times. Investigators have been kinda flaky, but there were some great experiences as well. We received a reference from the office to go visit two people who were interested in receiving a Book of Mormon. We showed up at the house and yelled "HALO!" but nobody came out. Then the next door neighbor peaked her head out and I asked her if her neighbor was home, she said yes, but we just needed to yell louder. So we yelled again and waited another minute and as we waited the neighbor´s little kids kept peaking out at us. Finally the reference opened her front door and told us that she didn't want anything from us. She said that she and her daughter never gave their direction to anyone and they weren't interested in the Book of Mormon. We were kinda disappointed, but I felt like we should yell at the neighbor that had talked to us and see if we could share something with her. She let us in and we taught her and her three kids. She told us that her aunt had been baptized and now lives in Salt Lake City Utah. She also told us that when she was a little girl she used to go to church with her aunt but was never baptized. We invited her and her kids to be baptized and they agreed to start preparing to be baptized.

I want to thank you for the amazing package I received last Tuesday. 4th of July toys and decorations. Brownie mix. Cooke mix. Tuna and corn? Haha love it though. But those homemade cookies you sent were SO good. We ate them all the second the box was opened. Thank you so much for the package and thank you Diana and friends for the note you sent.
Oh and I almost forgot. On Saturday we had a ward movie night. We had been planning it for a while. We watched the new Joseph Smith movie which hasn't been seen by a lot of members here in Chile. It was awesome. We had a projector and an awesome sound system. We also had 200 sopaipillas to eat. Unfortunately it rained all day Saturday so only about 30 people showed up as opposed to the 80 we planned for. It was still way fun though.

The mission is great though. I am dead tired. The work is hard, but the mission is just great. I think it is great how when you know you are doing the right thing you feel good on the inside even if you are exhausted on the outside. It's all worth it in the end.

Thank you for all your love and support. I miss you and love you!

-Elder Mooney

What a shock!

2011-06-15T20:25:00.000-07:00

Dear family,

Wow, so the news about Taylor just blows my mind. So crazy and so unexpected. One week he is perfectly fine, happy and working hard in the mission and next he is home with 20 stitches in his head. It is hard for me to imagine him at home already. I feel so relieved and happy though because he is alright. If I had just heard the news without getting a personal letter from Taylor and my parents saying that everything would be alright I would be extremely worried. Thank you for that. I am just happy that he is OK and that in two months I will be able to see him! I will definitely be praying for him and his family.

This past week we managed to teach Tamara (35), Angelo (37), and Victor (82). Tamara and Angelo have four kids and are extremely difficult to get a hold of. They forget about our appointments always and always are busy doing something. On Saturday we had a nice lesson using the Book of Mormon teaching about baptism as we read 2 Nephi 31. We demonstrated the way we need to be baptized and confirmed by a holder of the priesthood and it only added to the desire that Tamara had to be baptized. At the end of the lesson we invited the three of them to be baptized the 26th of June and they accepted. Unfortunately they didn't go to church on Sunday so we will probably have to adjust their baptismal dates again.
Yesterday was a very stressful Sunday. Elder Walters and Elder Erickson baptized two young women and we basically spent the day covering their tracks, fixing the hot water heater that didn't work, picking up the baptismal tunics that they left in the house, cleaning up afterwards. It was kinda hectic, but in the end it went well.

This morning we had a zone activity where we played fútbol and ate 60 completos (hot dogs). There were 15 of us and 5 sister missionaries so there was a lot of food to eat. Avocado, tomato, chips, soda, and 4-5 hot dogs each. It was pretty awesome. I still feel a little sick though. Haha

Things are going good. Thank you for your letters and your love. You are the best family ever.

Love,
Elder Mooney

We have witnessed a miracle.

2011-06-06T15:53:00.000-07:00

Dear family,

Well this past week kind of flew by. We have been knocking doors and contacting people like crazy. We have found plenty of new investigators and a few families that are extremely legit. Our days have been pretty busy which has helped us to stay pretty focused.

We have witnessed a miracle here in the sector. Two weeks ago we found a less active family of members, the Monares Family, and started to teach them. They have a 22 year old son named Abraham who at first didn´t want to talk to us, but we invited him anyways and he listened. He really opened up to us and told us how horrible his life has been since he left the church. He told us about problems with drug abuse, about how he has a kid, but the mom wants nothing to do with him and her boyfriend has been literally trying to kill him. He has been so upset that he has attempted to kill himself about 7 times, but he says someone has been watching over him and doesn´t want him to die yet. We invited him to start reading the Book of Mormon again and to come back to church. He came to church last week and he said that same week he found work, he has been happier, he quit swearing, quit stealing, quit everything bad that he was doing, except he says that he can´t stop smoking. We taught him how the body is a temple and he needs to keep himself pure so that he can feel the spirit. He said he would try to cut back. He came to church on Sunday for the full 3 hours and at the end told me that he was praying on Saturday and after the prayer he took out his cigarretes and cut them up. He has committed to not smoking anymore. He is a really great humble kid. It is amazing to see how the spirit has been working in him and changing him. We have only taught him a couple lessons, but he has been reading and praying alot and feels the difference. It is amazing to see how faith in Jesus Christ really can help people to overcome any temptation or obstacle that they might have in this life.

At the moment we have plenty of investigators and a few of them have listened to the missionaries before, but never have taken the decision to be baptized. It has been hard to know what to do for them, because they already understand so much about the gospel and have a testimony of Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. Please pray for Alexandra, for Viviana and her family, for Tamara, Angelo, and family, and also for the Jimenez family that we just recently have started to teach.

Well I miss you all and hope all is going well back home.

Love,
Elder Mooney

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This was just his P.S. to me, but I thought I'd share :)
And mom, to answer your question, no the inspections are not a district leader responsibility. Elder Page and I are the zone leaders. Its not that big of a deal though.

New fotos!

2011-06-06T15:51:00.000-07:00

Here comes June...

2011-05-30T11:01:00.000-07:00

Dear family,

Well things here have been pretty good. We have had some really great days and some really slow boring days. It is slightly frustrating being here with Elder Walters who has been here for about 4.5 months because he has built up a huge pool of investigators and has almost too much to do and we are just searching for investigators. We have found some really nice families, including last night we were knocking doors at about 9:40pm and at the last house we knocked a family of 4 (father, mother, and two daughters ages 16 and 20) let us in. They were having a little birthday party and a foreign exchanged student from Mexico was there and the boyfriend of the 20 year old daughter was there. The foreign exchanged girl had made mexican enchiladas. We said a prayer with them and they invited us to sit down and eat some enchiladas. We couldn't refuse.. We set an appointment with them for next Sunday and we are way excited to teach this complete family.

Elder Page and I had to go and do some pension inspections this week. In the mornings we visited each sectors pension and had to fill out a little form. We also have five hermanas in our zone and we aren't allowed to inspect their pensions so we just made ourselves some ecco and vanilla milk latés and did an over the phone inspection. It was kinda nice to have something different to do.

This morning we played fútbol as a zone in our department complex. We have a little baby court. It was pretty fun, but different playing with five hermanas. Oh and I don´t think I ever told you this, but there is a new hermana in our zone named Hermana Howe. She arrived here in Chile about two weeks ago and the first thing she said to me was, "do you know Hermana Allen?" I guess she and Kelly were friends in the MTC so that was kinda cool.

Things are going good here in though. We just need to keep finding more people to teach. Elder Page and I are trying not to think too much about how we both only have 10 weeks left.. Kinda weird. Haha

Thank you so much for your emails and support. I love you all so much.

Elder Mooney

A New Sector

2011-05-23T13:24:00.000-07:00

Things here in Los Presidentes are quite different from how things were back in El Castillo. Half of our sector is pretty rich and the other half is just normal. Elder Walters (the elder who has been here for over 4 months) was always telling us to be careful in the bottom half of the sector. We went down there and it is tranquilito or super chill. I feel like some missionaries have been kinda sheltered from the real ghetto areas. Ironically the other night we were knocking doors in the rich sector and we saw three punk kids hop a fence into a park and a minute later a Carabinero van (police van) pulls up and asks if we had seen some teenagers around here. We told them yeah and that they had just hopped the fence. Instantly the officers hit the gas and zoomed over to the park, two of them ran and hopped the fence and one called in for back up. We saw two motorcycle cops and another van zoom by to cut them off on the other side of the park. It was pretty intense. So we have decided that the rich sector is more dangerous then the poor sector.

We have found some really cool people in our ward. The bishop is a young guy in his 30s with big side burns and glasses. He speaks some english so we practice with him. The bishop's mother recently got married in the United States to a really tight black man from Tucson Arizona. They now are living here in Chile and are looking for an apartment. The funniest part about this guy is that he has a low raspy voice, he has a lot of attitude, and doesn't speak a lick of spanish. In church he doesn't understand hardly anything, but my companion translated a lot for him and when he liked something he would always be like "mmmhhhhmmm.." or "alright alright yeah." We love this guy though. He and I spent a while talking about Joe´s BBQ and other places in Gilbert. The ward is really nice though and it has been fun getting to know the members.

Sacrament meeting went pretty well yesterday. There were 83 people in church, but we have a small cozy chapel so it felt really filled. Between the four of us missionaries we managed to have 6 investigators in church. Two of them were baptized by Elder Erickson and Elder Walters yesterday as well. A little old lady named Ester and her grandson Matías. Her sister and the family of Matías were all there and it was really spiritual. Ester gave the sweetest little testimony afterward and Matías mom was tearing up the whole time. Hopefully the whole family will start listening now.

The mission has been a little different being with Elder Page, an elder that has the same amount of time as I do. We are both used to leading and directing the lessons and everything in the sector. We haven´t been fighting at all, we both just have the habit of starting the lesson and of starting contacts so we are trying to adjust to that. We live with Elder Walters who has 6 weeks less then us in the mission. He is now training Elder Erickson from Boyce Idaho. Elder Erickson and I discovered that we are somehow related?! We are both descendents of Parley P. Pratt and we both come from the Grigg family. His mom's name is Sheri Grigg, his grandpa is Joe Grigg, and his great grandpa is Anthony Wells Grigg. So mom, you have a little homework to do. Can you please look back a little in the family tree and see where our familiar ties are? I think it's kinda crazy that we are living together. From some reason Elder Erickson reminds me of my cuz Taylor McBride a little bit. There are definitely some family ties there.

Things are going alright here though. Please pray for us. We need your help because we are still just looking for people to teach and knocking doors a lot. Thank you so much for everything you do. I love you all.

-Elder Matt Mooney

Changes?!

2011-05-16T17:09:00.000-07:00

Dear family,

Well this past week went pretty well. It was the last week of the change which is always a little tougher, but we worked hard and it went extremely well. On Saturday the youth in our ward had an activity. They decided they wanted to have a movie night. The movie they chose to watch was Dumb and Dumber. Haha and they also wanted to make sopapillas and play futbol. It was supposed to be just a fun activity that they could bring their friends to. We worked hard all week inviting all of the youth and teenage investigators we had. We then went by all of them again with one of the young women's leaders and got 7 of them to commit to going. On Saturday night we managed to get 5 people there. Unfortunately the person responsible for bringing the movie didn't bring it and the only movie they had was Freddy Krueger. We had to convince them that it probably wasn't the best movie to be watching in the chapel. In the end one of the youth brought a pirated copy of the Fast and the Furious 5 and they watched that. They ended up not making sopapillas either, but had cake to share with everyone. Afterwards we played games with the jovenes in the chapel. It was a pretty disorganized sloppy activity, but everyone seemed to have a lot of fun. The investigators made friends and got to know the chapel.

On Sunday one of the speakers didn't show up so the bishop asked me to give a talk. I talked about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Haha and then in the Elders Quorum none of the leaders were there and nobody had a class prepared so they asked me to give a class and I taught about The Spirit World. It actually went pretty well. I realized how much the mission has helped me to develop my ability to teach and to improvise.

All week though the members of the ward have been saying goodbye to us just in case one of us was sent out of the sector. The majority thought that my companion Elder Bench was leaving because he had been here for 6 months, but we told them we weren't sure. On Sunday night we were surprised when we received our changes and they told us that BOTH of us were leaving. White wash.. It was pretty upsetting, especially because finally we have some people really excited to get baptized. So right now I am in a sector called Los Presidentes with Elder Page a missionary that started the mission the same time as I did. We are both new to the sector, but luckily we live with another missionary who has been there for a while. I am still pretty sad that I couldn't stay in El Castillo until the end of my mission, but I think Elder Page and I will have a good time here in our new zone.

Well thank you so much for your emails. I love the stories and the pictures. Please keep them coming!

Con amor,

Elder Mooney

I guess that's life.

2011-05-09T09:12:00.000-07:00

Hello Family!

It feels like I just talked to you..? Oh that´s right, I did just talk to you last night at 11:00 at night. Thank you so much for all being together and being so patient with the technical problems on Skype and then calling me on the cell phone and then calling me again. It was kinda a hassle, but I was really happy to be able to see you on Skype at least for a little while and then get to talk to each of you on the phone. I realize that I am so blessed to have the family I have. I feel that I really have a testimony that the family is ordained of God and that families really can be eternal. I just want you to know that I love each and every one of you so much.

This past week was a little rough as I told you. On Monday I wasn't feeling so hot and when I woke up Tuesday morning I was pretty much dead. My throat was killing me, my sinuses felt raw, and my neck was really swollen. My whole body was in pain. I could barely talk because my throat hurt so bad. It burned every time I swallowed. Even drinking water hurt. The next day was even worse. I bought ice cream thinking that would be something nice on my throat, but not even ice cream was enjoyable. We went to the doctor and the nurse at the church office just handed me an antibiotic, decongestant, and ibuprofen. Finally on Saturday I started feeling better. It was a pretty boring week in the pension in pain with nothing to do, but sleep or read. Now it´s all over and its crazy to me how one minute the body is in so much pain and the next it feels perfectly fine. I guess that's life.

On Saturday we started a service project with the members of fixing up the room of an Elder who is about to come home from his mission. I guess it is a tradition they have in the ward that everyone chips in and they fix up the return missionaries room a bit. This kids room really needed some work though. His dad has slowly been constructing their house for the last 10 years or so. He had a cement floor, a partially cardboard roof, and a brick wall with holes in it. We fixed up the roof and cemented the entire brick wall. Next week they are going to spackle and finish off everything, then paint, and somehow they are going to fix the floor as well. It was pretty fun though. Elder Bench and I were in charge of mixing and making the cement. I don't think they trusted us with anything else. For some reason they think because we are gringos we can´t work well with our hands or something.

Well I love you all. Thanks so much for the love and concern.

Love,
Elder Mooney

Things go up and down...

2011-05-09T09:10:00.000-07:00

Dearest Family,

Well this week went pretty well. We found plenty of new investigators, we filled our days with lessons, and really included the members in the work (dragging them to lessons and having lessons in their houses). Elder Bench and I were pretty content with the work we had done this week. On Saturday morning we made a list of investigators (I) and less active members (MA) that we were expecting to see in church on Sunday. It looked something like this:

- Jeannette (MA), Violeta (I), Alison (I), Estefanía (I), Marilyn (I) and family
- Veronica (MA), Pato (MA), and Cata (I)
- Juana Rojas (I)
- Irma (MA), Nicolas (I), and María (I)
- María (I) and Yazna (MA)
- Elina (MA), her three kids, and Cindy (I)
- Hermano and Hermana Camposano (MA)
- Antonio Gutierrez (I)
- Juan Briones (MA)
- Eduardo Bahamondes (I)
- Jaime Alvarez (MA)
- Luis (I) and María (I)

It was a list of about thirty people and we had taught every single person that week and they had all committed to going to church on Sunday. Saturday night we passed by and called every single person on the list to make sure they were going. On Sunday morning we called all of the people who asked us to call them in the morning and passed by three of the families to accompany them to church. To our surprise, not a single person went to church. A few were sick, others had emergencies the night before, others were sleeping. It was quite a disappointing day for us. Reading the Book of Mormon has really helped me to see the pattern of how things go up and down always. We just need to be constant and keep working.

I saw Diana´s prom pictures and it was weird.... Diana kinda looks like a different person. Haha she looks good though. Her and Thomas kinda look like they are at a modeling shoot or something. I also loved the picture of Grandma and her tiara. Tell her I send my love and say Happy Birthday! The new garden looks pretty legit as well. The pictures made me kinda trunky haha, please keep sending them though! Pictures are the best part of email!

MOTHERS DAY.... So this Sunday, May 8th, at 4:45pm your time we will be speaking through skype. Daylight savings time ends here on the 7th so we should only be 3 hours apart instead of 4. We will be using a members computer so hopefully everything works fine. I am pretty excited for this last conversation we will have before August. :)

Well I love you all very much. You are the best family ever! Talk to you on Sunday

Love,
Elder Mooney

We are working hard.

2011-04-25T16:13:00.000-07:00

Hola Familia!

Well things are going pretty well here in El Castillo with Elder Bench. We are working hard and trying to find more investigators that will actually fulfill their commitments. We have plenty of people to teach and we can find new investigators and less actives pretty easily, but a lot of them listen, but then don't do anything afterwards. They choose not to read, not to pray, not to go to church. We do have a few investigators that are progressing though.

On Monday we found a family looking through the list of members. We found a lady named Jeannette on the list and we passed by last week and met two of her daughters. They told us to pass by Monday so we did. On Monday we knocked on the door and asked if Jeannette was there and the lady who answered told us that Jeannette didn't live there. We told her that we had talked to her daughters Alison and Violeta. She then admitted that she was Jeannette and let us in. Jeannette is the mother of eight children and seven of them are still in the house. Violeta (16), Alison (14), Estefanía (10), Marilyn (8), Juan (6), Justin (2.5), and the baby (1.5) I forgot her name.. The family has a really sad story. Their dad is in jail at the moment. The mother has had a horrible life. And at the moment they are barely surviving with Jeannette working every day. Jeannette doesn't know how to read or write (not normal, she had a hard childhood) which makes it even harder to find work. We taught them about baptism and the gift of the Holy Ghost. The four girls all said that they would get baptized and their mom said that she would be willing to support them. Juan, the six year old, was pretty upset because he couldn´t get baptized yet. This week we brought over several members to get to know them and we brought over one of the young women, Tania (14), and her Dad and had them do the official invitation to church and they accepted. On Sunday morning we called them at about 8:50 and Jeannette told us she was sick, but that she would wake up the girls. We show up at 9:50, about 40 minutes before church starts and they were all still in bed. We had to wake them all up. Alison and Violeta got up and went to church. Violeta nearly died of boredom in the first hour, but in the second hour we had the young women and their leaders attack. They befriended them really well and Alison and Violeta had a great time. We told Jeannette that she is going to church next week even if we have to carry her there. At the moment the four girls have a baptismal date for the 15th of May. Please pray for them. They are the family Cardenas Gardina.

You asked what our Pension is like. We live in a pretty nice pension actually. It's small. One room. One bathroom. Small kitchen and a small living room. The two of us live alone and their isn't space for anyone else. It is nice though. This is the first house that has had a shower that is taller then I am. In the others we would have to hunch over. The house is pretty much tile and brick so it is freezing cold already. We live right behind the house of the owner. She is a nice old lady named Magdalena that washes clothes and irons for a living. Her husband travels and works a lot so we mostly just see her. We also have a sassy dog named Daisy that lives there. She only lets us pet her on special occasions. I like where we live though.

Thank you so much for the love and concern. You are the best family ever. Your Easter party looked like a blast. And yes, we will be skyping on the 8th for Mother's day. I think that 9-10 my time should work out alright. Its a little late, because we won't be in the house. 8:30 to 9:30 would be better though. Let me know what you can do. The earlier the better. Thanks for everything.

Love you all,

Elder Mooney

Here comes Easter!

2011-04-18T10:37:00.000-07:00

Dear family,

So last week was a really cold week. It was cloudy for about three or four days and we had to walk around with our jackets. The worst part about it getting cold is that our pension is like a cave or something and it is way colder inside then it is outside. We wake up in the morning thinking it's gonna be freezing cold, but outside the sun is shining and its not that bad. The same thing happens at night. So I bought some nice thick wool socks in the street market and that has helped a little bit. I am already using three blankets to stay warm and we are not even in winter yet. I am getting worried...

We have been teaching a lot of less active members. We have found some really great people with strong testimonies of the church who want to return and we have also found a few who have seem to forgotten everything and are now attending the nearby evangelical churches. There are a lot of little houses converted into churches all over our sector. We hear singing, yelling, and preaching all the time. We were happy to see Jaime in church this Sunday. He is a thirty year old less active guy who graduated from the churches institute. We have passed by him about four times and he has been opening up to us more and more each time. In the last visit we brought the Single Adult Leader with us and they went to institute together on Saturday. He is so funny, when we saw him on Sunday he told us that he had made two friends (amigas) at institute. We also convinced Jaime to go on a three day trip with the Young adult group. He wasn't sure at first, but now after making some new friends he is looking forward to it.

Do you remember Adonis from my last ward? He was baptized two Sundays ago and confirmed yesterday. That information made me really happy. We have two people with baptismal dates at the moment. One is Betzy and the other is named María. We met them both through less active families. Almost every member in our ward has an inactive family member or someone who is not a member so we plan to work with them a lot.

On Saturday night we were invited to celebrate the 87th birthday of a member named Hector. We thought it was just going to be a little thing, but they went all out. We were the first ones to show up (because we showed up on time) and they had tables and chairs set up with drinks and salads. They also had a GIANT pot of mariscos or seafood cooking. Clams, muscles, fish, pork? and lots of other stuff just brewing away. Little by little the guests showed up and it was basically The bishopric and their wives, the stake presidency and their wives, a few other members, and us the missionaries. The funny thing is, we fit in fine with the group. Before the mission I would have thought that eating with a group of people like that would have been awkward, but it was nice. We left the party early to go to a lesson and ate a piece of cake on the way out.

Things are going well. I can't say that it is easy to work in a sector like El Castillo, but I like it. It´s dirty, a lot of the people do not know how to read, there is a lot of poverty, but there are some really good people here.

Thank you for your concern and support. You are the best! Each and everyone of you! ;)

Love,
Elder Mooney

Oh and yes I do have my go home date. I have had it for months. I finish the mission on August 8th and should arrive on August 9th. We still have plenty of time before that though...

Always more work to do.

2011-04-11T12:47:00.000-07:00

Dearest family,

This past week was a long one. I have been adapting a little bit to my new sector and my new comp. On Wednesday my companion woke up with diarrhea and was throwing up. We went to my leadership meeting and then back to the house to sleep. That evening at about 8pm at night as I was studying the Book of Mormon I began to feel a little sick and my stomach started to hurt. I went to bed and in the middle of the night woke up to a similar situation as my companion. We ended up staying in the pension that entire day as well. It was terrible though because my entire body was hurting and aching. I couldn't get comfortable laying in bed, on the floor, in the chair. It was miserable. Luckily that has all passed now and we are doing much better.

As for my sector, it is very ghetto and very dangerous just as Mom discovered online. The people are pretty poor. There are a lot of little punk gangster kids every where, but they don´t really do anything to us. It actually reminds me a lot of my old ward Turquesa. The members have been really great to us. Most of the leaders are either converts or recently reactivated members. For example, our Bishop reactivated just recently and is now Bishop. He is a really great guy though and we are going to try to help and support him all we can. There are also a few members in the ward who are active, but are not married so they go to church every week but cannot have a calling until they get married. They are really great strong people and are fighting to get married. Their kids are really great as well. There are thousands of people that are inactive here so we will just be doing our best to find those who want to return to church and to baptize those that we can find.

My companion Elder Bench is really great. He is a goofy kid and really chill. He is a very curious guy and asks questions about everything. He asks about the language, about the mission, baptisms, other sectors, other missions, everything. He has been here in the sector for three changes, but still doesn't know a lot of the active members or their names so we are working on that.

Things are going alright though. I am tired. I miss home. But there is always more work to do so I guess we will just keep working. Thank you for you concern and your support.

Love you all,

Elder Mooney

Oh and say hi to Dallas for me!

I have a fire to get some work done!

2011-04-04T14:40:00.000-07:00

Dear family,

Well we received our changes last night and I am no longer in Pirque. My companion, Elder Jofre, was also changed. Elder Riding and Elder Grillone both stayed and will now be alone in Pirque. Truth is, even though I really loved being in Pirque I was pretty excited for this new change. I was extremely anxious this morning waiting for my change but when it came I wasn't too happy. I have been called to the Gabriela zone in an extremely well known sector called "El Castillo," but more commonly referred to as "El Castigo" or "The Punishment." My entire mission I have heard about this sector as being the worst sector in the mission. Several Elders busted out laughing as they congratulated me in my change. I'm probably going to die here (in other words, end my mission here). So at the moment I am not too excited. The conference talk about the gardener trimming back the bush keeps coming to mind. I need to just trust that I am here for a reason. I have a fire to get some work done here now!

My new companion is great though. His name is Elder Bench and he is from Glendora, California. He is a really calm chill kid and I don´t see there being any problems between us. I actually feel kinda bad for him because he started his mission here in El Castillo and this is going to be his fourth change here. He's had a tough time here, so now we are looking forward to attacking the sector. Elder Bench has also explained to me how he needs a lot of help learning the lessons and practicing his teaching so we will be working on that a lot. I am happy to be his companion.

Last night I only got about four hours of sleep - packing and getting ready to leave and all. For some reason the President ended up changing the location of our change concilio so we ended up having to go to literally the farthest chapel from us in the mission. So we had to get up extra early this morning. We called a taxi to take us to the subway, then we had to cram onto the subway with tons of luggage (which was not easy). Afterwards we had to walk a few blocks to the chapel. Then my companion and I had to return all the way back to almost where we came from on the subway. I showed up at the new pension, laid on my bed and fell asleep in my clothes for about three hours. My companion woke me up really politely and asked if I wanted to go shopping and write home. Haha he is a really nice guy. At the moment I am exhausted and out of it.

News in Pirque. Adonis is getting baptized next week for sure! We found another really promising family on Friday that the other missionaries should be teaching soon. Carlos, our recent convert, attended all 10 hours of conference with us on Saturday and Sunday. He really enjoyed it. Then Carlos and another future missionary from a different ward helped us teach Adonis in between sessions. Things are going pretty good over in Pirque.

I want to end telling you how much I loved conference. It was great. I really enjoyed the Saturday sessions. Us missionaries found it really interesting that President Monson in the Priesthood session and Elder Scott both talked about how we should not post-pone marriage. Great theme for a bunch of missionaries who shouldn't even be thinking about girls.. Haha. I really enjoyed all of conference though and felt that a lot of personal doubts and problems I have were addressed. It´s just like Elder Holland explained. The conference talks are for the whole world, but the Lord will teach us all individually. And yes mother, I missed your cinnamon rolls more then you know. We will definitely have to have them next conference.
I love you all and miss you very much. Please keep writing me. It helps a lot!

Love,
Elder Mooney

We ate ourselves silly!

2011-03-28T20:06:00.000-07:00

Aloha Familia,

Like always, this past week was pretty interesting. *** I'm leaving out the next few paragraphs of Matt's letter because he includes details on some of the challenges and problems that his investigators are experiencing. Probably best not published :)

We have been working hard anyway though. In the last twenty days we have found twenty eight new people to teach! Some of them seem really prepared to accept the gospel.

On Saturday we had our "Concurso de Postres" activity here in the branch. It was a huge dessert contest that we planned. All of the members had to bring their best desserts and a panel of judges would choose the best three. We decided not to be the judges, we passed that honor the the branch president and two other hermanos to avoid the wrath of any upset hermanas. It was a great activity, we ate ourselves silly.

Other then that things are just cruising along. Thank you for your prayers and support. It really helps. It's great to here that the missionary work back home is really working out as well. Keep at it!

Love you all,

Elder Mooney

Things have been tough, but good.

2011-03-21T14:58:00.000-07:00

Dear family,

This week went pretty well. Thank you for the great emails today as well. I really enjoyed them. Anyways, we have been working hard preparing Adonis Gonzalez to be baptized and we have been inviting lots and lots of others to be baptized as well. Adonis is doing great. We taught him on Saturday and it was one of the greatest lessons ever. We show up to the house and he is waiting outside for us. We go in and he already has a friend there, Diego, who is a member. So we teach them two and Adonis´ step sister, who is a member as well. We asked him if he had read and prayed and he explained to us his experience. He said he read 3 Nephi 11 three times so that he would understand it well and after each time he would pray and ask if the Book of Mormon were true. He said that after the third time he still didn't have a clear answer, but the next morning he woke up and just knew and felt that it was true. We taught him the Plan of Salvation and the Gospel of Jesus Christ and he understood it really well, better then most people. Then on Sunday we taught him pretty much all of the commandments with his dad, step-mom, and step-sister. He is doing really well and his Dad being a really strong convert is making sure that Adonis is taking it all very seriously. We feel very blessed.

Ivan Lopez, his mom Susana, and his grandma Maria are some great investigators we have that have accepted baptismal dates several times, but never come to church and always seem to have an excuse. We are not sure what to do with them. Please pray for them so that they can make it to church this Sunday. They are really great.

We are also working with a lady named Jessica. She is in her 30s and seems kinda like a punk-rocker. She has three kids and her husband is a long haired football fanatic friend of ours that works in a glass store next to our house. We met her a couple of weeks ago while knocking doors and she has become one of our most interested investigators. She reads. prays, and really likes the idea of being baptized. She had a baptismal date for the 3rd of April, but now we are going to have to change the date. She told us that she and Rodrigo (her husband) had been fighting and she didn't know if she would be able to go to church. To make things clear, he has nothing against the church, but at the moment, things are just rough between them. We taught her and calmed her down a little bit and then we went and taught Rodrigo in his glass shop. We discovered that they aren't married, but things seemed good and he said he would be willing to accompany her to the chapel. That night we called to confirm and Jessica told us they had a huge fight and she left the house. Please pray for them as well.

Things have been tough, but good here in Pirque. My back wheel on the bike broke again... We had stake conference yesterday and this next Saturday we have our Missionary planned activity of Desserts here in the branch. I´ll have to tell you about it next week.
Hope all is well back home. I love and miss you all.

Love,
Elder Mooney

I'm 21 years old!

2011-03-14T16:55:00.000-07:00

Dear family,

Well this is kinda cool. I´m 21 years old. I don´t feel that old.. I like it though. I feel like an official adult now. Today to celebrate my birthday we watched "The District," a series of missionary training DVDs. We then ate lunch with Margarita and Luis. We ate some tortilla de papas (like a giant french fry thing), with some creamy chicken popper things, rice, and some pork. It was an interesting meal, but very delicious. Afterwards, we played MONOPOLY DEAL for about two hours or so with our District Leader and his companion who came to chill. Elder Grillone made the German Chocolate cake you sent me and now its cooling back home. It was a nice relaxing birthday party, especially with the cool cloudy weather we are having.
Oh and thank you so much for the birthday package. I loved it. The two new ties are legit. The Peanut Butter M&M´s and airheads were delicious. Everything was amazing. My companions laughed at the Zing-shot and the Transformer bubbles. We couldn't decide if you actually thought I would love them or if you were sending them just to try to keep treating me as your little boy. Well when our Zone Leader came over on divisions we set up a pyramid of BBQ and Jalapeño Pringles and Dr. Pepper cans and had a tournament with the zing-shot to see who could knock over the most. I won 4-1-1. It was pretty intense. Thank you so much for the gifts.

This week I had the opportunity to go on divisions in another sector called Nocedal while our District Leader Elder Lyman came over to Pirque. Elder Bloomquist and I had a great time. I was exhausted at the end of the day because I am not used to walking. We had a really good experience though with a lady named Andrea and her 23 year old daughter Jocelyn. When we first started teaching them Andrea made it clear that she just let us in cause she felt bad for us and she thinks it is good to hear the word of God on occasion. She flat out told us that she wouldn't go to our church and she wouldn't join our congregation. It didn´t matter to me though, I was determined to teach her the first lesson and invite her to be baptized. We started teaching and she would just start talking and talking. She probably talked for about an hour in total. Really.. We kept teaching though when she would give us the chance. We explained baptism using Mosiah 18 and explaining 1) that it has to be a personal decision, 2) it has to be done by immersion, and 3) by the proper authority. It was probably one of the longest lessons I have ever been in and one of the most disorganized with two little kids running around, a mother breast feeding her kid, with crazy questions and side themes, BUT in the end Andrea and Jocelyn both accepted the invitation to be baptized. Andrea said the closing prayer and afterwards said that she doesn't know what happened, but that she somehow went from not wanting anything to now wanting to be baptized. They seemed pretty determined as well. It was a cool lesson of patience for us.

Then on Sunday Carlos showed up to church in a suit and his new tie we bought him. His mom Gloria and his little brother Benjamin came as well. It was great. Also Adonis, the son of a somewhat recent convert named Victor, came to church for the second time. He lives with his mom from Victor's first marriage and visits on the weekends. Last week we invited him to play fútbol with us on Friday and he loved it. When I saw him in church again I decided that we needed to put a baptismal date on him immediately. We had the day booked with appointments but I really felt like we needed to teach him. We talked to his Dad and he said that they would be home until 7:00. I told him that we had a lot of appointments but that we would try to pass by. After church I felt that we needed to go strongly so I called and canceled one appointment, then changed another appointment to later in the evening and we went to Adonis and Victor. We taught Adonis the Restoration and as we were talking about Jesus Christ we started talking to him about baptism. We invited him to be baptized and he said, "of course, that´s kind of why I have been coming to church." In the lesson Victor explained that he had been praying ever since we talked to him in the church that we would come to teach his son and was worried because we never said it was a sure thing. So at the moment Adonis has a baptismal date for the 3rd of April, conference weekend. Adonis and Victor both seem very happy.

Things are going well here in the mission though. I am worn out, but still trying to work hard. Thank you so much for all your love and support. You are the best.

Love,
Elder Mooney

Time seems to be going by a little too fast.

2011-03-11T11:15:00.000-08:00

Dear family,

Time seems to be going by a little too fast. We always work and think of time by changes and two weeks have already gone by this change. We only have four more weeks left?! We´ve got some work to do.

So on Thursday we had Zone Conference with President Laycock and a couple other zones. It was really good. They did a good example of hard work and perseverance with an Elder who had to do wall sits for five minutes while the assistants but electric heaters by him and started to tempt him to give up. Then his companion, President Laycock, and a zone leader went to cheer him on and support him. It was pretty intense, because the missionary got really into it and was suffering after only a minute.

At the end of the conference President decided to do something that he hadn't done in about eight months or so. He asked five people to give surprise talks. We always have a theme given to us each theme for studies and we should prepare a talk for that theme. This changes theme was the Book of Mormon. Luckily I gave a really good talk about the Book of Mormon in my last ward JP and felt ready. To my surprise President called on me to give the first talk and I didn't have it with me. I had written it in a different journal and so I walked up there and spoke a few words and shared some jumbled up thoughts. It wasn't very powerful at all. Afterwards I started thinking about what it will be like in the final judgment. A lot of people will think they are ready, but when it comes down to it they will just end up feeling unprepared and stupid. I don´t want to feel like that. I want to be ready.

We have a few people with baptismal dates. Emanuel (17?), Sonia (61), and Ivan (19). We have a lot of work to do with the three of them and they are all a little unstable at the moment. Please pray for each of them. Sad story of the week though. Sonia accepted a baptismal about 8 days ago. And about 3 days ago she slipped on some water that had spilled from the dog bowl and broke her wrist. She now has a cast from her wrist to her shoulder and she told her daughter to tell the kids that she won't be able to get baptized right now :( We haven't seen her yet, but we are going to see what we can do.

Things are all right though! My birthday is almost here and that should be kinda weird. I might throw myself a party so I don´t get depressed that day. Haha! I can't wait to get the package you sent. I love you and miss you all.

Love,
Elder Matt Mooney

The Elders are well taken care of!

2011-03-11T11:13:00.000-08:00

"Al proximo nivel!"

2011-02-28T14:58:00.000-08:00

Hello family!

This week went by pretty fast. It´s been pretty strange having a new companion, because it doesn't feel like I have a new companion. I think since I have spent so much time with Elder Jofre already that it has been an easy change. It has also been really nice having Elder Riding in our house. He is a fun kid and is really chill so there are no fights or contention in the pension. My companion Elder Jofre has seemed a lot happier and more talkative. Elder Grillone has also begun to speak spanish a lot more now that he has to guide Elder Riding around. It appears that this is going to be a good change for us!

A couple interesting stories from the week:

1) We went to the Barrales Family´s house the other day after lunch and they gave us some ice cream because they were having a big party with some friends from other wards. We talked to them for a few minutes and then started to leave. As we were leaving we noticed a large group of children in their front yard sneaking up on their brand new pet EMU named Julio. They started chasing him around the yard throwing balls at him when he started to book it and ran right out the front gate. (Luckily not our fault because the gate was open the entire time). We ran back and told Brother Barrales and the three of us ran and kinda guided him back toward the house. The Emu is really fun though. It supposedly can grow to up to six feet or so. The Barrales family is awesome.

2) We were knocking doors the other day when we came upon a castle looking house. No one came when we yelled ¡HALO! and then my companion noticed that the side gate was open. So he said "Al proximo nivel!" which is President Laycock's saying that means "to the next level." We entered the property when all of the sudden we heard a faint barking. Within a matter of seconds there were 5 or 6 large hound dogs chasing after us. I turned to see where my companion was and he was already out the gate. I hopped on my bike and booked it out of there. Afterwards we just started to laugh. It was a pretty fun experience. Just after that we found 3 new investigators.

Things are going well though. We just invited the grandma of a convert family to be baptized last night and she accepted. She will be the fourth member of the family that will have gotten baptized now.

Thank you for your support and prayers. You are the best.

Love, Elder Mooney

My week!

2011-02-23T13:40:00.000-08:00

Dear family,

Well this last week was pretty exciting. It was the last week of the change and Carlos and Maria Jesus were confirmed. It was kinda scary because the bus didn't pass and Carlos didn't show up to sacrament meeting until after the sacrament. He showed up though (in a sleeveless shirt and dress pants?) and was confirmed by the branch president. I think afterward he looked a little emotional. It was good. It was also a good Sunday because President Laycock came to our branch again and spoke in our sacrament meeting. He gave a really powerful talk about the Holy Ghost and he also talked a little about the mission. He had the five young men in church, including Carlos, stand up. Then he made them raise their hands and commit to going on a mission. Carlos did it! We are praying that he will follow through on that commitment now.

I think I told you all before that every Friday we play fútbol and basketball with investigators and members. On Friday we were playing and for some reason my team was just rocking and we won the fútbol match. Then we started playing basketball and my team managed to win each time again. (Probably not because I'm that good, but because the Chileans aren't that great ;) Unfortunately in the last five minutes I rolled my ankle really bad. It still kills when I wake up in the mornings. So now I have two bad ankles. Not fun at all.

On Saturday we went to the house of Mauricio, Cata, María Jesús, and Mariela (all recent converts) and we made cinnamon rolls with them in the evening. It was pretty fun. The cinnamon rolls actually turned out really well for being an internet recipe. They also made panqueques filled with manjar which I love. Then on our way home another member lady called us and had us pick up a big tray of creme puff pastry things. We ate pretty good this weekend.
Oh and speaking of eating good. Luis and Margarita, the people we live with, slaughtered a pig and cooked it this weekend for Luis´ birthday. I took a bunch of pictures. It was pretty disgusting to watch it all, but it was awesome eating it. It turned out really good, especially with the onion mushroom plum stuffing they made.

Oh and about changes. We all figured Elder Mathews was leaving because he had already been here for four changes. The rest of us were pretty unsure of what was going to happen. We had heard some rumors of changes and such but nobody was sure. We got the phone call and yes Elder Mathews left and the rest of us stayed. The only weird part is that I am no longer companions with Elder Grillone. I am now companions with Elder Jofre from Argentina (the other elder we live with) and Elder Grillone is with a gringo named Elder Riding from Idaho who has the same time as me. It makes everything a little strange with appointments and investigators, but we should work it all out this week.

Anyways, that is my week. Thank you so much for the letters, the love, and the concern.

Love,
Elder Mooney

Fotos!

2011-02-23T13:38:00.001-08:00

Keep working!

2011-02-07T13:38:00.000-08:00

Dear family,

Well on February 5th I officially finished 18 months in the mission. That means I´m 3/4 of the way through?! It feels kinda crazy to think that I am on the final 6 month stretch now. I am just gonna try to keep my head down and keep working!

Things are going great with Carlos and Gloria. Carlos is gettiing baptized next Sunday and is just rocking at everything. We taught him and his mom about the Word of Wisdom. We watched The Restoration video, talked about obedience to God´s commandments and his prophets, and then we explained how our bodies are temples. Carlos accepted the Word of Wisdom without doubts and Gloria accepted it as well. She said that giving up her Tea is going to be a really challenge, but she was going to do her best. We are really proud of them and how much faith they really have.

Oh and I recieved the Valentine´s day package you sent and loved it! Really, the candy, the cookies, the card, and the amazing tie. Thank you so much for the package. It´s strange, because I am not usually a huge fan of pink ties, but the one you sent was just classy and stylish. It´s one of my favorite ties at the moment. And the cookies were used for a good cause, we made them for Carlos´ birthday!

One unfortunate thing that has been going down here in Pirque is that diarrhea has become a weekly routine.. It feels like at least once a week all of us Elders are spending too much time in the bathroom. Not very fun :S

Everything is going pretty well though. We are excited for the two baptisms we are going to have on Friday (Carlos and Maria Jesus) and I´ve just been excited because I am an old missionary now. Haha

Thank you for all you do. You are the best!

Con amor,
Elder Mooney

January comes to an end...

2011-01-31T14:04:00.000-08:00

Dear family,

Well this past week went by pretty fast. We started off the week fixing up our bikes a little bit. We had our crooked wheels straightened out, then we adjusted and fixed our brakes. The bikes still need quite a bit of work, but at least they are working a little bit better now.

The other day we had an awesome experience with Carlos. We had originally planned an appointment with him on Thursday, but we felt like we should pass by him on Tuesday as well to see how he was doing. We arrived and he was playing video games with a friend. We taught the both of them the Restoration and it was amazing. Carlos taught as if he were already a member. He explained prophets a bit, he testified of Joseph Smith, and explained the answers he had recieved through the Holy Ghost. After the lesson and as we were leaving Carlos told us that he had been wanting to talk to his friend about the church, but didn´t know how to bring it up, then we showed up. Things are going really well with Carlos though. He played basketball and volleyball with us today. He went to a fireside and heard President Laycock speak here in the branch. His mom came to church on Sunday. Everything is great right now.

Now for the bad new. It turns out that Gloria is not married to Andres, the man she lives with. We are going to have to explain the Law of Chastity to her this week. We are a little nervous because we don´t want her to get discouraged. Please pray for them this week so that they can keep progressing.

The fireside with President Laycock was really nice yesterday. We did it at the house of the Familia Barrales. The house is like a paradise or something. Hills, swimming pool, grass, tennis court, chickens, and peacocks, and lots of big trees surrounding it. About forty five people or so showed up. Some recent convert families, investigators, and less actives showed up as well. Every one seemed to really enjoy it.

I love you all very much and thank you for your emails. You really are the best!

Love,

Elder Mooney

¡Me Gusto!

2011-01-24T16:57:00.000-08:00

Dear family,

Wow, this past week was a good one. Baptismal dates, sicknesses, spiritual experiences, and fun. First off, we called Ivan and Susana the other day to see how they were doing and Ivan told us that he and his mom had been reading together and that he gave himself the goal of reading until the book of Alma during his vacation. It sounds like they are doing pretty well. Please pray for them.

The highlight of the week was that on Friday a family fed us day-old chinese food. All four of us had food poisoning that next day. We spent the entire day fighting over the bathroom. For some reason it hit me the worst though. It was not a fun experience...

Oh, I also received my "trunky papers" this week. I had to fill out my information about home and where I would be flying in to so that the church could prepare my flight plans. I´m trying to not get too trunky now...

We also shared with a kid in his twenties named Sebastian Machuca. We had found him about three weeks ago and I felt the impression to hop off our bikes and go teach him. We taught him twice and then weren't able to find him or contact him since. It turns out he lost his phone and had been working a lot. We talked about 3 Nefi 11 with him and talked about the three keys of baptism; 1) Authority 2) Age/personal decision 3) By immersion. He was the joven who used to be a Catholic missionary. We invited him to get baptized on February 6th and he said he'd love to, but couldn't because he was going on vacation for about a week and a half, then another vacation for two weeks. He asked us if he could get baptized afterwards. We were like hmmmm.... we´ll have to think about it. Haha no, we told him of course. He officially has a date to be baptized the 20th of March.

The most incredible experience we had all started on New Year´s day. After having so much success on New Year´s eve we returned to that same neighborhood to knock doors. We didn't get into a single house, but we did contact a lady named Gloria. We talked to her outside and she told us her son had a Book of Mormon. She asked us for our number and said she´d call us on Friday. Of course, she never called though. The next week we saw her on the bus and I started talking to her. She felt bad cuz she had forgotten to call us and said she´d call that week after talking to her son. The call never came. Finally this past week we passed by their house again and they let us in right away. We sat down and shared a message with Gloria and her 17 year old son Carlos. We tried explaining the restoration, but they had so many questions about tenants and deep doctrine that it didn't go anywhere. We asked Carlos to give the closing prayer and he started crying right in the middle and never explained why. We went back later that week and they let us in again and Carlos was way excited to see us. Gloria told us that she wanted us to focus on her son more, but we made her stay and listen ;) We talked about 3 Nefi 11 and baptism. They immediately accepted baptismal dates. We invited them to come to church and only Carlos showed up. He payed attention in Sacrament meeting, the classes, everything. Everyone was really nice to him and made him feel welcome. It was a great Sunday. He went home and told his mom all about how he loved church. We went to visit them that same night and Gloria said she is for sure going next week. Then Gloria told us that Carlos had a question for us. Carlos explained that when he entered into the chapel he felt a strange feeling. He put his hand up to his heart and said I felt a burning in my chest. He said he had also felt it the last time we visited them. We then opened up to D&C 8 and read the scripture about a burning in your bosom. He smiled and his eyes filled up with tears. He, his mom, and his step-dad were all impressed. They currently have a baptismal date for February 13th. Carlos and Gloria are amazing though. Carlos is one of the most spiritually sensitive kids I have ever met.

As you can tell we have been having some success and we have been pretty excited. Knocking doors and contacting hundreds of people has been paying off. And with all five people who have accepted baptismal dates we have had to be pretty persistent in finding them again. All is going well at the moment.

Thank you for your emails and stories though. I loved them this week. It feels great to have such loving parents and sisters who are always writing me and supporting me. You are the best and I love you all very much.

Love,
Elder Mooney

Hey!

2011-01-17T17:53:00.001-08:00

Dear family,

This past week went pretty well. We have been focusing a lot on making more contacts and finding new investigators. It has been fun because we have come to know a lot of people in one of the nearby neighborhoods. We have made friends with people who do want to hear our message and with people who don't. It feels good though to be able to walk down the street and greet people with their names.

With all of this attention we placed on finding new investigators and contacting people this week we managed to find twenty new investigators. We also have two investigators with baptismal dates for the 20th of February, Susana and Ivan.

Ivan is a nineteen year old we found while knocking doors a couple of weeks ago. He seemed pretty interested, but afterwards we couldn't find him. We set an appointment with his mom, Susana, for Sunday and taught the both of them then. It turns out that they had been learning and investigating the church in 2006 but one day the missionaries never came back. So they were anxious to continue learning. It also turns out that one of the recent converts in our ward is a relative of theirs. They accepted the baptismal invitation for the 20th because this next week they are going on vacation, but plan on being back to go to church on the 6th of February. We feel pretty grateful for the work that those missionaries did five years ago with them and for the way the Lord has prepared them.

Funny story of the week. My companion Elder Grillone was messing around up stairs with Elder Mathews and wanted to show him some sort of Karate move. He was showing him how to hit someone in the face with your knee or something? Anyways, he went to do the move, jumped up in the air and BOOM! His head went straight through the ceiling. It seems that he forgot that upstairs our ceiling is very low. He left a big old hole in the ceiling and a nice little cut along his forehead. It was pretty funny. Elder Mathews about died laughing. These last few days everyone has been asking him what happened. He felt pretty stupid.

Thank you all for your emails and your prayers. I hope all is well back home. Thanks for everything.

Love,
Elder Mooney

Fruit Wars!

2011-01-17T17:48:00.000-08:00

Boundin'

2011-01-10T14:56:00.000-08:00

Querida Familia,

So time just seems to be flying. We are already ten days into January. It is crazy how fast time can blast by. This past week has been fairly difficult, but we have had some great times.

We recieved our change calls last night. All of us are pretty new here in Pirque except Elder Mathews so we weren´t planning on being changed. Elder Mathews was pretty sure he was gone and he even packed all of his bags a day early. In the end, all four of us stayed here in Pirque. No changes at all.

This week I have felt a little better physically, but not 100%. We have been working pretty hard and have been having some bad luck with the bikes. Flat tires, bent rims, broken gears, etc. But hey, that´s life!

I recieved my Christmas package last week. So incredible. Loved it all. Thank you so much. It was pretty exciting to have gifts to open almost two weeks after Christmas. The fudge and carmellows didn´t do so well on the journey. Some mold was found on the fudge, but Elder Mathews ate nearly the whole box anyways. The Cliff Bars made it fine though. All of the gifts as well. Oh and thank you so much for the cool little bike tool. It is way fun to know how far we have gone, how many calories we have burned, and how fast we are going at all times. Next week I will try and keep all the dats to send them to you. It´s impressive how much we ride our bikes.

A highlight of the week happened when we went to visit a convert family that lives up on a steep hill area with lots of trees and plants. One thing lead to another and we got into a huge plum and peach war with the son. Luckily, us four missionaries were wearing white shirts and ties so it made every hit really stand out. Elder Grillone got the worst out of everyone though. It was pretty fun. Especially the walk home and everyone wondering why we were covered in orange.

Today we had a concilio with President Laycock and it was pretty powerful. At the end he played the short Pixar video "Boundin´" which was pretty fun. I felt like it really applied. Keeping a positive attitude is just so important.
I love you all so much. Thank you for you love, support, and your prayers. You are incredible.

Con amor,

Elder Mooney

Memorable New Years...

2011-01-03T17:05:00.000-08:00

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!

Skype for Christmas is the best present ever!

2010-12-28T18:59:00.000-08:00

It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas!

2010-12-13T15:39:00.000-08:00

Dear family,

This has been quite an interesting week. First off, I don´t remember if I told you about the flea problem we have been having. Anyways, Elder Mathews has been getting more and more bites so finally we had an extermination day. We washed all of our clothes, everything we had. We vacuumed the floors. And then we went at it with 10 cans of Raid flea and tick killer. We sealed off that room and slept in the members house on a couple of mattresses on the floor. It was intense...

On Thursday we had our Mission´s big old Christmas Bash which was way fun. Each zone had to wear some kind of matching clothes. We all wore long red Nike socks, basketball shorts, white shirts, and bandanas with our name and zone on it. We had Zone olympics, a soccer tournament, etc. Then we changed, ate lunch, had a Christmas devotional, and finished the night watching It´s a Wonderful Life. That was a fun day.

On Saturday we planned a LARGE Family Home Evening and invited everyone we were teaching. We planned a bunch of Christmas games and to watch a movie outside using a projector. Unfortunately everyone showed up late and it was raining so we had to move it inside the house. We watched Joy to the World and then had a Christmas raffle which was way fun. We raffled off a Nativity scene, some Chilean toys, a nice CTR ring, and a few other things. About 28 people showed up and it turned out great. I have decided that all of the memorable and worth while activities in my mission have come after a lot of stress and planning. It's always worth it in the end though.

Mom and Dad, I want you to know that I did get the Christmas package and I love it. Its horrible though because I can´t open anything.. The twelve days of Christmas is no fun for an impatient kid. Haha thank you so much though.

I think the thing that has blown my mind the most is that Kelly recieved her mission call. I want to talk to her so bad now. I hope she is doing great. I am really proud of her.

Well thank you so much for the love and support. Sorry about not sending pictures, but these stinking computers won´t let me. I will when I can.

Love you all,

Elder Matthew Mooney

Thanksgiving has come and gone!

2010-11-29T16:46:00.000-08:00

Dear family,

So this past week has been an adventure. I have ridden through rocky mountain shortcuts, almost crashed several times, gotten into bike battles with Elder Deaver, and much much more. Pirque is huge! Really we spend hours and hours riding bikes every day. We usually have to plan our appointments thirty minutes to an hour apart so that we can ride all the way over the the next house. The first few days I could really feel it in my legs and rear end, but now I am pretty much accustomed to it.

This whole last week the three of us have been low on money and mooching off the family we live with. It is going to be really difficult to manage money well here because we have to take the bus several times a week and each time costs a dollar. It doesn't sound like much but a bus ride to the store and back is two dollars, then a bus ride to zone classes and back is another two dollars. It just adds up quick.

Thanksgiving day was nothing special. We had to pick up lunch and bring it back to the house. Noodles with red sauce and some vegetables with mayonnaise. It tasted pretty good though. When we got home at night though we were starving and it hit us that we were about to end Thanksgiving day without celebrating. So we ran to the corner store by our house and bought some Cheetos, potato chips, ketchup, cookies, and soda to celebrate. Now that is what I call Thanksgiving... The next day, Friday, we ate lunch with the richest family in our branch who made us a Thanksgiving dinner with two giant roasted chickens, potato salad, vegetables, and apple pie with ice cream for dessert. That was pretty awesome.

We have been working a lot with three people, Veronica, Vicente, and Amparo. They will all be getting baptized next Sunday!! Last week we also put a baptismal date on a foreign exchanged student named Wes from Indiana. He has a bunch of friends who are members and he wants to go to BYU when he returns home. He should be getting baptized on Christmas day if his parents give him permission. The other day we also found an amazing older couple. We talked to the lady on the side of the road on Thursday, then passed by her house on Saturday. It turns out they are stinking rich and live on a giant beautiful property. We taught her and her husband. They had never heard of Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon, living prophets. They said that they had never accepted to listen to anyone outside of the Catholic church and when we came in we shook the ground from under them. They loved the idea of a living prophet and twelve apostles. They immediately committed to coming to church.

Unfortunately they attended the wrong church on Sunday (even though we gave them a map), but they have a full desire to learn more about the gospel. I feel like I am almost back in time a little bit, preaching the gospel like the missionaries of old used to. It is very cool.
I still have not received my new companion. Tomorrow morning all of the trainers will be going to the temple in the morning and after we will be receiving our new companions. I am so excited to find out who he is. We spent all day today cleaning up the pension, killing spiders, cutting our bunk beds into four separate beds (it wasn't me), and trying to get everything nice for us and the new kid. I still think he will think the place is a mess though. At least that is how I felt when I first showed up.

Thank you for all the love and the letters. I loved the pictures as well. You are the best family ever.

Love you lots,
Elder Mooney

Fields, mountains and almost fresh air!

2010-11-22T17:21:00.000-08:00

Dear family,

Well we received our changes today. It was a bit nerve racking for me, not gonna lie. It turns out that I got changed. Elder Jacobs stayed in our sector and Elder Tello, my old companion, took my place there. I had to pack up all my stuff (I have way too much stuff now) and haul it over to the change meeting. Then President gave us our changes and I was one of the last people to receive my new change. I got called to a sector called Pirque and I will be training. First of all, Pirque is a coveted sector because its outside of the city; fields, mountains, almost fresh air. We have to ride bikes in this sector as well. Oh and to top it off we live with members in a big farm house. They have pigs, chickens, dogs, and all sorts of animals. It's actually really cool. At the moment I am in a Trio because my new companion doesn't arrive in Chile until next week. I'm going to be a dad!!! Haha it is going to be quite an experience training a new Elder in a huge wilderness sector. Hopefully we don´t get lost...

Last week was a good week though. We had a really cool experience yesterday in our sector slam. Oh and a sector slam is when all of the missionaries from the zone and knock doors in the same sector. Elder Jacobs and I were tired and didn't really want to be knocking doors, especially in someone else´s sector. We pushed ourselves anyway and started knocking. The fourth door we knocked opened and invited us in before we even started the contact. The man´s name was Milton and he recently had moved in. He told us about his religious background and desire to find a religion that truly made him feel like a "child of God." He even told us that he had actually been wandering around that same day trying to find a church to go to because he needed to feel closer to God, but didn't find one so he went back to the house and was listening to radio sermons until we showed up. We shared the restoration and asked him if he would be willing to get baptized if he knew it were true. He told us that he would have to study it out well first, but yes. Milton should be getting baptized soon!

Also, a while back I went on division with Elder Reynolds, an Elder from my district and he told me they needed to find more investigators. I told him, well let's knock a door then. I knocked a door and did a contact with a teenage boy and his mom who happens to be a less active member. The teenage boy was just baptized the other week. It is amazing how some people really are prepared to receive the gospel, we just need to find them.

Oh and Melissa I want to thank you so much for the package you sent me. It is amazing! I love the candy, the plates, the music, the toys. Really thank you so much for thinking and worrying about me. And your new house looks beautiful by the way. I can´t wait to visit!
I love you all very much. I hope you are all doing well. I pray for you always.

Love,
Elder Mooney

PS - Just want you to know that I ate a sandwhich de potito on friday.. It means butt sandwhich :S One of our investigators bought one and made us try. Its a sandwich made out of the organs and innerds of animals. It didn't taste too bad, but the texture was horrible.

Thank you for all your letters and support!

2010-11-15T17:08:00.000-08:00

Dear family,

This change has gone by really fast. I think partly because my companion and I have been together for so long and also because this change consists of 5 weeks instead of 6. What happened is, a group of missionaries should be going home the week after Thanksgiving according to the change schedule, but they wanted to be home for Thanksgiving so they go home this next week. Then we will have one weird week, and then we will be receiving like 25 new missionaries here in the mission.

I am quite excited for Thanksgiving and Christmas. On Thanksgiving we are going to be doing nothing special because nobody celebrates it here. Maybe we will order pizza or something. Luckily it's the last one outside of the United States! Then comes Christmas. I'm kinda hoping I get to stay here in my sector for this Christmas because it's lame to get sent to a new sector just before the holidays.

Something funny happened this week. As we were walking down the street, out of nowhere we heard a loud screeching noise. We turned to see what it was and it was a van stopped directly in the middle of an intersection. We looked to see who was driving and to our surprise it was a Nun. I guess she didn't see the light was red and noticed just as she reached the middle of the intersection. It reminded me of Sister Act for some reason.. Haha

We found a really cute old Peruvian couple here in our ward. They moved here to Chile about a year ago and in-activated from the church when they got here. When we first knocked on the door the lady, Gloria, immediately let us in, even though her husband Walter told her not to. We talked with them for a few minutes and then Walter brought us a plate of food to share with them. They both committed to returning to church and said that they will be waiting for us next Saturday with a plate of food. ;)

Thank you all for your letters and support. This week I opened my mail and had an email from practically everyone so that was really encouraging. I love you all very much.

Love,
Elder Mooney

Everything's all right.

2010-11-08T11:19:00.000-08:00

Dear family,

This week has been mas o menos. We did find an awesome new family though. We were looking for a less active family and found out that they had moved. We talked with Margarita, the new owner of the home. She told us she was separated from her husband and had 6 kids (5 actually living in their little house). Unfortunately she rejected our offer to share a message with her told us she wasn't interested. I asked her if we could just share a prayer with her and she said yes. I prayed and left her with a Restoration pamphlet and that was all. Two days later I felt we should pass by there again and ask if they needed help or had any questions. She said all was good and then we asked if we pass by another day and share with her. She thought about it for a second and said, yes. We went and taught her with the young men's president from our ward and she seems pretty interested. She has a lot of questions and a lot of doubts, but those are the kind of people we like to work with :)

The Jonas Brothers also had a concert right here in our sector the other day. It was crazy. Thousands and thousands of girls with their moms and dads were waiting in line all day long. We could hear screaming all day. Supposedly it was one of their biggest fan groups they had ever seen. That was interesting.

We had a Ward Family Night on Friday and the primary acted out the Tree of Life story. Elder Jacobs and I had to be Laman and Lemuel, which was fun because we got to go hang out in the Great and Spacious Building. What was funny about the whole activity was that a lot of adults were pulled away into the darkness and into the building, but every single primary kid made it to the tree of light and partook of its fruit. It was a great activity, extremely disorganized but great. Kevin, Jaqueline, Isabel, and David all made it there (some of our investigators).

Everything's all right though. Please pray for my companion and I, for our sector, and for our investigators. Thank you for all of you love and support.

Love,
Elder Mooney

Facebook photos from a member in Chile!

2010-11-02T09:08:00.001-07:00

Fotos

2010-11-02T09:00:00.001-07:00

Brrrr...winter is coming!

"Fighting the good fight"

Fotos

2010-11-02T08:50:00.000-07:00

Torta de mil hojas!

One year anniversary for Matt's companion (traditional shirt burning??)

We threw ourselves a party!

2010-11-02T08:34:00.000-07:00

Dear family,

Well Halloween was fun. Yesterday we had a Noche de Hogar (or family home evening) with the Familia Carrasco and one of the daughters, Sara, age 19, isn't a member. Supposedly its really hard to get her to trust you, but we made friends with her and we'll see if she progresses. We made homemade Reese´s and then we read 1 Nephi 8 and watched the cartoon of it. It was good! Then in the night time we saw a whole bunch of kids trick or treating, and people partying. I am happy to say that I just celebrated my last Halloween in the mission :) It was great to hear about the Halloween party back home. I miss the good old ward parties.

On Thursday night Elder Jacobs completed a year in the mission so we threw ourselves a party. Elder Jacobs bought a huge Torta de Mil Ojas. Its basically a bunch of crispy layers of pastry and huge layers of manjar inbetween. We attempted to eat half of it that night but failed because we also ordered a large pizza with chaparritas and garlic bread. It was a wonderful night. Haha and Elder Jacobs burned a shirt. Oh and it also rained that night, very unexpected. I forgot my umbrella and got pretty wet. What memories....

Things are good here though. Just trying to keep fighting the good fight. Thank you for your prayers and your support. You are all so amazing. Thank you for everything. I love you very much.

Elder Matthew D. Mooney

Time flies when you are working like crazy!

2010-10-25T15:33:00.000-07:00

Dear loved ones,

Another week has come and gone. Phew... October is almost over as well. It is amazing how time flies when you are working like crazy!

I received my package this week. THANK YOU SO MUCH! I love the tie (I've already worn it twice). I love the cookies. I loved everything! And I especially love the Warheads. We have been having some fun with warheads down here. We have shared them with our investigators, with members, with the Bishop, with everyone. We have also managed to capture a few quality videos of people freaking out after eating them. Two people have actually cried haha.. They have all enjoyed it though and most people ask for more.

This week something incredible happened. We have been working with a less active woman named Ana María for about 3 months now. She lives with her adult son and they own a little grocery corner store connected to their house. She has been active, inactive, active, inactive for a long time. We have been working with her and she has been attending church every week for the last two months about. Her only problem was that she has a lot of debt and didn't think she would be able to close her store on Sundays. She says she tried it for about two months and it went really bad. We kept working with her and just kinda taught everything but that because she knew what she had to do. She reactivated completely, but then had doubts about the temple and said she didn't want to go there. We left her with the video "Between Heaven and Earth" that talks about Temples and that cleared up all of her doubts, but she still didn't want to commit herself. We committed her to reading the entire Book of Mormon and she has been reading every day since. Then on Thursday we were reading with her in the Book of Mormon and after finishing the chapter she told us that she was ready to change everything. She told us she wanted her Patriarchal blessing, she wants to go to the temple, she even want to do all of her genealogy! Then she started crying because she was so happy. It was amazing how happy I was as well. I felt this complete joy come over me and I knew that the Holy Ghost combined with the Book of Mormon convinced her. She even said that she had a spiritual thirst or hunger. It was a powerful experience. She has an interview with the 1st counselor on Tuesday night.

It has been a good week though. Kevin and Jaqueline have baptismal dates, but we are not sure when they are going to do it anymore because Kevin is having an operation today. We are hoping that in a week or two he will be all better. Matías went to church again as well but still doesn't want to be baptized. We are going to fast and pray with the Bishop for him.
Thank you all for the love and support. You are amazing!

Love,
Elder Matthew D. Mooney

Nothing to do but keep working.

2010-10-20T12:45:00.000-07:00

Dear Family,

Well we received our changes last night and....I´m staying in my sector! as well as my companion! And to our surprise our whole zone pretty much stayed the exact same. Three people left, one of them because he finished the mission and one new guy came into the zone. My district stayed the exact same which kinda shocked us. Especially in one sector where they only have had like five lessons the entire change?? ANyways, there is nothing to do but keep working.

The work here has still been pretty crazy. We find lots of investigators, but to find them again and keep teaching them has been difficult. We did find an awesome less active man named Carlos and his three kids Kevin, Jaqueline, and Neffi. They are a really cool family and Kevin and Jaqueline accepted baptismal dates. They went to church with us on Sunday and everyone already knew them because they used to attend church. We have high hopes with them.

A sad thing also happened this week with an investigator named Marcos. He was a really cool, sincere guy. We gave him the Book of Mormon and he said that if it filled him, he would get baptized. We had some trouble finding him for a while and when we finally found him he was drunk. He talked to us outside his house and told us that our book didn't help him at all and that he wasn't interested. He said all it talked about was Joseph Smith. That made us a little upset, but mostly disappointed because anyone who actually reads the book realizes that the Book of Mormon doesn't even talk about Joseph Smith. We will have to see if we can find him sober. I just hate how alcohol messes people up. It ruins people and it ruins their lives. It takes away all intelligence and spirituality a person has and turns them into something they are not. I am glad that alcohol has never had an influence over me and I am positive that I will never let it into my life.

We also had two really nice Family Home Evenings this week with ward members and investigating families and less active families. We taught about Temples and they loved it. We gave them copies of the new Liahona on temples and they enjoyed that. We finished the Family Nights playing funny games like "Black Magic" and a memorization game "I'm going on a trip and I'm going to bring a (something that starts with A, then B, etc.). Family Nights or Noches de Hogar are the key to making people comfortable in the ward and the church here.

Mom, Dad, and Diana I am quite jealous of your San Francisco trip. I wanna go to China Town so bad! I miss chinese food. Chinese food and Mexican food. That is what I want to eat when I first get home haha. I am proud of you Mom for doing such a good job helping out those organizations.

Well Halloween is coming up! Then Thanksgiving! Then Christmas! These next few months should fly by! Thank you for everything and I love you all very much.

Love,
Elder Matthew D. Mooney

I am grateful to be serving here in Chile.

2010-10-12T07:54:00.000-07:00

Dear family,

This has been quite the average week. We taught plenty, found a bunch of new investigators, and are praying that some of them will progress. The problem is, a lot of our investigators like learning, but don´t really want to act in any way. With those people we just teach and testify as strongly as we can, but that is about all we can do. We have been trying to work with ward members a lot. Speaking of ward members, one of our friends here who always accompanies us to lessons, Fabian Gonzalez (Xavi), just got his mission call to Argentina! It was funny because he was praying not to go there. On Sunday he testified that he knows that Heavenly Father hears our prayers. Ha ha

News about Marilyn! I went and visited her with the bishop on Wednesday and she explained that she has received two answers - that the church is true and that she should get baptized. Unfortunately she is using her family and hectic work schedule as an excuse. We will see what happens with her.

We also brought one of our new investigators to church. His name is Matías and he is 15 years old. His family is catholic, but likes talking and sharing with us and he has relatives that are members of the church. At first he wanted to get out of church right after sacrament meeting. Then we introduced him to the bishop and the bishop rushed him off to the young men. He ended up staying 30 minutes after church and walking home with a family from our ward. The ward secretary thinks he stayed because of the girls ;)

Today we spent a lot of our Preparation day painting a room with the Hermana Maria Eugenia and her son Hernan. When we finished, I was a little uneasy because it needed another coat of paint or two, but she liked it. We then ate lunch with them. Afterward, I got my haircut for 3 thousand pesos. It was a little more expensive then I normally pay. The funny thing is, 3 thousand pesos is only 6 dollars?? And what´s even crazier is that McDonalds costs like 5 thousand pesos, or about 10 dollars?? The money here is wacky!

Well I love you all very much. Thank you for your emails, letters, and prayers of support. You don´t know how much they really help. I am grateful to be serving here in Chile. Thank you for everything.

Love,
Elder Matt Mooney

Wasn't conference just incredible?

2010-10-04T15:50:00.000-07:00

Dear Loved Ones,

Wasn´t conference just incredible? I find it so ridiculously amazing how much I really do enjoy listening to a bunch of "old men" talk for TEN HOURS. I know that those "old men" are prophets of God and they deliver His message to all the world. I feel so greatful to be able to listen to them every six months in conference. I also feel grateful because we were able to watch it all in english. I feel like that is a great blessing. I´ve tried listening to it in spanish, but it´s not just the same (that´s why the Lord speaks to us all in our own language). I also found it interesting how the themes seemed to be The Plan of Salvation - Agency and Follow Priesthood Authority - Prophets. Of course they talked about alot of subjects, but those were two large themes that we noticed as missionaries.

Oh and mom you mentioned that Sobe had a new Chirimoya drink right? I just ate a Chirimoya the other day. What a coincidence?! We´ve been eating really good lately. Too good, at times. We´ll have to work on that.

So we had about ten people who agreed to come to conference with us this weekend, but when it actually came time for the conference all ten of them backed out or cancelled. That was fairly discouraging. Well, life goes on and the work continues forward.

Conference also made me think of how grateful I really am to have such an amazing and supportive family. Thank you Mom and Dad for absolutley everything you are doing for me. You do so much and continue to do so much. Thank you Diana, Melissa, and Becky for being such great sisters. Thank you for writing me and sending me your love always. Thank you to all my friends and family who are reading this and have helped me to be where I am today. I love you all very much and pray for you often. Thanks all around!

Well I want you to know that I´m well. There are always difficulties here in the mission, but I´m where I need to be and I´m learning every day. Thanks for the concern.

Love,

Elder Matthew D. Mooney

"With or without clothes?"

2010-09-28T14:26:00.000-07:00

Dear friends and family,

How are you? I´m fine. This week has been kinda interesting. We have had some good times, but at the same time, its been kinda a slow week. For some reason the work is just going pretty slow. We found eight new investigators this week so we are hoping to see a little more progress this coming week.

We have been unable to teach our beloved Marilyn this entire week. We set four appointments with her and she cancelled or wasn't there for every single one of them :S We called her and asked her if she wants us to pass by and she says yes. It's difficult. We´ll see what´s going on with her this week. Hopefully we can get her to attend General Conference with us!

On Wednesday night I learned how to make Chilean Empanadas de Pino. They are delicious! Maria Eugenia, a really nice ward member taught us how. We made the dough from scratch and everything that goes in it. Pino is a hamburger onion mix that includes a hardboiled egg and green olive. I´m going to write it all down so I can celebrate the next 18 de Septiembre with you all in the states ;) We didn't have time to cook all the empanadas so we had to carry a big cardboard tray full of them 2 miles back to our house and bake them in our oven. I ate a lot of empanadas those next two days.

While we were there we taught Zulema, the crazy 81 year old lady, who is best friends with Maria Eugenia and always attends church. The missionaries have been trying to baptize her forever and she finally said she will get baptized. She then asked us if she had to do it with or without clothes (she´s a crazy lady haha).

That´s how the things are going here. I am way excited for the General Conference this weekend. It´s such a blessing to be able to listen to the words of living profets all weekend. I hope everyone can watch and enjoy every minute of it.

I love you all so much and thank you for everything you are doing for me.

Love,
Elder Mooney

"Cooouunt your blessings.... name.. them.. one.. by.. one.."

2010-09-16T14:43:00.000-07:00

Hello,

Well unfortunately this Monday I will not be able to email you thanks to the festivities that are going on here in Chile. Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday are just gonna be a big old 200th birthday party for the country of Chile. It should be fun.

Tomorrow our ward is throwing their yearly 18th of September party. It starts at 10am and goes till like 6-8pm. It´s craziness I tell you. They are going to make empanadas, mote con huesillo, pan amasado, y arto asado. Basically a big old Chilean BBQ. They are going to dance the national dance "La Cueca" (I think that´s how it is spelled?) and all the boys are gonna play fútbol. We are gonna pass it well.

So this week I had to do back to back divisions in other sectors. I had to go to the Nuevo Amanacer ward for a day with my old companion Elder Tello and then to Los Copihues with Elder Walters. It was exhausting. 48 hours away from my apartment and from my sector took alot out of me. It was sad because I had forgotten how blessed I am to live in a nice apartment building. It was freezing cold in Elder Tello´s apartment and there were 2 slugs in the bathroom. "Cooouunt your blessings.... name.. them.. one.. by.. one.."

Things are going well here though. The work is tough but well worth it. Oh and one lesson I learned this week, don´t Bible Bash. A man wanted all answers to come from the Bible in our lesson the other day and even though we could supply all the answers using the Bible, he hardened his heart and didn´t want to change. A powerful testimony is the best thing you can do.

I love you all very much!

Love,

Elder Mooney

"I felt the Spirit! I´m getting baptized!"

2010-09-13T15:38:00.000-07:00

Hello Everyone!

I am happy to be writing you all on this bright sunshiny Monday. Sabrina was confirmed and recieved the gift of the Holy Ghost on Sunday. We are way happy for her and for her family. Her grandpa performed all of the ordinances and we could tell that really strengthened him. Her less active mom was at sacrament meeting for the first time and had to leave after the first hour. We invited her to stay for the last two hours and to our excitement she said "maybe next week", which means she is planning on going to church again! We also taught and challenged her less active uncle to reactivate and he said ok. Things are going well.

Marilyn went to church for the second time. We are still progressing towards her baptism on the 26th of September.

Right now I would like to say hello to all of the mothers and relatives of the new missionaries who just arrived here in our mission. They are a cool batch of missionaries and they all have good trainers. They are all safe and happy, no worries!

Some crazy things have happened this week. We had to clean the house of a crazy old woman and her husband. It was probably the dirtiest and smelliest house I have ever been in. We scrubbed that puppy clean while avoiding the extremely explicit homemade wall paper of her husband. :S On September 11th we had to enter into our pensions early (6pm) because I guess it is the date of when the Government was overthrown here in Chile and there are bombs, fights, protests, and destruction on occasion. Nothing that big really happened though.

The best part of the week was that I had the priviledge of interviewing three people to see if they were ready to be baptized. The first one was a 16 year old kid who had listened to the missionaries for about a year in another ward and never got baptized, then he moved here and was completely prepared. The other two were husband and wife. Their daughter had listened to the missionaries and was baptized a year ago and the parents never wanted to listen. Now the parents are more animated then she is. When we got to their house the wife was really upset because her husband wasn´t home and had said that he wasn´t going to be baptized. We called him and invited him to the house. He came in angry and said he didn´t want to. He said that his car had broken down and he would have to spend over 800 dollars on it and just didn´t want to get baptized. We tried talking to him, but he wouldn´t change his mind. FInally Elder Simbaña said, "we´re going to all go upstairs and you and Elder Mooney are just going to talk about the baptismal interview a bit." The two of us prayed, then talked for about 30 minutes and went over the baptismal questions. In the end I invited him to be baptized with his wife tomorrow and he said yes. We prayed and afterwards he gave me a huge hug, then looked at me and said, "I think I felt something, like the spirit." I told him that he was exactly right. He then ran up the stairs and walked in to the room of Elders and said, "I felt the Spirit! I´m getting baptized!" Everyone was shocked, his wife more then anyone. It was a great experience.

I love you all. Thank you so much for everything you do! Be safe!

Love,

Elder Matthew Mooney

Awesome

2010-09-06T16:53:00.000-07:00

Dear family,

I am quite happy to say that Sabrina was baptized yesterday! It was awesome. The situation with her was interesting because the first day Elder Jacobs and I were together we asked references from everybody. People would throw out hundreds of names, naming less actives, old investigators, people that may be interested or used to be interested and we just took down the good sounding references. Our second lunch in the sector we ate with the Hermana Barrera and her husband. They are a quite old couple that got baptized over 21 years ago. As we were eating I was remembering that someone had told us something about their family. As the lunch came to an end their two grandkids came home and then it clicked, the grand-daughter was ten and wasn't baptized. We started teaching her that same day and things just went smoothly to her baptism. Her mom is less active and her dad is not a member. This last week we had her mom participating in every lesson and is excited for us to come back every time. We plan to keep working with that family.

Another awesome thing that happened yesterday was that our 21 year old investigator Marilyn attended church for the first time. The night before she accepted a baptismal date for the 26th of September, but with some doubts. She liked church though and we immediately introduced her to a 25 year old returned sister missionary and her returned missionary husband. They helped her feel right at home. She also got along great with Pamela, the 21 year old recent convert in our ward. She also agreed to coming to the stake baptism that afternoon and saw three baptisms. Our president was there and gave a powerful speech that left everyone laughing and crying at the same time. He then talked personally to Marilyn and told her to invite him to her baptism. She agreed. We are very happy with everything.
My companion and I have been trying to get into better shape by going down to the gym for about 40 minutes in the morning and running up the 14 floors of stairs afterward. It hasn't been happening every day though... We are going to try and improve on that. I don´t think the french fries and choripan that we ate for lunch today are going to help either :S

Last week I got a letter from Melissa and a card from Liberty Market which was awesome. It made me remember life before the mission a bit. Thank you all so much.

Well I just want you all to know that I love you and pray for you always. Thank you for everything you are doing.

Love,
Elder Matthew Mooney

Things here in Chile Santiago Este are great!

2010-08-20T07:14:00.000-07:00

Dear Loved Ones,

Well this week has been interesting. We have spent a lot of time searching for new investigators because at the moment there aren't any. We have been getting to know the ward members little by little and they have been a great help. We have been trying to build up their trust in us by sharing lessons with them and it is already paying off. The members seem to be happy to have us in their ward. (That´s always a relief).

It´s awesome mom that you have been talking with Joselyn. She kinda acts like our mom here in the Chile and always wants to give us food even though we don´t always have time. There was a stake disco activity with the youth this week and that was entertaining as well. Also, The President of the Elders Quorum has also been really cool to us. He was a missionary here back in the day. He´s from the north of Chile and moved back here to go to school. He now has a wife and three kids... He´s way cool though. He teaches crazy interesting classes and gave us a huge lunch on Sunday. That was nice. The ward is good and we are getting comfortable now.

Good news! Christian, the only investigator we have, told us that he wasn't ready to be baptized about a week and a half ago. Elder Jacobs and I taught him a powerful lesson about 2 Nefi 31 and he accepted a baptismal date for the 29th of August. The spirit was strong and it was way exciting. Hopefully you'll be hearing about that soon enough.

Things here in Chile Santiago Este are great. Thank you for all your love and support!

Love,
Elder Mooney

PS - I saw a really cool video the other day. You should look it up on youtube:
obra de teatro cristiano - bien contra mal crisitano

¡Woo hoo!

2010-08-09T18:06:00.000-07:00

Dear family,

Wow, so there is a lot to tell you and a lot of details and information to send so I´m just gonna throw it all together into this one email...

I have a new companion! His name is Elder Jacobs! He has 9 months in the mission and we are already friends because I did divisions with him his first week in the mission and it was a lot of fun. I feel blessed, and happy, and relieved.

This whole last week has been nuts with Elder Wyatt leaving and all. He had to pack up all of his stuff, say goodbye to the ward and a few other families, go sight seeing with the President and his wife, have a final interview with President Laycock, and have the goodbye night next to the temple. I, of course, was present for almost all of it. It was a blast...

It´s way cool mom that you are working on your spanish because we are going to be speaking in spanish all the time after the mission. It also makes it easier because people here that want to write you can do it easily and you can translate for everyone else. As for my spanish, I am speaking farely well. I need to improve on it a lot. Like A LOT! I want to be able to speak like a CHILENO. Someday it may just happen.

I recieved my amazing package the other night when we were at the office for Elder Wyatt´s interview. It was amazing! Thank you so much. I am sharing the candy with everyone, my companions, the chilean security guards, the jovenes, and everyone loves it. The socks from grandma are greatly appreciated! The camel story is inspiring and the camel is a little goofy but I´m diggin it. Dad´s new business cards and flyers are incredibly cool. I like them a lot. I wanna see the office now as well! But really, thank you all for everything.

This week I have a burning desire to get some work done here in JP Alessandri and we hope to find millions of people to teach. We will be relying greatly upon faith, fasting, and praying. Please keep our ward in your prayers.

I am dying to see more pictures from everyone. Please send them! I especially want to see pictures of Kelly´s africa trip as well and Sara´s wedding! That´s crazy that people get married?!

I love you all very much!

Love,

Elder Mooney

PS - Send Gilly my love and support!

A lot to do...

2010-08-09T18:04:00.000-07:00

Hello loved ones,

Well this has been an interesting week. I have really come to learn a lot about the kind of missionary I am and recognize the blessings I have here in the mission. My new ward is small but strong. There are only about 60-65 active members, but there is a list of about 600 members in the ward. That makes me happy because it gives me a lot to do.

My companion has inspired me to push myself a little more. I get up just a little bit earlier now and work out a little bit harder. Haha it´s progress. We go down to the gym sometimes, because the apartment complex has equipment and a pool. We´ve been swimming a lot lately.... NOT. I also bought a bunch of stuff to make myself chocolate egg and oatmeal protein shakes. Don´t expect any drastic changes though. I just bought the stuff becuase it tastes good.

At the moment there is no progress here in the sector. There aren´t any investigators either. So in a week I will be getting a new companion and we will be getting down to business. It should be fun!

Just want you all to know that I love and miss you all. Thank you for your letters and support. You are 2 good!

Love,
Elder Mooney

Changed...

2010-07-29T07:14:00.000-07:00

Dear family,

I was changed! Yesterday night at about 10:20 they called me and told me that I would be leaving Turquesa. If I had received that call about two months ago I would have been jumping for joy, but last night it was the complete opposite. It crushed me. I really didn´t want to leave the Turquesa Ward. Over these last four changes there (24 weeks), I have really developed a love for that ward and the members there. We spent so long developing relationships and working with them in the missionary work that it is hard to leave them behind. It is also heart breaking to leave behind all of the people who are now investigating the church.

We finally taught the entire family of Angelina and Bastian. Her husband Andres didn´t want to leave the house, but we made friends with him and dragged him out. We then had a lesson with the Guerrero Family. Andres now supports Angelina and Bastian in their decision and wants us to keep passing by to teach him more. It is so sad to have to leave them behind. Angelina and Bastian should be getting baptized in 2 weeks.

Then we have Ana Maria and Yanara who were a blessing and a miracle. Ana Maria is a little quiet lady who stopped us in the street two Mondays ago and asked us what she needed to do to go to our church. We immediately set an appointment to teach her. She and her 13 year old daughter accepted the invitation to be baptized and are way excited for it.

We also had an amazing experience with our ward mission leader this week as well. When we first started working with him, he didn´t seem to care about us or anything. Over time we began to develop a good relationship and we started having him leave with us to lessons and doing divisions. Then this week he invited us to come eat dinner (chilean "once") with him. He is a convert to the church and the rest of his family aren´t members. We had seen them before, but he never gave us the chance to talk with them. This time he invited us to teach his family. We realized that he trusted us enough to teach them a little bit. We felt good to be able to help him and I am sure Elder Deviagge will try to keep working with them.
There`s also Nicole who is 16 years old and has been going to church and seminary for like a year now, but hasn´t been able to get baptized without her Dad´s permission. Yesterday we went to her house with the 1st Counselor of the ward and taught her dad. He now gives us full permission to pass by the house and teach her any time we want. She should be getting baptized in 2 weeks as well.

The list really goes on and on. Darling, Camilo, Christian, Cristian, and Francisca... The Lord has been pouring out his blessings upon Turquesa. Not to mention that we are also having ward members working with us every day of the week to help us out. Unfortunately my time is up there. It was heart breaking at first, but now I just have to move on. I trust that Elder Deviagge will be doing a good job with the sector next change. He will also be training a brand new missionary over there, so it should be really exciting for the both of them.
Right now I have been called to the JP Alesandri Ward. My companion is Elder Wyatt (a weight lifting health nut that goes home in 2 weeks). And I am the District Leader over here. One thing that makes me really happy about the new change is that we live in a really nice apartment building on the FOURTEENTH floor. We each have our own bathroom and lots of space as well. It´s weird though, in 2 weeks I will be receiving a new companion again. We´ll see how things go around here.

So yeah, that is basically my life. I know that everything happens for a reason and that changes are necessary. The Lord has plans for each and every one of us.

I love you all and hope everything is all good at home! Thank you for everything.

Love,
Elder Mooney

Miracles every day

2010-07-12T16:25:00.000-07:00

Dear loved ones,

Chile is doing well. I am doing well. My companion is doing well. It is so weird here in the mission. We have six changes - each change to get as much done as we possibly can. The six weeks always go by way too fast, but at the same time it feels like I have been in the mission for years. I think once I hit that year mark time will go by even faster though :S

Just so you know, Kelly wrote me and seems to be loving life over there in Africa. It sounds like they have a lot of responsibility and a lot of work over there. I am sure she is handling it great.

This week Bryan recieved the Priesthood and next week his sister Darinka is getting baptized. Fun stuff right? We also finally got to teach Angelina and Bastian, the amazing family we found like a month ago. Their church scared them away from us for a time but we finally had another lesson. In the lesson she told us that the spirit has been telling her so strong that it is all true. She tried to avoid it, but she explained everything that the scriptures say. She feels a light filling the darkness. She is happier. Her mind is at peace. And best of all her family has been getting along better ever since we passed by the house. The went on vacation this week but will be getting baptized the first of August. Also, we have a 14 year old girl named Darling who was afraid to go to church with us. We got her involved in Salsa dancing in mutual and she now is completely comfortable. She should be getting baptized soon as well.

I honestly feel like even though we see so much rejection, so much sadness and negativity, the Lord really is blessing us with miracles every day. I feel like it is so hard to recognize the affect the spirit has in every situation, but as I pay more attention, I can see the spirit guiding us and helping us at all times.

Well I love each and every one of you. Melissa, thanks for showing me the conversation with Juan. He was baptized my second change in the mission. He is an awesome kid! Keep up the good work all of you and keep writing me!

Love,

Elder Mooney

"Nothing bad ever came from being obedient"

2010-07-05T18:13:00.000-07:00

Dear family,

Things here in Chile are crazy. This Sunday our bishop was released and a new bishopric was called. We can feel some electricity now in the ward. Obispo Juarez is our new bishop and we are already good friends with him so that helps us out alot here in the ward. He was also called to lead the missionary work in the stake recently so we are hoping that he will keep that focus of expansion.

Sadly I didn´t do anything fun for the 4th of July. I decorated the house with the stuff you sent me though. My Argentinian? companion sure loved the USA banner and US flags all over the place... Haha and I think he especially like how I kept singing "And I´m proud to be an American, where at least I know I´m free......" It was kinda a sad holiday though. I guess the Chilean community just doesn´t care about our Independence day.

Our investigators have been a little shaky lately. It seems that we have lost a few. It is really sad to see that happen too, because they still want us to pass by the house and share with them, but if they aren´t willing to go to church or make any changes in their lives we can`t. It´s difficult. We are still teaching Darinka who should be getting baptized in two Sundays now. We are teaching another 14 year old girl named Darling. Her mom and aunt are less active members. Darling was going to go to church with us on Sunday but got scared last minute and didn`t. We are going to help her to feel more comfortable by making sure that she goes to the salsa dance activity this Wednesday for mutual.

Two phrases have really been helping me to stay focused and work hard these past few weeks. "Nothing bad ever came from being obedient" and "SACRIFICE brings forth the blessings of heaven." As we recieve new rules and guidelines here in the mission, sometimes it is difficult to change how we have been doing things since the beginning. The truth is though, as we sacrifice our time and effort and make those changes, the Lord will bless us for our obedience. The concept is so clear! Easier said then done though.

Well I love each and every one of you and hope you are well. Thank you for your love and support. You are the best.

Love,

Elder Matthew Mooney

rollin' rollin' rollin'

2010-06-29T21:39:00.000-07:00

Dear friends and family,

It`s so good to hear that things are great at home, especially to hear that my little sister had her ApPeNdIx ReMoVeD?! How random! But then she got her license and that makes up for it I guess. It`s crazy to think how things are changing so much at home, but I`m just doing the the same thing everyday. Sharing the Gospel.

First off, I would like to thank my amazing sister Melissa for her package she sent me! Really, it was amazing. Thank you so much Melissa for la bufanda (scarf) that you made. It is absolutely perfect. A couple of weeks ago Elder Laney and I were talking about how in AZ scarfs seem a little fruity, but here in Chile I think they are the best thing in the world. But really I have been using the scarf all day everyday and it goes well with both of my suits. Thank you so much. Oh and it smells really good too. The graham crackers blew up a little bit in the journey and the scarf soaked up the smell. It`s cool.

This week nothing new has really happened. We haven`t found anyone new to really teach. The drunks have been everywhere like usual. One good thing that did happen was that Bryan (recent convert), his grandma, and his sister Darinka all went to church on Sunday. Darinka should be getting baptized in two weeks. Let`s hope for the best. Abraham and Carolina are progressing well, but them and 20 other people didn`t go to church on Sunday because it was freezing in the morning. Ìt`s just getting colder and colder here. It`s below 0 degrees C everyday now. It`s just horrible because the temperature outdoors is almost the same as it is indoors. We can see our breath as we teach all of our lessons.

This week I have been really focusing more on the importance of a pure powerful testimony....
"And this he did that he himself might go forth among his people, or among the people of Nephi, that he might preach the word of God unto them, to stir them up in rememberance of their duty, and that he might pull down, by the word of God, all the pride and craftiness and all the contentions which were among his people, seeing no way that he might reclaim them save it were in bearing down in pure testimony against them." Alma 4:19
With that in mind we were teaching Rodrigo, one of our recent converts, how he can be a missionary right now by sharing his testimony with others. He told us that he had no idea of how to share his testimony? So we taught him and invited him to share his testimony with us, but he would not do it. After a few minutes he explained to us that he did not want to share his testimony because he was not really sure of anything. We shared our testimonies with him and explained that the best way to help your testimony to grow is by sharing it. He understood and agreed to start working on it until our next visit.

Another investigator this week astonished us with how powerful his testimony has become. He says that he knows that the Holy Ghost answers questions in the heart and the mind because he has been receiving answers. He said that the scripture, "by their fruits ye shall know them (Mathew 7)" has had a huge impact on him. It has dawned on him that we do not teach the beliefs of our own church, we do not teach what we want or what our church leaders want, we teach what God wants. His testimony, the testimony of an investigator, has strengthened mine this week. (Now all we have to do his convince him to get married...?)
I love you all so much. I know that this gospel is true. I know that Jesus Christ lives and loves us and that he guides his church today. You are all incredible. Thank you for all your love and support.

Love,
Elder Matthew D. Mooney

Rough week

2010-06-29T21:37:00.000-07:00

Dear Loved Ones,

First things first: HAPPY FATHER´S DAY DAD?!!? Wow, I missed you on Sunday, especially when all the Young Women passed out cards to their dads and the primary gave them all bookmarks. It made me think of you. I also was reading the second talk in the General Conference Liahona about Priesthood Power and it made me so grateful to have a dad who honors and exercises his Priesthood. Thank you Dad for everything you´ve done for me and everything you´re doing now. Keep up the great work you cool guy you ;)

Love,

Elder Matt Mooney

Now unfortunately we have experienced many trials this week... Fights in the ward that have resulted in the releasing of the Young Men and Young Women presidents. Fights between couples that have prevented progression in the gospel. Laziness that prevented an entire family from going to church. Coldness that has developed into people sleeping in later and going to bed earlier. Winter has officially started and I officially have a cold. The list really does go on and on...

BUT we´ve got to be of good cheer so it´s all good. No worries. Today was a great day. We decided to go to the Mall close by because it has a bigger grocery store, they have office supplies, and they´ve got a food court. What we weren´t anticipating was the giant mob of thousands and thousands of people in the food court. Today Chile one another game in El Mundial de Fútbol, or the Soccer World Cup. It´s been going on for the last week or two. People are going nuts here. There are three games going on everyday and people are screaming throughout all of them. My companion has been suffering because Argentina has been playing well. The United States are in it as well, but nobody cares back home do they? I found it funny how it´s the biggest deal in the world here, but at home it´s nothing huge. But literally thousands of people were watching the game in the food court and when it ended everyone broke out in singing and dancing. All of the schools are showing the games here as well. It´s crazy.

When everyone left we entered and ate Taco Bell. It was really good. We then bought 2 weeks worth of groceries and carried them on the bus and the subway. Then we slept for an hour and a half. Good times.

This week I also got to know ELDER STOLLER and ELDER TILLEY. They´re both from Gilbert and we all have alot in common because of it. Elder Tilley knows almost everyone that I know. He and I have been at Kaitlin Gray´s house at the same time without ever realizing it. I think he was also In Skylar Peterson´s ward. Small world.

It´s been so weird to think that my best bud Jared is now a married man. That´s so weird. It´s amazingly cool though and I´m way happy for him. I wish them the best of luck and I send my love.

Well, there are a million other things to tell you, (like how a man almost died, literally and we gave him a blessing and now he´s fine), but I´m low on time. I love you all so much and appreciate your letters and emails. Please never stop writing me :S Haha

Until next week...

Love,

Elder Mooney

"Changes"

2010-06-15T12:57:00.000-07:00

Dear family,

Wow, so that was kind of a surprise. We received our changes last night, but about 20 minutes before the phone call it started raining and the power was cut. We then received the phone call of our changes and to our surprise Elder Laney and Elder Mayberry were both changed and Elder Deviagge and I staying. What was even more of a shock though was when they told us that we would now be the only two elders in the ward. So Elder Deviagge and I live alone now... The ward is gonna flip out when they find out that there are only two missionaries in the ward and they have to cancel half of the lunch appointments now.

Elder Deviagge and I used our entire preparation day today to deep clean the house. We defrosted the freezer, scrubbed the fridge, cleaned the bathroom, etc, etc... I am actually quite sad that I didn't use any time to relax, but we have six weeks alone in our house now. We wanna keep it clean.

Weird occurrences this week. I was kissed on the neck two times this week by two distinct drunk men. In Chile its normal for men to kiss each other on the cheek or on the neck, especially amongst the gangsters. It wasn't a pleasant experience though.

I also find it kinda funny that here in Chile the gangsters think its cool to wear big flashy scarfs, whether its hot or cold. Also kite flying here is pretty popular. Yesterday we saw a big group of bone thugs in scarfs watching their two friends fly kites. I just thought how weird that would be in Arizona.

The missionary work is going well. We found a golden family last week who immediately wants to get baptized. They are so awesome that it makes me nervous. This should be a successful change though.

I love you all so much. HAPPY BIRTHDAY DIANA!! Ill be writing you a separate email. Thank you for everything.

Love,
Elder Mooney

I'm just happy to be serving!

2010-06-08T05:28:00.000-07:00

Dear family,

Yes, this week was MUCH better. Very busy and stressful, but great. Bryan and Cristian got baptized! Yay! We planned the baptism really well, informed people about it all week, assigned talks, prayers and testimonies. The best part is though, half the people bailed on us the last minute. Good thing missionaries are masters of improvisation and the baptism went smoothly as well. Best result of the baptism was that the entire family of Bryan went to the chapel and his 15 year old sister wants to get baptized as well. Yessss.....

Best announcement we received this week was on Tuesday. Remember Daniel? Boyfriend of Jacqueline? Father of her son? On Tuesday he informed us that he wants to get married now. They`re going to the court this week to set a date. How cool is that? We were speechless when he told us. He also told us that right after he wants to get baptized as well. We`re hoping that Alejandro will follow his example.

I received my wonderful, beautiful, delicious package this week. Peanut butter cookies, more cookies, reese`s pieces, reese`s cups, brownie mix, ranch mix, whole puncher, thousands of post it notes! The pension was rejoicing this entire week with all the wonderful food I received. Thank you so much Mom and Dad!

So yeah, things are going good here in Barrio Turquesa. We have a lot to do and we`re loving it. Unfortunately this is the last week before changes. I`m kinda hoping I don`t get changed, but whatever happens happens. I`m just happy to be serving.

Well I love you all so much. Thank you for everything you do for me, it really helps so much to be receiving so much love and support. I hope all is well at home, I`ll be praying for you.

Love,

Elder Mooney

Fotos!

2010-06-08T05:25:00.001-07:00

Fotos!

2010-06-08T05:22:00.000-07:00

Too much!

2010-05-31T16:44:00.000-07:00

Dear everyone,

I can`t even begin to list all of the things that have happened this week. It`s been way too much. We`ve been trying to prepare our three baptismal candidates but on Tuesday we had our Zone classes like usual and the zone leaders asked me to stay afterward for 2 hours to learn a song to sing with them the next day. Then on Wednesday (the next day) we had to get up early to go to Mission Conference with President and half the mission. That usually lasts 7 hours. We sang our song and it turned out all right. Then that night we had to meet with our mission leader to finalize our plans about the Ward Family Night we were having on Friday. "La obra misional" was in charge of it and our mission leader put it all on us. He didn`t help with anything. So we had to plan that out Thursday and Friday morning during our studies. We planned it though and on Friday night we were in the chapel for 4 hours setting up, cleaning up, teaching and performing for the 40 members who showed up and then cleaning up again. We arrived at the house more then an hour late. It also rained a little bit on Thursday and Friday so everyone slept all day. Then on Saturday we spent the whole day visiting everyone we could, teaching them a short lesson and inviting them to church. On Sunday we were scrambling around for 3 hours at church trying to help the investigators and the less actives to feel comfortable and to stay for the other classes. Luckily the teacher for our Gospel Principles class didn`t show up and we had to give the class. Then we worked the rest of the day and in our last lesson of the day my head nearly exploded?! We had a soap opera-ish lesson with Alejandro, Daniel, Jacqueline, the crazy grandma, Jacqueline`s mom, and the Uncle José. The most rare and confusing situation I`ve ever seen in my life has happened in this family. Now it`s not sure if Alejandro is getting baptized... There`s still hope though.

OK! Wow, I probably wrote way too much and sounded way too negative. Truth is though, it was a horrible week. Doesn`t matter though. This week is a clean slate and we`ve gotta keep working anyway. Everythings good though. Two more weeks in this change and we`ll see what happens.

I love you all. Thanks for all the love and support! CTR always!

Love,

Elder Mooney

I feel blessed.

2010-05-24T16:09:00.000-07:00

Hello Friends and Family!

Just want to let you know that Alejandro did not get baptized this week. We postponed the baptism till this next Sunday because Jacqueline`s mom had to go out of town. It`s all good though. That just means we have an extra week to help him get prepared. We watched the documentary of Thomas S. Monson with him and the family and invited him to pray about it. He now fully believes that Thomas S. Monson is a prophet. As I`ve reflected on how much he`s learned and changed I feel blessed to have been called to serve in this ward at this time. The Lord could have called anybody to this sector, but he`s allowing me to be here and I feel blessed.

Daniel, the brother of Alejandro, the "husband" of Jacqueline is also progressing. He wants to get baptized. He believes everything`s true. He`s learned everything and visited Temple grounds with us... BUT for some reason still doesn`t want to get married now. He says he feels to young and that he wants to own his own house first. We promised him that if he gets married the lord will bless him, his wife, and his baby, yet he still doesn`t want to. We`re a little stumped. Here`s the funny part. He`s even willing to pay a FULL TITHE every month, but he doesn`t want to get married. We taught the law of tithing to the family and brought them forms to look at. He filled his out and wanted to pay his tithing on the spot. We explained that he had to be a member first. We`re hoping that the baptism of his brother and a family home evening with a recently married couple will do the trick. Please pray for both Daniel and Alejandro.

The recent convert Rodrigo Garrido just received the Priesthood on Sunday. It was awesome and he was way excited. He`s going to pass the sacrament this week and what he doesn`t know yet is that we`re going to have him baptize his nephew Cristian and his neighbor Bryan that are getting baptized the 6th (hopefully!). It`s amazing because we have a group of four young men who attend church, mutual, and seminary together. Rodrigo(16), Juan(10), Cristian(10), and Bryan(12). Two are baptized and the other two soon will be. It`s awesome when things just click and the work begins to pay off.

Two of our investigators Ramòn and Juana weren`t progressing to well. Juana is a less active member and Ramon is her pareja or living partner. We`ve taught him everything but Juana has to get divorced and then married to Ramon before Ramon can get baptized. For a while they weren`t progressing but then BOOM! Juana had been praying about the divorce and on mother`s day her ex-husband told her that he`d already prepared the papers. She just has to read and sign. Then Ramon found a job that required that he worked on Sunday and we taught him how important it was for him to not work on Sundays. That next week he talked with his boss and worked 2 full days straight without going home so that they could go to church on Sunday. It`s been one miracle after another.

Everything's going really well here. There`s way too much work to be doing here right now and I feel responsible for helping each and every one of these people. I felt really sick the other day but worked through it, because I didn`t want to risk losing any time with our investigators. I know this work is the work of the Lord. I know this gospel`s true. I feel blessed to be where I am doing what I`m doing. And I`m so grateful to have such an amazing family and friends supporting me from home. Thank you for all you do!

Love,
Elder Mooney

Dead tired...

2010-05-19T07:12:00.000-07:00

Dear Seres Queridos,

This week has been a fairly good one. I just want you to know that this email my be a little short because we played basketball and fùtbol as a zone today, then went home and fell asleep. Now I`m here writing emails and I`m dead tired. I don`t think we get enough exercise as missionaries...

Alejandro is still going strong. He`s preparing himself to get baptized this Sunday and I hope everything works out. Please pray for him. It seems like he wasn`t living the word of wisdom before we were teaching him, but now he`s fully committed to living it. He`s accepted all of the commandments easily. It`s amazing to see a person just change his life in only a few days. Also, Daniel, the brother of Alejandro is listening to us again and we`re gonna try to help him realize that he NEEDS to get married. He already has a kid, but doesn`t want to commit himself. I don`t really get what`s going on in his head.

My companion and I have been learning to make weird voices while walking in the street. He`s impressed with my duck voice, the shmeegle voice, and a few others, but we`re trying to develop a few new ones. Easier said then done... I know it doesn`t sound like the best thing to be doing while walking in the street, but it`s what we do to keep ourselves from getting bored or discouraged.

Things are good here though. Time goes by so fast, and yet sooooo slow in the mission. I miss you all so much and hope everything's going well. Thanks for the emails, the support, and the love.

Love,
Elder Mooney

Brrrr...winter's coming!

2010-05-03T16:40:00.001-07:00

Lots of new photos!

2010-05-03T16:06:00.000-07:00

I just want it to be Sunday...

2010-05-03T16:05:00.000-07:00

Dear Family and Friends,

This week has been a good one. Truth is my mind is kinda blanking when it comes to interesting or amazing things that have happened. Juan and Rodrigo were confirmed by a member of the Bishopric here in Turquesa Ward on Sunday. It scared me so much though, because they showed up 9 minutes late, but just in time to be confirmed. They came happy, well dressed and excited to recieve the gift of the Holy Ghost.

I just finished my 5th change in the mission. Oh and guess what...? Elder Laney and I stayed in the sector and Elder Wilkey and Elder Tello left. My new companion has a year in the mission and is from Argentina, he seems like a pretty cool guy. Elder Laney´s new companion arrived in the mission the same time as me and just came from my first ward in the mission, VIcente Valdes. He filled me in on our investigators and such. We´re excited to get to work this change.

I love you all so much. I can´t wait to talk to you on the phone this Sunday, MOTHER´s DAY! Be good. Be on top of the small and simple things always.

Love,
Elder Mooney

Challenges and Blessings

2010-04-26T21:03:00.001-07:00

Hello Family!

Ok well there are about a million things to tell you this week, but only a short period of time. So I´m just gonna try and touch everything a little bit.

Elder Laney, one of the Elders I live with, got his "trunky papers" this week. His papers that he has to fill out to say where he´s going after the mission. He had to fill in all of his information about Phoenix airport and his ward in Gilbert, AZ. Made me a little trunky.

We´ve been eating alot of Membrio here in Chile. It´s a weird, dry, sour, apple-ish fruit. The dictionary says it called Quince or something in spanish. It works as a laxative for my companion :S

This week I´ve been waking up freezing cold and it´s only otoño or fall. Everyone´s telling me that it´s HORRIBLE and that I´m gonna die during the winter. I´m starting to believe it. So I sleep with double shirts, double pants, gloves and an awesome beanie hat thing. (You´ll see in the picture). In fact, the other morning I was so cold I slept on the floor in front of the electric heater for 2 hours. I think I´m just a wimp. Haha but the truth is, I still like the cold! I just like houses that have insulation and heating.

Also, we were fortunate enough this week to have a flood in our house. Elder Tello and I were in the pension using the restroom and it didn´t quite work. I don´t wanna go into detail because the details aren´t so pretty, but I´m pretty sure you can imagine it all. The toilet started to flood. I stopped the water from inside the tank. We plunged the toilet. We tried to flush it again and it started filling up even more. I tried to stop the water from inside the tank again and the part broke off. Water (and other stuff) started overflowing all through the bathroom and flooded down into the room. Elder Tello was using a broom to push the water back into the bathroom. I finally found a way to stop the water with my finger and then jammed the same spot with a bunch of matchsticks. We had to buy a mop and clean everything up. Then we had to wait two days for the repairman to come. It was quite an exhilarating event. Disgusting... But memorable...
Best part of the whole week though was the 2 BAPTISMS we had! Rodrigo and Juan both passed their baptismal interviews and were baptized yesterday. I think Rodrigo is one of the best conversions I´ve seen so far. It wasn´t too hard for him, but right away he became active in Seminary, Mutual, Church Organizations, daily scripture reading and praying. He´s awesome. He asked me to baptize him and I gladly accepted. Juan asked Elder Tello to baptize him. This week we fixed the water so it wasn´t freezing cold, just slightly. The baptismal service was excellent! A lot of members stayed and watched this time. Most of Juan and Rodrigo´s family came as well. It was great cuz I had to baptize Rodrigo two times because the first time he let his feet slip and pop out of the water. It was kinda funny lookin. The service was great though and the baptisms were performed :)

Strangely, we found out that Juan´s mother is actually a member and she just never wanted to tell us. Juan and Rodrigo didn´t even know. Rodrigo´s 3 other siblings are also members but never told them or us. We shocked and kinda excited because we plan on reactivating the whole family!

I miss you all ridiculously and hope everything is well at home. Thank you so much for all the emails, letters, and prayers. I can always feel your support. I love you all.

Elder Matthew D. Mooney

Happy Birthday Elder Mooney!

2010-04-26T20:55:00.000-07:00

Decorations, goodies & gifts from Home!

2010-04-26T20:53:00.000-07:00

Dirty kitchens....and very clean converts!

2010-04-26T20:49:00.000-07:00

Future Misioneros!

2010-04-21T10:34:00.000-07:00

Dear Family and Friends,

Awesome! We had a baptism this week. Yesterday Cristofer Alejandro Valenzuela Cornejo was baptized. He´s thirteen years old and a really cool kid. His parents are both inactive in the church but we´ve been helping them to reactivate a lot. We´ve seen a huge change in this family just over the last 3 weeks. Really everything feels completely different in that home now. The baptism just sealed the deal.

Cristofer asked me to baptize him which turned out to be more difficult then I was expecting. The water was FREEZING cold. The hot water wouldn´t work so we just had to do without. When we first entered into the water he started making a bunch of sounds and didn´t want to go in but i pushed him into the water haha. Then as I was performing the baptism he bent his knees and right when the cold water got to his face he didn´t wanna go under and I had to push him down. Sounds bad, I know, but he was grateful because he realized he would´ve had to do it again. His parents loved the whole thing. Church, the baptism, the members. We´ve got a commitment from the whole family to stay active in the church and it feels great. That night Cristofer and I cracked up for like 10 minutes looking at the pictures before the baptism and talking about how I almost drowned him.

This week we have the baptism of Rodrigo (16) and Juan (10) coming up. They come from a huge family and the family has SO many problems. There are so many horrible rumors about that family, but Rodrigo and Juan are great. They love church. They love mutual (Juan went even though he´s not old enough). And Rodrigo even wants to go to seminarios. It´s great.
Best of all is that Cristopher, Rodrigo, and Juan all want to be missionaries someday and are already talking with the Young Men´s President so they can be on the right track.

It´s getting cold here in Chile and I´m gonna go by a hoodie to wear in the pension. Some days we don´t ever see the sun. It´s quite the opposite.

Love you all and can´t wait to talk to you in May!

Love,
Elder Mooney

Progress!

2010-04-12T16:29:00.000-07:00

Dear Family,

Just wanted to let you know that I shook hands with the one-eyed creepy cross-dresser man this week. He started kissing his hand and screaming afterwards.

I also had the amazing opportunity to go up into the mountains this week. I went on 24 hour divisions with my zone leader and we went to the farthest part of his zone (which is in the mountains!?). It was awesome, there were tons of trees, space, dogs, horses, and almost fresh air. We got warned two times to be careful because a Peruvian woman was killed by a bunch of wild dogs not too long ago. I just petted the dogs?

We had our interviews with President Laycock this week and it was intense. We talked about a whole bunch of things, but mostly we talked about my sector. "Permanaced" is our main focus right now in our sector. It`s a document that we are supposed to share with all active and inactive members of the church. You should look it up and read it, it`s really simple and really clear. Problem is that our ward has not had much success in the last two years. The average ward seems to have about 15 or more baptisms in the last two years and our ward has 5. I got President`s full support to focus as much as we want on the re-activating efforts in our ward because there are plenty of inactive members who are accepting us and wanting to return to church, but just need some help. Our increased focus on reactivating has proven extremely helpful because we`ve found a whole bunch of inactive families who want their kids to go to church and be baptized.

As of right now we have one baptism scheduled for this Sunday. Cristopher Valenzuela, age 13. He likes church and loves mutual and is excited to receive a remission of his sins! We also have Cristopher (16) and Juan (10) that went to church for the first time this Sunday and LOVED it. The are planning on getting baptized the following week. Their dad is fully supportive of them, but thinks that the 2 other baptisms he`s already received should be enough to save him. We`re gonna try to work with him.

I`ve really come to see the blessings of obedience, fasting, and following the spirit this week. I`m extremely grateful to be where I am and doing what I`m doing. My testimony of Jesus Christ has grown so much and with that everything else has become so much easier. I love each and every one of you and hope that you are all doing your best at living the gospel. Praying, reading your scriptures, magnifying your callings, and sharing the gospel. You are amazing, thank you for all the love and support.

Love,
Elder Mooney

Conference was incredible.

2010-04-05T11:37:00.000-07:00

Hello my dearest family!

Wow, it does not feel like Easter happened at all... I actually completely forgot that it was Easter until we got to conference on Sunday. What I did remember was that it was conference weekend! Conference was incredible. In the mission conference is like Christmas. We had the privilege of watching all 10 hours of conference and I honestly loved it. We went to the stake center and all of the english speaking missionaries got to watch it in english in a small room. Funny thing is that my companion is the only Latin elder in our zone right now 1 of 12. So we all had some cookies, and candies, and our journals and we studied conference. It was great. Unfortunately there was some pretty lousy interference during the first 2 sessions of conference and then it got worse so we watched the last 3 in spanish. It`s just not the same in spanish though...

Truth is, all of the messages about families did two things to me. It made me miss my family so much more and it made me remember how great my parents really are. Really mom and dad, as I watched and listened I could remember you two following almost every counsel that they gave. I can`t thank you enough for all the support and guidance you`ve given me all my life. You are amazing examples to me. (Oh and Dad, just so you know I almost wanted to cry half way through the priesthood conference because I wanted to see it with you :S).

Everything is good here though. Still haven`t received your packages, but I should get them tomorrow! I did get a letter from Melissa with DiNeRo?! How cool is that? Thank you so much Melissa!

The missionary work is about the same here in our ward. To clarify something that Kelly pointed out to me, the Macarena that got baptized is a different Macarena from my first baptism. This Macarena is 15 and had friends in the church. Way cool! We have an amazing 13 year old kid named Cristopher Valenzuela that wants to get baptized. His parents are less active but say they want him to be active and they want to go to church again.

I had my first fight in spanish this week. I know, it`s bad to fight, but everythings cool now. Elder Tello and I just had some frustration building up and let it all out. We started and ended with a prayer. Sounds weird, but we felt much better afterwards and it showed me that I know spanish a lot better then I thought! Haha

Well I love you all so much! I`m glad that you didn`t eat cinnamon rolls without me. I know the church is true. I know that families can be together forever if we follow God`s plan. And I know that the only way to find REAL happiness, lasting happiness in this life, is through the Atonement of Jesus Christ. I love you Mom and Dad. I love you BB-cakes. I love you Becky, Melissa, Tim and Tom. And I love you Grandma, Uncles, Aunts, and cousins. You are all amazing and are all so supportive of me here in the mission. Stay strong and Keep the Faith!

Love,
Elder Matthew D. Mooney

Crying & hugging going on...

2010-03-29T15:01:00.000-07:00

Hello friends and family!

Wow... Time is flying? It´s almost April and then in May I get to talk to you again?! I´m excited.

This week has not been the healthiest week for us (cookie dough, frosting, sopapillas, empanadas, etc...). The four of us Elders decided to start "La Dieta Adámica" today. The adamic diet is basically a diet of what we think Adam and Eve ate, fruits and vegetables. We´re gonna eat lunches normal, but the rest of the day it´s alllll natural. My companion is a little concerned.

We found an amazing investigator this week named Pablo. First lesson there was crying and hugging going on. He lives in a very ghetto part of the sector but he seems to understand our message better then everyone else. We´ll see how it goes. I recieved amazing news from my old companion Elder Blankenfeld. Christian and Macarena, two of our old investigators got baptized!!!!!! I wasn´t there, but I´m still way excited for them.

Mom and Dad, I just want you to know that you did a horrible job of preparing me to live in Chile... Let me explain why: So the other day we decided to do service for a family in our ward of repainting the short wall beneath their gate (they asked us to). We had to scrape off all the old paint then paint the wall white. My companion was just hacking away at it and left the majority of the old paint on the wall. Then he started splashing paint all over the side walk and gate and I was like ?!?!?!. In my house, this would not fly.. I did my side a little more orderly and when we finished I thought, "this looks terrible." Fortunately when the hermana came out she said, "O qué lindo!" She loved it and was completely satisfied. The standards of painting are just slightly different here.

Just want you to know that I love each and every one of you. You are the best seriously! I know the church is true. I know that Jesus Christ leads and guides his church in these days and I´m so excited to listen to his chosen prophets this Saturday and Sunday. I encourage all of you who have troubles focusing and enjoying conference to take notes, it totally makes it a lot more enjoyable.

Love,

Elder Mooney

More UPS than downs!

2010-03-22T15:59:00.000-07:00

Hello Dearest Loved Ones,

First off, I´m required to inform you that I have changed my email. The mission has officially asked us to switch back to myldsmail.net. Luckily, myldsmail.net is now using GMAIL and it works really well. My new email address is:

matthew.mooney@myldsmail.net

So if everyone could please write me at this email I would greatly appreciate it. I´ll still be able to check this one for the next couple of weeks, but I´m gradually switching to the other. Thanks!

This week definitely had it´s ups and downs, but definitely more UPS than downs. On Wednesday we broke our record for number of lessons in one day. That was exciting! The next day we were pumped and taught above normal again. Then unfortunately it slipped back down. It´s always great when the Lord blesses us with days of success like that to show us that we can be doing a lot better. The health of my companion seems to be doing a lot better now. It´s not keeping us from working and we´re both more positive!

An awesome, strange and unfortunate things that happened this week was.... An 11 year old kid named Dilon started talking to me in the street as we were searching for some houses of less active members. I talked with him for a while as he followed us around and then asked him if we could teach him and his family. It turned out that he lives alone with his dad who is a less active hippie carpenter jewelry maker guy. We taught him and his dad and gave Dilon a Book of Mormon. Unfortunately they are moving to another city, but it was a cool lesson. Dilon was a golden investigator. He went to his Evangelical church by himself every week. He knew practically all of the teachings of the bible and understood them. We described to him where the Book of Mormon came from and he said well that makes sense because GOLD is a tyoe of metal that lasts for a long time. He was very cool. Now they plan on talking with missionaries in their new city.

Then on Saturday night I was praying with Elder Tello to end our daily planning session and I felt the desire to pray for a special blessing over the ward. I asked that all of the members, less actives, and investigators would feel the need to go to the chapel so that we could have a powerful and memorable sacrament meeting. Then afterwards I didn´t think much of it. The amazing thing was that that next day we had 134 people in the chapel and 4 of them were investigators! That´s about 40 more then the average we´ve been having. On top of that one of the Elders from the Quorum of the Seventies suprised the ward with a visit. It was a very powerful sacrament meeting.

Last night we had changes. They called us at about 11 and told us that the 4 of us would all be staying where we are. That we´re doing a good job and need to keep it up. I´m not going to lie, at first I was a little bummed. BUT afterward I prayed and slept on it and in the morning had a very powerful personal and companionship study. Elder Tello and I know that we can do more this change and we´re going to do it. One of our goals is to help all members to take an active part in the missionary work. We´re going to try and bring members to lessons with us every day. Nobody realizes how important it really is.

Well I love and miss each and every one of you. Thanks for all the emails, letters and packages. Please keep it up ;) You´re the best!

Love,
Elder Mooney

Tengo 20 anos!

2010-03-15T15:43:00.000-07:00

Hola mis seres queridos!

This week has been amazing. (Not really, but I`m gonna be more positive). Haha! Alright well we did not have too much success this week when it comes to teaching. I think we taught less lessons this week then I`ve taught any other week in the mission. There`s an excuse though. Elder Tello and I got really sick. One day i woke up with my throat burning and my nose running like never before. It hurt to drink water. I worked through the day anyways. The next day Elder Tello woke up with the same sickness. So we stayed in the pension and slept ALL day. It sounds really nice, but not that great. Without air conditioning, the house gets pretty hot during the day. My throat was killing me that second day so i made one of the boxes of pudding that you sent me and ate the whole thing on the spot. Then about an hour later i made the other box and ate the whole thing. 9 CUPS OF PUDDING! Talk about happiness... We felt a little bit better the next day and decided to work through it because we had a full day of appointments. Luckily, every single one of our appointments failed and we taught like one lesson that day. It was incredible. Really though, it wasn`t that bad. We stayed positive and we`re almost completely better now.

Just in case you were wondering, yes, we did feel three really big earthquakes or aftershocks this week. I was laying in bed when the whole house started shaking and rattling. It was really strong, but not as strong as the original so I didn`t get up. My companion started yelling commands like usual ;) Then a minute later another one came and Elder Tello started yelling to us to ¨disfrutenlo¨ or enjoy it. So everyone just stayed still and felt it, me in my bed. It`s a weird feeling, but becoming pretty normal.

The day before my birthday I decided to forget my ¨diet¨ or whatever you want to call it and ate. I ate 3 sopapillas and 2 empanadas that night it was delicious. Then on my actual birthday we celebrated. The Saturday before we bought pork ribs, rice, onions, cake, ice cream, everything. Sunday night we had a feast and the whole house was decorated with my Pokemon birthday decorations. (thank you family). We ate Pork ribs marinated in some crazy sauce Elder Tello made, yellow rice and fried onions with eggs. Afterwards we ate the dessert I found, which was La Torta de Mil Ojas. Mom, you know exactly what I`m talking about. It was a cake made half of manjar and the rest of crispy pastry stuff. It was ridiculously good, especially with the half melted vanilla ice cream. It wasn`t such a good idea to eat so much at 11 at night though. Don`t worry, we took plenty of pictures and videos of it all. I`ll send them to you when I can.

One thing I forgot to mention was that at about 8pm on my birthday, all the power in Santiago went out. We were in the middle of a lesson with Daniel and Jacuelyn (who agreed to get married and baptized) when boom. DARKNESS... We taught for about another 10 minutes in the dark then wrapped it up. We went back to the pension, lit a bunch of candles, and started cooking my feast. At about 20 till 10 the power came back on and we celebrated. I`ll for sure never forget my 20th birthday.

The most spiritual experience I had this week actually occurred today. When everyone was taking their Preparation day naps I decided to study a little bit and started reading ¨For The Strength of Youth.¨ I read through the whole thing and realized how amazingly good that pamphlet is. Before the mission I struggled reading through a few pages of it and now I`m loving it. After reading it all I started reflecting on how I lived my life before and during the mission and decided to change a few things and set some goals for myself. It was an intense experience that came out of nowhere. All I know is that repentance is such a powerful tool and that it`s all possible through the atonement of Jesus Christ. I`m so grateful for this time I have to improve.

Well I love you all and miss you so much. I pray for you all the time. Thank you so much for all the love and support!

Love,
Elder Matthew Mooney

Everything's Chill...

2010-03-08T09:36:00.000-08:00

Hello Mis Seres Queridos,

Everything here in Santiago has seemed to calm down. Yes we have felt a few of the aftershocks, but they were just like vibrations. Water is fine. Food is fine. Mail is fine. Everything is fine. De hecho, I got my package!!!! On tuesday and opened everything. Sorry. Everyday is the same here and when we get packages we open them. I loved it though! Pudding, cookies, candy, mints, decorations, DVDs, everything. Thank you so much. You all do too much for me, really. Don`t worry though mom, we`re putting up all the decorations and everything on Saturday, Elder Tello is going to cook, and we`re buying a cake. My actual birthday is still gonna be fun.

Missionary work here has been normal. Every once in a while we find someone still freaked out about the earthquake, but for the most part everyone seems the same. Let me give you a summary of our investigators. We have Daniel (age 19) who is the boyfriend of our recently active member Jacuelyn (17). They live together and have a baby. Maribell (age17), Daniel`s brother wants to get baptized and was able to get baptized last sunday, but couldn`t because her parents want her to move back down to the south until she`s 18. We have Ramòn (55?) who is living with a less active woman Juana. He`s amazing but the two of them can`t get married because she`s still married to another man. Divorce in Chile is ridiculous. We have Elsa Riquleme (40) who is going to get baptized in June. We have to wait till June because that`s when she`s getting married to her ¨husband.¨ We just found Ines (30) and her daughter Constanza (9) the other day and they both accepted a baptismal date. She is separated from her less active husband right now. Hope it all works out. We`ve got a few more investigators with similar stories. It`s a whole different world.

My companion has been having a lot of problems lately. He has had a few surgeries here in the mission because of intestinal problems and other things. He has a LONG list of foods he cant eat. Unfortunately, he eats them anyways. He eats empanadas, lettuce, melons, beans, ketchup, etc etc... Everything he`s not supposed to and for that we have to spend an hour or 2 in the pension everyday and some days, we`re in the pension all day. I`ve tried talking to him about his eating habits and he says he`s gonna improve, but then in the night time he makes a big bowl of beans and sausages before bed. Then he wakes up to 2 fried eggs, sausages, bread, mayonesa, and ketchup. It`s a bit frustrating. Personally I`ve been eating a lot healthier. I`ve officially put myself on a diet and I`ve stuck to it for 2 weeks now. I think my companion has shown me what can happen from eating bad.

Well everything sounds crazy at home. I miss you all demasiado! You`re amazing and I appreciate you all more then you know. I know that Jesus Christ is our Savior. I know that God has called a prophet in these days, Thomas S. Monson. I know that the family really can be eternal. And I know that the Gospel of Jesus Christ blesses families. Oh I almost forgot, The Prophet, Elder Bednar, The Primary President, and one of the Seventy spoke to all of Chile yesterday. It was awesome! They managed to address Chile`s need perfectly. It was so powerful.

Alright, well I love you and I`ve gotta go.

Love,
Elder Mooney

TERREMOTO!!!

2010-03-01T09:33:00.000-08:00

Alright, well I`m gonna try and write as much as I can. We`ll see how it goes.

At about 3:30 in the morning I was laying half awake in bed when I felt a little vibration and opened my eyes. Then everything started vibrating more intensely. My bed started shaking, the window started rattling. After a few seconds the entire house was shaking pretty crazily. My companion then jumps out of bed and shouts ¨¡ÈLDER MOONEY ÈLDER MOONEY LEVANTATE! Hay un terremoto!¨ I was tired, comfortable, and kind of shocked and had absolutely no desire to get out of bed, but I did because the top bunk in a bunk bed probably isn`t the safest place to be during an earthquake. Elder Tello then started running across the apartment to wake up the other elders. The shaking nearly knocked him over. Elder Wilkey was already awake putting on his pants, but Elder Laney was still completely asleep (how, I don`t know?). We waited for about another minute and the earthquake died down. The power was out, it was pitch black in the house and we started searching for lights. Elder Wilkey and I found flashlights and Elder Tello lit a few candles. We looked around the house and everything seemed ok. Things had fallen off the shelves and water spilt out of the toilet bowl, but besides that, everything seemed ok. We quickly got dressed and put on tennis shoes in case another one came. We then got our backpacks ready with food and supplies in case we had to leave quickly. We checked the phones and they were dead. We looked outside and tons of people were outside looking around and a few people were packing up their cars and leaving. We weren`t 100% sure what to do...

Now let`s go back in time a little bit: A couple weeks ago our mission president gave us a few sheets of papers that had to do with WHAT TO DO IN CASE OF AN EARTHQUAKE. It explained the procedures we would take. It explained that we should all have money, dried food, and water prepared in a backpack. It had everything. We read it and figured we`d get it ready pretty soon. Then, the day just before the Earthquake President Laycock, his wife, and the assistant missionaries came to our zone to do house inspections / interviews. They talked to us about how important it will be to have our emergency supplies ready and before leaving we did a blessing over the apartment. They did that for our entire zone. We asked the President if these precautions were something that all the missions were doing or just ours. He said, just ours. We need to be prepared. Pretty powerful huh?

Back to the earthquake. We couldn`t call or do anything but wait. Elder Laney pulled out his MP3 player and somehow got it to play the radio. We listened to what they were saying for a while but it didn`t help much. This whole time Elder Laney, Elder Wilkey, and I were all pretty chill, but my companion was a different story. He was shouting commands, bagging all the food he had, and going nuts. He denies it now though.

We had the order to wait an hour in the apartment if something ever happened and if we didn`t recieve a call, then go to the chapel. After about a half hour we got a call from the office telling us to stay in our pensions with everything prepared in case of another. I got everything ready and went back to bed. The others couldn`t sleep and decided to make yellow rice and fried eggs. Every once in a while we felt some pretty strong temors and one big one in the morning. We stayed in the pension until about 12:30 when we recieved a call from the office to go to our scheduled lunches in our sectors, but to go in our street clothes. We would be offering service to all members, investigators, less actives, and anyone we knew. We went to lunch and the hermana had been going nuts because she hadn`t been able to get a hold of us and figured we were terrified or dead or something. We went to a bunch of the areas with houses that could have been in danger, but we found everyone to be in good conditions. No major damage in our area at all.

The major fear of everyone now is the replica or after shock that`s supposed to come. Everyone was expecting it the same day and it never came. They say it has to come though. Everyone`s flooding the stores now, buying all the food they can carry and more. Some malls and large stores are being robbed. Everyone was afraid that the water would be bad after the quake. Now we`re hearing that they might cut the water in Santiago. So we have every bottle, bowl, and cup full of water. The tub and the washing machine are full too. The office also gave us some fancy pants water bottles with filters about a month ago that we can use. There`s a little bit of a panic going on though.

On Sunday we held Sacrament meeting as normal and the Bishop chose to speak the whole time after sacrament. They then canceled the last 2 hours so that people could contact and visit family.

Truth is though. The earthquake felt really cool though. The ground, the walls, everything moving was insane and kind of exciting. Nothing really happened to us here. Unfortunately it hit other parts so much worse. I can`t even imagine being in the middle of all that. I pray that they`re all ok and that the aftershock is a lot less powerful (if there is one?).

I`m ok though. I miss you all more then I`ve ever missed you. The knowledge that I`m sealed to my family is actually a huge comfort to me now even though I`m not in much danger at this point in time. It`s been crazy here, but strangely normal as well. I hope that Chile can help the people who really are suffering and I also hope that this helps people remember what`s really important in this life.

I love you all so much! Thank you for the worry and concern, but it`s all ok now. Tranquilo. You`re the best and I`m so lucky to have such amazing friends and family.

Love,
Elder Matthew D. Mooney

A trip to church

2010-02-22T11:39:00.000-08:00

Hello my dearest friends and family,

Alright, well the most entertaining thing that´s happened was our trip to church. We carried another family to church (I think he means "brought" - the spanish verb to take and carry is the same) and by the end of the walk we had a parade of people, dogs, and strollers walking to the capilla (chapel). It would´ve made a cool picture.

The honest truth is, right now we are having a little bit of difficulty finding. We´re making a lot of contacts but all of the citas (appointments) are falling through. Also, vacations are still going strong and we´ve lost 2 investigators for another week or two. One person that we have is Ana Alegria, who is 13. She wants to get baptized but isn´t too bright. We have to re-teach her everything like 5 times. BUT every alma (soul) is important and she´s a really nice girl. Another one of our investigators has a marriage date in June, so that´s awesome. She plans on getting baptized right after. This week has been pretty rough, but we haven´t lost our spirits. I know that if we keep working with diligence, obedience, and faith, everything will work out fine.

Thank you family so much for the group email. Very cool! It was comforting and inspirational. It was weird though, when I first looked at the picture I totally thought that Uncle Brad was Taylor. Monkey faces were quality stuff.

I love you all so much and pray for you always.

Love,
Elder Mooney

New Sector

2010-02-15T15:57:00.000-08:00

Hello Family!

So this new sector of mine is quite different. It`s HUGE. It really is a giant sector and it`s also a lot poorer then my other sector as well. There`s crazy people running all over the streets. There`s a crazy old man that`s cross-dressed like a woman his whole life who always tries to touch as as we go by. He`s really well known by everyone in the neighborhood. There`s drunk people screaming at houses, fire hydrants spraying water, and people making bonfires in the middle of the streets and cooking bread. The benefit of this area is that the people are a little more accepting. We get into more houses and teach more lessons then in the richer areas. Unfortunately nobody really has progressed after our first visit. The majority of people say that they`re going on vacations (which is highly probable, because every one in the world here goes on vacations at this time of year). It`s a little tough though.

My new apartment is great. It`s more like a house and we have a lot more space. Elder Tello is really utilizing his chef skills here in the mission and making us whatever kind of food we want. Today he made Arroz Chaufa (or fried rice). It`s chinese food, but with a Peruvian splash. It was really good and he made enough to feed 30. Elder Sean Laney from Gilbert, AZ is a pretty cool guy as well. He went to Mesquite and has about 8 more months in the mission then I do. The only people that we both know from AZ so far are Kaitlin Gray and Cody Smith. He went to elementary school with Cody. Small world.

I`ve been introduced to some cool music this week. Disney music in Spanish! The Lion King, Tarzan, and Hercules. Ricky Martin sings ¨Go the Distance¨ from Hercules? You should check the music out though.

Well I love you all so much. This has been a little bit of a rough week, but it`s all ok because I know my Savior lives. I`ve really learned to apply the Helaman 5:12 scripture into my life. ¨es sobre la roca de nuestro Redentor, el cual is Cristo, el Hijo de Dios, donde debèis establecer vuestro fundamento...¨. Basically says that we should build our foundations upon the rock of our Redeemer. With the 1400 something inactive members here in my sector I see tons and tons of people who have built their foundations upon the wrong things. If we truly have a testimony of the Savior we`ll be more accepting to his teachings. Also, if we`re truly established upon this rock we`ll never fall. When life is really hard, when someone offends us, when we`re tired, or when we get bored, we can always remember the Savior and depend upon Him to give us the strength to continue on. Love you all so much, stay strong. Keep reading your scriptures and try to share the gospel or at least share your testimonies with someone. You`re the best.

Love,
Elder Mooney

PS - Jared is getting married....? wHaT?!? Wow, I almost blew up when he told me. Strangest feeling in the whole world, but awesome!

Look what Elder Mooney sent me :)

2010-02-08T20:48:00.000-08:00

So a day or so after my birthday I got a letter from my brother and he sent me some Chilean pesos, yay! It's only worth about $1.86 but it still looks cool :)

BOOM!?!

2010-02-08T14:30:00.000-08:00

Hola mis seres queridos,

Last night at about 11:15 we received our changes. All week Elder Blankenfeld and Elder Evans had been worrying about changes. They kept guessing who would be leaving and why. They also were guessing who would replace who, so on and so forth. The most likely change was that Elder Blankenfeld would leave the sector after being there for 6 months and Elder Boyce would leave too. But no, Elder Boyce, Elder Evans, and Elder Blankenfeld all stayed and I was changed. I was actually really excited to change, but was upset for two things; I had to pack everything that night AND that we had about 4 people who wanted to be baptized next change. It´s all good though. I´m just happy they´re getting baptized.

We went to the change meeting this morning and President gave an extremely inspirational and powerful talk to us about giving everything we've got. We also did a group prayer for the families of the 2 Elders who were found dead in Romania. Supposedly the gas was left on all night in their house and killed them in their sleep. It was so scary to hear about and now all elders sleep with the gas completely turned off at night.

After all that I received my new companion... Elder Tello. Such a cool Elder. He is from Lima Peru. He speaks perfect spanish (obviously) and speaks a little bit of English. I had been hoping for a Latin companion that could help me perfectionize the spanish language and now I've got him. The coolest thing about him though is that he is 20 years old and already graduated from college as a chef. Yes, a CHEF! He made me some ridiculously good pasta dish with vegetable sauce and chicken. He's awesome and I'm excited to work with him. We also live with 2 other gringo elders. One of them arrived in the mission just one change before I did and the other has been here for over a year. The one that carries over a year is from Gilbert, AZ. He went to Mesquite High school. Crazy huh? Anyways, we live in a much nicer pension then my last, but we are far from every store and internet place. We are actually in a GIANT sector now in one of the poorer parts of the mission. My companion tells me that there are over a million inactive members in our sector. Looks like we've got some work to do.

Earlier in the week something crazy happened. Our recent convert Juan had a huge accident and was all over the news. I´ll tell the story really quickly. Juan goes into the bathroom and sprays some AXE deodorant on his arm pits then sets the can on the sink. He then goes and sits on the toilet just a few feet away from the sink and BOOM!?! The can of AXE explodes. The explosion is so powerful that it blows out the roof above his head, breaks the window behind him, singes the hair on his head, burns his face a little bit, and burns off all the hair on his arms. What saved him was that since nobody else was home, he left the bathroom door wide open and most of the impact went out the door. He went to the hospital and then was released home. He's not allowed in the sun for 2 weeks, but looks just slightly sun burnt now. It's crazy. The can burst open completely and destroyed everything. The police and AXE are investigating what happened. They wanted to blame him, but there's no evidence that he did anything at all and they can't explain why the can blew up the way it did. I have pictures of it all, but these computers don't have anywhere to plug into. The best part of it all is that Juan and his mom recognize that Juan was protected. They see it as a miracle of God that Juan is perfectly fine and that he has no permanent damage done to him. Crazy experience though.

Yeah, that's my week though. Wish me luck with my new companion and please keep praying for my investigators. I love you all very much.

Love,
Elder Mooney

Be Strong!

2010-02-01T16:37:00.000-08:00

Hello my beloved familiares,

Another week has come and gone. This week seemed especially fast for some reason. I´d like to start out by sending a special shout out to my amazing sister Melissa! ¨hApPy BiRtHdAy MeeLiShAa!?!!? I hope you had an amazing birthday. The party at home sounded pretty fun, wish I coulda been there ;P I love you and I miss you very much.¨ - Love, your favorite sibling, Elder Matt

So something very lame happened last week. I was playing fútbol with a few missionaries and a few kids and basically I went to hit the ball with my head and succeded, but unfortnately another kid tried to do the same and headbutted me. So I started bleeding right under neath my eye and have had a black scab on my cheek all week. It´s not huge or anything, but EVERYONE asks what happend and I usually just tell them that my companion has a bad temper.

Also, this week I had my first snake experience. A snake is basically someone who hits on missionaries. I´d heard millions of snake stories, but never actually witnessed it until this week. We sat down to teach a lesson with this older inactive woman who wants to reactivate. Half way through the lesson her granddaughter comes in and sits down on the couch right next to me and just smiles. During the lesson she starts stroking my arm and i just kinda fidgit away from her and she just smiles at me. Then a few seconds later she starts rubbing my leg and pinches me. I was like what?! Finally we ended the lesson and I got out of there feeling extremely violated. I never knew that a four year old girl could be so feisty...

This has been a good week though. I battled our freezer and finally defrosted it after 3 hours of work and flooding the whole kitchen. Our 32 year old golden Investigator Rodrigo was grounded on Sunday. Leandro went by to pick up Rodrigo for church and Rodrigo's dad was waiting outside and said that Rodrigo isn't allowed to go to our church. Leandro said that before leaving the house he saw Rodrigo poking his head out the upstairs window. If you could please pray for Rodrigo that he can have the courage to persevere and that the hearts of his family members will be softened, I'm sure it would help him a lot. We also finally taught 10 year old Christian in a way that got him stoked for baptism. He's always gone to primary, but always been afraid to get baptized. We taught lesson 2 to him and 5 other cousins and friends and by the end of the lesson he asked us when he could get baptized. So cool. Most importantly, I've developed more faith in finding people to teach. A lady approached us in the street this week and now we´re teaching her grandkids. We helped a bruised up drunken lady to her house and passed by to teach her the next day. I followed a prompting to knock a random block of apartments 10 minutes before lunch and we entered in and taught a 25 year old guy. I know that the Lord has prepared people to receive this gospel, we've just gotta be diligent and watchful to find them. It's all a matter of faith.

I love you all so much and miss you. I hope all is well at home and that everyone´s healthy and happy. Be strong!

Love,

Elder Mooney

Keep the Faith!

2010-01-27T09:53:00.000-08:00

Hola mis seres queridos,

This week I was blessed to receive an amazing package from my family. Just wanted to say thank you so much for the OXY stuff (highly needed), the Jelly Bellys (not so needed, but very appreciated), the incredible CD´s from Diana, the homemade granola and craisins (which is like my favorite thing ever), the Balance Gold and CLIFF bars (which makes me feel 100 times healthier, the Youth theme for 2010, and the ordinance cards in spanish. It was the perfect package for the new year. Really, thank you so much. Elder Blankenfeld also received his CHRISTMAS package from his family this week, so we had plenty of food and fun.

President Laycock always tells us that the mission is the University of Life. It makes sense because we learn to prioritize our lives according to the gospel, but this week, I received even more revelation on what he means by University of Life. I live with a bunch of children. Last week I was sick and worked through it, this week the 3 other Elders weren't feeling good either. My companion was feeling sick and wanted to stay in one day, so then Elder Boyce felt like doing the same. Then everyone was just in a lazy kinda mood all week. I don´t doubt that they all weren't feeling good, but I feel like it was taken a little too far. Then there was how a couple of days ago when Elder Boyce tells me that my CD player won´t play any CDs anymore. Somehow it just stopped working and i wanted to blame them for always leaving it on all day and stuff, but I tried to have patience (key word was tried). The apartment is always messy, I'll wash all the dishes one day and the kitchen is completely destroyed the next. I´m already missing some clothing and nobody knows where it is. Elder Blankenfeld and Elder Boyce fight and get mad at each other all the time and blah blah blah.... Haha I know it sounds like I'm complaining A LOT, but the truth is I just wanted to paint a picture. I realized that all of these stupid little things that aren't even that important are helping me to develop patience. I can totally see how every little problem that passes is something that I need to be able to handle well after the mission, especially with the idea of having a family some day.

With all that being said, I really do love the mission. It's tough, but when i think about it, it's really exciting to be doing what I'm doing. We get to help so many people every single day for 2 years straight. We're teaching the true and only doctrine of Jesus Christ 24/7. I'm blessed to be in the Chile Santiago East Mission as well. When Elder Richard G. Scott talked to President Laycock before he became president of this mission, he told him that this mission has the most obedient missionaries in the world. (That´s all because the mission president before President Laycock had the missionaries living the Law of Moses. They had to count every contact they did, they had to use certain contacts, they had to fill out forms every day, for every lesson, for divisions, for everything. They had more rules then practically any other mission as well. Luckily President Laycock has allowed us to live the higher law and given us his trust. We´re all praying that nobody does anything stupid and loses the trust for the whole mission).

Our sector is doing well. We have a lot of people that we're teaching but some of them have some major issues to overcome before baptism. Marriage, opposition from family, believing in God. These are just a few. I know that if we're faithful and trust in the Lord, he'll provide a way.

Thank you so much for all your love and support. I know that what you're doing at home has a huge influence on what's going on here and vice versa. Keep doing what you´re doing and most importantly, ¨Keep the Faith¨ -Bon Jovi

Love,

Elder Mooney

It's all good.

2010-01-18T07:57:00.000-08:00

Hello!

Alright so this week has been good. I had/have a cold for the last 4 days, which has been pretty rough. Luckily I still have the giant bag of medicine Mom packed me when I started the mission! Thank you mom, it´s going to good use. Anyways, I've just pushed through it and kept working anyways and am feeling a lot better now.

So on Saturday night Obispo Perez nos llamar-ed (called us) and asked if 3 missionaries could give talks on Sunday because elections here messed the up the schedule. We quickly prepared the best talks we could and yeah... It was the first talk I had to give in Chile and it was a cool experience. Elder Boyce was the 1st person to speak and he spoke about the how the gospel blesses families. He struggled through the language, but delivered a good message. Next up was Elder Evans. He gave an Apostolic conference talk on the Book of Mormon that was really good, but left a lot of people sleeping. Then came YO. I gave a 10 minute talk on La Oracion (prayer). I tried to be as enthusiastic as possible so that people wouldn't fall asleep on me too. In all, it was a good sacrament meeting.

Our investigators are a little lacking this week. Problem is that people go on vacations for 2-4 weeks at a time here and we´ve lost some good investigators and a few baptismal dates because of it (Gloria, Romina, Estefanía, and Macarena). Luckily our good friend Rodrigo (age 30) is still progressing and told us that he´s positive he wants to be baptized now, he just is afraid to talk to his family about it. He lives with his parents and they're strong Catholics. It´s all good though, we´re positive, he´s positive, and it´s all gonna work out.

I miss you all so much. Sorry I didn't have any crazy stories or anything this week, I think I just am tired. Mom, in response to your questions, it´s like 95 degrees here and the Santiago Temple is awesome, but really small in comparison to others. I still haven't received the opportunity to actually attend the temple though..

Love you guys,

Elder Mooney

P-day Hike

2010-01-18T07:43:00.000-08:00

Elder Mooney's pension (apartment)

2010-01-11T09:48:00.000-08:00

Bathroom

Closet

Cleaning day

Looks like Elders live here!

This week we've been blessed to see the good.

2010-01-11T09:43:00.000-08:00

Hola, ¿Que honda?

First off, I´d like to throw a shout out to my favorite Dad in the whole world. hApPy BiRtHdAy DaD!?! I hope you don´t feel too old (even though you´re REALLY old now). Haha I love you. That letter you all sent me on dad´s birthday was incredible. Si tienen ganas de hacerlo de nuevo, por favor haganlo. Me encantó. (If you feel like doing it again, please do. I loved it!) Really, it was cool to just get a little bit from everybody really quickly, thank you.
On Tuesday I finally got my package from Kelly! She´s just TOO good. I don´t know if she told you all what she sent me, but the best part of it all was the Baby´s First Christmas Snow Globe she sent with a picture of me in it.... There was a book, CD, spongebob, Cheetos and cualquier otra cosa (all sorts of things) in that package. Unfortunately the bag of Jalapeño Cheetos she sent exploded during the journey. Spicy, cheesy, grease soaked into everything. Haha. Elder Evans re-baked the Cheetos and we ate them anyways. I cleaned everything up and everything is good now. Thank you so much Kelly!

Last Monday we went to El Cerro San Cristobal, which is a giant famous hill with a GIANT statue of the Virgin Mary on top. The four of us and 6 other Elders hiked up it in our missionary clothes. Halfway up we began to regret our decision to hike (we also began to realize how out of shape we are). We climbed to the top, looked over all of Santiago and took some awesome pictures. I'll send you the pictures in a separate email. After that we took this train thing back down and then went to Gatsby's, all you can eat buffet. It's probably one of the best quality buffets I've ever seen in my life. We ate ourselves sick then went and did a public presentation. Good preparation day.

This week I witnessed one of the scariest things I've seen in my life. About 30-40 ft away from me a kid got hit by a car. He crossed the street from a behind a vehicle, just as a car was passing at full speed. He smashed into the front window and then his face skidded about 10 ft on the ground. The scariest part was that his older brother or friend started screaming, running around, kicking cars, and yelled at us to call the police. I felt horrible for the middle-aged lady that hit him as well. She was so sad and confused about everything. The miraculous thing was that after about 10 minutes the kid who got hit seemed to be breathing normal and talking and there were no signs of blood?? We don´t know how it all ended, but ever since Elder Blankenfeld and I have been very careful when we cross the street.

Now for a change in theme. As missionaries we hear a lot from people that the world is just evil and that everyone has bad intentions and does everything for themselves. This week especially, I've begun to realize that they´re wrong. As servants of the Lord we are blessed to see some of the best and worst in people. Luckily this week we've been blessed to see the good. A 15 year old girl, who always attended seminary, named Macarena finally told us she´s ready to start preparing for baptism again. A 30 year old guy has brought his friend to church twice now and we placed a Baptismal date on his friend now. This guy is amazing, his name is Rodrigo, and he has truly been humbled through his afflictions and his trying to grow closer to God. Gloria and Estefanía, the family that lives directly in front of the church, finally went to church! Best thing about it was the members were great about saluting them and both Gloria and Estefanía loved it. A boy at church who was starting to ¨go down the wrong path¨ spent a full week of doing service and is now aiming to be a missionary again. He bore his testimony yesterday and it really impressed Gloria. Marcela Soto, a lady that lives next door to the bishop, finally has started to take interest in the church these last few weeks. She goes to church every Sunday now and is the most attentive person there. She invited all 4 of us over yesterday, gave us food to make completos (crazy hot dogs), and she made us an ridiculously amazing cake! It was a chocolate vanilla, raspberry, and mint cake with white and dark chocolate chunks. I ate my portion for breakfast today... Everyone wants to give us stuff right now. Gloria and Romina always make us banana milk, fresh juice, or some kinda tomato egg and bread stuff. Anita, Camila, and Paulo are always inviting us over to eat too. This sector is being amazing to us in every way and we don´t even feel like we deserve it. It´s a real blessing though.

As you can tell, things are going good here in the mission. Elder Blankenfeld and Boyce are always fighting (kinda fake, but kinda real). Elder Evans is always cleaning or baking for us. And I´m just chillin´. I miss you all very much and I hope all is well for you. Thank you so much for the praying and fasting for our sector. I´m positive it´s paid off.

Love,
Elder Mooney

PS- Sister Knighton, thank you so much for all the letters you've written me. You are amazing!

So many stories...

2010-01-05T08:00:00.000-08:00

Hola a todos,

So this is cool, it´s 2010. Kinda crazy huh? For the New Years we weren't allowed to stay out or anything so we entered the pension at 10 and ate some meat and rice that a member who lives upstairs made for us. We talked until 12:05 and noticed that the New Year had passed and went to bed. IT WAS A BLAST!

I've come to realize that there are so many little stories that I haven't been able to tell you all. Like how a Peruvian man in our ward had to make little tunics in the 3rd hour of church so that the people being baptized had something to wear. Or how my COMPANION overflowed the Baptismal font into our Gospel Principle class the day of Juan's baptism. Or about how a bunch of little kids dressed up like fat wise-men were running around the temple grounds during the Christmas programs. Or about how a missionary in our zone unfortunately got sent home a couple weeks ago. There's so much that I wish I could tell you all, but there's just no time to do it. Unfortunately you'll just have to deal with what I feel like writing you.

A few things that have had a great impact on me this week are:

The Stake Mission Leader invited all the missionaries and all their Ward Mission Leaders in our zone to a meeting. All of us missionaries showed up and not a single Mission Leader arrived. We held the meeting and the most memorable part was that he used a clip from the movie 300 to inspire us to work harder. (Had to do with how 300 real soldiers is better then thousands of bakers or blacksmiths).

The Patriarch's wife made us lunch the other day and she made us a drink that you HAVE to try! All you need is Ginger Ale, crushed pineapple, and pineapple sorbet/ice cream. You just make basically a root beer float but with ginger ale and pineapple. It was actually REALLY good.

We taught Mario, Lucy (de England), and family how to make REAL Estados Unidos pancakes and they LOVED them. Pancakes here are basically crepes.

I saw a dead body covered by a tarp right outside of our apartment. A man got hit trying to cross the main road. The police were blocking the street off and measuring everything when we passed by. Also a little boy got hit by a car while we were sharing a lesson, we all went outside to see, after about 5 minutes they decided he was ok, and we went back inside to finish the lesson.

I had a crazy man come right up to my face 2 days ago and scream ¨¡MATA A LOS NORTE AMERICANOS!¨ and also while we were knocking doors I told a man that we were Representatives of Jesus Christ and he yelled ¨¡USTEDES NO SON REPRESENTANTES DE EL!¨ and slammed the gate right in front of my nose.

This week Elder Boyce, trying to be funny, locked the front door after he left the apartment while we were still inside. Little did he know that the keys cannot unlock the door from the inside so Elder Blankenfeld and I were locked in the apartment for 30 minutes. We tried calling neighbors, we called the Elder´s phone, but they left it at a member´s house. Eventually a old man walked by and we threw him the keys and asked if he could open our door. Elder Blankenfeld taught Boyce a lesson that night.

The most memorable thing was that last night we passed by the hermana's house that lives upstairs to visit her, but she and her son weren't there. The 82 year old grandma was though (and let me just tell you, she looks even older then that). We asked her if there was anything we could do for her and she looked right at me and told me that she could use a boyfriend... I told her we couldn't help her with that and we left.

That´s basically my week in a really disorganized email. Thank you so much for the help you are doing back home for our mission here. I love you all so much and hope all is well. Please continue to pray for us so that we can find new people to teach.

Love,

Elder Mooney

Reese's, Donald Duck & lots of socks!

2009-12-28T13:03:00.000-08:00

¡Holas!

Talking on the phone with the family was incredible! After it was over my face was sore from smiling so much. The weird thing is, I can hardly remember a single thing we talked about, I just remember that it was good.

So Christmas Eve and Christmas day were pretty good. Christmas Eve we had lunch with Hermana Paillan and her daughter La Chumi (who´s a 23 year old Primary President). They gave us socks and fruit cake afterward. Then we visited Juan, Paulina, and a few other people. That night we had Dinner in the home of Anita, Camila, Paulo, and Dante. We ate shrimp ceviche with avocado, beef with a creamy mushroom sauce, little fried potato balls, green been tomato salad, and for desert we had big bowls of vanilla, chocolate, and coffee ice cream?? (One of the scoops tasted like coffee, we´re gonna have to go over the word of wisdom again). There were also truffles and sugar cookies. We also had prepared a message and games for the night, but didn´t have time to do any of it because dinner took so long. It was a really fun, really nice night though. It made Elder Boyce really homesick... Then at midnight Juan called us to say Feliz Navidad!

Oh and did you know that the tradition here in Chile is that everyone stays up until Midnight and opens presents then?? We told a bunch of people that we waited till morning to open presents and they thought we were insane.

Christmas day was really odd.. I woke up at 7:33 (the extra 3 minutes was a Christmas present) and thought it´s only 3:33 back home. Elder Boyce and Elder Maruri opened a few little gifts they´d saved (like wet-ones and finger puppets) and that was it. We cleaned and got ready like normal after that. I thought about home and the family all morning. We made Reese's and no bake cookies for various families in the ward and brought them to them (people don´t eat much peanut butter hear at all). We also sang Noche de Luz to all the houses (in parts). Everyone loved the Reese's and we have two families that want to do Noches de Hogar this week so we can make more Reese's. We then ate lunch with Vasco, counselor in the Bishopric, and his family. It was really good, but the whole meal was kinda sad. Vasco and his wife aren't able to have kids so they've been working on adopting for a long time. About 2 weeks ago they finally got their baby from a young girl who was wanting to put her baby up for adoption. They were so happy and taking such good care of the baby until all of the sudden the mother wanted it back. I´m not sure what exactly went down, but they had to give the baby back. So their Christmas was not at all what they expected it to be and was really rough. We felt so bad for them, the whole ward did. The meal was great though and afterward we sang for them. Oh and I also sang Jingle Bells as Donald Duck. At least now, they´ll never be able to forget me.. Luckily they are doing a lot better now.

The day after Christmas we sang to a few more houses we missed and received a few more gifts from people. Between the 4 of us Elders we managed to receive about 7 fruit cakes and 28 pairs of socks, pretty intense huh?

Changes were last night and guess what... I´m STILL with Elder Blankenfeld?? Haha anyways, he and I are pumped to be more obedient, more diligent, more focused, and more healthy this change (We´re gonna diet?!)

I love you all. You failed to send me Christmas pictures, but that´s OK. I´m sending you some baptism photos in this email and random others in another email. Stay strong and be good!

Love,

Elder Mooney

2009-12-28T13:00:00.000-08:00

2009-12-28T12:56:00.000-08:00

Introducing . . . Mini Matt

2009-12-23T16:56:00.000-08:00

Just in time for the holidays, we now have a mini Matt. Have an event you think Elder Mooney would like to attend but he can't because he's on his mission? Let me know and you can borrow mini Matt too :) He's a little smaller than real life, but more portable!