Fun Familia

Here I am on my 20th Birthday with the awesome hermanas who made me a paper lizard and gave me a box filled with funny notes and cards for me! 

This was the fun surprise birthday breakfast my district made for me on my birthday.  They made french toast and a birthday cake.  It was SO awesome!  They are like family to me here.

Dear my awesome fun familia,

Dang Brandon Roberts is already back from his mission? That's crazy. Mom I'm glad your back is doing better. Sorry Dad about what's going on in the office. You'll find the people you'll need. I'm soo glad you guys are learning and growing at the same time as me even though were really far away from each other!

That's so awesome you both get to be in that concert this week.  I LOVE ROB GARDNER. Ever since day one I've been listening to him and his music has helped calmed me down and kept me thinking about the blessings I'll receive by doing the things I'm suppossed to on my mission and becoming the person I need to become for my future. I'm really wanting to hear the music he's made specifically for our church now-- wow that's going to be awesome!

You guys are going to have soo much fun doing that together I wish I could be there! You guys should film it or buy the video so I can watch that with you someday and hear dad saying some of the parts. That'd be cool if you could get those actual songs with dad saying the parts so that every time we listen to the music it will be of dad narrating and knowing that Mom sang in the choir too! Just a thought that'd be awesome!

So we got transfer calls last night and I'm staying in San Raphael and Elder White is out and going to SAN JUAN! I really want to go there again I miss my recent convert familia-- hermana chaparro was like my mom...but anyway we'll see in the future! It's going to be really hard for me to say goodbye to Elder White. We've gotten really close to each other and he's helped me with sooo many things. But its time we part ways to serve the Lord and do what we've gotta do. Well def be seeing each other in Arizona. Does Tucson have a big international aiport or no? Just curious cuz then I can go see him when he goes home because I leave first.  That would be cool.

I'm getting an elder from Uruguay named Elder Paz and he's awesome! I knew him a little bit in San Juan and he's a super funny guy ahaha!  We're gonna get along real well. He's got about 9 months or so in the mission.

This morning before coming here I actually got to go give blood for our ward mission leader's mom who has cancer. I got to see her and talk to her at the hospital in centro and she's been on chemo fora while and didn't look super good. I think she's going to get better tho...I've kept myself in good shape so I hope my blood will help my senorita out!! She was a really nice and sweet lady so she deserves my blood anyday:)

HEY SO IM GOING TO SEND PICS TODAY!! I know I haven't done that in like 3 months or soo but I'm going to do it right now so I love you all soooo much!! You all are my everything!! 

Shoutout to Brother Dave Gadsby for the awesome emails with the advice he gives! You're a very smart man and you know your stuff.  I'm actually really impressed!  Thanks so much!

Anyway much love to you all!!

Elder K Chamberlain

(responses to a quick email from Spencer and Hailey)

Hey Spence!

The weirdest foods I've tried have been morcilla which is called "blood sausage" its literally just conjugated blood haha. But I've tried cow tongue, liver, and I can't remember all the others but I have def tried some weird things here in Argentina haha. I'm probs going to try a pigs head next. It's literally a pigs head cooked up haha!

My pench? That's what we call them because in spanish they're called pensiones. It's  wayyy nicer than my last area.  I'm going to send pictures today cuz I brought my stuff!

Dude tell me about tennis! I heard at the BYU camp you like won the whole championship for your division or something?! That's crazy!! Keep that up bro and you'll be a professional if you want to someday seriously!

Hey bro miss and love ya tonzz talk to ya soon!!

Elder chamberlain

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Dear Hailey--

Hailey how you doing!? You're soo big!  You're a little lady basically ahaha! Hailey Argentina is awesome! It's actually been pretty warm this last week more than normal so that made me happy! I've been growing and learning soo much lately.  It's been hard and fun! Did I read you're playing tennis too? Hailey thats' awesome! How's that going?? I love you soo much Hailey!  Keep being that good beautiful girl you are!:)

Love your older brother,

Elder Chamberlain:)

Happy Birthday 20 Year Old!!

Hey Mom and Dad!

Wow ya this week was one of the hardest and best in my mission! 

We had intercambios and a white storm about 3 miles away in pouring icy rain! It was pouring sleet for a lot of this week!  A white storm is where a whole district or even a zone goes to an area of a set of missionaries and talks with everybody they see! Except it was pouring rain and everybody was inside. So at least we knew where they were haha! But ya we could literally see our breath in this rain and there were still a lot of people that just didn't want us or just slammed the door on us. The excuses you only get in Argentina...estoy con mi abuelita( I'm with my lil grandma) Estoy con el bebe( I'm with the baby) Estoy con mi suegra( I'm with my mother in law) El bano esta tapado( the toilet is clogged!) Ahaha I can't tell you how many we've heard.  My district leader is literally writing a book about all of this called  "si Dios quiere" which is "If God wants to" haha! It is soo funny and I actually think he will do well if he can get that into deseret books and get it into the hands of missionaries that have served in Argentina because los argentinos are unique ahaha!  We were both soaked head to toe and it was miserable and there were still a lot of people that turned us away or slammed the doors on our faces. HAHA but its all good we dont care:) Just a very verryyy hard week for ALL of us and we got through it and now I'm able to celebrate it with my birthday!  But ya Ma, this week was awesome.  We suffered with A LOT of joy!;).   

Hey sorry yesterday we couldn't have P-day because it was a holiday and all the cibers were closed. I don't know if I ever told you guys what a ciber is but there just places where you can rent out a computer for a while.

Mom and Dad, I'm sorry I don't have a cord to send you guys photos but today my whole district along with one of my zone leaders who's going home this next week was with us (we were on exchanges) they all threw me a surprise breakfast birthday party with french toast, and dulce de leche which is like caramel.  It's pretty good and I've com e to like to put it on a lot of things like the Argentines do haha!  The hermanas made me a hand made lizard and a big cake and a really cool paper box that you open which has a bunch of funny letters to me.  It was sooo funny! I thought nobody would be able to beat my birthday that I had a year ago when I only had 3 days in Argentina but mom, it was amazing...I can sincerely call these people family. These missionaries made me feel soo close to any home that I could have in this country and being soo far away from you all. We also did some other weird things that they do here for birthdays like swallowing a raw egg and my comp shoving my face in the cake and then me putting it on others too ahaha! We got both on video and I'll be able to show you guys them someday haha!  This is by far the best district I've had in the mission and I'm going to miss them all soo much when I go.  It was so awesome. 

Our transfers are ending this week so by Sunday I'll know about what's going to happen to Elder White and I. If we go a 3rd together that'd be awesome! We'd be together for general conference haha!

Hey Nico is doing a lot better and he's interacting more with several of the boys we have in our ward so that's been going great! Other than then that our zone has been kinda struggling but were on track for success with our attitudes!! So we're gonna get some baptisms for sure! Also a new law came out for getting divorced which is what President Goates told us so now we're...actually going to have SEVERAL baptisms very soon haha so I'm pretty excited for that! That's going to help the mission work a lot!

Anyway Ma, I had and am still having an awesome day!! Hey thank you for that birthday message that you sent me just now!!  I love the pics!!  Ya, I don't feel 20 Mom, but I guess I kinda do a little bit more now! It's weird...I'm finally in my 20's...it doesn't feel right! I will try and send some videos of me and the egg and face in the cake etc with some pics ahaha! Much love Mama!  I'm sorry your back is hurting and I hope you get better!  Hey Love ya tonzz dad!  You're a stud-- keep up the great work with everything you do!:)  

          Love your son and best of best of best friends,

         Elder Kohler Chamberlain

Elder K Chamberlain

Don't Want to Leave!

I am still serving in San Raphael

Hey Everybody!

It's pretty crazy how fast that first year went!! ya...I don't want to leave!! I LOVE the mission. I've learned soo much! I love helping other people through this gospel and many times just being a friend to someone that doesn't have many or none at all. That's so cool you all got to go to Dean's blessing! I'm glad at least you guys got to go and support them!

Haha I miss Hailey tonnzz!  Tell her hi for me and that I listen to her songs a lot! My comp thinks that song with both Kelsey and Hailey was pretty cool and he's gonna learn it on the guitar when he goes home haha!

This week was a good one! We had such an awesome time with Nico and really helped him out. We talked a lot about serving a mission and how it's not an obligation in the church. He can make his own choice to answer God's call to serve. He seemed to feel better from that. That its his choice and it's not that he's being forced to go. We talked to him about all the many people that he would bless and how God will richly bless his life in return. Later it turns out that in the week the day before we had lunch with them Nico was beat up in the streets...at 7 at night...it happened where we've had some bad problems before.  We don't go there anymore. He wasn't beat bad but more than anything just robbed and they beat him in the dirt. He's such a quiet timid kid and it makes me sick that people could do that to him. We gave him and his mom a blessing when we went for lunch with them at their house. The mom was actually getting pretty sick because her blood pressure raised significantly after that happened. So that's why we gave her a blessing too.  We're going to continue to visit them and help them out and go out with Nico to visit some people too!

We visited them yesterday too and had a lesson with the Hermana's daughter's husband who isn't a member. It was weird because we were trying to start the lesson and they were literally talking about whatever...they started talking about their kids and how they used to share their kids with other moms to give their babies "more suck" (nursing)  But I'm not going to lie it was pretty weird and ya one of the mom's almost 4 year old son runs up to her and just pulls down her shirt to do it...I've seen it before and older and I don't want to talk a whole lot about this but you really don't know how many things I see here in Argentina!   So I thought I'd share something different with you all haha!

Today I'm going to the dentist and their office looked ok. I dont know if dad would approve haha but I've seen a couple others for other comps and it's not too bad in comparison to the others! I just hope they use more than soap to wash their stuff because I rememebr how I had to wash your tools dad haha it was a really looonnnggg cleaning process haha but it doesn't look like they do that...haha.

Also I'm going to watch Meet the Mormons with our zone today! President said we could do it if we had good food and drinks so he was cool about this one!

Also the highlight of all the lessons we had this week was with one new family who I know is going to be baptized! The hermanas had given us this reference and we're now going to visit them again with him. It's a family with the parents and an 8 year old daughter! We taught them the Plan of Salvation first this time and they really liked what they heard. There's some word of wisdom problems as normal but we're sure we're going to get through to them!  

I've been using this jacket I bought 3 months ago or less to keep warm. I almost always use my light jacket and the big one I have for going outside and gloves and stuff.  It can get pretty cold! But we have a little heater that we use in our room at night and that with my sleeping bag all helps! The real thing now is that our hot water for our shower isn't really working. Like it's a little warm but we have to turn one of the sinks hot water on so that water can go to the shower but if we do that then it literally just dribbles out water. But ya-- it's all good haha! It's the mish!

Really with my Spanish I just need to pay stronger attention to every single word they're saying. When I don't know a word I'll write it down or if I didn't understand them I'll still ask them to tell me what word it was and I'll look it up. Most of the time I'll ask my comps though. It's nice with Elder White because he actually lived in Guatemala with his family too so he already had good Spanish before the mission and has gotten really good!  I'm reading a lot in "Jesus the Christ" and just studying the scriptures! Every now and then I'll get a really hard but good question too and Elder White and I will both look for answers on how to explain it.

Hey thank you soo much for the prayers and your love and support. I'm trying hard to do my best. We're really thinking that the new family that we found is going to be baptized more than the other people we're teaching.

Anyway that's the gist for this week. I love and miss you all!  Have an awesome week!!

Elder K Chamberlain

Music was the Key!

Hey Everybody! 

This week was awesome! We got an awesome reference from the hermanas and the family that we contacted really wants us to come back and teach them! We have an appt. with them during the siesta! We're going to put a bapt. date for them on the so we're really pumped for that!

Also we've been working a lot with the less actives and we had an awesome family night last night and another one tonight and several more this week! But last night was awesome because we really got close to a kid named Nico there. Nico is about 15-16 years old and doesn't really talk a whole lot. He was left at the Hermana Cortez house when he was just 5 days old and his "mom" can be pretty strict with him. Last night during our lesson he just had his head on the table the entire time. He did not care one bit. We tried making the lesson fun and had people blindfolded and told them to do hard things. We related it all to how when we obey the commandments we're more in tune with the Spirit and things can be easier--Like not having a blindfold. After we played another game that the mom made and had some panchos.(hotdogs)

But during the lesson Nico was sent to his room and later came back just quietly crying. During the lesson I was able to make my way over there and put my arm around him and keep teaching with Elder White. At the very end of the night I was talking to the Hermana about something and I heard someone singing...it turns out it was Elder White but he was singing "Hallelujah" to Nico playing the guitar. Turns out this kid Nico plays really well and learned from the computer when he started 5 years ago. He's a stud! I started singing "Hallelujah" in English and we told him that he should come play piano with me and Elder White when all the kids come to play soccer at the chapel on Thursdays!  Elder White says in all of my time here he has never seen him smile...let alone that big. I felt soo good and Elder White and I are both super excited to help this kid and put him in a better spot in his life. We're hoping that maybe we can practice some cool church songs and maybe sing and play something in church. We think that would help his confidence a lot and have people see him in a better light.

It's so cool to know that God knows where you need to be in the right time. I'm so excited for Ivana and her fam (reference) and to have a lil' jam sesh with Nico and hopefully help put him on a path where he'll want to serve a mission someday. 

Much love to you all hope you all have a great week!!

Elder Chamberlain

Movie made for Ward Member Referrals

Hey Fam-- this is the movie we made for the ward to help give us more references! These are the elders I'm with all the time. Haha They are super awesome funny guys ahaha!

Obviously everything is in Spanish. I talk in English in one part but it's really got our ward more active in just the past couple weeks so it's helping us!

The water balloon fight is outside our pench and it's filmed in our pench and the other elders pench too!

I hope you can all watch it and that you like it ahaha!!  

(This photo was taken as a screen-shot from the video.
The complete video cannot be loaded on to the blog)

Hey Mom!

Wow I knew L. Tom Perry had cancer but didn't know he died. He'll be missed by many for sure.

MA--- we ha such a good week! I wanted to make sure my comp finished strong in his last week of the mission! We found 2 new big families like the Chaparro family and we taught them a couple times! Others are also progressing too and were really excited for that! But I'm leaving for San Raphael after these 6 months! I can' believe I've been here since December! 

Mom I'm actually excited for San Raphael a lil' cuz it's super pretty there! It's one of the more pretty/richer parts of the Mendoza provinces! I'm with a gringo named Elder White and we already know each other fairly well so it should be fun with him!

Wow that's soo cool that Madison and Rebecca are leaving on their missions. They'll learn a lot!

I didn't know Spencer was a counselor in his quorum-- that's soo cool!

Hey good job in inviting that family to come to church. They have the invitation now and they just need to make the decision. I hope they'll make it soon especially while there kids are fairly young to help them make that a part in their life. It will be a lot harder for them later on in life if they don't make that a foundation now. But you did your part and thats the success of it. We invite and nothing more. There's nothing more we can do neither should do because we have to respect the free agency that God wanted us all to have so badly. Enough to sacrifice a third of his children.

I love and miss you ma more than you know. The mission is going and I've learned and seen more then I thought I ever would--All in only half the time. But ya this time next year I'll be getting ready to come home with you all:)

I miss and love you all soo much. Suzanne wrote me and I LOVED hearing from her! I hope everything went well---Baby Dean looks good!

Love your son,

Elder K Chamberlain