Key to Happiness is Being Grateful

Hey Everyone - 

This week was fun and we had an awesome ward activity that we made! We had churipanes! Churi is like this sausage which they have here and there's several kinds and it's really good! That and pan (bread). It was a lot of fun and we did the spiritual activity part. We we're going to show a video but technology wasnt really working soo we just explained it all. We did really good I felt! We talked about the Book of Mormon and gave the ward a challenge to give out 10 books of mormon to someone this week! At the end we talked about when Christ asked Peter if he loved him and why he asked him 3 times if he loved him. overall it went really well.

Everything else is really good too! Veronica, Nico, Alonsos, aguileras, andrea y tomas etc everyone is really good and were making good work with them. Thank you for all the prayers they're very much appreciated!

Much love to you all!

Elder Chamberlain

What's up Popz,

I can finally start to see spring coming but while I was working out this morning it just starts to pour rain haha! It's pretty cold down here still but not too bad how it was like a month or 2 ago.

Ya Mom has told me that Spencer's killing it in Tennis!! I cant wait to see him in a tournament someday!  

Wow that should be fun and ya pretty interesting to organize a Christmas sacrament meeting! Haven't you made a musical production like that before though? Dad if you want some really cool songs that I love that maybe you could use...they help me feel the spirit soo strong and help me think about the Savior when I need help.

"still,still,still"

"away in a manger"

Those are just 2 that I thought of! You could make some cool arrangements!

Soo is home gonna look really different when I come back? You're getting some new alfombra huh? I haven't seen carpet in a long time!

Dad I've been making more progress with Jesus the Christ and my comp just finished it. He started about a year ago and He's going home to Uruguay in 2 weeks. Elder Barton is going home this transfer too and soo is my good bud from Mexico, Elder Tirado. We're losing a lot of cool missionaries this transfer. 

I skipped to the end of the book dad and wanted to read about Christ's second coming and the millenium. I teared up reading some parts --it's really cool.  I'd invite you to read it. It really puts the purpose more in your mind of why were here and what's about to soon happen.

I learned about the difference of the kingdom of God and the kingdom of heaven. The Kingdom of God is simply the gospel and the kingdom of heaven is the government and law of heaven. The 2 shall reunite when Christ comes back again.

Anyway that was something cool that happened this week. You and mom should read that part.  It's only like 20 pages in total at the very end.

Dad I've been thinking of something that you've always told me--the key to happiness...true happiness. It's being grateful. I'm glad that I have a lot of trials here, that it can be dangerous sometimes, trials with food, my pench, and just the things that Argentina doesn't really have and more. More than anything you guys, I've seen sooo much sadness and just families left torn by the power of satan. I'm grateful to have been able to see the things I've seen and help all of the people that we've helped. It's made me GRATEFUL. 

Thank you for teaching me that dad. I love ya and miss ya way too much haha.

Love your son and best friend,

Elder Chamberlain

MA!

Hey I heard you called the offices haha I hope everything goes ok with the package! Ohh that's awesome! I love those little photo books that you've sent me! 

Spencer is such a studdd!! Haha I can't wait to actually see a game! It'll be when he's in Highschool too so he'll be that much better!

Mom every week I keep feeling the spirit stronger and stronger it's been pretty cool. Like dad always said the key to happiness is gratitude and it couldn't be more true. I talked to kelsey a lot about that in her letter. Through all of the things that I've seen,people I've met, and learned here I will never forget how I felt and how they shaped me into who I am. I'm just really grateful how the Lord has kept me safe both physically and spiritually. It'd be really cool to show you it all...

Kelsey is soo beautiful. Plzz tell her that she has a marrying limit of 1 year in college AT LEAST! I don't want her to see the first good looking rm and get taken like that haha. But I'll be there to make sure that doesn't happen too...finally haha! 

I love ya tonz mom --thanks about the card. I've been fine! Dont worry!!:)

Love your son and best friend,

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

Winter Weather

Hey everybody

We had an alright week this week! It's been snowing a lot and the ski resorts are getting a lot of it. Sorry it's actually not snowing right here-- it's been raining a lot which has been suuupppeerrrrr fun especially in the winter haha. A lot of aguanieve in other areas(sleet) But ya in Malargue there's snow in the elders area and they showed us some cool pics so that was cool to see.

We have been working a lot more with our ward and we're now officially having ward council every Sunday. The bishop showed up pretty late and he was the only one. They at least started out good because we were starting out at once a month and did that a couple weeks ago with about 10 people! But it's all good-- we're doing a lot better with the ward than we initially were! Tomorrow we're going to have lunch with a recent convert and our prime investigator family haha! They are all soo awesome! We've been working with several people including them but transfers are coming up again and I don't want to have to leave with people getting ready to baptize again...it's fun to be the one to baptize and Heavenly Father wants them to do just that so it's all good.

Nico and his mom/family are all doing better and we're working with them. Nico with several other kids apparently want to write Kelsey because I showed them and their families a couple pictures of my family. Haha its nothing new but it's always funny.

SPENCER CAN TOTALLY MAKE THAT GOAL!! (wanting to play for the varsity tennis team his freshman year)  It's happened many times before and if he's this good already he's going to for sure make it. Tell him I said that ma!

Hailey is looking soo much bigger and taller too! She looks like a mini Rachel Blasi in that photo haha!  She's got her type of clothes and everything. Hailey is beautiful!! Enjoy the time with her mom but don't feel too bad because you have a lot more memories to make with us all over again and OUR KIDS...haha!  Anyway I love and miss you all--- let's get after it this week!

Love the one and only,

Elder 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