Talk With and Evangelist

Dear Dad,

Christmas Dinner at a Members House

One of the pastors that we found is named Mario Coronel. He was a taxi driver for a while and has been a pastor too. He also said that he´s spent some years doing missionary work in all of South America. He told us that a couple times in Chile he´s been beaten, robbed and had all sorts of scary things happen because he wanted to preach the gospel to the people. He was also way understanding of us as missionaries trying to teach to people that a lot of the time don´t want to listen. I think that the coolest thing he told us was that the reason he did and does missionary work is to give back to Christ. He has memorized and marked all of the references in the Bible that talk about the crucifixtion of our Savior and whenever he brings someone to the gospel and helps someone else find Christ he thinks of it as giving back for one drop of blood that Jesus shed or one of the times he got hit with the whip. That was one of the coolest things that I have heard about why someone does missionary work. It´s all to give as much as we can to God. Because God has everything and gives us everything so the only thing that we can give to Him is us. We can give our time and our talents to help the people come to Him and we can give our hearts to his service. That´s my new goal as a missionary, to give to God because of all that he has given to me. To try and be the best that I can so that he can be proud of me and so that I can be proud of myself. That´s my new focus and because of that I have been doing a better job as a missionary. When we do things because of love we always have the desire to do them. The greatest motivator is true love. Love for God and love for our fellow man. That is why the people that have Charity will be better off in the ressurection. Because the most important thing to have is Charity.



Christmas dinner close-up

Love, Michael







Elder Sirrine's District in a Van Elders Only

New Year's Dinner with Zone

 



Elder Sirrine and his District

 

Dear Mom

 

 

Thanks for the updates from home. I will definitely take better care of my camera when I get it. The updates from this week are that my companion is going to leave at  o´clock today and that I don´t know when my new companion will get here. This week we´ve had a lot of good lessons and I actually found two new families that sounded like they´d be interested in learning more about the gospel. The problem was that when we passed by to actually teach them they weren´t at home. I also found two Evangelical pastors this week and both of them were way cool. They are happy to sit down and talk to the missionaries because they believe a lot of the same things that we do. They were also awesome because they know how hard it can be to preach the gospel to the people here so they were supportive of us and are willing to share soda or food when we pass by. They were some really cool people. My new companion that is coming is going to be a Chileno and his name is Elder Sarmiento. I think that this next transfer is going to be rather interesting and I know that I´m going to miss Elder Salas a ton. He´s going to Tierra del Fuego to be a district leader now. That was pretty cool to learn. It´s sad to see how empty our pension is now with only my things out. I look forward to learning a lot in this next transfer and I hope that everything goes well for you guys at home. I haven´t had time to buy a pillow yet. I will hopefully be able to do that sometime this week or next week. Thanks for the advice and I will be sure to do the best I can. It´s alright, I think there will be a couple of Gringo missionaries coming. We´re also getting a new companionship because we´re opening a new area this transfer so I´ll still have people to speak English with. Lots of love.

 

Love, Michael