Wow. The time is going by way too fast. I lack a little over two months to complete one year. It passes fast, and today marks the beginning of my 6th transfer here in Chile. And the 4th one with Elder Squire. Yep, we are still together here in Carrión. But now it´s back down to one sector instead of two. Elder Pititto finished his mission and tomorrow leaves for Argentina. Elder Moore went to San Pablo, another zone in the mission. I don´t think that happens much, someone leaving their first sector after one transfer. I feel bad for him because he and Elder Pititto had several good investigators. He was especially excited for Pamela, the wife of a member. She really wants to get baptized and is way excited. Actually, they tried putting the baptismal date for February 7, and she asked if they could do it Jan. 31 instead. She´s progressing great and excited for the baptism. I feel bad that Elder Moore won´t be here for it. It was a pretty interesting transfer. We just got like 10 investigators thrown at us. It´ll be different and difficult working with all of the ward limits instead of half. But it´ll be good too.

That´s the biggest news for this week. Not much else happened. The final round of presidential elections was yesterday. A month or so ago they had the first round and limited it down to two candidates. Yesterday they voted for these two. Piñera won, just so ya all know. The other guy, Frei, has already been president once. From what I´ve heard he made a bunch of promises and didn´t keep them so no one wanted him again. But it was actually a close vote. Piñera only had 51%. We´ll see what kind of changes he brings to the country.

Last week we had a great experience. We were knocking doors, and at one door Elder Squire said "We´re going to enter this door and teach." Sure enough, they let us in and we taught about baptism and the restoration. The woman isn´t married but lives with her boyfriend, ("convive" with her "pareja") so we can´t put her with a baptismal date. But there was another guy there that was interested. We taught him how to pray, and he gave the closing prayer. In the prayer, he asked to know if Joseph Smith was a prophet and this message is true. After he said that he felt good and believes it was his answer. Wow! The problem is that he doesn´t live in our sector or even zone. We have to pass the reference, and hopefully he can get baptized eventually.
We set up an appointment to visit Jessica again with her "pareja," boyfriend. The thing is, he´s atheist. When he was younger, he went to a Catholic church, but just because his mom took him. He just believes in himself, nothing more. But he did have interest to know if there really is a God, if it will bring him happiness. We taught about God, bore testimony, and started into lesson 2, the Plan of Salvation. But then he asked us why there are so many churches in the world today, so we taught the Restoration. At the end he committed to pray, not only to see if God exists, but also to know if this message is true. We haven´t been able to pass since then, but we are going to go by and see how it went. It was an interesting lesson, and I know that the Spirit was definitely guiding me to be able to know what to say in order to help him.

We keep teaching the few investigators we have, and trying to find more. Yesterday we found out that Yesinia's mom came down from Peru, and the two of them left to live somewhere else. Bummer. But we´re still going to continue with Carol.

I think that´s about it for this week. Still suffering in the heat but enjoying the work. Missionary work really is ordained of God. In what other religion would a bunch of 19 year olds leave their family and their country to learn a new language and teach a message of Jesus Christ only to get doors slammed in their face and be ridiculed and laughed at? And yet, look at all the blessings that come as a result. More charity and love, patience, humility, faith, etc. (Christlike attributes, as found in Preach My Gospel chapter 6) I know that this is the only true church of Jesus Christ, and I´m proud to be a missionary to testify of this.

Elder Murdoch