Man, the weeks just go faster and faster!! This last week was full of experiences.
Wednesday we had division with the Zone Leaders. Elder Rasmussen stayed here in the sector with Elder Caro from Columbia. Actually, Elder Caro trained Elder Rasmussen, so they both enjoyed it. They found 3 new investigators. One was a ten-year-old boy who since then we´ve lost because his parents don´t want anything. (His mom and grandparents are members but don´t want to go to church.) The other two were actually referrals that we had received from an inactive member. They´re friends that live close to each other--two women about 40ish. Erika lives right next to Adela, our recent convert, and Maria Eugenia lives a couple minutes away. The problem is that we haven´t been able to find them since then. They´re never home when we come. Well, a couple times there have been lights on at Erika´s, but no one comes to the door. We´ll keep trying to contact them, but we might drop them this week.

Adela´s progressing well. We´ve talked to her about the mission (which she´s thinking about, hmmmmm) and patriarchal blessings. She hasn´t shown much interest in the latter. But she did go to the temple to walk around the gardens. Unfortunately, she didn´t understand how to get there. She knew it´s in the corner of Procuro and Pedro de Valdivia, but what we hadn´t explained is that it´s not right on the corner; you have to turn and walk for two minutes. So she arrived at the church office building there and was really disappointed. But we explained better how to get there and she´s going to go back. She also went to institute all on her own! The one she went to was for people who have been in the church longer, so she didn´t understand much; but she´s going to go with a member to a different institute that she´ll understand. That´ll be great.

Catalina is progressing a little. She´s been reading and praying, but she still hasn´t been able to go to church. And the other day when we taught the Word of Wisdom she said she has a "problem" with tea. This "problem" is that she likes the taste even though her mom said she hardly ever, almost never, drinks it. Today I´m going to buy her some herbal tea and see if she can change. She´s ten-years-old. She shouldn´t have a problem with the Word of Wisdom!!!

It´s been getting really, really cold here, especially in the mornings. We have a little plug-in electric stove, but it doesn´t do much. Our house is so horrible! But we may be finding another one soon. Yesterday we had lunch with a family that lives in an apartment building. Funny enough, all that floor are members--them, her sister next door, a man that we´re teaching that was baptized at 8 but then immediately went inactive. And the fourth door is another family of inactives that are moving. They supposedly are leaving this Saturday, and they want to rent out the apartment! Tonight we´re going to stop by and talk to them about renting it. We hope that they will be okay with it, since we´re missionaries and they´ll know that we´ll take care of it and they´ll receive their money on time each week. Pray for us to be able to get it.

Have I mentioned how I´m starting to hate dogs? They´re all over the place.There are more dogs in the street than in the houses here. All sorts of strays all over. Sometimes they bark as we pass, very seldom coming after us, and even then they keep their distance. We just have to show that we will defend ourselves. But the other day the unexpected happened. We showed up at lunch with a sister in the ward, and Elder Rasmussen had to borrow her hose to wipe some dog crap off his shoe (another dog problem). As he finished and we were entering the house, the member´s dog came over. Apparently she likes to play, but when dogs play they use their teeth. So we kind of danced into the house, trying to avoid her mouth making contact with our legs. But I missed a step and she got me. Fortunately it wasn´t a horrible bite. But there is a nice little whole in my pants and my leg. It´s already starting to heal up, but I wanted to boot that dog hard.

Yesterday in church I was saying hello to some members, making my way to the piano to play some interlude when he bishop came over and asked me if I could give a short talk about missionary work right after the sacrament. So I had to prepare it during announcements, ward business, and the sacrament. I couldn´t during the hymns because I was playing. It was really rushed, but I felt really good about how it turned out. Several members told me that it was great, including one that said my accent sounded Chilean. I talked some about D&C 4 and then about member missionary work with the quote from David O. McKay "Every member a missionary." Then I talked about a book that I read called "Already to Harvest" by an old mission president in which he reads from D&C 33:8-10 about "Open your mouths and they shall be filled." He talks about 2 questions one can do while talking with a nonmember. These are: 1) Do you like to read? and 2) If I gave you a book about the story of Christ´s visit to the Americas, would you read it? He said that this has been tested to be 85% efficient. It´s a great idea, and I´m hoping that the members will agree and put it to the test.

Well, I´m out of time for this week. This is the last week of the transfer, so we´ll see where I am next week.
Hasta Luego!

Elder Murdoch