Wow! This is the last week of my first area! Crazy how time flies! But Elder Rigby thinks that we´ll both probably end up staying here in Renca 1 for another transfer. Which will make three for him, I think. I kinda hope I do stay. I´m just barely getting to know the ward, and we have a couple people close to baptism. It would be great to stay. There´s one person here that Elder Rigby was teaching before I got here. The only thing keeping her from baptism is that she´s con vive. This means that she´s living with someone but not married. They want to get married, but had planned on January, which is far away. But we learned the other day that they changed the date to September. Which means I´ll be here for her baptism. And after baptism, they have to wait a year to go to the temple. But I´ll be in Santiago for that, too.

Cristian Burgos is progressing and not progressing at the same time. He has been praying and reading. But he´s had doubts about continuing investigating our church. I think he has some fear of what other people will think. Plus it´s hard sometimes to teach him cause he works till night, sometimes till midnight. Last night we watched The Restoration with him and committed him to church. But he´s not 100% committed to church, only if he can. We might end up dropping him. He just needs some time. But it is good that he´s still reading and praying. We hope he can receive his answer soon.

Ursula and her family went on a trip this week, and tonight we´ll teach them for the first time in a week. We have been calling them every night. Ursula hasn´t been reading much, but Fabiola has been reading and praying every day. She´s progressing great. Tonight we´re gonna set her with a baptismal date.

We had interviews last Wednesday, and I learned something great from President May. In our mission, we have an analogy of a garden. We plant seeds, cultivate, and harvest. In the interview he taught me that if we have 14 seeds, and the wind and cold takes 5, we still have nine. If we lose 4 more, we still have 5 to harvest. But if we have 7, the wind takes 3, we have 4, and we lose 2 more, we only have two to work with. This is like investigators. The wind of course is Satan. He also did this with Elder Rigby, and we´re starting to try and find more people to "plant". Hopefully we can have more success with this.

Our Enlish class went great this week. We had 6 people, and 5 were new. We had a helper, too. Roxana is the daughter of our the second counselor to the bishop in our ward. She is in a university and has taken English classes. She can speak really great English. She helped us teach, and it went really great. I almost felt like I was learning English, too.

It´s pretty cold here now. During the day it´s not horrible, especially when the sun´s out. But at night and in the morning it´s freezing! That´s winter for ya. Except there´s no snow. When we take off our coats in appointments, and the people see me with a short sleeve shirt, they ask if I´m cold. I tell them that where I´m from it´s really cold, and I´m used to it. But in the night yes, I´m freezing.

The language is coming. Slowly, but coming. When people here me speak, and hear I´ve been here for a month, they´re impressed. I can speak pretty well. My accent needs a little work, but that´s coming too. The problem is understanding. There are some people that I can understand pretty well. But others I can´t. They talk so fast here! But I´m kinda getting used to it, and it´s improving.

Elder Rigby´s really great. I´ve learned a lot from him. He´s a hard worker, obedient in everything, and diligent. I´m grateful to have him for my first companion and my trainer. He´s great.

Well, I´m about out of time, and my hands are freezing. Gotta go warm up by playing some soccer. Yeah! I think that´s about it for this week. Adios!
Elder Murdoch