O-15: July 2025

Coming Home, July 7th, 2025

Coming home in a couple days! Feeling all the feels, the most noticeable ones are sadness/sorrow, excitedness/joy, and content. It has been an incredible experience.

It has also been an incredible week! This week has just been full of miracles! We also were very busy helping Hugo, Amandita and Seleny prepare for their baptisms. There was a lot of stress, and a lot of problems but God is good and they all got baptized! It was a very joyful day! And then later in the afternoon the ward threw a going away party for me. I love all these people.

It's been very sad saying goodbye to everyone. But I know God will watch over them and keep the missionary work rolling down here.

Today and tomorrow I'm just chilling with all the missionaries that go home.

Just a reminder that I'll be giving a talk on this Sunday, the 13th at 10:30am mountain standard time. 2090 Sherwood Dr, Sherwood Park, AB T8A 6H7, Canadá. There's the direction, see you there!

Love, Elder Spencer

One Week Left, July 3rd, 2025

One week is all I have left to help people come unto Christ down here in Chile. The grind is still on, no stopping now, eh?

It was a good week this week! Found lots of people and continued to teach the ones we are teaching. Hugo, Amandita and Celeni are progressing steadily and are preparing for their baptism this weekend!

A miracle we saw this week was with a friend we met named Daiana. She was a reference from some elderes in Bolivia, that taught her once. She living here to work. Anyways, we met in a park and she opened up to us about her situation and story of who she is. (Still to this day, I'm amazed that people, young or old, who just meet us will talk about the craziest things in their life. Things you should only say to someone you really trust in). Well we taught her about the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and I felt inspired to ask if she had faith, she said yes. I asked her if she was trying to be better everyday through repentance, she said yes. And then before I could ask the third question she said, she wanted the third step, which is baptism. So she will be getting baptized in a couple weeks.

I gave a talk in church as well. Went pretty good I think! I talked about becoming true disciples of Jesus Christ and missionary work.

Spiritual thought: John 13:34-35

"34 A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. 35 By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another."

Invitation: I invite you to pray to have a portion of the love that the Lord has for each of us. To pray that His love can rest upon you and that you may act in love to feed His sheep. To have His love and light so that others may know you are His disciples.

Mark your calendars!

I'll be getting back next week! And on Sunday the 13th I'll be giving a speech/talk, however you want to call it, about my experiences as a missionary for the past 2 years! I'd love for everybody to come! See the address below, it'll be at 10:30 mountain standard time. Next week I'll send out a zoom link for those of you who live far.

2090 Sherwood Dr, Sherwood Park, AB T8A 6H7, Canadá

Love you all! See you soon.

Elder Spencer

- morning hike

- Daiana

- me and my como, Elder Cruz in the campo

- new hair style

- learning how to knit or something with my neighbour

- noche de barrio

- got sniped giving my talk

Loving the Work, June 23rd, 2025

This week started off great and then had its ups and downs.

Tuesday

- we had district council which went pretty well. I talked about an orchestra and related it to missionary work. Learned some new musical spanish vocab terms which was fun! Then some of the hermanas led a great practice of how to extend invitations.

- after district council I went on an exchange with my zone leader, Elder Keller. It went well, we found a 5 people together, had English class which was muchly needed for me haha. But then I didn't even go bc I had the opportunity to run a little interview/checkup on some hermanas in my district that ward share in that area.

Wednesday

- we continued to teach Celeni and Amandita preparing them for their baptisms, they are very excited!

- then we visited some members afterwards

Thursday

- in the morning we got on a random bus and went into the countryside, found a new town we've never been to and got off. We only found 1 person out there though.

- in the afternoon we had a couple lessons then dipped it to Santa Maria, an area in my district to do a baptismal interview. We had to get there an hour early because the last public transportation stopped running. So we'll we were there we went to a family home evening with the hermanas. And it turned out to be with 2 recent converts of theirs that I had the opportunity to do their baptismal interview like a month or 2 ago! It was awesome to see how much their lives have changed since being baptized. Gave me more motivation.

- then I conducted the baptismal interview with their friend Sebastian. Great guy, got baptized yesterday. Really special experience.

Friday

- my comp woke up with a fever but got feeling better later.

- had a great lesson with Hugo, the man is amazing. We are going to see if we can move his baptismal date to this Sunday instead of in two Sundays. He is ready.

- then we booked it out to Putaendo where we had a couple lessons. Came back to San Felipe and helped our new ward mission leader figure out his calling.

Saturday

- had lunch with bishop and his wife. They have this little heater in there house that is gas powered. It isn't the best thing ever, when they turned it on, thick white gas spewed out for about a min or two. And the smell of gas really made me want to mow a lawn or clear a driveway with a snow blower. They told us not to worry haha.

- then in the afternoon none of our friends could have us over, so we ended up visiting members well looking for a new place to live. We gotta move out.

- also well we were walking home at the end of the day, in a slightly sketch part, a motorcycle almost hit me. It came right up onto the sidewalk honking it's horn and slamming on the breaks at the last moment. Turns out it is the dad and mom of Anthony, a legend we baptized a couple months ago. We laughed, then he invited us to Anthony's bday party.

Sunday

- Amandita and Celeni weren't able to come to church as they all may have gotten yellow fever or something crazy.

- Hugo came and he loved it, he is such a great guy.

- then we went found a couple people and had some lessons

- Learned how to make some amazing Bolivian empanadas

- the district did great this week with their goals. But now we are starting to have some internal drama. It's a new challenge as I am inexperienced with girl drama. When I've had drama with elderes in the past we had those easily resolved and became best of buds. So if you have any tips feel free to share haha.

Spiritual thought: The topic of miracles has been present a lot this week. And so consequently I've been thinking a lot about miracles.

And I really like this quote from our prophet Russell M Nelson.

"Seek and expect miracles. Moroni assured us that “God has not ceased to be a God of miracles.” Every book of scripture demonstrates how willing the Lord is to intervene in the lives of those who believe in Him. He parted the Red Sea for Moses, helped Nephi retrieve the brass plates, and restored His Church through the Prophet Joseph Smith. Each of these miracles took time and may not have been exactly what those individuals originally requested from the Lord."

Maybe the miracles we receive aren't what we thought they'd be or what we wanted. But it is what we needed. What God needed. I invite you all to look for and expect miracles in your lives. To do the spiritual work necessary to see them.

Have a great week! Love you all!

Elder Spencer