Week 17: Adventures of the doggie who converted to the gospel of Jesus Christ

Happy Halloween from Elder Van Pelt (AKA Abraham Lincoln  Easter Bunny)

Well my friends, Rosemary ended up not getting baptized because she went to the casinos the day before her baptism. This made me giggle at first to imagine this little old grandma gambling at the casino the night before joining the church and making a promise to the lord, but when reality sets in it was pretty sad! Zach and his companion Elder Pistorius need to keep giving her some more discussions to help her more fully convert to the gospel before she can make that next step of baptism. So lets all keep her in our prayers as she contemplates what is most important in this life.

Zach will be staying in Victoria for at least another 6 weeks, which he is super excited for. He has really grown to love the people there and loves the beauty that surrounds him. He will find out if he will be transferred shortly before Christmas (when we as a family get to finally freaking see him, yay!).

Halloween was this last week, and as some of you know, our family really gets into Halloween. We LOVE it. We love being scared, we love scaring each other, we love pumpkins, dressing up, skeletons, hauntings... Everything. We love it. Anyways, Zach informed us that much like Mexico, Chile doesn't really celebrate Halloween (bummer, they think halloween is for devil worshippers), but they celebrate dia de la muerta (day of the dead).  This is a holiday where they go to cemeteries and honor those who have died by cleaning their tombs and headstones. As most holidays, the Chileans also celebrate with lots of empanadas, relaxation and FIESTAS! YEAH! Sounds awesome, I would love my fair share of empanada fiestas at a cemetery, nearly as good as halloween. Nearly. I guess I am a devil worshipper.

Anyways, Zach was able to bring a little bit of halloween to the members in Chile. The elders made games, decorations, snacks and played spooky music. Zach even put a scary dolly in a highchair as decoration in memory of Cassie and I, you can see this in the picture shown. I was most excited to see that he had not lost his flare for the best holiday ever. The highchair is straight out of a slasher film (probably).

One day this week Elder Pistorius and Zach were in the church preparing the baptismal font by filling it with water and making sure the chapel was clean. When they arrived, the trash can was spewed all over the floor, which they cleaned up and didn't have a second thought. As they were leaving the church, they found this little black dog wandering the halls. In Chile, the dogs are mostly all stray and rabid, crazy mutts that like to bite people, so they didn't want to touch him because as Zach said, he was "gross". They tried pushing it, moving it, shooing it, but it would not get out. So they spent 20 minutes chasing around this little black dog, which he said was his fun for the day (I think we need to send him a game or something if thats the only fun he is getting).

Well, here is your weekly grandma story...
Zach was teaching an 82 year old grandma this week. They were planning on teaching the lesson of the plan of salvation after they said the opening prayer. Instead, after the prayer, this grandma stole the conversation and just started jabbering and talking so fast that Zach said if she had dentures, they probably would have fallen out. She wasn't preaching or anything, she was just talking about all this random stuff and wouldn't let the missionaries speak. I guess she just wanted someone to talk to! They are still there to this day, listening to her talk and talk and talk. Just kidding. But they really didn't think they would ever be able to get out.

Zach had his first baptism this week, it was a little 10 year old girl (who is super cute, as you can see in the pictures). It also looks like she has picked up Zachs crooked thumbs up. Ruining thumbs up for people in America and Chile, thats our Zachy!

Anyways, thats about it for this week!

Hasta luego!