7/29/2013 Letter and Pictures!

Hey everyone so not a lot of time this week! Just keep on keeping on! I'm going to attach a picture. Its of what i wear every morning when I study. I woke up the other morning and it was 35 degrees inside our house, we had the heater on too. Its crazy! So this week a bunch of Menos Activos came to church that I reactivated! Not a baptism, but it was still way cool! We taught Pablo the Word of Wisdom, he and his family have problems with basically all of it. They said they would commit to live it to their best. A little progress, they are changing. Its way awesome! I think though if Pablo doesn't have a date for baptism next week we are done going by. We can't waste time like that. So many cool spiritual things happen every week here, we will just be knocking doors in apartment buildings or talking to people in the street and they end up needing help. People here are really cool too. I don't remember what it's like for everyone to speak English. I can't imagine it, it's hard to remember which is a good thing. The ward here is doing so much better it's awesome! They have five missionaries out so everyone is focusing and using them as motivation to help us, it's going pretty well. I hope all of you are doing well. This is my favorite time of year in the states! I love reading in the Book of Mormon and seeing all the prophecies and thinking wow, I'm fulfilling a bunch of these right now. It's awesome. Well I love you all!!! Ill do better next week! I'm old now so forgive me. haha

Elder Biesinger! 

An awesome star that is out every night

James comp Elder Skaggs with Pablo and his family

P-Day activity

Orion the Hunter?? You tell me.

Birthday breakfast, French toast with all the fixings

Enjoying breakfast

James Birthday Presents. Awesome stuff!

It's cold in the apartment, this is what he studies in.  He cut the fingers off so he could turn pages:)  Love the sign

James with his  ZL, the ZL returned home on the day this picture was taken.

Four Elders with an awesome couple from the ward.

7/22/2013 letter

Oh yeah I'm almost 19 that's cool!! haha thanks for the Birthday wishes!!!!

On Mon, Jul 22, 2013 at 12:37 PM, James Biesinger <james.biesinger@myldsmail.net> wrote:

Two Months is Chile! I Consider my self Chilean now! I Decided I'm even gonna speak Spanish like them now (only the stuff that is missionary appropriate). So this week was even colder I don't remember what warmth is like! I came from the coldest winter in Utah in the last 20 years to here! What's Summer?! All Things are going pretty good I Think I might finally have a Baptism next week if all goes well! 

This week Pablo and Daniel didn't come to Church But we had a Noche de Hogar with them last night at a members house that was awesome. The drunk guy (Daniel) came to church again. It was my responsibility this time. But it was okay the funniest thing happened the day before. Saturday we had a youth conference in our building. All the youth in the stake came and eight of us missionaries taught them a but then we did divisions I took four youth out and we went and did contacts and visited people for an hour or so. It was awesome. When we came back it was the baptism of one of the youth that went out with us. It was the first baptism I have seen as a Missionary it was an experience I can't describe sometimes baptism might be taken too lightly. All the youth then had a testimony meeting. It was a great experience. What was funny was that Daniel the Drunk guy showed up to it somehow. We were outside taking a picture of the youth with Geovane (the baptism kid) in the middle. Well Daniel walked up and got right in front of the camera and posed it was hilarious. I then had to tell him to come back on Sunday because he couldn't be here at that time. It was cool. It seems like things are going well from the pictures! Love you all take care!

Love Elder Biesinger

7/15/2013 letter and pictures

Hello!

So I'm still in the same area! New comp he is the DL he has like a year in the mission, he is from Cali, His name is Elder Skaggs he is pretty cool his spanish is really good I think president told him to only speak spanish to me so its been different but its good we speak English sometimes but for the most part I am just learning! 

So this week was great it didn't rain and it was just way hot the whole time. Its like a Utah spring here. The Andes out in the distance are still so amazing to see I love it. So the drunk guy did come to church again and he was really smelly. 

Last week I told you how Pablo and Daniel went to church well Tuesday we had a lesson with them and Pablo said while at church he felt and now know that The Book of Mormon is true. This was amazing! What is even better is that yesterday at Church his whole family came!! Pablo 16 Daniel 11 Jerko 21 His mom Evelyn 40ish and his "Dad" Christian 38ish and even the baby brother Martin 10 months who was baptized catholic the day before! What! idk what it was still cool! The mom can have her crazy ideas her kids want to progress finally!

So story of the week. Tomorrow is some weird national holiday for Chile founded on some catholic Saint. So no one really works this week so what does that mean? Everyone gets drunk! So yesterday we were trying to find some house numbers and a drunk guy walks passed and tells us just to leave people alone that they don't want us here I looked at him and said hello and asked him if he knew who lived here.(I was hoping he knew because we needed to know) He said no and then walked up to us. He then told us all these crazy ideas about us. We said well those are not true but we can tell you the truth and help you know the truth of all things if you have time later when you aren't busy. (he couldn't stand without stumbling) he was crazy drunk so we just asked if we could talk to him later but it was pointless after letting him ramble about out names and our age and all that we finally got to leave his presence. He walked up the hill a bit and asked a guy(who watched the whole drunk guy thing go down)  if he could tell us who we were looking for he said yeah let me help you out so he went inside got his daughter who lived there because he didn't and she helped us turned out the person we were looking for used to live in her house so we decided to talk to her instead. She loved it. She now has a book and is reading 3 Nephi 11 by the time we come back. It was great to see how Planning works to find the people we are supposed to find without knowing who they are.

Love you all!

Elder Biesinger

James and Elder Stringham

James and Elder Farnsworth

7/8/2013 letter

Hello!

Well Changes are called changes for a reason! Changes were Wednesday and Tuesday night President called us and talked to Stringham. Long story short Stringham is finishing his mission helping another Elder be obedient and stuff in another Zone and I am still here in my area. My comp now is Elder Farnsworth but he leaves this Friday to have an Operation back home in Florida. So yeah with who and where will Elder Biesinger be Friday night and for the rest of the change??? I don't know but here are my guesses! (You can all vote if you would like.) In a trio with the zone leaders or, the other side of my ward Elders or in another trio. Or with a new comp here in my area. Or finally In a new area with a new comp.. Either way it doesn't matter and I'm going to be fine just a weird situation that left me in charge of my area in the middle of my training! Its cool though i like it..

I finally have people progressing now! Daniel and Pablo came to church it was a miracle of the spirit fasting and prayer. I think Pablo might finally know the BOM is true. Daniel wants to be baptised on the 27th but we need to get his brother two so he can have support. Things are going they just need to feel the truthfulness of the gospel. 

I just remembered a funny story that wasn't to funny at the time. So Sunday at church i am bearing my testimony and all of a sudden i realize that the bum that walked in a few minutes earlier was yelling and going crazy. The next thing i know my comp is helping him into the hall well i didn't know what to do I'm in the middle of bearing my testimony trying to help my investigators and others feel the spirit and my comp is leaving and the rules are we cant do that so i look in the crowd and thank goodness Elder Garcia saw and he went out with my comp. Well after the meeting my companion Elder Farnswoth and Elder Gonzolas taught the gospel principals class while Garcia and I took care of the guy. The poor man smelled terribly of gasoline and was very dirty. he was drunk or schizophrenic sadly i think a bit of both. We spent the next to hours trying to calm  him down and teach him. he left a lot better. I saw him today walking around with a bible. hah i guess we will see what happens next week!

Well I love you all and I am so happy to be here doing this work I know it is the right thing and I am so glad to be here!

Love Elder Biesinger

7/1/2013 letter

Que tal! 

So yeah this week was more of the same! More people lying and not wanting to progress but its okay the blessings will always come! So funny story. People always lie here constantly. If you know how we knock doors we just yell alo! outside the fence well this week we were knocking doors (cuz we hardly get member references (working on that)) and we see someone look out the second level window right as one second later an 80 year old lady comes out she comes over and talks to us we ask if we can come teach her and she says well no I'm alone and I'm really busy. well she is sitting there saying this and we can still see someone up stairs looking at us so we ask well who is that up there looking at us and she says oh that was me I'm just really fast. I go down the stairs really fast. she just refused to tell the truth. Not that funny i know but at the time and in spanish it was way funny. Me and Stringham get along great! 

So I understand basically everything in spanish when i really focus which means i know realize that everyone talks about us haha. We stand out really bad but its okay. the only issue is people honestly think we are all kinds of things.. Men in Black, or spies, the CIA lots think we have guns. Basically unless you're a menos activo you have some crazy idea about who we are! 

People are really different here. There is not spirit of exploration or commitment so we are teaching different. We just leave if they haven't done their reading and other commitments it works because they love us coming over and it cuts them deep when we tell them we can't teach them until they do what we ask in order for them to progress. I hope it starts working. I am dying for progress. Part of the culture here is just straight soccer. I don't understand how they don't win every year everyone knows everything about it and everyone is good i think its because they are to lazy to work hard and practice. The Andie's are ginormous! I don't understand how they are not explored. I swear there has to be wildlife out there but no one knows. Don't get me wrong though i love Chile they do have a culture and i am taking everything good that i like from it for instance i bought my first knock off soccer Jersey today woo hoo. 

One of the best parts of the day is personal study of the scriptures and pmg. Other then that  its when investigators do something good. Like Estela she is a future investigator because we just contacted her and havent actually taught her yet but she missed an appointment so we were bummed but the next day we were walking and it was dark and we just hear someone yelling to get our attention we turn and i see this woman running at us and i realize who it is we walked to here and she apologized because she had to work on short notice and she set another appointment with us. she was carrying all of her school books with her and everything.  It was awesome to see that because no one does that here! I am praying she is as prepared as she seems.

Well all is well!!! I love to hear from people I hope all is well!! Love you!!

Love Elder Biesinger

P.S. Enjoy your 4th! Blow something up for me!! 

6/24/2013 letter

Well what a week!!! We had freezing temperatures, our clothes froze solid out on the line! I defeated the pulgas for now... i think they are just full... I got rocked by a small earthquake during my studies and then by the aftershock too. It is a weird feeling. I don't know how i feel about it it is bone chilling. However at the same time it is so awesome because people don't even care its just normal yet everyone talks about it. 
So First our investigators we dropped a bunch and are still teaching the best ones even though they have a hard time progressing Pablo is still the star he always reads we just have to help him feel why he needs this. I feel like the investigators that are prepared that we haven't found yet are being held back from us because we need to fix the ward first. The leaders of this ward don't do anything near what they should we need to get the ward on track before we can truly have converts that will stay active. As part of this we all talked on Sunday all four missionaries it was rough for me because we didn't find out till late Saturday night but we did well my spanish was good and i was understood. We cut the fetch out of the  members with the scriptures (to cut is to humble and teach I guess). If you saw the world wide conference members are supposed to be doing more so we showed them why. The problem is that the Bishop and the Mission Leader were not at church or the Conference and no one know why... There are a lot of problems to fix. There are some amazing members here. But at the same time i looked at the actual numbers 836 members of the church in this ward we had maybe 86 people at church Sunday. The upside Gricilda the poor old lady was at church thanks to some awesome members it was a great pick me up. 
Things are basically the same everyone yells hello and thinks they're funny some people yell at   us to back to America because they don't understand who we are when we tell them they are humbled. Most the time we just say hello to people they walk away until they are behind the door of their house or a safe place then they yell at us. No one has any ganas here. I want to find the people who are ready and have the ganas to work. 
The Doctrine of Christ is an amazing thing the Atonement is the healer of all and the word must be spread. 
I love you all and I love being here it is the greatest-
Elder Biesinger
P.S. Ganas means drive not balls hahah

6/18/2013 letter and pictures from the Zone Conference

Hey Everyone so Yeah today is Tuesday. Not Monday woah crazy I hope my mom didn't freak out do much yesterday when I didn't write! ha We had a Two Zone Mission conference yesterday With President and It was awesome It was a really good conference. We had to take like an hour micro bus ride up the mountain to get to it with a bunch of drunks talking about how we were white and have blond hair then talking about Joseph Smith and my companion told them about faith in Jesus Christ meanwhile I'm just holding on and trying to hear because the bus is so loud I can barely hear people talk that will take some getting used too!

Its still great here it keeps getting colder and they say August is the coldest wahoo. I'm getting better at Spanish when I can hear people I can understand usually at least 90 percent unless they really slur their words. I can normally have a conversation but it is hardly ever long or perfect but I'm getting there! 

Our Investigators as much as I love them some of then are killing me! Everyone is so lazy and non committal no one will complete their commitments so it is hard for them to progress we will probably drop a bunch this week which will be hard for me but if it feels right then its what we have to do. I feel like we also teach more less active lessons then anyone ever. Chile is 1 in 20 a baptized member and out of 7 to 10 members only one is active.. Thanks to the missionaries in the 80s who would just have baptism parties and anyone that showed up to play soccer or eat food got baptized. 

My favorite investigators because they progress very well are Franz and Pablo. Franz is the big German man and his attitude of get things done and very straight laced makes it feel more like America he and his family are amazing other then the wife who wont even come in the same room with us. Its sad. Pablo is the 15 year old brother of Daniel. Daniel and Evelyn have been talking with Missionaries for a year and a half Daniel is 11 his mom Evelyn is like 40. All of a sudden one day Pablo wanted to listen and share with us now he is way ahead and we are going to teach them tonight I feel like we will set a baptism date with him its awesome. 

Well other then that I just try to stay warm and not itchy from fleas or bit by dogs! 

I love you

Elder Biesinger

In my defense, I didn't freak out:) I was patient.   Lori