Semana Dos‏

8:06 AM

So in an attempt to get more people to read my blog i want to start giving small pieces of an incredible story i have from this week. And just tell more of it in each successive week. Here is the first installment of this new story

As I was sitting in the police office talking to an officer he was asking me questions like What where you doing in the town Centro? I was telling him the truth, but i don´t know how much of it he believed. So he pulls out his phone, and calls someone. A moment later another officer walks into the room with a revolver. And in broken English asks me. What were you doing today? And so i told him I was in the Centro teaching people about how they can have a happier family. I then said i was using these pamphlets (3 ways to have a happier family, and the restoration) He takes the one about the restoration. And asks me what this is. I then told him, i would love to tell you about it, but it´s probably best if you find out for yourself. I have a teaching appointment in a couple if mins. Can i go teach a family about Jesus Christ, and then come back to the police station after i do, and then we can finish this conversation. The officers we´re taken off guard by my request and said sure. I then asked them to keep my pamphlet, and to read it so they would have a better idea of what we will be talking about. I then left the police station and headed to my next appointment...

I have learned so much this week, it´s incredible. Before i tell another story i want to talk about something. I just recived news that there will be Sister missionaries put in Paillaco with me, and they are going to be living in the house i am currently living in. So I needed to buy a get a new house, but that´s a story for another time. But the news of the sister missionaries got me and my companion talking about the age change that was made 6 months ago.

And after talking for more than an hour about it, we both believe that this change was made for bigger purposes than just missionary work. Here in Paillaco we see a lot. And we can see that world is getting worse and worse. And God needs families to be strong in gospel principles, because Satan is trying to destroy the family. And i truely believe that one of the reasons that this age was changed was so that there would be more women serving missions so that they would have stronger roots in the gospel. So when the storms come we will be able to withstand them. And i really wanted to share that. Anyway back to story time

One day Elder Larsen and I were walking on the edge of the town, and i was overlooking how incredible gorgeous all the hills and forests and all of southern Chile is. And i was just taken away by all the beauty. And as we are walking i start telling Elder Larsen that i really wish that when i leave Paillaco i get assigned to a place where I can enjoy the beauty of this country. I don´t want to be in the of the cities, i want to be in an area where i can see nature. And i am starting to say something else super awesome about the campo, when a giant dog jumps out from under a truck not too far away and is coming straight for me, and it jump up at my neck and tries to kill me. So i jump back avoiding death. When it lunges at me again. And i wasn´t fast enough to react. It´s jumps at my neck again, and it is within inches of killing me, when i hear a chain, and the dog stops mid jump right next to me. And I can see that it was chained to something under the truck, and it was mad. And so i take a couple steps back to see. And the dog is trying to rip the chain out of the ground to get to us. And i´m pretty sure it almost did, but Elder Larsen and i just hurried away to our next appointment.


Which brings me to my next story. I was literally brought to tears by one of the men that was baptized just before i arrived in Paillaco. He´s an old man. Living all alone, in an old house, that looks like it´s falling apart. He has almost nothing in the world as far as i know. And I go knock on his door. And i he comes and answers, and is super happy to see us. He gives us both a hug and invites us in. And we in his house there was a table. And on the table there was an Open copy of El Libro de Mormón y Principios del Evangelio (sunday school manual) And he tells us that he was just studying to be ready so when church comes on Sunday he will be ready to learn everything that God needs him to. And then we sat down with him, and helped him study, and we taught him about prophets, and how we have a living Profeta today and that we are having the opportunity to hear from him in a couple of days. And he didn´t know that there was still a living prophet.

He knew about José Smith but didn´t know that there was still a prophet today. And we shared our testimonies with him that there is a prophet today that talks to God. And we shared just a couple more things with him. Sorry i just really i got off topic, i was telling you why i cried because of this man.

I dont think i have ever seen someone more humble and loving, and so grateful to God for everything he has, and willing to do everything that he can to be close to Him, and to learn the things that God needs him to learn, and to feel his comfort. And here I am having everything i need. Everything i want. And i don´t think i am half as grateful to God for my blessing, as i can be. God has giving me alot. I have a family at home that Loves me. I´ve have friends that have changed my life. I have the opportunity to teach about Christ everyday, and feel how He loves each of us, and be able see His love for the people i am helping right now. I may literally not have a Peso to my name. And i am literally living off the hospitality of one member right now, because i don´t get money until the beginning of the month so i can buy food until then. But i really do have everything that i need.
Love you all Talk to you next week

Pictures from the Mission President

We finally got an email from the MP telling us our little boy got there safely!

 ......10 days later....

and 3 days after Pday when he told us himself.

But hey, it's the thought that counts right?! ;)  (watch, because I'm being snarky about it, Burt and I will get called to be MP's and it'll be my job to do the emails.) ~lightning-fast repent~

At least we didn't have to wait for snail mail.  He told us in his first email that he mailed a letter that first day....it's yet to arrive.

I love to see pictures of this boy happy!  It makes me cry less. :D

Elder Crockett and Elder Larson

Sister and President Rappleye

Their new home of Paillaco

Dear Family of Elder Crockett,

We are pleased to inform that your son has arrived safe and sound and smiling to the Chile Osorno Mission.  It was a pleasure for us to greet your son upon his arrival and feel his desire to serve.  Enclosed is a picture that we took with him shortly after his arrival.  After a short period of orientation regarding mission procedures, customs of the country, etc., we assigned Elder Crockett to work in the city of Paillaco with Elder Larsen as his companion.  Your son's address during his time in the mission will be:

                                                Elder Hamilton Crockett

                                      Casilla 7-0

                                      Osorno, Chile

Sister Rappleye and I love our missionaries and are truly happy to have the opportunity to work with Elder Crockett.  We appreciate your willingness to share him with us as he works as a missionary and ambassador for the Lord in Chile.  Sharing the gospel with these deserving children of our Father in Heaven will certainly bring great joy and satisfaction to him, and to you as well.  Thank you so much for helping him get to this point.

Please write him regularly–at least once a week.  Your love, interest, and support will be of great help to him.  Should there be any emergency or if you desire information regarding any urgent situation, please feel free to contact the Missionary Department in Salt Lake City rather than go to the expense of phoning the mission here in Chile. 

The missionary work is progressing rapidly here in southern Chile, and I hope that you will share in his exciting mission experience as Elder Crockett writes to you weekly and keeps you informed of his challenges and achievements and experiences.

Sincerely,

President John E. Rappleye

Chile Osorno Mission

Mi primera semana‏

Hamilton Denton Crockett

8:27 AM

So in case you didn´t get the letter i sent home the first day I am going to tell you everything. When i landed in Peru i was starting to get scared about going to Chile. And i made friends with a couple of people on the airplane, which made it better, but i realized that i do not speak Chilean spanish. At all. So i when i was told that we were flying over chile i started getting really nervous and had no idea what the heck i was still doing there. And i spent a couple of hours kind of stressed out, and so i tried sleeping as much as i could, and i slept most of the way from Peru to Santiago.

And when i was in the airport in Santiago i was terrified. Because not only was i leading a group of missionaries through a forgign country. I was leading them through a country where i could not understand anyone, and alot of our group got soperated so i had to find them and get them back together so we can get to another airplane to take us to Osorno. Long story short i get them to the plane and everything is alright, but i am more stressed than ever. So when i get on the airplane and fall asleep imediately. I wake up to the pilot saying that we where going to land in 30 mins.

So i am super scared, and decide that i should probably just look out the window until i get there. And as soon as i look out i am immediately overcome by peace. And i could feel how important it was for me to be in Chile right now. And i knew that this is where i belong. In the airplane i was the only person who was sitting in the first row, and everyone else was like 30 rows behind me, so thankfully none of them could see me stressed or how much i changed when i saw Osorno. All my life i´ve always put on a face of me being stronger than i am infrot of people. And i wasn´t about to let that change. So i was super grateful for that (p.s. no one knew i was stressed out in the airport so i´m still good)

i was the first person the meet the mission president and the AP´s and i love them so much. They are incredible, and i got to spend like 10 mins with them until any of the other missionaries came along. Which i was super grateful for that too. So we all get in a car and drive to the mission home, where we all got interviewed and told where we are assigned to be. And i am have assigned to work in a village called Paillaco with my companion Elder Larsen. And before i tell you about Paillaco i´ll tell you about him. Me and him became friends super quick. But i don´t think i have ever met somebody who has a personally as close to mine in my life. I`´m pretty sure he likes hearing the sound of his own voice more than i do. He´ll start singing out at random times, and this morning we sung the entire lesson of the Restoration. Super fun guy. When my mission president told me about him, pretty much one of the only things he said was Í´m praying you don´t let his weirdness rub off on you. Well guess what president too bad, because it´s like he´s been living with my family my entire life, because he´s just as much as a freak as the rest of us.

But anyways back to Paillaco It is like i´m living in a world like 100 years ago. I have to get up in the morning and chop firewood for us, and a member in the branch. And i am living in pretty much a shack at the edge of town. When i first saw my house my first though was Wow i don´t think i´ve ever seen someone living in something this ghetto before. But then i started walking around Paillace and going into homes, and now when i see my house i think Wow i still dont think i´ve ever seen someone living in something so ghetto hahahaha that´s only half true. There are some houses here that are litterally falling apart, but the people are pretty good at taking care of them and making them safe to live in. Oh random side not speaking of safety ¿remember that really nice Medical kit you gave me? Ya i need a new one. It´s gone. I would appreciate it if you sent me a new one. And i think my dog whistle is gone too. But that is ok beacuse i already know a ton of tricks that gets crqazy dogs to run away. Por ejemplo Chilanes are really mean to the counteless stray dogs n the streeet (not an exageration the things are everywhere) and so they throw rocks at them. And so if a dog is barking at me at charging me to i just need to bed over and tough the ground and they´ll think i´m picking up a rock to kill them with, so they run away.

But back to Paillaco my companion and I are the only missionaries here right now, and so i feel super cool every morning. I get up and look in the mirror and my first thought is, I am the only person in this town that has the authority to do Gods work. And that gets me ready for the countless hours of rejection i have until 8 oclock. After Chileans eat dinner they instantly get nicer and then are super receptive to what we have to say. But by that point we only have time to teach like 2 lessons before we have to get home. Shoot i´m pretty much out of time.

 There is literately like a million stories i want to share, but i don´t have time to. So when i get home in a couple years make sure to let me show you my journal because i have a ton of great stories in there. From what i hear it about 2 to 3 weeks to mail to the States so it may take awhile for anyone to get a letter from me. But i am writing to as many of my close friends that i can this first week. But that might only be a couple of people because i need to take a just up to Valdivía  to play soccer with my district. But i promise that there are letting coming for you. (there should already be one coming for you mom) (it doesn´t have have many cool stories in it though, because i wrote it my first day here. My Chile address is the same one that i gave in in that package i sent home. LOVE YOU ALL!

So I googlemapped his new area and this is an aerial shot of his WHOLE city.  Can I just say I love technology!  I'm so excited to follow him from afar on this adventure! ~Jenn

Newpics

I have no information about any of these pictures, so feel free to write your own caption. :D 

He made it! (Mompost)

Well, we think he made it.
One of the other parents of the missionaries on the same trip sent us a flight plan that they are 99% sure was theirs, although neither of us, for some inexplicable reason, asked for an official flight number. 

After 3 layovers, one bout of sitting in a plane on the runway for 3 hours and 20 total hours of travel time, the little airplane-shaped blip on the map has stopped moving in Osorno.

It's kindof funny, the 'scheduled arrival' time kept changing to keep pace with the delay on the runway like they'd been planning it that way all along.  Maybe that's typical, but it seemed funny to me at 2 a.m. when I decided that sitting there watching the little blip not move was making my brain mush and I finally went to bed.  I didn't intend to track it, but got addicted as soon as I got the flight plan.

From all indications we may have to wait until Monday to find out officially if he made it, although some Mission Presidents are kinder to parents than that and will email as soon as the missionaries are settled.  I'm hoping we have a kind one, cuz that's just mean to make a Mom worry.


Update: the flight tracker officially says it arrived!

Last Days in the MTC

I've had them for more than a week now but i am going to officially announce that i have my flight plans, and i will be leaving the MTC on Monday Mar 11 at 4 am. I am going to Los angeles first though. And i will arive there at 8:15 am. I'm not sure if that is California or Utah time though, and my lay over there will be until 1:30 PM that same day. I will be able to call you then. 

 

So when i first got my travel plans i was super happy! I finally get to leave the MTC and get to Chile, but then i saw something on the front page that freaked me out a little bit, and i noticed that my travel plans had more paper in them then everyone elses. And that is because i have been assigned to be the Travel Leader. So i was put in charge of 10 missionaries, and it's my responcibility to get them from Salt Lake to Chile. There is 4 different Airports that i have to get them all from, and i need to make sure we are exactly on time or early to everything in order to get us there safely, and i also have to make sure that everyone also has time to talk to their families, and do whatever else they have to do. Thankfully i only have to temporarilly assign a couple of companionships because alot of the companionships were broken up when the church was buying the tickets, but that will be fine. I'm super excited now though, and i can not wait until i get to leave the MTC and finally get to Chile. OH by the way, please send me a dear elder when you get this so i know that you read this so i have less to stress about hahaha

 

Ok onto my story time for this week. My entire time here in the MTC i loved that there are a ton of sister missionaries here, there are litterally as much sisters as there are elders. But i had a super hard time looking at them as sister missionaries, beacuse a couple of sister missionaries that i see all the time were not acting like sister missionaries. And i constantly had to work hard to get away from sister missionaries who i think may have come here to find celestial companions, and me and my companions just happened to be the ones that they were focused on. Pretty much every hour of the day. 

 

And alot of the missionaries in my zone would come to me for advice on what to do, because everyone else could see that these Hermanas where hunting after me, but i was always able to avoid getting caught in there traps. So many missionaries came to me for help because some of them where caught in similar situations and wanted my help. And so i would spend a lot of time helping elders. Which game me a negative look toward sister missionaries, because even though alot of the times it wasn't completely their fault, they still warm up to the elders making it hard. 

 

So i was just looking at most of them as baby hungry women who figured that they could catch a man while he was off the market, when I talked with the MTC presidents wife. And she told me incredible things. I can not even remember most of them, but they really turned around my point of view of all sister missionaries. 

 

And so i was starting to turn around my perspective when a new district came in. And half of the new district as sisters. And because I am in the oldest district, it's kind of my responsibility to take them under my arm and make them feel welcome. And  OH MY GOODNESS! i LOVE EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM! (As a missionary) the sisters in that district has an incredible light around them! And you can litterally feel their testimonies when they walk in the room. It does not even make sense. But meeting them totally threw me into the path of seeing them as representatives of Jesus Christ. 

 

And even though i still can't look at some sisters in my district as missionaries (sad i know) i can look at almost every single on of them as missionaries. If there are any women who read my blog please serve a mission, you have no idea how much light you carry, when you are carrying the name of Christ. You can carry such an amazing spirit with you, it is incredible. I want so badly to see even more sister missionaries to come into the field, because it's so easy to see that you will be able to do so much good, and bring so much more of the spirit of God than i ever could. This is God's work. And he needs us.

PICTURES!!

I honestly can't express how happy pictures of my little boy make me.  It's so reassuring to see his face, the haircut that I didn't give him, the friends he's making, his surroundings.  I'm so incredibly happy for my boy.

Studying and exercising at the same time.

Not. My. Kid.

Grinning like a fool while reading a letter from Jocee.

Meditation with El Conquistadore.

His wall of Jesus.  He's gonna need a bigger wall soon.

For those who come later....

There's a treasure to find!!

Somewhere in the ceiling.
I bet Truman will look for it next year. :D

Denton and Jace!