Jan. 6, 2014 - FELIZ ANO NUEVO

It has been a wonderful few weeks as Kyle celebrated the Christmas season with his companion and the other missionaries in Santiago!

Here is a small part of his latest email and as you can probably tell, he is so happy and grateful the the tender mercies of our Heavenly Father as he leads them to those that are ready to hear their message.

"I have like zero time today, but let me just say in these last few weeks, I've recieved MORE personal revelation, felt the spirit more, and taught better than I ever have in my life!! I love the feeling that I have right now! We have had two INCREDIBLE lessons lately where I'll just be talking but its definitely not me... its the spirit just using me as an instrument to talk to the people we're with and teach them what they need to know! My companion and I just walk out of lessons sometimes speechless because it's such an incredible feeling.... I just LOVE IT!!"

Saying good-bye to his trainer as he gets ready to go home.

Christmas Stockings!!!!

Christmas caroling with speakers in his backpack:)

Something sweet from his niece who asked Santa for "Sugar and Peanut-Butter"

last year!  I guess she decided Kyle might like some of the same!

Dec. 9, 2013

The last few weeks have been filled with lots of activity for Kyle and his companions.  He decided that Thanksgiving wouldn't be the same without homemade rolls, so he decided to make them for some of the missionaries.  They have already decorated a tree in their apartment and are ready for Christmas as you can see from the pictures below.

Kyle also celebrated his 21st birthday yesterday and a family was so wonderful and helped him feel like he was at home with a cake and delicious lunch!  It was a great way to introduce his new companion to the wonderful people in Chile.

He is now serving as a district leader and is a trainer to a new missionary from Arizona.  They are having great success in finding people to teach and he feels it is in large part thanks to the spirit that his new companion has brought to the mission.  They had a recent visit from an area Seventy and he loved the message that he shared with them about the sacrament.  He reminded them that we take the sacrament each week "so that we might have his spirit to be with us."

He sends his love to all of you and was so grateful for your letters and birthday wishes!

Hope you enjoy some of his recent photos.

Nov. 18, 2013

Another great month for Kyle with many wonderful missionary experiences.  He loved listening to conference at the beginning of October and then this past week Elder and Sister Holland came to visit his mission and they were able to go and hear him speak. He made the comment that this was by far "the best talk ever!"  What a blessing it was to be able to be so close and be taught by one of the apostles.

A brief quote from one of his email's said:
"Sunday was a good day where we taught some lessons and I know that God is definitely helping us  out because the success we had this week was nothing that the three of us did...it was all God preparing people for us to teach!!  I know that we missionaries don't do anything!!  We are just the instruments in the hands of God."

Here are a few pictures from the last several weeks.

Doing a little service!

Loving all the baby kittens right now!

Lots of experiences with many different companions all month.

A P-day hike!

Oct. 7, 2013

Kyle continues to do well and is so happy!  Following is part of his recent email to us and a picture that he saw and he decided to try to draw it himself.  He asked us all to read D&C 88:84 ".....We know that the angels are always protecting us!!!"

This is in reference to many of the talks he heard from General Conference this weekend.
"Something that I liked a lot was how they always prayed for us missionaries and focused on telling everyone to share the gospel with all of their friends... soooo GET TO WORK! hahaaha But I really enjoyed all of it!! Sunday night we FINALLY found 2 new people to teach! After 3 weeks of not having any new people, our prayers have been answered and they're great!!!! It was a contact that we met a few days ago and normally they aren't there when they say they will be, but they were waiting for us! It was truly a miracle!! The best part is that President has been teaching us to always finish the first lesson with a prayer on our knees and have the head of the family do it.... we practiced what we learned and the father actually did it! We were so happy!! "

Sept. 17, 2013

Kyle's sent some fun pictures this week.  We hope you enjoy seeing what life is like as a missionary in Chile.  Enjoy!

A little house painting party!

Each missionary with their personal favorite dog!

Trying his hand at flying a kite:)

All dressed up for Independence Day

Sept. 2, 2013

I thought you might enjoy a clip from Kyle's email this week and a few more pictures.

Wednesday was the only day that we got to work in our area. But this day we worked SOO hard and saw miracle after miracle! I don't know how we did it but we taught a ton of lesson and just did a lot of stuff! It was the best! We had so much fun but came back to the house and basically died because we were so tired! It was a lot of fun though! 

So we had 3 baptisms in the ward and we started to fill up the baptisimal font and everything was going fine. At one point the batteries died in the calefont (Chilean water heater) so we couldn't get any hot watter. Luckily that day, the counselor from the stake presidency was there and he's in charge of fixing all the buildings in this area and he replaced them for us. Things were going well again but all of sudden we decided to go check on it and we found out that the flame went out and it was filling the font with freezing water! We didn't know what to do so we called the counselor agian and he came to check on it but couldn't figure things out. We went outside to check the gas and it was all good so it was another problem. I said to my companion, "we need to go and say a prayer, these baptisms need to happen today!" so we went back into a back room in the church and said a prayer asking for everything to be ok and for the counselor to figure out how to fix the calefont. AS SOON as we left the room we went and looked and the calefont started working. Right away we went back and said another prayer giving thanks for the miracle. We didn't want anything else bad to happen :) I knew miracles happen, but in the mission miracles can happen instantly. We realized that God is always listening to us and when it's for a good reason, such as helping 3 of his children enter the waters of baptism, he's going to do everything he can to help us out. It truly was a remarkable moment and testimony builder for me. 

Let's just say Sunday was a great day with the baptisms that we had!! I was SOOO happy! It was the greatest ever! Marcela told us that she just felt so good and felt a warmth inside of her that she couldn't explain! FINALLY!!  I realized that this is exactly what I'm here for and I love it!! 

P-Day at the Zoo

Special Baptism Day

August 5, 2013

Kyle is doing great and was recently made zone leader.  From what he tell us that means he oversees 24 other missionaries.  It sounds like it is keeping him busy which is good!

They had two baptisms this past week and he says they are such amazing young men.  He truly loves the people in Chile as you can see from his smile.