Greetings Friends and Family!

Hello my friends and family from around the world! I hope this email finds you all happy and safe and filled with the Spirit of the Lord. This is a wonderful time to be alive and to be committed to our personal quests and experiences!

It has been yet another successful week in Chiguayante, and the work is begining to flourish here. With hard work and dilligence, Elder Florez and I continue to find new people to teach and to build up the faith of the people that are here. We had a visit this week from Presidente Arrington, and his message of love and obedience, combined with a promise of success if we continue to remember the three pillars of our mission here (Reactivate, Retain, and Baptize), has helped to give us a new energy as we go about our days. I am so glad to have the opportunity and blessing of serving here, and to feel the special spirit in this calling.

As we have ''gone about doing good'', we have had many opportunities and events that really built our faith and helped us to move on. Here are some experiences from the week:

We went the first thing Monday afternoon to visit a sweet lady that has been having us over once a week for several weeks now. We hadn't been able to visit her in our normal time Friday, and felt pretty bad about it. As we yelled at her door, her daughter (Who we haven't met before) answered, and quickly invited us in. Hermana Yolanda, who this last week caught a particularly painful bug, was waiting for us. She had expected us all day Friday, even asking her grown children in her home ''Have the Mormons come yet?'' on a regular basis. Hermana Yolanda was confined to her chair, unable to move for the pain that it brought. Her daughter, with some interest in our message, also sat in on our visit to hear what we had to say.

Inspired by the Spirit, we diverted from our planned message to talk on the blessings of the Spirit, especially the blessing of healing. In her moment of need, this devout woman of another religion asked for us to give her a blessing of health, which we readily agreed to. As the prayer was said, she felt such a feeling of tranquility and peace that she forgot to repeatedly say phrases like ''Amen, Señor'' on a regular basis, a normal occurance for our lessons and prayers with her. Her daughter, with tears in her eyes, mentioned that she had felt the Savior standing in this room with us, and that truly He had come in this moment of need. Hermana Yolanda received from that moment on the strength needed to overcome this infirmity, and by the end of the lesson was feeling so much better that she cried.
As I looked down at my name tag to see in big white letters the name of Jesus Christ, I was awed that in that moment, He had asked us to represent Him for this family. We were a bit of a conduit for His incredible love, and that family has experienced blessings through it. Miracles really do happen, in regular abundance, for which I am incredibly grateful.

Sometimes, a message really sticks in our mind and becomes something that we can choose to apply with fervor or let slide off without any good impact. This week, as I was reading an older Liahona, a message really struck at me from a talk for young adults. This article had three points for young adults to apply and take advantage of in this time of their lives. It quotes liberally from a section of Doctrine and Covenants, section 51:

“And I consecrate unto them this land for a little season, until I, the Lord, shall provide for them otherwise, and command them to go hence;

“And the hour and the day is not given unto them, wherefore let them act upon this land as for years, and this shall turn unto them for their good” 

The point being, one of the messages that stuck in my mind was about how the people were only in this part for one small bit of time, but accomplished so, so much. With fervor, obedience, and faith they did work that blessed their lives and many others as well. With this in mind, we can set our shoulders to the wheel every single day, a new mission every morning. With faith in our hearts and with our efforts continually dedicated, Heavenly Father will bless us incredibly. I have seen that so much here, as times where we shouldn't have any success become days of incredible blessings. I am continually in awe of the Lord's hand in our lives. This is the article.http://www.lds.org/liahona/2010/06/your-mission-in-life-is-now?lang=eng

This has been another fantastic week. We have contacted so many people that people we don't even know stop us in the streets and talk to us about when we contacted their family. Whole sections of our zone know us and our names and a few simple parts of our message by heart. Many of our investigators our preparing wonderfully, and are committing to more and more. Several, including the Familia Zarate and Hermano Raul, should be making the grand step of baptism very soon.

I love you all very very much and hope that you all have an excellent week this week. May the Lord bless you in all of your righteous endeavours is my prayer.

With love,

Elder Richardson