It's been a good week.  On Saturday night we had the ward party to celebrate September 18th, which is Chile´s independence day.  It was so fun.  I think I sent you a few pictures from that with us all dressed up.  A hermana in the ward lent us two of the typical dresses.

Monday was super fun.  We went with the Familia Vergara up into the Andes mountains to go play in the snow.  It was the first time that Hermana Achucarro had ever seen or touched snow.  It was lots of fun.  The drive was about two hours and it was amazing.  We stayed up on top of the mountain for about an hour and then drove back down.  It was lots of fun.

The week flew by.  We had a Zone Conference with President Arnold, who is the area president of the South America area.  It was really good, but it looks like our mission has a problem with obedience.  It was sad to see.  But he gave us a lot of great counsel, and taught us a bunch so I think we´ll be able to do better.

This week we had a lesson with Luis and President Wright.  It went pretty well.  Luis is basically ready to get baptized, and wants to get baptized with all his heart but he works on Sunday and hasn´t been able to find a way to switch his schedule or find another job.  But I think the lesson we had with President really helped to motivate him and hopefully things with be able to work themselves out soon.

We also had a great meeting with our ward mission leader and finally put together a ward mission plan.  And the ward just came up with this awesome retention and activation plan that we´re super excited about.  So things are going really well.  Our converts are doing awesome.  Camilia had an interview with the bishop yesterday to extend a calling, I don´t know what it is yet, but she should be sustained next week.  I´m so excited.  We also found some great old investigators.  We found them on Saturday, taught them a great lesson, and they came to church on Sunday.  And Sacrament Meeting was awesome and they loved it.  So I´m excited about working with them.

Can you believe I´m about to start my last transfer?  It doesn´t feel real.  It makes me sad to think that some of these people we are working with are going to get baptized and I´m not going to be here to see it.  And there's a chance that I could never see any of these people again in my life.  Its hard to think about. 

It's starting to warm up here.  And everyone is getting ready for the 18th, which is Chile´s Independance Day!  I´m so excited.  It's a big deal here.  We´re going to a have a fun week this week, and next week too with all the festivities. 

This week has been good.  I´m finally 100% better after being sick for over a month.  Tomás recieved the Holy Ghost yesterday :)  And the missionary work continues to progress.  We found a lot of people this week that we had lost touch with.  And we´re trying to start and find new people to teach because everyone else is getting baptized. Luis is doing great, he's ready to get baptized, he just has to wait till they switch his work schedule.  Camila is awesome.  They are working on a calling for her and we´ve started helping her with family history.  Tomás is super excited to serve a mission and has already started collecting his toys that he can sell to start saving money.  It's so cute.  We bought him a piggy bank to start saving.  His cousin, Bastian is doing awesome.  We´ve kind of lost track of Karen because her mom doesn´t want her to go to church anymore because she doesn´t want her to get baptized.  :(  Oh well...

The coolest thing about the mission is that you can see the gospel in action and watch it change the lives of people.  It's amazing to realize that all the things I´ve learned since Primary and have always trusted to be true, and really and actually very, very true.  Its amazing.  We meet so many people who are so unhappy and I just want to pound it into their heads that what they need is the gospel!  If they would just live it they would be so much happier!  And that all these worldly things don´t matter.  We are literally children of our Heavenly Father, which means he loves us perfectly.  Our worth is inherent and nothing we can do can change that.  It also means we have the capacity to become like Him, just like every child can become like their parents.  It also means we were born with some of His qualities, just like we are born with characteristics of our parents.  And if everyone could just understand that, really understand how special they are and everything they were created to be, they would be so much happier.  But it's all very, very true.  I know it beyond a doubt and I´m so, so, so happy and grateful to be able to help other people learn how to be happy.  

I´ve attached a bunch of pictures from the baptism of Tomás that we had yesterday.  It went really well.

We spent most of our week making sure we had everything ready for the baptism so I don´t have much else to report.

The missionary work is going well.  We will be baptizing the uncle and cousin of Tomás in October.  And we´ve got some other people we are teaching that are good prospects.

The time is going by so fast.  It's crazy!

This week was good.  I'm feeling alot better.  I still have a bit of a cold, but other than that I'm doing good.  Camila recieved the Holy Ghost yesterday.  She is now officially a member of the church! 

I guess the biggest news is that we had changes.  Hermana Achucarro and I are staying together.  This will be Hermana Achucarro's 5th transfer in this area (thats 7.5 months)  and my third (4.5 months) and our third change together.  

We actually had this great specialized training with President this week about the Atonement.  He talked and taught about how to access the power of the Atonement, not only for the forgiveness of sins, but all our problems.  It was super cool.  We were able to turn around and use it with our investigator Luis.  It was great.

But everything is going good.  The missionary work is moving along and we're trying to keep up.  I'm out of time, so I'll talk to you all next week!