Hey, everyone!

Hope you are all enjoying a happy Halloween, and have had a good week! For us, this week was extremely productive.  We have been preparing seven people to be baptized in the next two weeks.  One is getting baptized this Saturday, named Cesar.  His girlfriend is a member in another ward in Calama, and so he already knows a lot about the church, and instantly accepted to be baptized and committed to living the commandments.  The other six baptisms are for the next week, and it's an amazingly humble family from Bolivia and Argentina.  We found the mom, Elena, a few weeks ago one night, and she told us, ´´I´ve never talked with the missionaries, but I´ve always wanted to.´´ Ever since then, the family has been extremely receptive, and willing to commit to all the commandments, as they know obedience brings blessings.  Such an important lesson that few people in the world understand.  The spirit is always strong in lessons with people who don't overcomplicate the gospel.  They realize that something can be both powerful AND simple. After all, Christ's love for us is not complicated. It's been amazing to see people with such simple faith, and help them to know the church.  

Today, as a zone activity for p-day, we also played soccer, which was a lot of fun to do.  

   

Hope everyone has had a great week, and I'll update you all next week!

-Elder Checketts

(From PJ's mom...  In response to some questions I asked PJ, about if Chileans celebrate Halloween, and if he sometimes forgets English words now that he has been speaking fluent Spanish for almost 9 months...  and if he has had transfers again, etc...  this is what he said...)

Yes, Chileans celebrate Halloween.  But it sounds like kids get really angry if you don't open your door, and they throw eggs at your door, to tell the other kids you are not handing out candy.  So that's interesting....  In Mexico and other countries, Halloween is called Día de las Brujas (Day of the Witches), but here, they just call it Halloween.  As for your question about forgeting English, it does happen quite a lot.  Because my companion is gringo, we speak a lot of English, but we always speak Spanish to other people, so sometimes we'll forget an English word, and just use the Spanish one, because we both understand it, and can' t think of the translation.  Also, yeah, cambios already happened. We're staying together for another 6 weeks. That's fine with me, since we get along. Also.... I should be getting my packages tomorrow..... I'll save the Christmas packages for Christmas (obviously).....but I can't promise the other one will last until December!  :)