October 17, 2011

Well hi!

So uhhhh I don't even know where to start with all the information I got! First, I looked at the photo's of the wreck, looked intense. But dad thought Britt may have sent pics of her new car, she didn't haha but no big. Nice story about ex pres. Rodgers being the only one who knows where Punta Arenas is (btw we found a place here that is names Sandy Point... Which is Punta Arenas in English. Ha) But to answer the common question I am in the most southern ward in the world BUT it is split in half and I'm in the northern half of the ward. there are other branches farther south in the world BUT they don't have missionaries. SO I am one of the 4 most southern missionaries in the world. and I haven't seen any penguins... In the street. BUT we went to a Pinguinera today and saw some :P So I'm gonna put some pictures in another email to Britt so she can put them on the blog!.

Ummm okay so i'm glad everybody is doing good, I hope work and stuff is all good for everybody and I hope the house shindig is going well for Britt and Matt kus that's pretty intense stuff especially with a car crash at the same time :\ (you won't believe how long it took to look for the "\" on this keyboard...) moving on! So okay. Happy Birthday tomorrow mom!!!! I'll try to find some winter stuff for you. even though now it's the beginning of summer.. :P in fact I started sweating today it was weird!

OH hey! So this last week we saw a cultural presentation for the celebration of the 50 years of the mission Chile and it was awesome and a little nostalgic (how do you spell that?) for me because they danced a bunch of dances that we danced in elementary school HAHA! I was like "HEY I have home video's of me dancing to that exact same thing!!!" It was pretty funny. My companion said "I should have told my family about this!" but then thought about it and said "Oh... they wouldn't have understood it." haha so yeah it was cool. they were cool dances. and yes they did better than we did (Obviously)

In the package uhhhh oh the pictures you can print are the boys, girls, fam 1 and 2, and I thought we had one with all of us including grandpa and sarah didn't we? I forget. and yeah I have a lot more pictures that I could put in the drop box... But if you figure out how to download them to a home comp and I can just replace them that would work out cool because then I could also delete the ones on this memory card and have more room to take pictures. and I guess a memory card in the package would be a good idea. I don't know what I want for christmas especially since I don't know if I will still be here in Punta Arenas at that point and will have to figure out what to shove in my suitcases when I leave on the plane and will have a weight limit. So I dunno. Just a pair of drumsticks like I asked last week and Possibly the drum pad especially since ethan isn't doing marching band. and some snacks :) because american food is different (obviously) than food here.

ummm um um um I don't know what else.. Well about this week uhhhh It was pretty good we found some cool people, one who we taught, as the first lesson, the word of wisdom because he asked us to pray for his health when we started and then we taught him a couple more times super short lessons and challenged him for baptism and he was like "well if God answers my prayers yeah!" so it was cool. We also found somebody who doesn't believe in God but is going to continue listening to us. In fact we're going to teach him again today. so it'll be interesting teaching him.

We Probably will be baptizing Sebastian on the 29th and Hopefully Diego. He knows everything he needs to and has a testimony his only thing is that he wants to know more about what we believe so that he doesn't break a commandment without knowing it, but we want him to be sure on a date and if it's the 29th that's awesome because after that my companion will probably be in another sector. Plus on the 29th we're planning on doing all of the baptisms in Punta Arenas on that day in one chapel. We're pretty sure we have 10 people who are sure about doing it on that date so we're super stoked for that day.

Ummm I think that's kinda all.... I'll send those pictures to Britt. But i put one here :)

Love you all! Talk at'cha next week!

Elder Bassett

October 10, 2011

Hello everybody! How is everybody doing? Well okay I got a couple emails so I know a little bit, but Britt hasn't emailed me yet about the accident so I don't know what happened there really or have pictures but I'm sure that they'll be here by next week right? :P so yeah anyways.. Haha I guess I can't buy your car from you when I get home now.... Bummer. No but seriously I hope that you really are all doing good, not just the car.

Umm I'm thinking if I need to remember anything outside of questions you've asked. Umm in that package you are thinking of sending I would like that John Schmidt music book I played out of (not the same one that Brandon had on his mission) and maybe some sunglasses, because I might get permission to wear them down here because the sun is SOOO bright! It's ridiculous. Actually in the rules this zone is allowed to have hats to help with the sun but I would rather use sun glasses as well or instead or whatever word works there. I'm thinking about drum sticks too But I don't think that there are really any drumsticks at home that are in good condition... If you find some you're willing to send that'd be cool but if not then it's no issue. I'll continue to use my ruler and pens. Oh yeah and the pictures that you're planning on sending, if they could be printed out that'd be cool. And any american food you want to send haha. (Cream cheese wouldn't go well in the mail probably but it doesn't exist here :O and neither does Peanut Butter.... :O)

The weather is getting warmer, it's pretty crazy I noticed yesterday that the sun has moved sooo far towards the south, I would have liked to take pictures of the difference in the sun sets but I didn't think about it when I got here, and usually to the west there are clouds on the horizon, like 95% of the time actually. The wind hasn't stopped since I got here though. Seriously.

Oh hey this week was pretty cool we celebrated 50 years of missionary work in Chile. I thought it was interesting. Also about that, Diego and his family is from Concepcion so I was thinking if somebody could figure out what ward aunt Jackie was in while she lived here I could see if it's familiar to them. Also I remember in the MTC dad said Johnny wanted my address so if you could get that to him or just get his and tell it to me I'll write to him and that could work.

Oh hey I am still trying to get something for birthdays because they don't allow some kinds of jewelries and stuff to be sent by mail, but I'm working on it for Britt and Mom. We've got a member in the ward who sells jewelry so I'll get something cool :)

ummmm This week wasn't super exciting. Yesterday everybody had work or got sick so nobody came to church (actually a lot of the members were missing as well...) so it was kind of lame there. Sebastian and Diego are both giving up coffee and are basically for sure getting baptized it's awesome, but we've got to find more people to have progressing. We found just a couple of people recently even though I feel like we worked really hard this week walking through the streets trying to find people. But yeah nothing really happened super exciting that I could talk about... The week went by really fast. I only have 3 weeks left of training... Crazy stuff!

But here's something cool that happened about ohhhh an hour ago. We were going to the internet place we usually go to (except its closed today because its a holiday) so we get out of the "colectivo" which is basically a taxi but here the "taxi's" are different so anyways we get out of the car and cross the street and this old guy hangs up his phone and gets our attention and starts talking to us and tells us he's a member since 1980 and his wife is at home by herself sick at 76 years old and his only daughter is in Texas, also sick, so he feels really bad and worried (obviously) and wants a blessing of comfort. Coincidence? I think not! So long story short we got the keys to the nearest chapel and walked there (5 blocks away) and us and the other companionship do the blessing and the guy bears his testimony and talks about how he knows God had us cross his path for a reason. He is an awesome guy really he said he is going to one day buy 300 Books of Mormon, 300 Bibles, and 300 Hymn books and give them as gifts to new converts or investigators with his picture and a testimony in front. :O Yeah he's great. and now we're here in this internet place because the Elders of this sector were just like "hey the usual internet place is closed but we know one that's really close lets go." So here we are.

And that is basically all I have to say this week. It's getting warmer but still in Punta Arenas it never gets hotter than 70 degrees. Baha! so yeah. That's all. Talk to you next week!

October 3, 2011

So this week was pretty boring. I can't really remember most of it to be honest... But whatever. Oh hey! I know mom asked for my address like two or three weeks ago but I've forgotten to give it to you all until today... But it is as follows

Elder Preston Jay Bassett

Chile Osorno Mission

Casilla 7-0

Osorno

Los Lagos

Chile

So there you all go you can put that in the ward thing and all that jazz. Which makes perfect sense right? ummm so thanks for the info on the dropbox I can finally show people my family! But it is not working for me to upload photos so I will have to work that out later. Anyways

Oh here's something for everybody who didn't watch the first session of General conference. President Monson announced some new temples right? I don't remember most of them but guess what. They are going to build a second temple in Provo! Baha! I think they are going to put it in place of the Provo Tabernacle but I'm not positive, we all started talking at the same time as soon as he started talking about it so Yeah I'm not sure about where they are going to build it but how awesome is that! I guess Provo is just that cool.

I hope the funeral all went well. Tiff said it went well enough with musical numbers and such so that's really good. The most exciting thing that happened for me was General Conference. They were some pretty relaxing couple of days we've had listening to the apostles and people. We watched it live so they started at 1 and 5 so they took up the whole day pretty much. it was pretty awesome. I got a lot of notes and it was really cool.

So I don't know anything about what's happened for all of you so I have no comments about life in utah.

About life here... Still pretty cold, but warming up. The days are getting longer. this last week flew past. We still have some of the same investigators, we've found a few new ones but nothing really exciting happened last week. It wasn't a bad week by any means... Just nothing super awesome. So I don't know what else to talk about... So for now... I'll try to work out the drop box thing and get some pictures sent home with that!

Love you. Talk to you next week!

Elder Bassett

September 26, 2011

Hey everybody! So another week come and gone. Everything is going well down here. The weather is changing pretty fast, when I got here it stayed pretty dark until around 8 or 9 but now when we wake up there is light coming through the windows. I keep hearing that eventually it will stay light here for about 22 hours of the day generally. That will be interesting definitely but anyways!

(We lost our Grandma Bassett on Sept 22nd) So about Grandma. Wow. That's kind of all I can say about that, but she's definitely not suffering anymore. We just have to remember we can't stop the hand of God from calling people back to him. I hope Grandpa B is holding up well during this time. And I hope the funeral goes well!

I don't know what else to say about that subject so moving on! This week was a pretty tough one, we had a LOT of teaching appointments that fell through so that was dumb. I lost count of how many but one day we had every single thing fall through and just walked around the street all day, like until we went home again, trying to find people to teach and to see if the next appointment would work out. So yeah. Lame. But we do have two investigators who are really progressing a lot. The people we find who are the best are the ones who have members in the family. One of them (Sebastian) is married to a member, their whole family are members, his father in law used to be bishop, their cousin is our mamita... So basically he's been being prepared for years. Which is awesome. Even though every time we go to their house they give us loads of food and if we keep going there we are going to get fat... But yeah it's pretty great. (The situation and the food haha) So we're excited for him.

There are a few other people we are teaching but none of them really are as close as Sebastian or Diego (who I've talked about before) but still good. Today after P-day ends we have an appointment assigned for every half hour until we go home. It's gonna be intense. But one of the people we are teaching tonight totally had a change of heart in the last couple of days and it's seriously a testimony builder of the Book of Mormon because he didn't want to listen to us for weeks so we've just been teaching his wife and son but the other day we went to teach them and he sat in the room listening while changing contacts to his new phone and we read Mosiah 2 and talked about how to hold the family together and stuff. Anyways so the next time we passed by their house the wife (Gloria) was gone but he (Victor) was sitting at the table and we knocked on the door and he said "Hey how are you guys come in, take a seat!" and we were like "uhhh... Yeah definitely!" So he told us about how he feels about their family and the issues they have been having so we talked to him for a little while about what we thought could help bring the family together and shared scriptures with him and he prayed at the end of the lesson, which is basically amazing because we had asked him like 4 times previously if he wanted to pray and he said he didn't feel ready or he didn't want to and all that jazz so we were super excited that he prayed. And we almost got him to go to church, he said "I would go today but I have to work" So we were close. Stupid work. But it's cool because my companion told me that the first time he walked into that house he got a feeling like "one day everybody in this family will be baptized" so we're seeing the hand of God working on him, softening his heart through the scriptures and stuff. So it's pretty sweet.

Ummm Besides that what else has happened this week... We discovered that our gas heater probably has something wrong with it and that if you leave it on over night you will get sick. Hence, I'm kind of sick. Baha. But whatever. Oh, if you ever decide to send me a package I'd like it to include my piano music and a new journal. I have like a month and a half left to write in my journal (I think, I counted like 50 pages... Give or take. Anyways) So that would be cool. And I'm including pictures in this email and I will send one more email to Britt with more pictures so she can put them on my blog or whatever. And Everybody has asked for pictures of the family soooo.... Yeah that'd be cool haha.

I think the letter I sent took longer because the president and all them had to work out getting those pictures printed out because I have recieved one hand written letter that took (I believe) three weeks. The date on the envelope says the 25th of august and I got it on the 15th of Sept. so yeah Letters still take a long time but I don't think they will all take 7 weeks like the one that was sent to the family... Haha. But regardless I'm glad that you got it.

Umm to answer questions to Ethan, it is different being down here in the cold all the time: It's not as cold as Utah can get on the coldest day but still pretty cold. I knew that you would have Mr Clark and It's not really surprising he calls you Bassett and that everybody calls you mini Preston. Baha. But why didn't you do marching band ya putz!? Oh well, I'm over it. Your schedule looks pretty fun how it is so keep it up.

Yeah I think that's all really. Hope you enjoy the pictures. I had like 130 to choose from so they should be decent ones. But Britt will get more in about 5 minutes

Love you all.

Talk at'cha next week.

Elder Bassett

September 17, 2011

First off Thank you dad for getting the money thing taken care of I should have been more specific last week about that but I can't even remember if I knew it would be today that we had our replacement p-day (which is why I am now writing because we figured it was the best time and we wouldn't have a productive day if we went home and changed and went out prostelyting for half an hour)

So yeah I wasn't planning on sending this email right now so you will all have to wait another week for those pictures unfortunately. But I will talk about it right now. This place was absolutely amazing! It's called Las Torres Del Paine it is a huge national park that is pretty well known (at least here in southern america) and so we were immensely blessed with being able to go there and also that it was (relatively) good weather. Which we were not looking for because when we woke up to head out there it was a blizzard. so yeah. (btw about the weather, It may not be like subarctic tempuratures right now but I it's like the beginning of summer, as if it were 30 degrees in march. and wet. I would never have to wear this much clothes to stay decently warm in march in utah)

I took probably 80-90 pictures so you won't be able to see them all for a while because the emails only will let me put like 4 ish pictures but whatever I'll choose the best ones. Next week.

So yeah the Torres were HUGE like easily 3 times bigger than the rocky mountains. They talked about how people have tried to climb up it, only 3 people have reached the summit so it's like insane. Also I took a video and tried to do a kind of documentary but, it didn't work because the wind was absolutely ridiculous. I leaned into it and it held me up pretty far it was insane we were all almost falling down just trying to walk. We first stopped at a couple lakes and got some cool pictures of the sunrise then the second lake we went to and got pictures of the glaciers there and then just the huge mountains. But they are cool pictures.

So yeah that's about today, I'm sure I could tell more about it but... That's all for now and i'll get those pictures sent and just try to imagine the immensity of these mountains because pictures just don't really cut it.

Okay so to answer a few questions we had our baptism for the guy with the smoking problem yesterday which was super awesome! We did it yesterday because tomorrow is their like independance day or something so their parties and celebrations started today (there was an activity in the chapel that we didn't go to, obviously) but he will be confirmed tomorrow. WOOT! okay and I won't get into trouble reading my friends emails. But I can't respond directly to you so if I have your address I will write you letters, if not... Send me your address :D and I will write to you.

Our mission president is basically awesome also he is allowing us to watch a movie (like a regular one) on monday. I think it is because it is a holiday But nobody knows. I think we have chosen to watch Rango. My vote was Kung Fu Panda 2 but whatev's. (the choices besides those two were toy story 3 and Avatar, which I don't think is really missionary appropriate but we didn't vote for it anyways so no worries!)

So I hope that everything is going well at home! Happy birthday tuesday to Brandon!! You're so OLD!! Jk but anyways (actually my zone leader is older than you haha) Oh question! In Chile the first presidency sent a letter out allowing the young men to go out on their mission at 18. Did they send that out in the states too? Because if they did it would be the same situation for Ethan and I when I get home and I think that would be pretty funny for everybody involved.

Okay about this whole week, it was awesome! We didn't really talk to a whole bunch of people on the street BUT we found 13 new people to teach! That is huge to be able to find those people. And they are all like super receptive and awesome! So it's cool. We did good this week I think. But that's really all! oh hey Britt, I found out that Dear Missionary allows the letters to be sent through email too. Which is interesting although in my case slightly unnecessary But if you wanted to post something on facebook to tell people I guess that'd be cool... Just sayin.

So yeah. Awesome week. Amazing day. Lots of pictures waiting. I'll get on writing those letters to my friends. Sorry this is completely irregular and y'all didn't prepare to write me and await for a response but it is what it is. Thanks again dad for taking care of the money it REALLY helped. Love you all. Talk to you next week!!

Elder Bassett.