FOR THE LORD THERE IS NO LOST CAUSE

Hello!

First off thanks for the emails everybody! I loved all of them. Well pday once again, the weeks go by so fast. Anyways this week was a lot better than last week. If not that much in results at least in spirits. First off I will tell you about our investigators that until recently we had. We talked with Veronica and her Mom last Monday night and we talked a lot about baptism and testified and what not but it's still a no and this time the Mom put her foot down on the issue. She said that she could keep going to church and talking to us but that she can't get baptized until she's older. We tried a lot of tactics but her mind is made up and for right now she's not budging. That's a bummer. As for Karina we haven't been able to get a hold of her or her husband since I last wrote so there is no news or progress there as of right now.

Anyways, with that start-off to last week, it was rough for the first few days but we had a fast as a district and even though it didn't help all that much with the results, it did help me out with the morale. My companion Elder Maldonado is an obedient hard worker and a good missionary but he is a little down and frustrated about the dry spell here in Loncoche and the one that he has been having in his mission right now. But despite that, I'm not too worried about him and we've been working on more meaningful prayers and are going to have weekly 24 hour fasts now so that should help us out. The other missionaries in the house, Elder Hillman and his son (trainee) Elder Calaway are doing good and are also working hard. Elder Hillman has been here for six months and his animo is still good, he just needs to be less conform with the results. But we all get along great in the house. We all laugh and joke around together and are all obedient so it's a good house. Elder Calaway, the new guy, reminds me a lot of me. He just started in this zone and unfortunately has to see all these branch problems his first cambio, like I did, and he doesn't have too much confidence in himself or his spanish but he's a good guy and I know that he'll turn out to be a good missionary.

As far as the work went this last week people are still setting appoinments with us and then aren't there or don't come to the door when we go. Even though we are still talking with everybody we've changed our tactics a bit. We've been going down the ward list visiting all of the innactive members, which is the majority, and although most of them haven't been home, we have found a few and have appointments to visit them this week so we will see how it goes. I think that we need to do a lot of strengthening of the branch before we can trust them to take care of good investigators and new converts. So we will keep up a lot with visiting the innactives this week. Also we have put up flyers all over the town and are now teaching English classes on Saturdays. Our first class was last Saturday and it didn't have all that great of a turn out but we are going to keep advertising it a lot and we will see how it goes.

The best experience that we had last week was finding a new investigator, Victor. Victor is quite the character. He is a very very poor guy who is very dirty, always is wearing a yellow hard hat, and lives alone in this tiny wooden hand made shack surrounded by a shanty wooden fence and a yard filled with all of this junk that he just loves. We found him because he was yelling things about gringos and the states to us so we decided to go

over and talk to him. He is kind of crazy, drunk and is obsessed with the states, airplanes, and NASA. He actually has a NASA tie that missionaries gave him two years ago and has a collection of little model airplanes and space shuttles that he loves and treasures. These missionaries who gave him the tie were teaching him and brought him to church but he never got baptized, probably due to the alcohol. But he says he wants to get baptized and I could hardly believe it, but he came to church with us on Sunday and I think that he was even sober. In church you could tell that people were kind of looking down on him due to his dirty clothes(hard hat and all), terrible smell (which filled the chapel), and famous drunkeness but that doesn't matter.

Although members of the Lord's church and even some missionaries might judge by the outward appearence and reputations, every human being is a child of God and everyone of them deserves the chance to hear the message of the restored gospel and to apply the healing power of the atonement in their lives. For the Lord there is no lost cause and if it be his will, and if Victor is willing, the Lord can change him and take away his addiction to alcohol to replace it with the love and mercy of the Savior. These thoughts filled my mind as I sat next to him in the chapel and the spirit testified to me powerfully that this was true and that this man is a truly beloved son of God. So even though it might not work, I'm excited to give Victor this chance and to help him use and feel the power of the atonement in his life. Well I gotta go now but I love you all, I love this work, and I love the Chilenos. The work isn't easy and the Chilenos can be very frustrating at times but I love them and have been called to preach to them for these two years. So I'm going to make the best of these next 9 months to do so. Until next Monday CHAU!!!!!

Elder Harper