January 30, 2017

It's kind of weird to think that I'm not going to be a teenager
anymore, (His birthday is February 4) but at least I can use this sweet scripture (I've been waiting forever to do this) : Alma 50:16- "And thus ended the
twentieth year."
One of the converts here is going to make me lunch (For his birthday) and we have a
couple of FHE's so I'll probably be eating a lot haha.
Yea we actually have a lady that is super awesome. We contacted her in
the street like 3 weeks ago but she never came to a lesson or church
so we stopped trying to teach her. But a couple days ago I called her
and we set up a lesson in the chapel and she showed up! It was awesome
and we gave her a tour of the chapel and she loved it. And then Sunday
she went to church and then after she came back and we taught about
the Restoration and she loved it. She has a baptismal date for the
12th of February so we're working with her for that. She has had a lot
of problems in the family, but now she is separated from her husband
and lives with her daughter (who doesn't like the Mormons). But she is
really cool!
Maria José is doing well. She had her interview with the bishop and
got her temple recommend. We're going to go do family history work on
Wednesday with her and then she'll be ready for when the ward goes to
the temple. We're trying to help her get to a girls camp or something
that they're doing and we talked to the seminary teacher too about the
class. Just like all the other youth she is kind of reluctant to do
it, but in the end she'll do it and have a great time. It's awesome to
see how different from the the first time she went to church and now.
She wanted nothing to do with the members and left right after
Sacrament meeting, but now she stayed the whole time and is talking
with a ton of people like its nothing.
(I asked him if it was hard to give up his phone when he went on his mission) It wasn't really hard for me to be away from my phone. I was pretty
surprised about that. If the phone's not there there isn't a ton of
temptation to look at it. But for like 2 weeks I always felt like
phantom vibrations in my pocket and then I would realize that I didn't
have a phone haha.
Thanks for the email, this week I was thinking about one of the
parables that Jesus taught, about the Prodigal Son. Really quickly
summed up: There was a kid that decided he wanted to take all of his
inheritance and ditched the house and went to a bunch of parties and
spent of all his money until the point that he was jealous of the pigs
because they had slop(I can't remember if that is the word) to eat.
Long story short he repented and went back to his house and his dad
accepted him and they threw a whole big party. But something I thought
was interesting was that this kid had a brother (friend, leader, or
any other person) that was in the house, saw his brother leave, make
bad decisions, and then knew that he was in a really bad position. But
his brother did nothing. How would this story be different if the
brother got up, left his house, and went to go look for his brother?
He could have saved him from a lot of suffering, pain, and regret. We
all know someone that needs a little help, so I want to invite you
guys to be a good "brother" and look for someone that need a little
help, some encouragement, or just a friend.
Love you guys a lot!!!
Elder Cheney

January 23, 2017

 I want to work with the young men when I get back,
that would be the coolest thing ever. Or nursery, I'm in between the
two.
Thanks for the package!! When are all the young men going to write me?
We always wrote the missionaries. Just make them send me an email
haha. But that is crazy are there 21 that go to church or 21 on the
list?  (I told him we have 21 priests (16-18 year old young men) in our congregation.  And yes, most of them are very active.)
Maria José is doing really well, we taught her yesterday. We're trying
to make the switch so her main source of support in the Gospel is
coming from members in the ward and not from us so it was cool to have
a lesson in the house of a member. The member is going to help her go
to mutual and to a camp that the young men and women are going to do.
So she's doing pretty well.
We're teaching the kid of the people that own our house and they're
our neighbors too. He's pretty cool, we played ping-pong with him in
the chapel one time so we'll see how it goes with him.
We met a kid named Gohan, like from dragon ball-z. He said his brother
named him hahahaha. He was like 17 and we're going to try and be
teaching him.
I ate an entire Churrasco in a lunch and that was a challenge. It's
pretty much a big hamburger with a ton of avocado, it was really good.
I was pretty much dead the rest of the day.
I love chile and we're doing well. We're finding a good amount of
people to teach so hopefully we see some progress these next weeks.
Love you guys!!!
Elder Cheney

January 16, 2017

How's the ward doing? How many priests are there? Who is getting ready to go on missions?

David needs to get a handle on his life. He has just been one big mess since I've been gone.  (In response to me telling him that David had changed his major.  I'm sure David would have an interesting response to this.)

It's true, the best way to teach something is through the scriptures, it always invites the Spirit and it is a lot more powerful than anything we could say. 

MARIA JOSÉ GOT BAPTIZED!!! IT was awesome, like more than half of the zone came so there were about 10 missionaries there and the service was super powerful. Her mom and sister came and they liked it a lot. Two recent converts gave the messages of baptism and the holy ghost and they bore their testimonies and it was amazing. Everyone felt the Spirit really strongly and when it came time for the baptism Maria José wasn't nervous. Then Sunday in the morning we had the confirmation and I was able to confirm her. It was a really cool experience too even though I was super nervous. So she is officially a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She's not in white in the pictures because she didn't want to have any pictures of her in the baptismal clothes (she was embarrassed). But we're really pumped with her and now she said she might want to be a missionary! 

Besides her we haven't really had anyone that is progressing a ton so we're going to be on the lookout for a lot of people. It's still pretty hot down here, I'm getting a sweet tan line, I'm probably going to get a haircut today, and that's about it. 

Love you guys a lot!

Elder Cheney

January 9, 2017

That's rough starting out so early all the churches here start at 10. ( I told him Church starts at 9 now)
WE GOT ELDERS!!!! (Our ward had sister missionaries, we just got some new Elders) Tell Dustin to try and go with them at least once a week, that is by far the best way to get ready for the mission. I know he's busy but it will help him a
ton.
I really don't have a ton of time but some quick updates:
The pictures: we celebrated the birthday of one of the new elders,
Elder King it's like his third week in the field so we bought him a
cake and surprised him in the house and sang happy birthday loud, it
was pretty funny.
We decided to start keeping our money in the freezer cause it's the
best place to hide the cold hard cash haha.
And the last one is a picture of our bathroom, we made a little
discovery that there is a mushroom growing in there. Don't worry we
already cleaned it out. But it just snuck up on us.
Also Maria José has a baptismal date for this Saturday, we just need
to have the interview and then we should be good. She feels super
ready and we've been trying to keep up with her everyday so she's
ready but if all goes well we'll have a baptism this week.
I'm doing really well, getting along with my companion, the members
are great, and we're eating good so todo bien.
Love Elder Cheney

December 26, 2016 and January 3, 2017

December 26
I was just really happy I didn't cry. (After talking to us on Christmas) I didn't feel like crying at all this time so it was pretty dope. It was actually really distressing to talk to you guys, the other time just stressed me out even more. SO this call was a 7. Even though David thinks he's pretty cool, talking to everybody else was fun. There's not a whole lot else to say, but I have a whole lot of socks, (ward members gave them lots of socks) so we're doing good. I'll send some pictures that will show how our Christmas went. I have like 5 pounds of chocolate so pray for me.

 I want to share with you guys that I learned in personal study this week.

I was reading in Genesis 39. Here it is talking about Joseph after he was sold in Egypt by his brothers. He was bought by Potiphar and made his servant. Potiphar saw that God was with Joseph and that everything that Joseph did prospered. When he realized that he made Joseph that master of his entire house, he entrusted everything to Joseph. Verses 4 and 5 from Genesis 39 say

4 And Joseph found grace in his sight, and he served him: and he made him overseer over his house, and all that he had he put into his hand.

 5 And it came to pass from the time that he had made him overseer in his house, and over all that he had, that the Lord blessed the Egyptian’s house for Joseph’s sake; and the blessing of the Lord was upon all that he had in the house, and in the field.

So after he gave command of everything to Joseph, his house prospered and was blessed. Everything Potiphar had was blessed. Now what can we learn from this? We know that everything in the scriptures testifies of Christ and his role for us. We can learn that if we give everything that we are to Christ and let him work with us, He will bless us and make us much more than we could ever make of ourselves. We just have to trust him. A goal I set for 2017 is to choose some Christ-like attributes and work this year to develop them more. I'm going to invite everyone to do the same. Email me and tell what attributes of Christ you want to improve this year! 

Love you guys a whole lot!!

Elder Cheney

January 3

So we had changes this week and I got a new companion. His name is
Elder Eyre from good ole Draper Utah. He's been out for about 1 year
and 5 months. We're getting along pretty well, he's a really funny
guy.
We were with the Olivares family. We got there kind of late because of
a problem in a different sector but we got there and ate some tacos
and it was really fun. After we ate they brought out a million
desserts because they had divided the family up into teams (they have
7 kids) and they each made a dessert to do a competition and we were
the judges. I ate a ton of cake. We had to go at 11 to get back to the
pension and after we got all the calls that the sectors were ok I went
to bed so I didn't quite make it until midnight. I think I fell asleep
at like 11:40. So the party ended a bit early for me too.
This week was really long, with a bunch of meetings and a bunch of
buses and going back and forth from Viña. I'm pretty tired but it's
okay because we have one more training tomorrow that we have to give
and we have to wake up early. But after that we'll have a normal
change. We had a ton of changes in the zone, 7 missionaries got
changed out of the 12 that we had. Two sectors had whitewashes so they
don't really know what's going on haha.
Even though I'm really tired we were able to get a ton of work done in
these couple of days that Elder Eyre has been here. We've found a
bunch of people to teach but I'll you guys about a couple of the main
ones.
Maria José: she's the teenager that we've been working with forever.
We taught her a lesson pretty in depth about the apostasy and the
importance of the authority of God (the Priesthood). SHe understood
really well, she's really smart, and we talked about the baptism and
she committed to get baptized the 14th of January. We're going to have
to help her out to feel good with the decision and support her, but
she's super ready for it. Her main problem is that she has panic
attacks sometimes, so we're going to pray that she can feel calm with
the choice.
Denis: She's a lady that we found contacting houses and she let us
teach her at the beginning and she said only because she respected the
fact that we left our houses to preach the word of God. We talked to
her, showed her the book of Mormon, listened, and testified a lot. Her
husband works on a boat so she only sees him once every year. It's
really hard for her and she feels alone. We gave her the Book of
Mormon and promised that she'll feel the comfort that she needs and
her eyes lit up. It was awesome to see the Spirit testify of what we
were saying. At the end she said that she wants to listen to us
because she feels the need of more spirituality in her life and she
needs God. So that was a really cool lesson.
In honor of the fact that this is the most tired I've been on my
mission (it's a new record every week) I'm going to share a scripture
that president shared with us from Isaiah:
28 Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God,
the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither
is weary? there is no searching of his understanding.
29 He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he
increaseth strength.
30 Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall
utterly fall:
31 But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they
shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary;
and they shall walk, and not faint.
I know that if we put our trust in God and keep the commandments, even
though we feel tire, weak, fatigued, that God will give us the
strength to do what he asks of us.
Love you guys a ton!
Elder Cheney