Hey whats up family!!!

Hey what's up family!!!

This week has been great! Sorry, I don't have much time to write this week! But this week we had an activity for Christmas. It was great having three zones together! That's like 100 people or so. 

We played sports all day, and had musical shows, and watched some awesome Christmas videos. I wanted to make some awesome videos after that. (:

I got sick the next day because I was out in the sun and exercising all day and eating tons of food. So Sunday and today were pretty hard because the mission doesn't stop. That's the best part. It doesn't matter if your throwing up, and don't have anyone to take care of you, you keep going and pushing through. You just pray that you'll get better soon. So, I kept going and sharing my testimony with everyone even though I didn't have the energy to walk... (:

The evangelist music here in Spanish is awesome. I've been enjoying it lately. (:  Yesterday, we had church for one hour because it was a voting day! The woman won, so theres a woman president in Chile which is cool.

Our investigator, Aquelis is doing awesome. (: We are going to try to baptize him on Christmas which would be a White Christmas if you know what I mean. Because it's 100 degrees here, and the only white thing around here is our shirts, and baptismal pants. (:  He's doing awesome though! We taught him about the Word of Wisdom and he just said he would do it, and he didn't argue, instead he asked us what he could drink and eat. It was funny, but he's just a cute old man. (:

We also have another investigator who has tons of money!! He's loaded. He has a pool in his front yard. He first told us that he doesn't need anything else in this life, and that everything is good. We then explained that he is missing the Gospel in his life. He's is highly interested in the church, because who wouldn't be? My favorite thing to say in each and every testimony I give, nearly crying of the Spirit is just to say that this church is the reason for my smile. It's the reason I get up every day, and its the reason I leave my family to be with you guys this Christmas season.

Everyone, just remember as you are buying your Christmas presents that this season is really about Jesus Christ. You can hear that 1000 times but until you really sit down and think about what this season is about, you're not going to feel it. I give you all a challenge to do something for someone. It doesn't matter what it is, just go out of your path one day and do something awesome for someone. (:

Okay, I have to go.  I love you all.  You are the best support (: Especially Michael who has sent me by far the most letters. (:  Chau!!

Love,

Elder McGee

Wow, its a blazing 95 degrees here!

Wow, it's a blazing 95 degrees here! I'm getting tan, I see there's tons of snow there! It's hard to imagine that everyone I know and love is freezing right now, while I'm dying of heat every night with the fan on full blast and the windows open!! 

I'm so excited to be able to talk to the family on Christmas! (: Its only like three weeks away!! I can't believe its already December, I feel like you all just told me about your Halloween stories!! (:

This week absolutely flew by!!  Our investigator, Aquelis is doing awesome! He came to church again this week, and it was absolutely amazing to see his face light up and feel the Holy Ghost in church. (: We had a lesson with this one guy who said it wasn't possible to have the gift of tongues. I looked at him in the eyes, and asked him if it was possible to learn a language and teach with power in three months. I bore testimony of the power God has given me to learn the language of the people here. I don't remember what I said, because it definitely wasn't me talking.

We had one extremly successful day, finding two families to teach! It was awesome! So many people need to hear this special message!!

Mom sent me a Christmas package, so we enjoyed some good Christmas stuff, my companion and I! I also bought a little Christmas tree, and some people gave us some ornaments, I'll send a picture next week. (:  I have found a way to continue making videos and it is in harmony with the mission rules, so you guys will see some videos here shortly. (:

My challenge for the week, is to read some of the Book of Mormon, and then think of someone you could give it too. I want to give out 150 in my mission. (: I think you could at least do one. (: It's the coolest book ever. I testify of its truthfulness and coolness. (:

Well, that's about all this week! Just know that I'm safe and loving it here in Chile!! I want each of you to know how much I love you! You are all in my prayers daily. Thank you all for your prayers. I can totally feel them. I have the best support system ever. (:

Love, Elder McGee

Diciembra already??? Wooo!

Aquí estamos tan cerca a navidad!

Estoy super animado para hablar con ustedes tan pronto!

Diciembra already??? Wooo!

We are going to buy a small little Christmas tree for the apartment! Some people gave us ornaments, and lights. (:

I had a pretty great week!

So remember Aquelis from last week? 

Well he came to church yesterday! Oh yeahhh! This man is super ready. I bore solid testimony to him this past week of the importance of going to church. It's amazing how people respond when they understand the importance of going to church every Sunday. Because they usually end up going the next week. (:

Wow, yesterday was probably one of the most powerful experiences I've had on the mission so far. We went into these peoples' house. And something was definitely going on between them. We totally picked up on it, and decided to just try to help them with their marriage problems. So it was going awesome, and then it was my turn to speak, and I had no idea where my words came from. I honestly didn't know that I knew these words in Spanish. It was truly a miracle for me because I said everything I wanted to say with clarity. I spoke of the Atonement of Jesus Christ and the incredible power behind forgiveness. Jesus Christ atoned for our sins, and went below all of us. He felt things that we will never experience in this life. So if you are having problems, lift your head up, and smile because Jesus knows how you feel. I testify of that. He knows everything you go through, so give him your all.

This week was my first week that my heart was broken by an investigator! She progressed so much, and was so ready to be baptized, until she called us this week, and said she didn't want visits from us. Wow. I gave her my everything, and I was rejected. It was a hard day, but you can only pick up and press forward. Siguir Adelante.

I also got to go up to Santiago this past week to get my visa. It was really fun, we were super lost and I decided to pray, and somehow I knew the way to get where we needed to go in downtown Santiago!

Anyways, that's it for this week, I don't have any more time. (: So, I love you all, 

Keep going strong. Sounds like everyone had a good turkey day -- we did too -- my comp and I, because they don't celebrate that here!

Love you all, 

Love Elder McGee

Buenas tardes familiares y amigos (:

Buenas tardes familiares y amigos (:

Yo tenia una super buena semana!!

Mi español es mucho mejor, y puedo entender mucho mas!

Mi componero nuevo, Elder Aguire, es de Argetina!

En nuestro casa, siempre hablamos en español, porque el no sabe ingles!!

Woooo (:

Anyways what's up! I had a pretty great week!  I received my new companion from Argentina this past Tuesday. He will be ending his mission with me. He doesn't know English, and it's only us that live in the house. (: So from here on out, it's all in Spanish, baby!! He was a zone leader before, so he is a great missionary, and has lots of experience!

As soon as we put his stuff in the house, I was in charge because I stayed in the same place. So for a couple days, I was leading the sector, and making the phone calls, and doing everything! I was amazed and blessed this past week, as I grew tremendously in my Spanish because of the tasks I had to complete. The members here are so great. It's cool because in less than three months here in Chile, I'm confortable doing anything, and talking to anyone. (:

My companion is really funny. We just laugh all day, and joke about everything in a good way. (: But we we teach, it's powerful and our unity is great! We found eight new people this week! How cool! We started working like 50 times harder this week in everything from teaching more, to running in the mornings.

It's usually about 90 degrees here in the days. I was thinking this week, it's been pretty weird. Whenever summer ends here, I'll have experienced summer for a year! The same when I come back home. I'll already be tan whenever you guys are just putting your coats away. (:

Anyways! We ended the week with a Stake Conference stacked with the Temple President, and the Mission President. I understood everything, and it was great. (: I'm just having the best of times. Let me tell ya! I have experienced a different kind of joy! A joy that keeps a smile on your face for more than a few minutes. A joy that just makes your heart happy! It's amazing.

This past week, we had a great experience. We met a man who is named Aquiles. He told us his wife died, and just cried and cried and cried. He is about 60 years old and living alone. We shared a scripture, and I testified that his wife was experiencing joy and happiness, and she was in a safe place. He was so relieved, and said his wife had sent us to his house. It's amazing to just help people out. The service of others is what this life is about. I know you guys aren't missionaries, and can't spend all your time serving people around you, but I know you can all do little things each day that can change peoples' lives. (:

This week I get to go to Santiago to get my carnette. It's like my visa! Wooo (:

That's about all for this week! (: I love you all. Get on your knees and thank God for everything that you have, because you never know when it'll be gone. I carry a rock in my pocket every single day. Everytime I touch it, I say a mini prayer thanking him for something. I've been doing it for four months now. I have noticed the biggest change in my attitude and happiness in general. (:

Love,

Elder McGee

Hey Hey Heyyyy (:

Hey Hey Heyyyy (:

Wow I miss you all!

What's new? Not much! Just learning Spanish, studying the scirptures, teaching my heart out, and exhausting myself daily! I think the hardest part of my day now, is walking up the flight of stairs into the apartment! But I guess that's good!

Tomorrow, my companion Elder Peñuñuri from Mexico, and Arizona is leaving me! Im going to be having a full Latin companion who doesn't speak English! Woo! So my Spanish is going to probably be its potential by Christmas. (: Im pretty excited! I'll be with him starting tomorrow morning! I'm also officially done with my training!

This past week not much happened! Just running around teaching a lot, and trying to get people to understand the importance of the Gospel! I've been thinking a lot this week, just about positive energy. It is truly the source that makes the world go around. Every single positive thought makes something good happen. If we all took everything in front of us and just made it positive, think how great the world would be! When it all comes down to it, everything positive comes from the Light of Christ. We are all born with this light inside of us. It's amazing too just take each and every daily challenge and think of how it benefited you, or how you grew from it! I loved the quote Grandma sent to me this week. It says: "Strength doesn't come from what you can do. It comes from overcoming the things you once thought you couldn't." So my challenge for you this week is to try to take a negative situation and make it positive. (: 

Our hourse flooded again! This time is was my fault. Our shower heater broke. Everyone uses hot water heaters here, but they are gas, so you have to light it on fire eeach time you want hot water. Well this week, is broke, and we had to take cold showers! I don't know why but I decided I would just use to hot water knob... Well the pipes inside of the califon (hot water heater) weren't connected. So the whole time I was in the shower, water was just shooting into our house. It was great!!

I went on divvisions with another Elder this past week. He is from Peru, and we taught some people. They were all just crying, and said it's what they needed and they had been searching for the truth for a long time! The spirit was sooooo strong. It was definitely a nice feeling. It's the whole reason I'm here: to bring people and invite them to come unto Christ.

Well. There's not much else that happened! Wish me luck with my new companion, and I will write you all about it next week. (:  I love you all!

Love,

Elder McGee

Hola! Que tal?

Hola! Que tal?

I had another great week here in Chile. (:

It's beginning to look a lot like summer!! Windows are opening, and music is being played in the streets! The Chileans love their 80's music. It's cool because they like the good stuff too like Milli Vanilli. (:

We got to go to a wedding this week for one of our investigators!! Wooo! They now have a baptismal date. (: This week I truly saw how God can work in our lives! We started off by visiting a less active, and re-activating her, then she got excited about missionary work, and had her friend over. Her friend was very impressed with the Joseph Smith story, and said she knew it was true, and wanted to be baptized. But she wasn't married to the guy with whom she was living. So we got them married this past week.

While we were at her wedding, we saw a lady working at the government building. We didn't talk to her. Later that day, we felt impressed to go contacting doors. We were about to give up because we couldn't find anyone, when we found the lady we had seen at the government building! She totally let us in, because she had seen us in our suits earlier that day. After talking for a little bit, we found out that she was actually a member because she asked about my CTR ring. We are going to visit her this week, with her family who are not members.

It's amazing to see the divine connections that God has prepared for us. We can all use this story, to know if we keep ourselves worthy of the Holy Ghost, and keep the commandments, and keep our selves close to the Lord, that He will bless us with things we could never have thought of, or planned in our own minds!! My testimony was strengthened a ton this week!

We did a lot of service this week -- which was way fun -- and found some new people to teach from that!  I already ripped a pair of my pants playing soccer with some kids in the street. (:

We had a man yell at us for about 45 minutes about how the Sabbath day is on Sunday. We told him that every day is like the Sabbath day for us, he was confused then we explained why Sunday is the right day! It was funny, and actually turned out pretty well!

This week the craziest thing happened to me!! I went to a feria, which is basically like a huge garage sale that takes up a street. I was looking for a shirt that I can do service in. Then I found a BRANSON, MISSOURI shirt!! Can you believe that?? In all places, I found a Branson shirt in Chile at a garage-sale-type-thing. Hahahaha. It totally made my day!!

That's about it for this week! If you want some good scriptures, Check out 2nd Nephi, Chapter 31! It's awesome!

Have an awesome week! (:

My camera is being lame! I will figure it out this week and have tons of pictures for you guys!! Woo!

Love, Elder McGee!

Wowwwww! Its crazy how time is going. Im finishing my 4th month already!

Wowwwww!

It's crazy how time is going. I'm finishing my fourth month already! I had a great week!!!

I got a package from Mom! Woo (: Only two more months until I get to Skype (for Christmas)! Woooo!!  I'm also glad to hear everyone is doing awesome as ever!!

Last night I had an interesting experience! We met a man who hates Americans and thinks English is ugly. He didn't know I was a gringo, because he was a little blind and he said because I was tan and short he thought I was Latin. So he just trash talked our history, our music, our language and everything! It was pretty harsh, but I just keep my mouth shut. He didn't want to talk about our church since it was from in the States. But he liked history a lot, and we told him how our church was not "born" in the states. It was born when Christ created His church on the Earth and how we have the same church that He made. We got a Book of Mormon into his hands, and shared about how the Book of Mormon contains stories from before the States were even around! It's funny the things people say!

I wrote this in a letter to my cousin, Dallas:

"Well, I'll be honest with ya man! The mission is by far the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. I thought I had had some pretty hard things go on, but this is the hardest. (On the other hand) the mission is really pretty easy! The people here are great, Spanish is fun to learn, but it's just being away from the family! We are so close to our family, so to leave them and have little contact is very hard! It's pretty weird to not have a phone, and call anyone I want whenever I want! But dude, I say all this meaning it's the best thing that I've ever done. 

In these past four months, I've experienced the hardest of times, but the happiest of times. Nothing beats feeling the Spirit of hearing someone say their first prayer, or come out of the water of Baptism. Nothing, and I mean nothing beats that. It's hard to wake up at 7 AM every day after walking miles and getting rejected multiple times. But I can not even explain the feelings of reactivating a family, or having the Spirit travel through you with something you need to tell someone without you having any plan to say that. 

The most important thing I've learned so far is just feeling a little bit of what Jesus Christ Himself went through when He atoned for our sins. I often ask myself, 'Which drop of blood did I make Him shed?' or 'Which thorn did I put on His head?' We are not perfect and we never will be. But fact of the matter is that no matter what we are going through, no matter if we're feeling alone, sad, heart broken, being made fun of, having the hardest time of our life, or anything bad -- we can never, never, never fall below what Jesus Christ felt. He is our Savior, our Brother, and our Redeemer, and becoming my best friend. 

Through Him, I have pushed through (breaking up with) Kylie who was my everything, I have pushed through being away from the family, who also was my everything. I went though a little bit of torture not knowing this freaking language, and a lot of hard stuff, but EVERYTHING is for us to learn from. Everything we go through makes us a little better. Dude, I bare testimony to you that Jesus Christ was the coolest, most perfect man to walk this earth. If I have learned anything, it's His love for me, and every person in the world."

We had two baptisms this week! A little girl and a thirteen-year-old boy. They were both so cute! Their Dad is probably going to get baptized soon, and their Mom is less-active. It's amazing to see the happiness that results from following Jesus' example and being baptized with authority! Sooooo amazing!

For Halloween, no one really did much. There were tons of little kids trick or treating, but that's about it! I saw on the news that President Obama had Trick-or-Treating at the White House.  Pretty funny!

Last week, our mission had nine-hundred-and-one investigators, recent converts, or less-actives come to church. That's crazy! There's less than three hundred people in the Mission. That means each person brought about three people to church! Crazy, huh??

If you need to do a school project in Spanish for Chile, make either sopapillas or empanadas! They are both very popular here!  This week, read: Doctrine & Covenants Section 101:15. Awesome scripture!

Other than that -- I had a pretty good week! Those were the highlights! Today, we went bowling for p-day and then out to a little restaurant!  I want you all the know that I love you, and will see you so soon! Have an awesome week. (:

Love,

Elder McGee in Chile. 

P.S. I will try to send pictures later!  Love you!

P.P.S.  I made killer corn bread this week!! (: