Happy Thursday!

Hope everyone has had a good week! It sounds like the weather is just all the opposite there. Because here it is starting to get warmer and the days are getting longer. Which is great for us because more light means more people. I guess it is true what they say about how light attracts light. 

This Sunday was pretty neat. They did a special multi stake conference from the conference center but just for chile. Elder Christopherson spoke in spanish and it was all pretty neat. It is great that the lord loves us enough to call people that are willing and able to help out all of his children, in their languange. They talked about the importance of the Sabbath day and the attendance to church. 

We are now teaching this cool little peruvian family. The mom is named Milagros.. or in english Miracles and the dad has a pretty american name.. Richard, and the daughter Nicole. They are super cool and are excited to go to church this sunday. 

I hope that you are also having a good time celebrating your anniversary and Dad's Birthday!! I sure feel lucky to have such good examples to look up to. I am sure that you had a great time celebrating everything. Happy Birthday DAD!! if mom turned 28 this year that means that you should have turned like 30 or 31 right?

Have the best week! Hope somebody makes a few goals for me this week.

Elder Holdstock

The time just keeps on flying by. Just like the kites we see in our sector everyday. That is one of the cool things about where we are is that it is a pretty humble neighborhood and so there are always just lots of things happening out in the street. But these last few weeks all the kids have started to come out with their kites and flying them. but it is a different ball game than the states. When I flew kites it was basically throw them in the air and they would fly... but here it is a process and a talent. You have to know the techniques or they wont stay up. There are also some kids that are pretty gangster and use string that has glass on it and they fly their kites into other peoples kites and cut their string with theirs so that their kite goes flying off in the wind it is serious business. 

Everything is going really well. We found a really awesome family from peru this week who are really excited to go to church. Daniella is doing well and is getting ready for her baptism. We are excited for her. We are to the part of the change that is a little bit more chill for us without so many trainings and stuff so we get to have so more time in our sector and in divisions which is relly great.

I cant believe that school has already started! Everyone is getting so old. I hope the school year started well and that everyone gets all 7's. (that is how they do the grades down here 1-7 instead of A, or B or C. 7 is the best.) 

We have also been teaching a venezuelan named carlos that is super cool. Our new ward mission leader has also been taking out the trash with all of our investigators and inviting them over to his house and stuff like that. So the invitation this week is that you can find someone for the missionaries to teach in our house. It will be hard... but not impossible. If you do it I will give everyone a big high five.

Elder Holdstock

P.S. it sounds like they can't buy the plane tickets until like 50 days before I go home or something like that... but I am pretty sure that my release date is like the 30 or so... I should be heading out from here on the 29 of october and be back the next day. I will be back just in time for halloween.

President Woodward,

Thank you for taking care of our son (Clayton Holdstock) for the last 22 months. We have seen such a spiritual growth in him. We are so looking forward to his return home. Maybe we are anxious parents, but we are wondering if he has his travel plans yet. We have family in Canada that is wanting to make travel plans to see him return home. I contacted the Missionary Travel Department and they said they did not have any travel plans in their system yet and recommended we contact you.  If you could kindly put a trunky mom’s anxiety to rest, it would be greatly appreciated. We know you might want to keep him forever, I know we do. 

Thank you for your service and great example to him. He has enjoyed training and teaching with you. We are eternally grateful to you and your wife. 

Brian Holdstock
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Dear Brother Holdstock,

The secretaries have already reached out to buy your son's plane tickets. His group is scheduled to depart from Chile on October 29th.  His release date is October 30.  The exact time of his departure is still not known, but we will let you know as soon as we know. We are glad that you have reached out to us for this information. Elder Holdstock is one of the best missionaries in the mission. If not the best. Tell his mother that she doesn't need to worry or get trunky he still has a while left. If there are any other questions please let us now. We thank you for your good parenting and your understanding. 

Sincerely,
Elder Holdstock

HOLA

HIYA  

Sorry For such the late response we just got back from the zone conferences out in El Quisco! So that was way fun. We got to go back home for a minute. This change we are focusing up on the power we have as missionaries and transmitting that in the way we talk and interact with people. It has been really fun because it has been a pretty joint effort with president to put this one all together. He taught us a lot of really great things. He is pretty big on making sure we dont sound like weird when we talk to people, that we use words that are not really formal instead that we speak so that people understand what we are talking about. Because not a lot of people really understand what exaltation or things like that even means. We just focus on how we have a message of happiness that we are confident in. And that pretty much sums it up. The Gospel is simple. It makes us happy even though sometimes we aren't going through happy moments. We have hope because of what Christ did for us and thanks to the incredible plan that our loving father prepared for us.

Mercedes got baptized and confirmed this weekend and she was really happy. Her family also went to see her. She said that she was thankful that god had chosen her. We hope to make some progress with the rest of her family. We are also working with a little family a mom and her daughter Margarita and Daniella. They are great and are progressing like champs. 

We actually have to go visit them right now!

Keep it real.

Elder Holdstock

happy weddings

Wow sounds like everyone has had a really busy week this week with lots of activities! That is so cool that you got to see elder holland! I hope everything went well with the flowers and everything like that. We have had a pretty eventful week as well. This change there were 20 new missionaries that arrived to our missions. The interesting thing is that pretty soon they will be closing the MTC in Chile so we have already started to receive missionaries from different MTC's all around the world. We received missionaries this change from Mexico, Chile, Argentina, and Brazil. We are pretty excited though because that means that we could open up like 5 sectors that had been closed! We got to see a lot more of Santiago as well because the drivers of the vans that took us to president's house went right through the heart of the city. It is pretty cool actually.  

Mercedes is doing really well. She had her baptismal interview this Tuesday and it was great because president woodward actually got to do it for her! So he has been pretty involved in her whole process. She is doing so well and just wants so badly that her family also starts going with her. Actually this sunday her daugther named Rocio went with her. So that was great.

We have also been teaching a little family that is really fun. Named Mauricio and Gloria. They are just funny but it is fun to teach them because they dont really have that much of a religious background and so everything that we teach them is pretty new to them! They are really loving it. Hope that this week is the best and that everyone has a good time at all the weddings this weekend!

Elder Holdstock

P.S. I have a new companion, his name is Elder Gallardo he is from Mexico. I am pretty excited to start working on my mexican accent before I head back home. Also for sure we will be eating some mexican food.

you can call me assassin

That is because this week we will oficially be killing my good ol' friend Elder Marsh. He has already had his last interview with president and is ready to head off to the US of A. We have had a really good week though, and seen lots of little miracles. For example: Last week we contacted a lady that was hanging up her clothes outside to dry. She had a back problem so we said 'why dont you just let us do that for you'. She was grateful and told us to go back another day. We went back and she wasn't home but her daughter who is about 23 opened the door. I could just tell from her eyes that it was kind of a rough moment from her. We started talking about life and about god´s plan for us and she just burst. She has lots of worries and lots of fears and problems in her life right now and she felt like it was an answer to her prayers. Unfortunately we couldnt go in because they were alone but we invited her to church and she showed up! She told us she loved it and felt a lot of peace. So god is in charge. Isnt that just a great thing to know? 

Mercedes and Rocio are also doing really well. Mercedes will be getting baptized here quickly and Rocio is there taking the little steps she needs to so that she can be ready. 

This is already the last week of the change and so next week will be pretty wild to see who my new companion is and to organize all the transfers. 

One fun thing we did this week is in the night time we made some choripanes on the grill we had out back. The thing is that in chile there arent gas grills, you have to do them with charcoal. But it takes a hot minute for the charcoal to start up, so we decided to do it gringo style and brought out my companions hair blow dryer (shout out to nate) and we used that to get it to light up quicker. 

Sounds like it was a great week down in saint george and playing soccer! Hope everybody scores at least one goal for me this week. 

Elder Holdstock