Elder Lewis here, still hanging in there!!

To kick this off, last week my comp and I took a little nature hike in our sector, 

where we found an old cross thing on the hill, and a cool little ancient rome time building. 

Don't know how to explain it in english, but you get the picture. :)

We also had a nice activity of ping pong with our good pal Mario and his brother, Kevin, in the chapel. 

We had a few tournaments of feroucious ping pong and Hermano Del Rio showed up to show us up. It was a good time, and we were able to give Mario and his brother a tour of the church. 

Our office pals, the Gibby´s, put in work and bought us DUNKIN DONUTS! 

They went quick. 

A classic Boston Creme for your Boston man. 

Speaking of treats, Elder Ranck and I decided to go buy some ice-cream. 

As we walked away very excited with our chocolate soft serve, we realized that we were fasting, and sadly, had to throw out a whole soft serve cone. 

That may have been one of the hardest parts of my mission. 

Through our tears, we made a vow to come back after our fast had ended to get another cone. We returned the next day, and enjoyed a fat cone of soft serve. :)

This week was one of the most special weeks of my mission, because the temple here in Concepcion, the temple that we've been inviting everybody to come visit for over a year, has finally been dedicated. 

President Nelson came to dedicate the temple along with Elder Stevenson. 

We got to watch all 3 sessions of the dedication from the stake center, and it was one of the most special and spiritual moments of my life. 

We got to watch the first session with our mission president, and after the dedicatory prayer, we got up and hugged through a good amount of joyful tears. 

Let me tell you, I wasn't much of a crier before the mission, but im a big big old melted M&M when it comes to life now :) 

Anyways, it's about that time. Time to hit the STREETS!

 

Love you guys, have a great week and stay safe!! 

LOVE YOU ALL!

-Elder Lewis

Happy Almost November Everyone!

With Halloween just around the corner, we've been knocking lots of doors early to see if anybody has done their candy shopping yet. :)

We haven't found much candy but we have found a new friend, MARIO! 

One of the Elders from the sector next to us told us that they had found a golden young man in their sector, but he lives in our sector. We were in an exchange with those elders, and we went to go visit MArio for the first time. We got a hold of him in the house, and started talking. 

The other Elders had found Mario and his friends playing in the soccer court behind the church. They had jumped the fence and were enjoying their time until the missionaries came! They gave the group of boys a quick tour of the chapel, and Mario was very excited to see the new area. 

We started talking to Mario about the Temple, which he had visited in the Open House about a week ago. He loved the experience, and wanted to know more. We had a baptism this Saturday of a family from the other elders of our sector, and we invited Mario and he was super excited to come. The baptism was awesome, and Mario asked me, "Hey, can I be baptized like that too?" I told him of course and that we would help him get to that point! We invited him to come to church the next day, and we saw him walk into the chapel with a smiling face Sunday morning. We had a great sunday, and he loved the church. He had lots of questions and is very eager to know more. We met with him alone and talked about baptism. Let's just say that Mario is preparing for the 11th of November for his baptism! It will be a ride to see how it goes. We are very excited for him and for the choice that he's making in his life, at 14 years old. 

As you may remember, we had a baptism date for our Haitian friend Michelet for that Saturday as well. Monday, we got a call that Michelets cousin in Santiago had been attacked and was in the hospital. Michelet had to be with him all week long in the hospital in Santiago, and we had a stressful time keeping in contact and trying to plan his baptism with him. 

Long story short, Michelet is planning on moving back to Haiti because of the things that happened with his cousin. He doesn't want to be baptized to leave the church and the country right after, and we had to cancel his baptism date for this Saturday. 

We will continue working with him and praying for him so that he can be baptized. 

On a happier note, I hit the one year mark a few days ago! 

As a celebration, I cut the pocket off an old shirt and burned it as tradition. 

A MONGALOID snail found his way into the house, and I invited him to the ceremony. 

I think it was well enjoyed. 

Well, to wrap things up, God knows everything that we pass thru. 

Difficulties, problems,joys, and all the other things. He knows what's going on and He will always make a way for us. Even though sometimes the fruits may fall off the tree a little early, we can always try to pick em up and clean em off, and there are always other trees to go searching for other ripe fruits. :) 

Thank you for everything, for the prayers and love, it is being sent right back your way. 

I love you all, have a great week!

MUCH LOVE,

Elder Grant Lewis

There we go folks, 

the Temple Of Concepcion Open House has finally come to a close.

After about a year of inviting, teaching, and preparing, 

we had a super exciting and stressfull month of open house, 

and the people of Chile (and the Concepcion mission) have recieved great blessings, and miracles. 

Being office rats, my comp and I have been working like MACHINES to help out with the temple. We've been running from the sector, to the temple, to the office, to the temple, and so forth. It's been wild but it's been amazing to be in the temple, so often, in the final days of the open house. 

On Saturday, the last day of the open house, there was a HUGE line out the door for all the people that wanted to get in. 

Our mission president called us to action, to gather a group of sister missionaries and assemble a missionary choir to go sing to the people waiting outside. 

To put it short, we sang for an hour straight with the missionary choir and with President and Sister Catala, and people loved it! 

There was a huge group of people around us, taking pictures and videos and enjoying the sweet sounds of some rusty pipes from ya man Elder Lewis. 

Along with the temple help, we had to help buy new stuff for the houses of the new missionary couples that will be wokring in the temple. We had to buy 5 of everything that you'd need in a new house. Kitchen ware, washers and dryers, furniture, beds, desks, the whole spring roll. 

$3000 and a trip to the homegoods store, and a whole day of prepping houses, we have 5 houses all ready for our senior pals. :)

I'm a little short on time, so I will end this letter off with a few thoughts from General Conference. 

One of the talks I liked most was the talk from M. Joseph Brough. He talked about a trip to Alaska, where he and his buddies had lost all their supplies and had to tough it out for a week with nothing in the Alaskan wilderness. He also talked about the experience with his daughter as he and his wife served as mission presidents, and how she didn't want to serve a mission, but knew she had to. To keep it short, what I took away from the talk is that,

 WE CAN DO HARD THINGS. 

In the Boston house, my mom always had a sign in the house that said,

 WE CAN DO HARD THINGS. I never really understood it, but it's a rather simple and a common phrase that is actually very complex and can require a lot of thinking and pondering to really undertsand the meaning. 

The mission has been a hard thing for me. I remember thinking, "Man, why do I have to serve when I've been a missionary all my life, the only member in my school growing up, all my friends and coworkers and neighbors being nonmembers. I shouldn't have to keep doing this when I've already done it all my life!" 

Same with the daughter of Brother Brough, she had already lived in the mission with her parents, and she didn't want to do it again. But she did it, even though it was hard!

Even though the mission has been so hard, Im doing it. And I've already made it a YEAR! Its not easy but it's doable because when we do Gods work, He always makes it doable. 

The hard things don't need to detain us, they just need to make us think, 

"What do I need to do so that I can have Gods help in this new task?" 

It's important to remember that God does NOT want us to fall, He wants us to climb higher so that we can be closer to Him. 

I know that this is His work and that He helps us when we need it most. I love you all and thank you for your love, letters, and prayers. 

May you all have a great week, stay safe and keep going forward! 

See ya next week!

-Elder Lewis

Put on your helmets, strap into your seatbelts, and take your protein pills because this email is about. to get. WILD!

To give you guys a quick overview, this may have been one of the most fun/most interesting weeks of my mission, and I've got lots to write, so lets get to it. 

We started this week off with our good pal Michelet and one of our favorite families here in the ward with a Family Night!! 

We talked about prophets and current revelation in preparation for the conference. 

We then stepped it up and made our own completos! 

To let you all know, whoever said that completos are gross, they're LYING! 

Completos are GREAT! 

I will bring it to the USA when my time comes. 

After that, we kept working as scheduled, until our mission president called us asking to bring a mattress from one house to another, a good 15 minutes away on the highway. 

So, my office buddy and CCM companion Elder Gumm and I took the call to action and hopped in the 2018 Toyota Yaris (we didnt have access to the van) and got to work. 

As we found the necessary materials to make the move (ie. string), we made our way to the house to get the mattress. 

We swiftly positioned it on top of the Yaris, and ghetto-tied it down to the roof. Let me tell you, God knew that we were a little too proud of our work, and made things a little more interesting for us. :) 

As we zoomed down the highway, with a mattress rigged to the top of the car, feeling good about our work, I glanced in the rearview mirror, and saw that our MATTRESS WAS SLIPPING RAPIDLY OFF THE BACK OF THE CAR! 

I sprung into immidate action, jumped into the back seat, rolled down the window, and hung onto the flopping mattress for a good 5 soul wrenching minutes. We pulled into the nearest supermarket, rethought our plans, humbled ourselves, retied the mattress to the car, and a little more slowly, made our way to the final destination. 

WHAT A NIGHT!

The next day, we had to help with the change of sister missionaries in the temple. 

One group was heading out and one was coming in. We had to bring a group of sisters to the bus station and drop them off there. On the way, we ran into a bit of public misfit as somebody had made a burning road block in our path!! 

We weren't about to let our sisters miss their bus, so we turned on the DareDevil mode and BLEW through the firey road block and made it to the bus station in time! 

One of the nights of this week, I was enjoying a nice carrot. One of my buddies, Elder Watts, is a carrot fanatic, and had told me that "the heart of the carrot has spines". I confirmed that statement this week, as I made the discovery of the spikey heart carrot.

 Very interesting stuff. 

As we were closing the week down, our president announced a MARATHON! 

We would gather all the remaining temple inviations, meet up at the University of Concepcion, and we would run as a mission to the temple, giving invitations to everybody that we passed on the street! 

We ran and ran and handed out all that we had. We all met up at the temple, and cried our battle chant with our President. It was a super fun experience, and something I will never forget. My legs might not ever forget it either, i'm still VERY sore. 

As we progressed into the weekend, we started CONFERENCE!!! On Sunday, we had Michelet come with us to the conference! 

It was a super cool experience to be there with him, and listen to the phophet and apostles speak. He felt the spirit, and was very excited to be there, learning so many new things. After the conference, he told us the talks that he liked the most, what he learned, and how he could use those teachings in his life. He sent messages to his family in Hiati about the conference and all the photos that we had taken together. 

On the bus ride home, we took the wrong bus and ended up at the bus station, 

VEERY far away! 

We hung tight, and the bus made a long loop and dropped us off at the house. It was an interetsing confernce weekend!

Obviously, there was a lot to take in this conference. I will be sure to adrress some of the things I liked the most and what impacted me personaslly next week. 

I need some time to study :)

Anyway, I hope you're all still with me and havent launched into space yet. 

To say the least, its been a real good week. I love you all and thank you for your letters and emails, thanks for the prayers as well, THEY ARE FELT!

Hope you all have a great safe week, see ya in 7!

much love,

-Elder Grant Lewis

Que intense music:

The Biggest. Order. The Office. Has EVER SEEN!!!

As the mission has been working hard with the new temple, we've been running low on materials. 

We actually ran out of Books of Mormon (dont fight me on how to say it, thats how it is!) and we were really low on basically everything else. 

So our mission Presidente called out the big guns, and I got to work! 

It was the biggest material order this office has ever seen, and I got the honor to call in the nuke with my name! 

We spent a whole morning unpacking, organizing, and stocking the offfice shelves. 

That stack of Books of Mormon is 4 layers deep, we ordered over 1000! 

We now have sufficent boxes to make a nice missionary fortress. 

Following up with the classic BMW photo roll, I found this old beauty parked outside near the Temple, and I had to stop and grab some pictures. 

I've got a problem. 

After about a year without chocolate chip cookies, my mother sent me a pack of cookie mix, and i sent them to the office worker Hermana Gibby asking her to cook em up for me, and man did they turn out good! 

I gave some to a few members, and they came to me this Sunday asking for more. THANKS BETTY CROCKER!

Speaking of not having cookies in over a year, I'm coming up on my one year mark! Actually, I'll be coming home the 1st of October in 2019, so I'll be home in exactly a year! How fast the time goes.

We've been helping out a lot with the temple open house, perks of being the office man! We had to bring in some heaters for our sisters that are killin it behind the scenes, sending out all the references that we get from the open house. 

We also got to do some latenight, after hours running around Concepcion to help the sister missionaries get to their new houses and whatnot. 

It's been crazy, but it's been such fun work. 

Now into the REAL good news of this week. You guys might remember Camila from a few weeks ago. As I said, she dropped of our radar and we had to cancel her baptism for good. 

My comp and I had been pretty bummed and we were a little low in spirit. One night, we were out searching for people, and after some stingy Chileans slammed the door in our faces, we were about to give up. We turned to walk away, and saw a Haitian man, standing iluminated under a street light. My comp looked at me and said, "Wanna try him?" I shrugged and we walked towards him. We met Michelet, a Haitian man that's been in Chile for 9 months, but lived in the Dominican Republic for 8 years and speaks spanish very well. 

We talked and talked, and he told us that he'd been searching for a church ever since he got here. I immediatly perked up and invited him to church this Sunday. He excitedly replied that he would love to go! We headed out, our spirits high and new hope in our hearts. 

The next day, we had planned to go to the temple with a family, but they told us 2 hours before we were going to go, that they couldnt make it. We got bummed again, and my comp remembered our new friend Michelet. We gave him a call, and asked if he'd like to go visit the temple with us. He said, "Yes! Give me 15 minutes and lets go!" We passed by to find him, and he was waiting for us outside. We went to the temple, and we got to know him really well. 

He had lost his older brother 2 years ago, and is working to support his brothers, sisters, and mother in Haiti. We went thru the temple, and I knew he felt the spirit. As we left, we asked him what he thought... 

He told us, "I feel so content," and told us that he had learned a lot and loved the visit. Sunday, we picked him up to go to church. He was waiting for us, ready in his church clothes, with his Book Of Mormon in hand. We got to church, the whole shabang, and we decided to invite him to baptism. We went to the font, and just asked him, "Michelet, would you like to be baptized?" He told us "Yes", no questions asked. He told us he wants to be clean and start new, and he knows that God will bless him and his family. 

Long story short, Michelet has a date for the 20th, and he is HYPED! 

AND SO ARE WE!!! 

In the 3rd hour, the Bishop asked Michelet to introduce himself, and the things he said touched my heart. He said he was here in the church because his new brothers, his new friends invited him and he wanted to learn more about God and that he was very excited to be here. 

He said, "The missionaries are my best friends, and my family said that the best friends are friends from the church. And I'm excited to finally have the opportunity to learn more about God and be in church. God bless you all". 

I know that this work isn't easy, and it's not supposed to be. But God gives us the blessing, in this case the miracles, that we need when we need them. 

God gave us the miracle of Michelet, and I know that we found him because God wants him to progress. This expereince has been one of the sweetest experiences from my mission, and I Know that God made it just for me. 

I love this work and I know that it helps people, especially Michelet. 
I love you all and thank you for your weekly love and support. 

You're the best. Have a great week, stay safe and keep rolling!

much love,

-Elder Grant Lewis