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