June 28, 2017 - VIVA CHILE

Hello my friends! Another beautiful day down in Santiago, the weather is actually a little warm and sunny today, so that is a nice change of scenery. The dogs have started to chase around the other Elders so now it is their turn to suffer. And we just watched the Chile soccer game in the Confederations Cup against Portugal for Pday, overall it has been a pretty swell day. 

Ok where to begin? This week we made some serious progress with our investigators. we have strong concrete dates with people who actually have the desires to submit themselves to the Fathers will and follow the example of his son Jesus Christ. It has been a miracle watching the Atonement work in the lives of people, the ones we teach and also my own personal one. Elder Gates and I have also started to teach some of the kids who come to Mutual and play soccer with us. We had a good lesson in the street with them about The Restoration on Sunday, the Spirit really testified of the truth. The kids decided to learn more and have been studying the pamphlets that we have left them to read, so we are excited for the progress that we could have there. We also had a powerful lesson on Monday night with a less active member. He has been struggling with some life problems and choices and we had a powerful conversation on the power of Christ to break the strongest bonds, even those of heartache and addiction. Overall I am loving the work and how it is progressing.

Ok so funny story of the week happened about an hour ago. We were watching the Chile soccer game in the house of a member and all of the sudden during the penalty kicks the tv stopped working. We were freaking out and we decided to ran outside in the apartment complex, and we finished watching the game with the neighbors of the people we knew. We just burst in their door asking about the game, and they told us to sit down (Chileans are very nice when you want to watch soccer with them). Chile won, and we got scared. We were in a prettty rough part of the neighborhood, and everyone started leaving their house and yelling and going crazy, on top of that they might have been a little drunk, so it was interesting. But Chile won!

I love the mission and love how things are going, I can honestly say I have not had a better experience in my entire life. The people, places, animals, food, atmosphere and the lifestyle are all different, but in the end all of us are sons and daughters of a loving Heavenly Father. That is our purpose, to bring His lost souls back to him, and I would not rather be doing anything else. I love you!

Love,

Elder Tilghman

Jeremias 18

June 21, 2017 - Water War

Hey everyone this week was a great week down in Chile, and like always there was a weird story. Honestly the things that happen are ridiculous, sometimes the way the people think just makes me shake my head, but on with the email!

For the last few weeks we have been having some solid investigators come to church, and they are all Haitian. They have been coming to church and reading the book of mormon, but we are working with them about teaching that the Priesthood authority from God has been restored after the death of Jesus Christ, they have a hard time with that one. We have gotten the ward to help us with some of the Haitians needs, so we are helping them to find jobs, food and get some well needed supplies that people need, especially during the winter. We hope that through fasting and prayer, both our own and that of our investigators, that they can progress towards a baptismal date and be baptized! We have also had a ton of fun this past week trying to find and teach new people. It gets dark here at like 6 o'clock at night because we are in winter, so we spend a lot of time trying to teach and contact people in the dark, cold night. I mean, who wouldn't want to talk to two foreigners about Jesus outside in the dark street with no street lights in the middle of the ghetto? Makes logical sense to me. I honestly would not change it for anything, the work is exciting and fun at the same time, with of course the challenges that come every day, but everyone has those. 

On Saturday we went over to a neighboring ward to help them out with an activity where they had their chapel open and invited people on the street in to come take a look. Our job was to invite the people. But, the trick was we did it in the most dangerous part of our mission! So it was fun because we got to talk to a ton of fun characters in a few hours and I learned a lot that drugs are very bad for you because they make you lay on the street at 4 in the afternoon as cars swerve around you. Once again, do not do drugs children. 

Ok so fun story of the week. Last Thursday we got a call from another missionary that he needed help right away with a service in his sector. So we headed over there and what we did was find a mountain of water bottles. The man in charge wanted us to dump the water out and put the caps into a bucket, because he will sell them back to people for more money, and he got the bottles for free. It was the weirdest service ever, but we just dumped water out of bottles for 4 hours. But wait there is more. We went back the next day to go finish up (there were like 10,000 bottles) and the owner of the bottles came out of his house angry and flustered. We asked what happened and he told us the story. Apparently the night before, a bunch of high people had jumped his fence and tried to steal his bottles so that they could sell them to get drug money (once again, drugs are bad), and their noise woke the man up while he was sleeping. He yelled at them to leave, but they did not, so he pulled out a gun and started to shoot at them from his back patio so that they would leave. So basically someone almost died over empty, useless waterbottles. 

And that was our week! Pretty normal overall, I hope you all enjoy your week and take care in the heat down in Arizona!

Love,

Elder Tilghman

Alma 37:37

One year with Elder Scott

Guy from Arizona, Guy from Utah, Guy from Colombia

June 14, 2017 - Panflutes and Police

Hey everyone, this was a really cool week, we had some great lessons and contacts, and we had stake conference this weekend to wrap everything up. And of course as usual, life keeps getting stranger and stranger in the ghetto of Santiago. Who would have ever thought that the ghetto of Santiago could ever be the most exciting and interesting place on earth?

This past week was good for Elder Gates and I. We were able to talk and meet with a bunch of our Haitian investigators on a regualar basis last week and we fixed two baptismal dates with the ones that are fluent in English! They are called Sammy and Mathieu, they are great guys with great desires to serve and follow God and it has been awesome getting to meet and know them. They have come to church and are both reading the Book of Mormon, so we are getting excited for their baptismal dates and we are praying that they continue with their desires to learn. We have a couple other investigators that are progressing, but most of the people when we go to their house say that they are too cold to come talk to us and that they want to stay in their house, but it is what it is. We have an investigator whose name is Connie who is pretty cool. We found her going through a list of old investigators and she wants us to come by and start teaching again. She is taking cooking classes in her highschool, so she gives us cake and other stuff a lot when we pass by, delicious. 

This weeks funny story of the week was a little embarrasing. So we had to go into Santiago downtown on Friday to do some VISA stuff for my companion and we had to pay with a little card to get on the bus. I used my last charge when I got on, so I knew I had to recharge before I got on to ride again, so I felt fine. All of the sudden the bus gets stopped by the police and they scan everyones card to see if they had money on it or not, so that they could ride the bus. Well, they scanned my card and saw it had nothing, so we had to get off the bus and I had to present all of my papers and in the end, the policeman waved us on with a pat on the back. But the whole bus saw the little gringo get pulled off the bus by the police so that was fun. And on the way back we took the subway to get to a different part we had to go to and two guys got on with like the panflute that Peter Pan uses in the movie. They started rocking out playing soul songs, so that was pretty cool, they played really good.

Overall of course I am loving the mission, and loving the things that we are doing. I hope that you are all well and that you have a safe week!

Love,

Elder Tilghman

Marcos 5:41

My main man Elder Maiaitusi is leaving in two weeks!

Elder Allred is leaving as well

And Elder Smith!

Topalda is not leaving, I just saw him today

I love these guys

Top view of a Chilean street fair

Cloudy, rainy day in Santiago

June 7, 2017 - Lies

Hey everyone this week was a great week! Today for PDay we had a barbeque and played soccer here at the court in the church with all of the missionaries from the zone, it was like a tiny Memorial Day, except it was really cold. But the great thing about today was that there was a lot of leftover meat, so we will be set for a few days. 

The people here in our sector our great. We have a few investigators who are coming to church regularly now and really enjoy the members and learning about the gospel. However, they are all Haitians and live in the same house, and they want to wait a few more months to all get baptized until the rest of their friends come over so they can all get baptized at the same time, so we are working with them to keep reading the scriptures and learning every day so that they can prepare for baptism! The crazy thing is is that like all of them speak good English, so we are back to also teaching some of our lessons in English, which I am not going to lie, is pretty hard because Spanish is just easier now. A couple weeks ago Elder Gates and I were contacting people in the street and we ran into a guy named Juan. We were on our way to an appointment, and he yelled after us to go stop by his house on a Thursday. Well pretty much everyone here yells that at us, but they just like seeing us run all over the place, but we felt something different when Juan talked with us, and when we passed by two days later he was in his house!We shared the Restoration with him and he told us how he was baptized as a kid but had never been to the church after his baptism. We invited him to read the Book of Mormon and come to church, and he has been doing both of those things every week since we found him, it has been a miracle! Heavenly Father sometimes works in mysterious ways to carry out his work. 

Ok so funny story of the week. On Saturday we went to go visit a less active member in our ward, and his dad was standing out front of the house in the sidewalk. We have already met with him and talked with him before, so we know him and he knows us. We greeted him and asked if his son was in the house. He looked us square in the eye and said "I am the uncle, I am visiting for today, I do not know who you are." We have literally talked to this guy like 5 times. Then his son poked his head out the window and told us to come in the house and the dad told us "Actually I am the dad, I was lying to you, you can go in the house." Morale of the story kids is do not lie, it does nothing.

Overall as always, loving the mission, loving the things we are doing and I love serving the children of God. I hope you all have a good week!

Love,

Elder Tilghman

Helaman 14

May 31, 2017 - Yeah, I speak Portugese

Hey everyone this week has been a great week! Elder Gates and I are loving the area and the work and we are finally being able to see the fruits of our labors in the Lords vineyard. I am really excited to tell you all about it. 

Ok so as always we have to talk about the people. These past few weeks Elder Gates and I have been working with an investgator from Haiti named Nevel. We have been focusing on baptism and the blessings that come from being baptised and following God because he is having a hard time adjusting to life here in Chile. We had a great lesson with him last night about Gods love for us and how he blesses us everyday in our lives with little things, and Nevel said he felt the Spirit and that he wants to be baptized! We are pumped and are so happy for him because we know just how much his life will be blessed. This week as well we have been able to find some great new people to teach as well. We were going back to visit some future investgators and we ended up teaching two lessons to two Haitians, both of which speak perfect English. They loved what we taught and we are going back to speak with them some more, and they committed to come to church. This past week we also had some deep discussion with a Buddhist. I had never really talked to anyone of that faith, but then we found Tomas on Sunday. He is passing through some hard times and we sat down and talked with him about God and his own beliefs. It was a powerful lesson and we testified and bore witness of the power of Jesus Christ and the power of prayer, at the end of the lesson we all felt at peace, so we are also excited to see where things will take us. 

We have been having English classes here in the church every Saturday night for a while, but we have had trouble getting people to come, so last Thursday we went out to the street market that runs right in front of the house and started handing out cards to people inviting them all to English class. We had some really funny discussions. This guy started coming up to us and yelling at us in English, and he must have thought he was saying bad words but he was yelling words like "pancakes" and "bicycle" at us, and then he did not even come to English class. I guess he will just be walking around saying random English words for a while. 

Ok so other funny story of the week. We were in the street last night on our way home to the house and a lady approached us. She had some alcohol in her hand, so we knew right away it was going to be an interesting conversation. She asked us to give her a blanket because we were cold but we told her we did not have any blankets and she got mad at us. She then started to say some stuff in Portuguese because she thought we did not understand, but with the little Portuguese I have picked up, I then asked her a question, and she looked at us in awe. She then told us she did not need a blanket and then walked away, after asking us for money. ¿Voce fala Portugues?

I am loving the mission and I hope that all of you are doing awesome! I pray for you and wish you all the best!

Love,

Elder Tilghman

Ecclesiastes 12:13