GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!!!!!!

     Well if you didn't know here in Chile EVERYONE loves soccer or futbol or la pelota almost more than life itself. And because of that about half of the activities in the church are games of soccer. That being said we had an activity this past saturday, yep you guessed it is was a game of soccer with less active members and investigators. Being the only gringo I was at a disadvantage, or at least that's what they want you to think. Suffice it to say that when it came down to the wire, one minute left to play, tied game, other team has the ball what do we do, well first thing is you have to get the ball, check, and to make a long story short you have to kick it up the field where Elder Hutchins can make a diving header to score the winning goal, be it Chilean, Argentian, Mexican, or Preubian, not a single one of them could stop the gringo from scoring the winning goal!

     In our mission and throughout the world there is a obligation for every single mission, TALK TO EVERYONE, and sometimes is can be a very interesting assignment. For example this week we talked to this one lady who, when we went to talk to her told us she wasn't allowed to talk to us, then talked for a minute or two non-stop, then shook our hands to say goodbye and said once again she wasn't allowed to talk to us, then began again to talk for another minute or two, to sum it up she did this same thing 7 times before she actually walked away and then she still was turned around walking away talking to us....okay....

      So our ward has not updated their ward mission plan since 2005, yep about time to update that thing. So along with the Ward mission leader, we cooked up a slightly better plan focusing on the same things that our mission is now focusing on, Baptize, Reactivate, Retain. Baptisms come principlely from references, reactivation comes from visiting the less active members, and retention comes from....ACTIVITIES!!!! We are going to have two activities every month for the mission work in the ward! Sweet, of course it would have been better if the ward came up with this idea instead of waiting for an outside source to do it, but hey the Lord knows.

     News on the Riquelme family, still awesome and still gone on vacation, here in Chile there is only one time in the year to go on vacation, January and part of February, and everyone leaves for about a month and a half. And so they came back for a day, we taught them tithing (the last lesson) and they left again. But Elizabeth still wants to get baptized she just kinda has to be here in order to do it.

     We are teaching a young man (19) he is from Columbia and lives practically all of the commandments, word of wisdom, law of chastity (those are the two big ones) and he likes the church, he just doesn't want to get baptized yet because he doesn't understand why he needs to do it. The thing with him is he doesn't have goals, he can't see the bigger picture. We have explained it to him many times that it is essential to return to live with God again, but if you don't have a goal to live with God again, it must no be too important to you. Basically it comes down to goals, to dreams, to desires, to wishes, to hope. you gotta have them. If you don't have any of them, life just womps. You have no motivation to act. I know that Hyrum (that's his name) has these things, he just told us that he doesn't because he used to have them and none of them worked out and that he never accomplished any of his goals that he had. 

I love all of you guys, youre awesome!

Elder Hutchins