A week in Talagante!

It was hard for me to know what to share from this weeks letter. Elder Walz had limited time and some mild frustration as he tried to upload some pictures, which included photos of letters he'd hand written, to a computer with all Spanish instructions. I think he pretty much lost all of his pictures and I could tell he was frustrated. He is officially living in Talagante and experiencing a "Chilean" Spanish immersion! I'm told that "Chilean" Spanish is way different than textbook Spanish. I was also counseled that his first weeks and months can be extremely challenging as he attempts to transition from English studying to full time, 24 hours a day, SPANISH!! My heart ached for him as he expressed the need for a good blanket and some snacks, a better jacket and some English study material. He is truly at a point where he will learn to rely on the spirit for more than just inspiration to teach the gospel. He will be praying for temporal help as well as spiritual. He will feel and experience what some of the struggling people of the area feel which I'm sure will help him learn to appreciate and love them in an entirely different way. Letters of love and encouragement will be appreciated!!

Elder Walz wasn't able to write much of a letter about the mission, but I want to include this in the blog for the sake of memories, observation of transition, and something to laugh about in a few years. I usually clean up the typos which are caused by the Spanish spell check, but I want Talon to be able to look back on this day as it was, haha!:)

10:13am Talagante!

Okay so the things ineed are

my blue columbia jacket from dad

a blanket :) Mine are trash here.

Oil canester

Ensign or liahona in english

Any snacks

Missioany reference book

Fine point pens from Pigma Micron 03  .35 m ina lot of black and then a few colors. I hear they are on amazon

Arizona temple postcards of the onesin az in deseret book if they are cheap :)

I also wanted you to call pvcc and ask if they need you to pick up my diploma cuz i never did haah

Oh and put ctholic jesus sttickrs on the package to make it get here sooner :)

Okay so sorry im writing so bad. Ihav like no time now. Onehour to writemy pres, you, dad, and tanner. I did write a letter for you and took pics so im going to try and send those pictures.! Im glad the pres got the letters to you :) He was pretty cool.

Well i just some how deleted allmy photos onthe memory card! :( Im kind of upset haha I had a lot of things. But anyways i will send the picture next week of the letter i guess. I am almost out of time :( I had a really bad first week but hopefullyitwillget better. I couldnt understand anyone i was teaching I just would bear mytestimony here and there. And then i just delteted my photos because i couldnt read what was going on.

Anywys i am trying to keep my head up. Love you mom. Your the best! Have a great week! I hopeyou understandthe list but if not i can clarify when i have moe time next week.

Love Elder Walz

10:19am Just Breath:)

Everything will be fine Talon. You will get this. Sorry about the pictures, stupid computer!;) I'll get your things sent!❤️❤️❤️

10:20am re: Just Breath:)

Haha thank you so much! I just said a paryer and looked up and saw this! :) So you understood everything for the

most part. I have a second longer because they are trying to makemymemory card work againso i can take photos

of my emails haha Butthanks I really do just need to breath! haha

Love you mom :)

My first area...Talagante!

Elder Walz was able to write a hand written letter in the midst of transfers..I have typed it out..

Hello!

I am officially out of the MTC! We just got to our Mission President's house and took pictures and got to know them a little. Now we get to write letters to you while waiting to be interviewed. It is already so cool here. Their house is huge and super nice. They are also pretty young. They have four kids ranging from 16-8. Another cool thing about them is that they have traveled a lot. President grew up in LA and his wife grew up in San Francisco. But after they got married, they have lived in Provo, Miami, DC, Canada, Holland, Argentina, and China. Each one of their kids was born in a different country.

So as of now, I don't know who my trainer is. We found out our P-day will be on Mondays. I am very excited to hear where I will go. My teacher in the MTC said there will be new missionaries in his ward. The President's assistants said some of us will go to the coast. I am so excited to be on a mission. Everyday I feel a stronger feeling telling me I am where I'm supposed to be. I'm so grateful I was able to be raised in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. I finished reading the Book of Mormon this week. I loved reading it. I don't know why it was so hard to read back home. Well, I have to go. I sure love you guys. I wouldn't be here without ya! Have a great week and I will see your emails Monday! 

<3 Elder Walz



The following is a very special and sacred letter we received today from the mission president. I am so grateful for his prayerful support of Talon. When Talon was set apart as a missionary, his good Stake President taught us how not only is Talon called to serve in a place, he is called to serve with and learn from a specific mission president and his wife. I can already feel confirmation of that.

24 August 2016

Dear Brother and Sister Walz,

Sister Woodward and I were pleased to welcome your son, Elder Walz, to one of the finest missions in the world, the Chile Santiago West Mission.  He is well and happy, and we are impressed with his enthusiasm for the work.  After departing from the MTC, he arrived at our mission home and I interviewed your son. He is a wonderful worthy person. We had lunch together and afterward, we went to the mission office which is the Stake Center of Maipú. My Assistants and office missionaries then gave him a brief orientation of the mission. He met his new companion, and they departed for his first area!

Elder Walz has been assigned to work with Elder Agostinelli, who will serve as his training companion.  Trainers are chosen for their competence, patience and dedication, and are selected after prayerful consideration.  With this letter we are including a photograph taken of your son and his new companion with Sister Woodward and myself.

Please accept our deep appreciation for raising such a fine son.  We feel a genuine fellowship with you in supporting and providing him this opportunity to grow spiritually as he labors to bring souls unto Christ.  It is my prayer that the Lord will inspire us all to sustain him in this challenging assignment. He will experience some of the most difficult as well as the most rewarding moments of his life here. Please write him frequently, weekly if possible.  Express your love, support, and confidence in him.  You will witness miraculous changes in his life as he engages fully in the service of others.

If you have any questions or if we can assist you in any way, please do not hesitate to write.

Sincerely,

President Christopher G. Woodward

Chile Santiago West Mission

Mission President

Mission president and new companion

Pokemon GO

Well, I can't believe its my last P day here! This week one of the talks we watched was Elder Holland on the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon. It is a powerful one! I loved it!

So this week I got to go on splits for 4 hours! It was so great. I worked with Elder Lima and he is from Brazil. He spoke pretty good English though so he was able to teach me a lot. We took the metro to the East Mission and started walking through his area. We tried knocking on some investigator doors but no one was home so he said, "lets sit down and say a prayer and ask the holy ghost to help us out" because we couldn't find anyone to teach. He asked me to say it and in Spanish of course. Then not even 5 minutes later we contacted someone at a street light and they were interested and he set up an appointment! We then closed it with a prayer. She asked us to pray for some of her emotional problems and then Elder Lima said absolutely! And told me to say it! I was like uh oh! But the prayer actually turned out pretty good. But then it gets better. About 15 minutes later, we found a 16 year old kid at a park playing Pokemon Go! My companion told me to contact him. So I went over and asked him how he was doing and stuff and then told him my family played Pokemon go before I left to come here for my mission. He thought that was cool and then my companion took over. After about 2-3 minutes, I was lost but then the kid started getting teary eyed. My companion pulled out a Book of Mormon and gave it to him. In the paper copies of the Book of Mormon, they have pictures in the front. Elder Lima explained the Book in a cool way. He opened it to the first picture which was of Christ and explained that the book was another testament of Jesus Christ. And then the next picture was of Lehi leaving Jerusalem and then a picture of them on the boat coming to the Americas. Then he just said the rest is about the trials of the people here trying to live the gospel and that there were prophets that kept records. Then he hands the book to him and gives me the eyes! I was super nervous again but I just bore my testimony on the reason I was here and that it was because of that book. The teachings in the Book of Mormon have made me the person I am and it has brought me much happiness. And then I told him if he lives by the teachings in there the same will come to him. It was such a cool experience. The rest of the contacts were pretty quick but they almost all made appointment times! It was such a testimony builder! It was hard to understand investigators. Well I pretty much didn't understand hardly any actually, haha! But my companion was awesome and helped me out. Then when we got back we got Papa Johns for dinner! It was great! Other than that, everything was pretty much the same. We had a total Spanish day yesterday again and they are always a little quieter because we don't know what to say haha. This was the last week of going to the temple every Wednesday. It has been great starting off the days with such a great feeling that you get while in the temple!

Finally some REAL FOOD!

Hey Hey! 

Well the new missionaries arrived! They call us veterans except we barely know anything! 

Okay so a few cool things about this week! 

The cafeteria is getting redone so we have been eating in the gym of the church on the grounds and GOOD NEWS, the food has been so much better!! We have had lasagna, chicken salads with ranch, meatballs and potatoes, and pizza! Yesterday for lunch we got Papa Johns! It was great! 

We also had a clean room challenge this week and we won that. So the president's wife made us chocolate chip cookies! That was the night of the pizza so yesterday was just great! 

We ended up not going proselyting last week, so we have that tomorrow! We did get to go contacting and my companion and I gave out our first Book of Mormon haha! It was to a 17 year old kid. He let us practice our Spanish with him and then after a while we got into church stuff and he was interested so we gave him a book! It was super cool. But yeah tomorrow I will be going on splits with a missionary from the east mission for 4 hours! Pretty scary but now i can at least understand Spanish. My Spanish is still slow though, especially past and future tense. Yesterday we did a solo Spanish day so that was difficult but super beneficial! 

I've been reading in Alma this whole week and I'm to chapter 40! Its been pretty awesome! He is like the best missionary ever haha! He gives up being the top guy almost to go around preaching the gospel. He doesn't care how many people shut him down, he keeps teaching and just loving all the people! It is really cool to read. My favorite scripture and the one I memorized in Spanish this week is Ether 12:27. It's crazy, I'll be out in the mission field in 2 weeks!

This is for Turner and Tyson! Pokemon Go just released here this week and everyone is going nuts. Even our teachers when they walk out of class haha! Then everyone when we went contacting at a park were just roaming with friends playing it. 

Okay here are some pics:

My roommates finally got me to put up the flag last week. 

Me being silly in front of the flag 

We decided we had to take a pic in front of my flag!

I found some clay tennis courts!:)

 Here in Chile they have a grand mac! I only got the super mac!

We got mcdonalds last week! So good!

A fake bose mini sound link for only $30. It sounds pretty good!

Half way through the MTC!

Hey everyone!

A cool spiritual story from this week was about the brother of Jared. We got a new teacher for the second half of the MTC and he is great so far. We read Ether 3:1-6 over like 20 minutes. Its about when the brother of Jared went to carve the 16 rocks out of the mountain and then take them up to the top of the hill. That is all I would think about the story before but he had us slow down and think about it. He  probably didn't have any climbing gear, nor tools to carve out the rock. So he probably fell a few times and hurt his hands many times and was probably frustrated but he still eventually climbed all the way up the mountain. When he got up there, he still was so humble that he asked for forgiveness for his weaknesses or something like that before he asked the Lord for help making the rocks glow. I don't have my scriptures with me, otherwise i would summarize it better but read those 6 verses again with the mentality of putting yourself in the situation of climbing a mountain by yourself and having the pressure of your people needing you to do that for them! It was pretty cool :) 

Also there is a talk by James Hamula about having a sober mind. If you haven't heard it, look it up! haha It talks a lot about the fact that we were chosen to be here at this time and then also that we were able to defeat Satan and temptation in the world before this. So we still have all the same personalities we just need to find them again. This was really cool to me because i finally got my patriarchal blessing printed off this week and it says at one point that I was valiant and a leader to people in the spirit world. Its super cool that I read that the day before I heard that talk! 

On Friday we go on splits with the missionaries in Este! haha Its going to be crazy. We are going out for 3 hours and I still don't feel great about my Spanish. It is certainly coming along but not all the way. So I am half scared but also excited. My Spanish is typically better in lessons so that is nice and also a testimony of the gift of tongues from the spirit. 

We also got to hear from Elder Zaballos which is one of the 70! He was super cool but i forgot my notes on the talk. :( 

This last Sunday our district sang He Sent His Son in Sacrament Meeting. That was scary but everyone said we did good!

SO its crazy that I am half way through the MTC!! I feel like i just got here. haha 

Well I dont have a whole lot for you this week. Nothing too crazy happened except the 3 weekers all left for their missions and we got a whole bunch of new Elders today. I also have no pics because we wrote before we left to go out to the city. :( Usually i can take pics while I am out and then send them when I get back. So sorry about that. 

I love you so much Mom! 

Love Elder Walz

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