Por fin te tengo de nuevo al lado mio

Hey!

So this was my first week here with Elder Diegoli, and it went pretty well for us.  Everybody really likes him, and he's fit in really well.  A little information about him.  He's from Sao Paulo, Brazil, he's 19, turn 20 in January, and he has a year in he mission.  He's had four sectors, and seems to be really motivated to work here in Valle de Azapa.  Apart from that, we had a really good week.  We have a few investigators that are progressing really well, especially Nirva, who is haitian.  I can't remember if i've already talked about her but she's one of the little blessings we've received here, and she's very prepared and very pregnant!  We had a really good lesson with her this week and keeps moving forward.  ANOTHER COOL THING is that Carlos, the really small almost chinese looking guy that was baptized last week, told us in a lesson that the night he was baptized he had a dream where he was standing on a mountain looking out at some fields and he heard a loud voice say "at last I have you again at my side."  It's been a blessing to be able to know him and I know he's just gonna keep moving forward.  All of the people who were recently baptized keep moving forward and are all doing very well, but this weekend none of them were able to be confirmed because they were traveling or got to sacrament meeting late.  So we're gonna keep working with that.  This week we were also caught in a MONSOON wow there was so much rain.  It was hard to work in but luckily we had a few people who let us in to meet with them.  We also made a lot of progress with Nacho's mom this week.  She opened up to us and told us that she's not happy with God for taking her brother from her.  We're looking forward to meeting more with her.  We also got to have lunch with some dope people and eat some dope food.  We had hamburgers one day and had a barbacue the next.  We have been eating like kings down here in the valle.

Some crazy stuff that happened too is that we saw ANOTHER fight, between two chicas in the street that just wanted to hurt each other real bad and there was a guy breaking them up.  We were kind of watching for a second, and then we felt like we should move away from the splash zone so we left.  The other crazy thing is that Elder Diegoli has the funny custom to talk to trees as we walk.  So he pretty much says hello to every tree and every dog we see.  Kinda a nut ball, but you've gotta love him.  I gave out two books of mormon this week with my testimony inside, it's a new kind of initiative that we're doing here in our zone, and it sure does feel good to know that with that book goes my affirmation of it.  I know that the Lord's church has been restored and that the work that we're doing here is sacred.  I hope you all have a great week.

Elder McCurdy
ps sorry for the lack of pictures this week

I was scared of dentists and the dark

HEy all
This week was a very good one.  This week I have had a special appreciation for the life that I have and for all of the blessings that i have been given.  We've been teaching a kid named Valerio recently, who is a really great kid and has always had good questions for us.  We finished his lessons this week and we had a big powerful experience talking about the temple and patriarchal blessings and things like that.  I've come to realize that everything is blessings.  We receive so many things every day and we don't even come to notice them.  It's been great to be here and be able to learn so much.  Elder Moss and I had the opportunity this week to go clean the baptismal font!!  That was fun...(?) maybe not so fun but the font looked spick and span.  We also met an investigator named Juan Carlos who was super cool.  He had been meeting with the elders in the other side of the ward and wants to be baptized, together with his wife.  They have a half complicated situation but are really strong and are persevering.  I also had another interchange with Elder Patterson, because he had to come do some more baptismal interviews for us.  On the night of the interchange we made a fire in our backyard.  We searched and looked and asked and made sure that it wasn't against the rules, and the we did it.  We burnt an old door we had out back and our boy scout days helped us make a dang good fire. (Life scouts>eagle scouts) We also met a new investigator named Nirva, who moved here recently from another part of Santiago.  You all will definitely hear more about her.  We also had another zone attack this week in a different part of Renca, and we were running really low on time because we had to get back to my sector, but in the moment when we were like eh do we go now or, we decided to knock one more house, and a super receptive lady came out.  Bang bang.  We got to top the week off with the baptisms of Carlos Cornejo and Valerio Gajardo.  It's been such a blessing to get to know them and they were able to be baptized this Sunday.  See the blog for some dope photos and one really fun filled video.  Unfortunately yesterday I had to say goodbye to Elder Moss because his time here in Renca ran up and he went to go be in a different part of Santiago.  My new companion's name is Elder Diegoli and is from... wait for it..... FREAKING SAO PAULO BRAZIL literally my third comp from that part of that same freaking country.  I plan on working a lot on my Portugese in the time i have with him, which will be at least these next nine weeks.  On is first day in Renca we saw a terrifying fight in the street where three dudes were just beating the crap out of this one guy because he had done something wrong to him.  That was really scary but good thing we were fairly far away.  More than anything I'm so grateful to be here in Renca and to have the gospel in my life.  McCurdy out.

Elder McCurdy
ps. The guy in the photo with the statue things is my new comp.

Todo lo perdido se recuperara

Hey All!!

First of all I'd like to add the funny things that have happened this week.  For one thing I think I've seen more people throw up like right in front of me in this week than I have in my entire life.  Don't ask me why but that's been the case and I noticed and the other little funny thing is that almost every situation can be related to a Katy Perry song.  Whether it's "The one that got away" or "Dark Horse" or even the extra terrestrial song i've constantly found myself saying things that come from certain songs, and they all seem to be by Katy Perry.  The last funny thing is that last night Elder Quispe, (from peru) convinced Elder Moss that his aunt and his cousin are both llamas and that llama skin or fur is sacred in Peru.  Fun times in the mission.  Now to the serious stuff. (Well maybe not so serious)

We had a really good week!!  We had interviews with President on Wednesday and that went really well.  A lot of my interview was about Elder Moss, but we also talked a lot about my sector and how being back in the mission is.  We also got to see the assistants, who are Elder Birrell and Elder Santos.  You all probably don't remember, but Elder Santos was one of my zone leaders in Los Andes and is a good friend of mine.  It was good to see him again, he's doing as well as always.  Thursday we had a run in with an old investigator of ours.  He had accepted a baptismal date and everything was looking really good for us, until his wife (super catholic and not nice) told us that he was moving to the south.  So we hadn't seen him in like three weeks, and he told us on Thursday that SURPRISE his wife was lying and he's only going there for vacations.  He shared with us that he was glad to have seen us again, because he had thought a lot about the things we had shared with him.  One thing that he said that really touched me was "Yo creia que no existia el alma, y ustedes me ensenarion que si."  It was a beautiful moment and I got to share the book of mormon with him.  (I figure if we're not gonna see him for a little while longer he might as well have like the most important thing ever while he's gone.) I also had another interchange with my friend ELDER Patterson the EPAT that was fun but he's always bad luck so when he goes to other sectors your appointments always fall through.  It was very good though.  We went to go see this guy who says his dad is hidden by the government and he took us to see his sister so that she could explain more and she walked out the front door looked us in the eyes smile and said, "I'm sorry you guys are roped into this, my brother is crazy." and then he went off.  Just some funny mission stories I guess.  To cap off our week, Nacho and Isaias were both baptized.  I was able to baptize Isaias, and a priest from our ward baptized Nacho.  They were happy to have made the covenant of baptism with their Heavenly Father and Elder Moss and I were very happy to help them do it.  We also had some really good lessons with some of our people about the law of chastity and the temple and about how much of a blessing it is or it will be to have an eternal life with our families.  It's a blessing that we can't take for granted.  I love you guys and hope you're all doing really well and if you need anything, let me know.

Elder Rhodric McCurdy