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Elder Cody Moss
This is a blog of my two missionaries Elder Cody Moss, Chile Concepcion and Sister Amber Moss, Chile Santiago North.
This week was awesome! We had a lot of lessons and we had a…BAPTISM! Yeah yesterday Hermana Dinsdale and I decided that we were going to do our hair all pretty for Brian's baptism so in the morning I pull out my curling hair which I have never used here in Chile. I plug it in and am curling my hair I had put half of it up. So I curl one side and then I'm curling the next side and I start smelling something. I'm like man this curling iron reeks what is its problem so I bring it down from my head to look it and there is a chunk of my hair melted to the curling iron. I'm like in shock and thinking what in the world. Then I go to lay the curling down and I start scraping the hair off and my iron starts to bend in half. Right where the metal connects to the plastic and the plastic is like taffy. It was so crazy. So I touched one of the curls and the end of it just crumbled into my hand I was freaking out. So much for growing my hair out. Anyway I didn't have much time to look at the rest or anything so I used Hna Disndales curling iron from Chile and it finished the top half of my hair beautifully. So we go to church do the baptism then the rest of the day we come home and I start checking out the damage to my hair oh man. So it only burned one side of my hair and it was the bottom part so lucky you can't tell too much....so tells me Hna Dinsdale. I had about 4 or five locks that the ends were just burned to death. When I touched them they just slide off and crumbled. I lost about 1 inch to 1 and a half in the length of my hair. And that only on one side of my head. Thats a pretty sweet hair cut right. But my top hair covers it up so it's not to bad. We told the Elders when they called at night and they were soooo sad for me. I think they were closer to tears than I was. I think I was just more in shock and upset cuz now I have to start growing my hair out again. Plus I don't know if I should get a hair cut or not cuz the people here seriously don't know how to cut hair. Usually they give the girls hair cuts that are a lot shorter then they want and it looks like a mulet. Honesty I think it would look better to keep my hair half burned off then to get a hair cut from one of them. So their is a sister in our mission that studied cutting hair so I'm praying that I get put with her or I'm in her zone next change. lol Hna Dinsdale is going to help me get some anti shock hair stuff to help my hair out so... Don't worry I'm not bald and its not horrible it is just bad.
Despite my bad hair day, Brian was baptized and he was so happy and excited about it. It was really really good. His mom and brother came. They are both inactive and Brians brother came to all of the classes in church and then for his baptism his mom came. We had to wait a Little bit for Brians grandma to come because they had a family emergency and his cousin I think it was or had been drowning or something and was in the hospital so the grandma was there but then she came for the baptism. The family Contrerez had been bringing Brian to church so their son Thomas is now friends with Brian. And Brian is super humble and spiritual and just thinks the world of Thomas. Brian asked Thomas to give a talk at his baptism so Thomas did and it was really neat to see. Then Thomas' dad baptized Brian. Brian is basically part of the family Contrerez now it is so great to see how much they love him and how much he loves them. He has his own family but they are always doing their own things and I don't think Brian gets very much attention but this family is really great and they are always helping him now. It is pretty crazy to see how people fall away from the church here. Brians mom was the president of the Relief Society and now is super inactive. The spirit was really, really strong at his baptism and his mom really liked it. Brian even gave his testimony it was so cute. We still have to teach him how to give a testimony cuz he went up and folded his arms and closed his eyes and gave his testimony. He was saying I thank thee for. He said for the missionaries and everyone that help. Brian seriously has the most powerful prayers that I have ever Heard. He is very special and so was his baptism.
One of my converts here was trying to share the gospel with his x wife and kids and the mom started to listen but then didn't want anything to do with it and then wouldn't give the kids permission to be baptized and then she was doing some really bad things so Ricardo was really really sad and started to drink and smoke again. It made me really sad because he was the person that I saw change the most in the mission and now he says he doesn't know what to believe and he doesn't feel like he can change. We are working with him and I always try to remind him of what he asked us when we were teaching him. Richardo asked what happens if I don't feel the same after my baptism. And we told him that he wouldn't feel the same if he wasn't doing what he need to do to have the spirit. Keep the commandments, Read, Pray and go to church. I asked Ricardo which of these he was doing and he said none of them. That is why he has fallen and that is the importance of keeping the commandments. They protect us they don't prohibit us. After he was baptized he was so different he was the happiest person that I had ever seen. So I saw him the other day after a long time and I couldn't believe how he looked. Just looking at him at his face you could see that he was different that he wasn't the same that he wasn't living the gospel and the hardest things for me to see was that now he wasn't happy. Before he was so happy he was just walking on clouds when we talked to him and now you can see in his face that he doesn't have that like he did when he was living the gospel. We are going to continue working with him and help him over come this.
This morning I finished translating the story that dad gave about Rusty. Their are like a million inactive in Chile. Every week we have to visit 10 people that are inactive. There are a ton. The people here hardly ever do their home teaching or visiting teaching and from that I have seen first hand how important it is for people to have home teachers and visiting teachers. If people don't have this support they will fall away they won't feel loved. So I'm planning on sharing this talk with people to help them see the importance of visiting and helping others. And that even if it takes years to help them it is worth it.
This week we did the coolest things with the Elders. We changed sectors for a day with Elder Mudgett and Elder Elder. Everyone else thought we were crazy for doing it but it was awesome. It was so great to work in their sector and help them out. The reason that they wanted us to go there was to teach Cindy, one of their investigators. So Cindy has a problem with modesty so our job was to teach her how to dress modesty. The Elders felt a little awkward thinking about teaching it to her. So Hermana Dinsdale and I prepared one of the best law of chastity lessons. It was seriously awesome. Now after we had taught it the Elders are even saying that it has changed their lives. (We told them cuz the lesson went so well they wanted to know everything we said.) So the title was A Virtuous Woman and we talked about how precious we are as women and that we should dress and take care of our bodies because it is sacred and it is a gift from God. We also talked about the way that we dress influences the way that we act. We talked about how we help the men that have the priesthood when we dress modestly. We talked about tattoos, earrings and marriage. It was awesome I have never felt the spirit so strongly in a law of chastity lesson. It was so good. I really have to say it has been one of my favorite lessons. Cuz then we even showed pictures from the ensign of virtuous women and Cindy had a lot of questions and loved it too. To top it all off Hna Dinsdale and I gave awesome testimonies of why we should follow this law. At end of the lesson Cindy said that she loved it and then she committed her self to reading the law of chastity pamplet it was really funny she said I like this pamphlet I'm going to read it tonight.