September 18th, 2015: Hey Fam!

So president told us to all write our families really quick, I hope your all doing fine and well in the USA. 

Hey guys real quick I want to tell you all that I’m okay! The earthquake was crazy and I can’t believe that the earth could move that fast and in that many directions! To be honest at first my companion and I were walking and I asked him why everybody was shaking their fences, then it got really loud and started moving faster.  The good thing is that not that much damage was caused in my zone.  All the missionary’s are freaked out because they all live in apartment buildings, but hey they are all fine. I’m really nervous for my friends in Coquimbo. I hope mom and dad can find out what is going on with the Castillo family, I sure hope they are all right, Mom please tell them that I love them and that I’m praying for them! I’m fine and I doing lots of service to help others and to help this shaken country! Thanks for your prayers!

September 14th, 2015: New Change, New Faces and New Miracles!

Wow I can’t believe how fast the mission goes by, only six months left and I’m so full of emotions that I can’t even begin to describe! Its a strange mix of sadness and calmness, but we will see how it goes.  I’m so pumped on getting ready to bring even more people back into the true church of god! I can honestly say that as the time gets shorter and shorter I’m getting even more focused on my goals and my own progress as a missionary! 2 years are not long enough! So I have been thinking about extending my mission, Mom what do you think? Would you like it if I served another couple of months? I need everybody’s feedback! But I feel really good about it so I will see what happens!

My new companion is so cool! He is from Arizona, he is also younger in the mission which makes me feel like an older brother sometimes.  He reminds me a ton of Luke and how he acts, what he likes to eat and his form of character, he is always cracking jokes and I love it hahaha.  He is a great missionary and the best part is that his name is harder to say than mine! Finally I have someone who has a harder name than mine! His name is elder Mcelhaney, he is from Gilbert and such a stud, he has the same time in the mission as I did when I started in this sector.  I feel very blessed to have a companion that is so full of love and wants to help the other missionary’s progress even more! How blessed I am to have him as a companion.  The funniest thing happened when he first entered the shower the other day "we have two showers in our apartment which is a miracle by the way".  So I have never entered in the bathroom that he uses and he came out and told me that we have a serious problem.  We then became "Mario and Luigi" and decided that we have to become plumbers.  We tried to fix the bathroom and it ended up becoming a serious fight to the death.  All I can say is that my companion Elder Gutierrez is one dirty guy.  We started with the shower, it was clogged with like a little bear cub of hair that would not come out of the drain and it seriously fought us back.  Then my companion went crazy and the pipe broke down into the tub even more and I thought it was all over! But we got the water fixed and called the shower a lost cause because the toilet would not hold the water in! I will never become a plumber and that’s that.....long story short is that he uses my bathroom now, problem solved.

An awesome story that I wanted to share is an experience that Elder Mcelhaney had in his old sector, so what happened is that Elder Mcelhaney served in the same sector I served in in the great city of Valparaiso! So he knows all my converts and stuff, but he has a convert over in the sector and as we were talking he told me that his convert knows me! I was shocked! I asked him who it was and he told me the name and I still could not remember the name, and then he told me how I knew and met her............................. When I heard the story in the night I cried, I know the lord lives and he always prepares the way for his sons and daughters to come back to him

THE STORY

One day with Elder Puefua I told him we needed to do more service for the people here in Valpo, especially becuase it was Christmas.  So as we were walking and sweating in the hot humid day and trying to contact people I saw a frantic looking mother trying to hold her children together and watch as the moving truck literally dumped her stuff on the side of the road and drove away.  My heart felt really sad to see this women standing there so I went and we offered our help.  We found out why the movers just dumped it on the side of the road, she lives on one of the many hills in Valpo, so her house was below three hundred stairs and down a dirt path.  We began to accept the challenge and began to take sofas down these huge stairs.  It was so hot we began to sweat through our shirts, we also began to to get sunburned haha but that does not matter.  After a good hour of this service we got down sofas, chairs, kitchen stuff and a bed, then we shared a quick message about the restored church.  We planned a visit and when we showed up she was not there.  We lost contact with her and then I left.  Well Elder Mcelhaney found her in the street and she told him to come to her house quick because she wanted to hear the message again.  She said that I was an answer to her prayers that hot day after Christmas and God had this church planned out to help her raise her children, THEN SHE GOT BAPTISED!  What a miracle right?!!! I feel so blessed to be a part of that great saint in Valpo.  We all do acts every day to help people, everyone will remember those acts, we must literally help everyone!

I love you guys so much and I hope your all doing great! Please hold onto the Iron Rod!

Elder Logan Shill Passey

Doing Service in Quilipue

September 7th, 2015: This Week was Totally Awesome!

Well we had a great week! We received a visit from a general authority "Elder Viñas" we also had a huge activity to help a ward that is not doing to well in our zone, we also had a cool baptism with Javiera! It was really cool and I am so stoked to see all these people that I love to come into the church! How blessed I am! It was also so hot this week and I feel like I was dying under the heat and then it changed so fast and I was drenched in rain.......welcome to Chile. We also had a crazy experience one night..... this will be a great letter!

Okay to start off we had a great conference with Elder Vinas, he is a great man and his wife is the best! She gave a talk that was like the talk President Packer gave in the last general conference! but she did not talk about marriage! She talked about how to be a missionary who loved the work, it was great to hear such a loving older women share her experiences and how we can all become missionary’s full of power! She also talked a bunch about how to set goals! I loved it because I have a bunch of goals but I need to seriously plan better and make better goals to help the work go on in my sector.  We have not had changes yet! This wed will be the day, but I’m so pumped and we will see what happens. I feel really weird and old in the mission and I think its because, one I am old hahaha but also I feel a little bit more like an old school missionary. I still share from the pamphlets and the others share Mormon messages hahaha But I love that we are all sharing the same message and I love to see the progress of other missionary’s.  Elder Viñas set a great example for me and I was blessed to talk with him face to face for about 15 minutes about things that are going on in my zone, to see the love in that mans eyes was so special for me because I felt that he really cared about this great work! He listened to my companion and me and then smiled, looked us straight in the eye and said I NEEDED TO BE BETTER.  Wow it was like a serious blow but I realized that he was so right! I felt all the pride that I had drain from my body as I listened to his council.  I need to plan better, share my plans better and then I need to verify the plans of other companionships better, wow hhahaha I hugged him, and as I was walking away I told my companion "that’s why he is a general authority" He laughed and put his arm around me and we went and prayed and from that moment on we always have a plan, and it works! So I hope that all of you can make plans and set good high goals for your lives! it really does mean the difference! A GOAL WITHOUT A PLAN IS ONLY A DREAM!

Also this Saturday I was running around with the whole zone in one sector! It was cool to see the whole zone helping one ward find more members and bring them to church.  This great church is growing so fast but due to other stuff that has happened this ward is dying, it only has about 30 members and 6 priesthood members.  But I think that it will survive and become a strong ward.  We found a bunch of less active members and taught them and wrote down their dereciones and they will be going to church soon! I think everything will be just fine with that ward!.

More preaching on the bus, hahaha well this time we sang a song on the train "its like the tracks in SLC" with the whole zone.  It was really cool and the whole zone was nervous at first but then as we sung a song it all seemed to work out just fine.  Then we went and contacted people, it was great to see "the zone" working together and for the work of the Lord.  I love contacting the world in this way, I think it will help everyone to hear, the problem is that the people cant only listen with the ears, but they need to listed with the heart! Every time I get up to contact like that I feel my heart start to beat like crazy and then after a quick prayer it all seems to go away and the love of Christ beats the fear and I can stand up and literally share my message with the world! What blessings I have!

This week was so hot! I felt like I was ready to melt.  The sun just decided to come out and I started to fry, my awesome comp found some sunscreen and we started to lather up and then after a few days the rain came back and it began to beat us up with rain! What is going on Chile! yikes! hahaha But I cant lie I sure do love this country! But one crazy thing happened this week.  Last night we finished praying and I was almost asleep when the phone started to ring, as my comp and I both got out of bed we found that the number was blocked and we decided not to answer it.  As we started to get back in bed we heard a yell and a boom and it sounded like a couple of people knocked the door down to rob us and we heard a bunch of footsteps in the house.  I thought it was time to die hahaha but we slowly crept out of bed and I pulled out a iron rod from the window and I started to walk down the stairs and I found........nothing!  It was a really scary experience! But it turns out that I’m still alive, whew! But yep that’s that!

Also Javiera was baptized this Sunday! I was so pumped to see my companion help this wonderful girl down into the water and to be baptized! it was so awesome to end a change with a baptism! As for changes, my companion has more time then I do so I bet he will get called to go first.  But who knows? maybe the Lord want’s me here, if that’s the case I will work as hard as I can and everything will be all right!

Love Elder Passey

What a great family!  Javiera’s baptism.