Yesterday and last Wednesday we had two groups of students who finished the "Education for better employment" workshops.  It was a bitter sweet week it was hard to say good bye and not know if we will see them again but so rewarding to see them with all of the tools to get into school and earn an education so as to become the leaders in the church and in their communities.  As I have said in past posts these are some of the best in Chile and they are excited to go out and prepare themselves to make a difference.  We are proud of them and pray for them.  It is impossible to not love them and have a lasting relationship.  They have formed groups on Whatsapp which I had never heard of but they invited me into the group and it is fun to see their conversations and also inspiring to see how they speak of spiritual things in their communications.  There are several who are return missionaries and they told the rest that they should plan a night when Elder and Sister Ellis are working in the Baptistery to do baptisms.  So they are planning to get together and go out together for ice cream and come to the temple on a Tuesday night to do baptisms with us.  They are all working on family names to bring.  To us that is the great showing of success in the workshops we have participated in with them. 

 

The group at the top finished on Wednesday ant the group on the bottom finished yesterday.  What a great day.  We are so blessed to be here and to be able to work with these people.  Our only fear is that as we get the stakes to more fully grasp the initiative of self-reliance we will see less of the participants and work more with the Ward and Stake leaders. 

 

One of the rewarding assignments that we have is to hold the Self-reliance workshop with the missionaries who are returning home.  They are so surprised when the come into the room and see their whole name on a placard without the titles of "Elder or Hermana" in front of their name.  When we start out we explain the just for today they are regular members of the church and not full time missionaries.  We are preparing them to return home and understand a little of what is in store for them.  They are a bit shocked and interested in the first names of the other missionaries.  Many of them have never known that information.  I tell them to look around and take note because all of these are part of their network of contacts.  We had 18 in this last group from the Chile Santiago East mission.  There were7 Latinos and 11 Americans.  It is amazing to feel their spirit and energy and sometimes a bit overwhelming.

 

 

The Returning missionaries CSE mission 2/5/2015