Earthquake report! March 1, 2010 (Pictures)

Ben building a house!
Way to go Ben!


















Cute kitty! She always visits
the pench.













"Killing" Hermana White!















Baby booties! The two top soccer
teams represented!



Hi Family!

How is everyone doing. Ok, so President asked that we send an e-mail to our families on Saturday to tell everyone that we were ok. We are all ok. I did wake up in the morning at 3:45 to the apartment shaking. It was strong enough to wake me up, but not strong enough to do any damage. We have a few missionaries that have their families in Conception, I hope they are ok. I didn`t get an e-mail from Dad this week, is everything ok?

With all of the earthquakes and natural disasters going on, it has really made me stop and think. Later this day when all the earthquakes were happening, Elder Ramierez and I were walking to an appointment and I just had a lot on my mind. It made me think how just in a heartbeat everything can change and it helped me realize where our priorities should be. All the things that are written in the Bible and in the Book of Mormon are being completed. Look in Matthew 24 and it pretty much describes our day. Really our priorities should be in putting our lives in line with the teachings of the gospel and everyting else will turn out how it should. We will be prepared to face whatever curveballs life throws at us. I am going to start storing a lot of water in the pench and have at least a 72 hour kit ready to go at any time. This has really been on my mind a lot and the mood has been kind of somber down here for the past little while. But I have an internal peace that everything is going to be ok, I`m happy because I know that the gospel blesses live and that when we turn our lives over to the Savior he can make more out of our lives than we ever could by ourselves.

Anyway this week was great! We went and did a service activity Saturday morning and helped build a house. It was a continuation of a service project that we did a while ago and it went really well. I still am pretty sore. I`ll send some photos.

We had divisions this week and I went in our area with Elder Campbell. He`s a great Elder and we had a good time! He`s from Ogden, Utah and played QB for their football team. We are a lot alike and had a great time!

We`ve got a lot of investigators progressing towards baptism, each has their unique individual challenges, but they are working through them. Some need to get married. One needs to stop drinking, and others really need to take the first step and make it to church.

I`ll tell a quick story about a 16 year old girl that we have been teaching. Her mom has been a member for about 30 years, but has been inactive for a long time! They both really want to go to church, along with her little sister who is 10 or 12 years old, but their Father is really against religion and doesn`t like it when they go to church or read the scriptures at all. He is a good guy, but is really not making good decisions with his life. Anyway, that`s not the focus, he will come along. The thing that I admire is that this girl has the courage to stand up to her father and do what is right, read the scriptures, and go to church. She knows that he is going to get mad, but she does it because she knows it is right. She is a very stong Spirit and I admire her.

I love you all! Until next week!

Love,
Elder Hoglund