November 1 update

Elder Kenison's companion, Elder Carvajal, is now entering the last week of his mission!  That means some special activities for the missionaries.  Elder Carvajal has some relatives in Chile and has permission to visit them before he departs; and it sounds like there was a mission conference, and some other trips going on.

this week we've been going to all sorts of places, santiago and stuff, now i'm in san miguel close to my last area. because elder carvajal has permission to say bye to his family. haha but we've had to cancel lots of lunches this week (so i took out money to buy lunch, for more than one day) so really i've missed eating really good food haha

It's nice that he appreciates the "really good food" provided by members in his assigned area.  Eating on the road probably means the Chilean equivalent of "fast food."  The travels will continue; on Saturday, they will go to two of Elder Carvajal's previous areas (Maipu and Llo Lleo, out on the coast).  Then on Monday, Elder Carvajal begins his journey home and Elder Kenison waits to hear who his new companion will be!

There has been some progress with investigators.  We learned today for the first time about a man named Angel (pronounced Ahn-Hel) who is 60 years old and married; we're not sure of the family situation or how he got connected with the missionaries.  He is having his baptismal interview today!  We only learned this:

Angel is the investigator that we have that has read the entire Book of Mormon and half of the principles of the gospel book. haha he loves to read. we were kinda surprised when he accepted the challenge to be baptized. but hopefully it all works out :D

That's great news — we'll look forward to more details next week!  We also heard about a new investigator named Carla:

she hasn't been able to go to church because her husband gets drunk the night before. so we're kinda trying to find a solution

We did get this second insight about her:

she's a progressing investigator. she's really cool, but she works at a hospital and so she has to work a lot, and sometimes on Saturday night so it's hard to go to church. we're just trying to get her to attend church. but we're guessing that her husband is finding ways to make it so she can't go.

And then he shared one additional experience:

yeah we passed by for a new investigator, Fanny, (pronounced F-aw-ny) haha, and we talked to her a bit. she said that she LOVED reading and so we gave her a Book of Mormon and had her start from the start. then she asked us if we have like meetings or whatever in the church. we told her that we did, every Sunday at 10.
On Saturday we passed by again, actually it was interesting because we had an activity in our district where some people from other districts came over and we had a "weekend misional" (missionary weekend) there was a missionary couple that came with us for a little and then on Sunday two kids came with us. it was AWESOME!!! we stopped by to see Fanny with the couple, and Fanny told us that she read the first 20 pages, and didn't understand it (because of all of the names) so she read it again, she still didn't quite get it so she read it a third time. so we described who the people were in the Book of Mormon, the family and everything. and she said that she'd keep reading.
On Sunday (yesterday) she came to church :D haha with her boyfriend (who lives in a different house than she does) and she brought her daughter. it was AWESOME!!! we watched a video about he plan of salvation and she asked "how can i be baptized?" haha we laughed (out of excitement) and told her. she told us that she would be continue coming to church and everything. :) i was awesome :D hopefully all goes well with her. 

Nice to see some enthusiasm, and some good new prospects in the work!

Finally, Matt admitted that his official release date, according to the "trunky papers" received last week, will be March 15.  So the countdown begins: only 19 weeks, or 133 days to go!!