January 3 update

As we enter the new year, we (Matt's parents) are now aware that we have only 10 p-days after today.  That's all!  We will miss these wonderful days of communication.

We were delighted today to hear that the elders are "alive and kickin!"  Good to hear they are back to full strength and working hard again.  Elder Kenison said Elder Hassler is making great progress in learning "Chilean":

Awesome! He had an hermana say yesterday after he said the prayer, "Eres kapo el Elder Hassler!" haha pretty much saying, "Elder Hassler is a stud" haha he speaks EASILY better than I did when I had a year in my mission.

We asked about the earthquake that occurred Sunday in Chile.  It was magnitude 7.1, which is not as big as last year's 8.8 but still very large.  It was about 300 miles south of Santiago, and fortunately appears to not have done much damage.Matt commented:

No I didn't feel it we were walking around the street really fast. haha But i did hear about it. That's crazy!

As for New Years traditions and celebrations, this comment:

Yeah there was a firework display thing. And there is a custom here that on new years you give a hug to the people at the beginning of the year to wish them luck. haha So we didn't knock many doors because people would think we're wanting to give them a hug. haha but it was good. There were hugs and kisses and everything given to everyone yesterday at church. haha Elder Hassler turned to me and said, "Too much love!!!" haha I just laughed, and said, "Welcome to chile... haha"

It sounds like they continue the focus of working with the members to encourage better involvement and support:

We've been working a lot with the members and also trying to get the new area organized so that we can make sure that EVERYONE gets a chance to accept or reject our message, so that we can be the most effective. We've been visiting the members that live there, even though there are only three families and only one of them are really active. We've tried to visit them and get to know them a little more. like their families and also their schedules so we can know when they're working or available. :)

We found this story particularly interesting:

We passed by for a less active member recently, Nestor. haha he's a stud. He speaks English too so we'd randomly switch off from one to the other haha it was kinda annoying for Elder Hassler I'm sure haha. But we talked to him a bit. He let us know that he had talked to his boss and that he won't have to work on Sunday anymore. We were excited to hear that. But also we just talked to him for a bit. He told us that for new years and stuff he just spent it all alone. We felt kinda bad that we hadn't heard of it sooner but we just talked for a little to get to know him. Then he asked us if he could share a couple of ideas that he had to help us as missionaries. haha
We told him that he could. He told us that we need to "dejar huellas" which means like, leave prints, or a path. For example, he said, if you want a dog to come into your house, you'll leave treats along the path so that they'll go where you want. He told us several different ideas that he has to do that with people really, to find the ones that want to learn more, and if they want to learn more, (want more treats) they'll follow the path.
One of the ideas he had is that we could pass by for the houses of members and ask if they have any Liahonas that they're not using and then with those we could pass by for "pelucarias" (hair cutting places) hospitals, or anywhere where you would have to sit and wait. And we could leave them there. But also put a little piece of paper on every 5 or so pages that says "if you have any questions, or if you would like to learn more, call this number......." Then we could leave our number there for the people to call if the want to learn more. He told us that he has TONS of ideas. So yesterday we spent a good part of the day passing by for members. haha Now we have more than a hundred Liahonas! haha We just need to print off the little papers and glue them on. haha Nestor says that his ideas are that the investigators come looking for us, not us for them. So we're going to give that a try. And for this week just do what we normally do and kind of give that a while to start and hopefully some people start calling. haha

Here's a picture showing the results of that effort:

Interesting idea!  We'll be eager to see how this goes.

Two more photos.  Elder Hassler is trying to get Elder Kenison to like sauerkraut on his completos:

And then this "mission photo" — Elder Kenison on the lower right, Elder Hassler on the far left: