Garret's Mission Blog: February 2026

Monday, February 23, 2026

February 17-February 23, 2026 Week 34-Coihueco Branch, Coihueco

What's up fam?

How are y'all?

Another great for me in Chile!

1 picture is worth 1000 words

https://photos.app.goo.gl/7VmyLPrw9TANGP5L9

Quick stuff

Our friend Jose received the Priesthood today!

The food is good, but please stop giving me the hottest soup when it is 90 degrees outside.

we hooped for exercise time and went on some runs

my cooking skills are getting good

Not quick stuff

Last p-day we stayed in Coihueco and just chilled. We played like an hour of pingpong (I bought crap rackets at mall chino) and we played a 7 game series. It was very close so it was a lot of fun, but I pulled it out in game 7.

Went to the temple this Thursday. That was pretty lit. Did some endowments and ate some fire pizza after (papa johns on top)

Had an intercambio with Elder Wakefield (again) on Wednesday that was pretty lit. Had a great lesson about the plan of salvation with one of our friends named Paulina.

Had district counsel Tuesday. We talked about giving people that hunger to learn more and a desire to meet with us, specifically the 2nd time. We find a lot of people on the street that give us their number and their address and we agree on a time to come back and we never see them again. In the mission there are like young missionaries that are leaders, and one of the hermanas leaders in the mission was talking about she would give people cliff hangers on purpose and we talked about in 3 Nephi 11 where Jesus left the Nephites on a cliff hanger too.

Had a baptism of our friend Amalia! She's a funny little girl. Somebody (me) accidentally put the water in the font a wee bit too hot for Amalia. We had like a lesson with them like pretty much every day this week and she was very excited and very funny at her baptism (hence the title). There were like 10 children there from 5-10 years old so it was a little crazy.

This just goes to show that you don't need to listen to help people get baptized( just kidding). Our friend Amalia has a speech impediment and it is very hard for the Chileans to understand her, but for me it is almost impossible. I swear it is impossible to understand like the majority of the children here in Chile.

I've be listening to videos in Spanish to practice my listening in Spanish, and I watched this fire video about this guy who went to church and just slept. He didn't think he could get anything out of church, someone helped him realized that he could go to church to serve. This can be applied more broad. A lot of times in life, we only thing about ourselves and what we can get out of something, but a lot of times we should be thinking about how we can help and what we can give.

Video:

Helping Others | Napping in Church

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/video/inspirational-messages/2023-10-0120-helping-others-napping-in-church-eng?lang=eng

Espero que les guste!

Que estén bien!

Hasta luego

Monday, February 16, 2026

February 10-February 16, 2026 Week 33-Coihueco Branch, Coihueco

Hola que tal?

Another great week down here in Coihueco I love Coihueco. It is beautiful and very peaceful and all the people are very nice

Shout out to the Seahawks for winning the Super Bowl

Quick stuff

-Exchange with another new missionary in his 3rd week in the mission. His name is Elder Wakefield. it was lit. We had a lunch with a D1 yapper that would make my grandpa mark spear look like he has never talked in his life.

-there was a concert and festival for Valentine's Day in the plaza in Coihueco and that looked pretty cool. We passed by for a second.

-got to listen to our dear prophet Dallin H. Oakes

-had 5 friends at church

-one of them will be baptized next week. Our friend Amalia. Her parents agreed to be married so that they can get baptized! This week we will try to do the hard part, put a fecha del casamiento y una fecha bautismal. Because it is easy for anyone to say yea yea, I'll get married- eventually, so we are going to try to help them pick a date

-got to put cream in my ZLs face cuz we had the most people at church last week

Our friend Gaspar.

My comp was lowkey complaining every day that we cant play sports on the mission, or play soccer with the kids on the street. But one day to made it up to him. I just randomly without telling him challenge these kids to play ping-pong in the park. I told the kid we challenged if elder Louder won, he had to come to church, and if he won we would buy him a soda. Elder Louder won, and he reluctantly came to church but.... now he wants to learn more and he wants to get baptized.

God works in mysterious ways I guess.

Conferencia Multizona.

We had an elite multizone conference where we talked about the scripture in Alma 37:6 (one of my favorite scriptures) by small and simple things are great things brought to pass. It was actually very good. We talked about we don't really need to over complicate things. And we know what we need to do, we just need to do the small things to be obedient and work hard and have faith that God is preparing people to hear our message. I know this is true that if we do the simple things every single day, we can reach our goals and we can grow closer to God.

#1percentbettereveryday

#goddid

#hayqueleerellibrodemormoncadadia

-shoutout, as I'm writing this it looks like there was another apostle called (I mean I just found out) Elder Clark Gilbert, and I knew his name right away cuz he gave a fire talk about the parable of the slope, about it's not where we start it's where we finish and about going in the right direction.

A member named Jose he gave me his belt cuz we boys

President Oaks Devotional

Exchange with Elder Wakefield

Concert in the park for Valentine's Day

Multizone conference

Monday, February 9, 2026

February 3-February 9, 2026 Week 32-Coihueco Branch, Coihueco

Another good week here in Coihueco, Chile. Hope y'all are doing well and had a good week!

QUICK STUFF

-last p-day we had a district activity and played some basketball and frisbee and some board games and went to get some burgers. It was pretty fun (better than d and d thats for sure).

District council; lessons with members are important

-my comps b-day, I bought him some cake that was lit. It was pretty good ngl (not gonna lie).

-had an intercambio with one of my ZL's Elder Bailey in his sector. It was pretty lit but not a whole lot happened. We had some good burgers though so that's tuff.

-had 4 friends at church! And a lot of the new members as well!

-had a lesson for like 20 mins in the relief society about missionary work and how they can help us, and how they can amor, compartir, invitar (love, share, invite).

Our friend Amalia. Our friend Amalia is going to be baptized the 22nd of Feb. She is 8 and is hilarious bro. She lowkey got a lil of the tism (a terrilbe way that Tanner and Garret refer to someone with Autism) but she is very smart and very cute. We learned in the first lesson that she was friends with a kid in the branch, so we asked his dad about it and apparently they go to school together. Apparently they say that they want to marry each other when they grow up. So course we invited them to a lesson (The boy Elias he's 9, and his dad Hermano Sierra. He is iin the branch presidency, and he's goated. He speaks like insanely good english). I wasn't there (I was on an intercambio) but boy Elias, was apparently teaching the whole lesson to Amaila. He started saying the sacrament prayers and breaking bread during the lesson. Then at church he was explaining in depth about the program and speakers. I ship Amalia and Elias all the way (ship is a slang for relationship). All the way to the sellamiento (sealing). (Dad how did you meet mom? Easy son we met in autism school, where we were only acquaintances, until the missionaries found your mom and brought me to one of their lessons, and we became friends for real.) But she is very excited to be baptized and follow the example of Jesus.

Our friend Oscar. Elder Louder found this man while I was on the exchange. He accepted to be baptized, and set the lesson for a the next day. The lesson didn't happened and we texted him a few more times, but he didn't answer. Then he called us up out of the blue and asked us, "what is fornication" and "do i need to stop (certain things) to be baptized"? We cleared that up for him and now he is 100 locked on living the law of chastity.

Our friends Mirko and Luisa. The parents of Amalia. They are pretty lit, but aren't married so they cant get baptized yet. We are trying to help them get married so they can get baptized. Mirko is a dawg. This man knows everyone in Coihueco because he is a security guard in the only supermarket.

Elder Louder was being hard on himself for not speaking Spanish. That is were the title comes from. Straight bars from Mirko, well technically it is a quote from Albert Einstein, but I had to tell Elder Louder what Mirko said in English.

That makes me think of the parable and the talents. If you don't know what the parable of the talents is, it is a parable that Jesus taught in the bible, Mathew 25:15-25.

God gives us all different gifts and different abilities. We just need to increase and use all of our talents in serving God and serving others and not compare our talents to the talents of others. Lots of missionaries like to compare themselves to other missionaries. Like who speaks better Spanish, who helps more people to be baptized and other things like that. But, they need to stop. God wants us to build each other up and not compare. In short, before I get into a yap session (to late), just remember to build the talents that God gave you, and don't compare, or only compare the you you were to today vs the you you were yesterday.

I hope you guys are all doing well! Have a good week and feel free to email me to let me know how you're doing!

PS. ¿He escuchado que los Seahawks ganó el Super Bowl? (Have you heard that the Seahawks won the Super Bowl)