Tuesday, December 30, 2014

¨Thanks for Eating all the Macaroni¨

That´s an inside joke, I hope some of you understand it!!! =) 

This week went super well, I got to baptized J, his mom came and everything and we actually got the support of the ward this time! It was perfect, more than the Bishop who usually comes with his family we called the young men's leader and he ended up bring some youth and the other leader. They also brought refreshments!! Not macaroni... but still. We always have those who are baptized share a little bit of how they felt during their baptism. J came to the front, and described the strong, good feeling he had felt in his chest when he entered the water. Everyone knew it was the Spirit, because everyone in the room had felt it. It testified of the true love of our Heavenly Father for every single one of us, His children and it testified of the truthfulness of this His church on the earth. I have no doubt in my mind that this is actually the Church of Jesus Christ; that he is at the head of this church and that through modern prophets this church has been restored and has continually revelation to bless each and every one of us and our families. I´m extremely thankful for all your letters and support and hope that you guys had a very merry Christmas and hope that you enjoy your New Years!! 
J's baptism
Christmas Eve Skype with the birthday boy! LOVE = )

Tuesday, December 23, 2014

White Christmas

Thank you everyone for all the messages of encouragement and love that you´ve sent me during this Christmas Season. I really hope that you all have a wonderful Christmas and that you are able to remember the real reason for it.
This week we had the opportunity (finally) to speak with a family, we have an investigator whos wife has been in Puntarenas (like 2 hours or more away) and he doesn´t want to be baptized until they decide to make this decision together, because he doesn´t want his family to go to two different churches or anything like that. So, we´ve been waiting a super long time for her to finally be able to leave her job and make the change to here in Heredia. This last sunday we finally were able to meet with them as a couple, and we taught the message of the restoration. At first the wife seemed slow to accept what we were saying, like she was judging our words. But, with time, she came to understand our message and began to accept it. Interestingly enough the changing point in our lesson came when we taught the message of the first vision, when Joseph Smith saw God the Father and Jesus Christ the Son in the Sacred Grove. We testified, and the Holy Ghost added power to our words, her heart was softened and she began to grow in her faith.
To be able to see a situation like this, the changing power of the Holy Ghost unto conversion, is very rewarding, and it strengthens my testimony. We should not doubt, we should not fear, and we should not wait. Our Savior and Redeemer paid the price already, all we have to do is press forward following his example. I love you all very much, and as I said am very grateful for your messages of comfort and encouragement. I hope that in this Christmas Season you find joy in our Savior, in his birth, and in his sacrifice. Feliz Navidad Amados Hermanos Mios! =)
Love,
        Elder Lohberg

extra emails info:

Hey, not sure how much you know, but the mission is splitting in july of this year. The missionaries are all going to be called to a new mission is what i heard. like, the prophet and apostles will pray again and we get put in one of the two. Everyone WILL get a new mission call i think, that´s what president said.  The first mission is Costa Rica San Jose West that´s the one i want to be in (along with everyone else here haha) it includes: Guanacaste, Alajuela, Heredia, and part of San Jose (La Sabana) the other is San Jose Costa Rica East, which is: Limon, Cartago, Puntarenas, another area, and part of San Jose.

oh hey, we went to the temple thursday too, forgot to mention that. It was cool, a little weird to do it in spanish and the video was way old.
another mom sent these to the elders

stocking given to the elders from the bishops wife I think





Tuesday, December 16, 2014

Shorter message this week!‏

Hello Everybody,

Everything is super tuanis with my new companion Elder Toledo. We work really well together and we´ve been able to see the Spirit testify to what we teach in our lessons. The other day we were walking down the street in one of the neighborhoods we visit a lot and we saw a lady standing in front of her gate smoking a cigarette. I remembered that one day we passed by and spoke to her and her husband and he sister really quickly when I was on divisions with Elder Aviña but that we hadn´t said much because they didn´t seem interested. Anyways, we passed by and started talking to her about Jesus Christ because, well, it´s Christmas, the time to celebrate his birth. We spoke for about 3-5 minutes and she had remembered the last time we passed by (about 2-3 weeks ago) and I don´t know, from the bat I thought she was either sick or sad, because her eyes looked watery. We were about to leave when I felt prompted to ask if she was sick, or if she was really sad. Instantly, she started to cry and she didn´t explain much but right then and there we testified and promised her that this message we share can help her. We gave her a Book of Mormon and my companion marked a verse for her to read in Ether that talks of a better world. 

Yesterday, we passed by again and talked to her and she told us that she read the verse and it really helped her calm down and she loved the message it had and that she had read the first 4 chapters also. We were like, WOAH,that´s awesome!!! (People here don´t read that much so when they read 4 chapters in a day that´s really good) And we set a day for us to pass by and share a real message with her and her family. I know that this is the Lord´s work, and even though it´s hard sometimes, and there are things that I personally don´t like, the Lord knows what he is doing, and I´m grateful for the opportunity I have to participate. Thanks for everything and I hope you guys have a good week! 

Tuesday, December 9, 2014

Feliz Navidad, ch-ch-ch-ch-ch, feliz navidad, ch-ch-ch-ch-ch‏

I would formally like to wish you all a merry Christmas. It occurs to me now that I probably should have saved this for the week of Christmas, nevertheless it has been finished. Verily, verily, I say unto you, the weather here right now feels kind of like Washington in the summer haha. Everyone is whining about how cold it is and i´m like, yup, summer. So, finished my week with Diego (a member) as my companion, it was interesting, nobody here has ever heard of mini.missionaries, but I guess that´s a thing=) 
Elder Toledo and Elder Lohberg ( :

My new compañero= Sooooooo, yesterday I went to San Jose in the morning to get my comp, so Diego and I went and bought a dozen donuts at price smart (cosco) for $4 and a gallon of milk $4 and then we went to get him and drop off one of the Elders from the other area near ours who was leaving. My companion ended up getting one of his suitcases robbed that had alllll of his clothes, so we´re working that out right now haha. His name is Elder Toledo, he is from El Salvador and he has 5 months in the mission, so he came 2 changes before I did. He´s cool, he was in Guanacaste haha so he had to wake up at 2 in the morning to take a bus all the way to San Jose. Apparently, he is really good at soccer so I´m looking forward to Friday to see if his reputation is legit. Then we´re really just kind of trying to talk to all of our investigators who are really spread out and basically are ready for baptism. We´ve got one set for the 20th of this month, named J he is super cool, but we´re hoping for at least 3 more of Heavenly Father´s children to follow Jesus Christ this Christmas and be baptized! 

Todo es super tuanis y esperamos para, oramos para, y trabajamos para tener éxito, para encontrar todas las personas que están preparadas para la mensaje de la restauración del evangelio de Jesucristo. Gracias por todo! =)

Tuesday, December 2, 2014

Pues pues pues... something sad

Whelp, no se lo que debo decir. I´m going to go head and hit up the highlights of this week, it´s been a weird past couple days. So, we had visited a member who had a tiny Christmas tree with like flashing lights and all and so Elder Parker and I asked how much it costed to get all that. She told us it was about $8 more or less, but we were basically broke haha because of some poor decisions shopping wise =P. Highlight Incoming........: Sunday at church she came and she handed Elder Parker and I a bag, in it was the set; a tree, lights, and little ornaments. We were so stoked!!! So, we worked super hard for the rest of the day, we visited some members to pick up Elder Parker´s boots, a member had been fixing them. (There are lots of Zapateros here, people who fix shoes and such) and they looked really good, he used airplane tire for the bottom of the shoe. 
Elder Lohberg and Elder Parker - note the "fireplace" ( :

Then that night we got home, and got to work on making the Christmas season real! He made the tree and set it up and everything, I used a protein can thing that we had and made a fireplace that we were going to use. I cracked open my chexmix and we started eating. Everything set, so we decided to take pictures. I lit up the fireplace I made (I had a glass of water nearby just in case) and we started taking pictures. Then the fireplace uhh.. overheated.. and started to fall apart. So, we used our emergency water, and then we went back to taking pictures.. without the fire. Then after we finished taking pictures we were sitting around eating chexmix and drinking coke when we got a call. The assistants called and told Elder Parker that he was going to be a zone leader in Limon. It was kind of a shock, I don´t know, weird. I helped him pack his 30 sports jerseys and everything he had and that was about it. I´m now in charge of the area. The assistants had also mentioned that I would have a mini companion for a week until I got my next companion. 








Elder Lohberg & Elder Parker

Elder Parker asked Diego to give us a ride in the morning to the office because he wanted to say goodbye to him. We drove, it was a pretty sad ride haha. We stopped at the office and I was supposed to get a new companion but it turns out they couldn´t find a mini companion but Diego was there, so the assistant Elder Cude was like, hey can you be his companion. He said yeah and here we are haha. So, yeah, Diego is my companion until Monday when I get a new companion, I don´t know if I will be training or what, we also don´t have a district leader yet, not sure when we will get one, probably Monday. Diego is a member that we work with all the time, not sure if I mentioned that. But yeah, sometimes changes are sad haha! 
Aaron and his comp "elder" Diego ( :


I love hearing that everything is going well out there in Washington and other places where you guys are at haha. I´m in Alma in the Book of Mormon right now, reading about Alma the younger! Such a change!!! But I would like to actually send you guys a video to watch! It´s a BYU devotional talk by Holland when he was the President. =) I know  that what he says is 101.5% verdadero! Escuchalo!