Monday, November 9, 2009

1 month in Chile !!

Wow!
  I cant believe I've been in Chile for more than a month already...thats absolutely crazy. And we have cambios this Sunday! Transfers is what they're called in English, I was gonna write "changes" cuz thats the literal translation of cambios haha. So thats super exciting. But then again no, I want to stay in this ward and sector. Elder Hastings thinks we´re both gonna stay though, but who knows. He said they basically call you late Sunday night and say, Elder so and so, stay. Elder so and so leaves. Then Monday you head to your new sector. I hope we both get to stay though for at least another cambio.
  I still can't believe that I've been on the Mission for three months though. It's still a long time to think that I have 21 more, but at the pace it's going now I'll be done in no time. It feels like just yesterday I was getting off the plane here!

  Anyway, so this week. It's been another good week. We´ve had lots of lessons, with less actives, investigators, and also with members. Right now we´re working hard with a couple of our investigators with baptismal dates. But more on that in a bit. We had a baptism yesterday! As you've seen in the fotos. Fransico Javier got baptized, which was really cool. His family is really good (well the parents anyway). The parents used to be active but went inactive, but now have strong desires to stay active. So that's very important, because the support of the parents is key with younger converts. The family is amazing though. Whenever we´d go over they would offer us so much to eat and stuff and they really don't have that much to start with, and you can just see the love and another word that I can't think of in English, only in spanish haha. But yeah, you get the point, they're amazing.

  That happens more often than I'd thought already. I can't think of some words, or when I think of a word the spanish word comes into my head first, not english. It's funy, one of the guys in our pension finishes his mission in less than a month, and he struggles speaking english cuz he can't remember what the correct words are. It's also funny because we can't remember the outside world haha. Like someone asked whats the name of a famous actor and none of us could remember for the longest time. Anyway....
  Our main investigadors right now are Valerie and Marcella. They're the 8 and 14 year old daughters of Ximena and David, the parents we baptized on the 25th of october. The girls have a baptismal date for this Sunday. It's been amazing to see the improvement of Marcella. She used to not even listen to us, now she wants to and asks when we´re gonna come teach her. Its really amazing to see the gospel bless families. But yeah, they should be getting baptized this Sunday.
  What else happened this week....Oh yeah. So Friday we had to do a mass cleaning of the pension. That was pretty fun. We (me and Elder Burton, one of the other 2 elders living with us) defrosted the freezer with spoons and scooped all the ice out. And when we did it it was like snow! So we made some snowballs and went upstairs and threw them at Elder Hastings, my comp, as he was cleaning the bathroom. Twas pretty funny. How unexpected of a thing to happen....the middle of spring in Santiago Chile, you're cleaning the bathroom when you suddenly get hit by snowballs! Good times.
  Then friday night we had divisiones(divisions). When two elders swap places for a day. I went over to another ward for the day. We switched Friday night and switched back Saturday night. That was a good experience. I was with a guy from Peru, so I had all spanish all the time. It was interesting. We did lots of walking. I was glad to get back to my comp though, Elder Solis is a little crazy and annoying at times haha.
  Oh yeah, Dad-the shoes are doing great, no problems to report. Just get dirty but nothing shoe polish can't fix. Mom-Before you send my christmas package make sure to put some of those good pens that I like in there, I'm running low.
I bought two new ties from the grocery store today for $4 a piece, what a bargain...they aren't even bad ties!
Now for some random occurrances/observations I've made throughout the week.
 -The weather here is so dumb....it doesn't know how to make up its mind. One day its amazingly hot and the next its cold. Makes no sense!
  -I got a haircut last p-day for the whopping sum of 1.500 (which is one thousand five hundred, the switch the comma and period remember) pesos, which translates into about $3. And they did a good job! One of the cheaper haircuts of my life. Downside though, I felt very helpless. I can't really tell people how to cut my hair in English so I just kinda let her go and didn't bother to say much to her haha. But it turned out alright.
  -My glasses broke! The ear thingy on the left snapped off the other day. I bought some super glue stuff today and I'm gona try to repair them later today, I shall let you know how that goes next week...
  -Now in the adventures of food:
  -We ate KFC today haha. I had chicken strips (duh) but the strange thing is is that there isn't mashed potatoes. Doesnt make sense to me. KFC implies mashed potatoes in my mind. But the chicken was still very good, tasted the same as KFC in the states. Other weird thing I observed was that you could get your drink as beer. This is the only place I've seen like that so far though haha.
  -So the other day I hit a new high in terms of trying and eating foods. I ate a whole alcachofa (artichoke). Never thought I'd see the day haha.
  Well thats all I got for this week. Me and Elder Hastings are about to head back to the pension and get some well deserved nap time. I'm very excited. I love you all and you're all in my thoughts and prayers. Until next week!
¡Les quiero mucho!
Con mucho amor,
Elder Aaron Mayberry

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