OMGOSH! FAMILY! HI!!!!!!! lol
Where in the world do I start?!?!?!
This has been the coolest week in MY ENTIRE LIFE!!!! As you found out, I am in
fact in a little hick-town (for Chile) area, called Lontué, about 6 hours from
Concepcion. Needless to say, I did some hard core traveling. First in planes,
then in busses. My companion IS from Argentina and is a native Spanish speaker,
which has been SUPER good for my Spanish, BUT she also only has 3 months left
in the mission and all of her companions (minus two) have been gringas.
So she speaks a little bit of English. I LOVE HER!!!! …we get along SUPER
well and we can communicate pretty dang well too! Spanish is awesome, I LOVE it! The only
problem is... I can´t understand the people here for MY LIFE!!! Not only
do they talk SUPER fast, but they don´t annunciate por NADA! (for nothing). lol Our
area is actually Lontué B because it´s brand new. They split Lontué in two and
the Elders that were here are now Lontué A, and they are probably the nicest Elders
ever (Elder Turner from Utah and Elder Cadena from Mexico- both are going to
die [or end
their missions] pretty soon)! We’ve spent a lot of time this
week with them because they’ve been showing us around and introducing us to all
the less actives, members, and their investigators, many of which they are
giving to us (seriously, SO nice)!! The funny thing is that Lontué A and B aren’t
actually divided, both our companionships work in the same area and with the
same TINY branch, we just work separately and find for ourselves. This past
week Hermana Joglar and I contacted over 140 people and had we already have
like 16 new investigators (according to the qualifications for new
investigators in PMG). OH, by the way, you were telling me more about the
leadership position for sisters... my comp IS the leader for this area of the
mission, which covers like 2 zones. She seriously is so awesome!
She and I live in this TINY Chilean
home with a super sweet widow, she is awesome! I just wish I could understand
her... lol! To be honest, I´m definitely
wishing I had a sleeping bag right now though. As you know, Chilean homes don’t
have heating, but some have mini electric heaters ...our’s doesn’t. I asked the Mission President about whether or
not I should buy one the day I got here, and he was like no, no, no, no, you
won´t need one! We give you 3 thick wool blankets and you can go to a store
here (their equivalent to Wal-Mart) and buy a caliente cama (electric blanket) and
you won’t be cold! BUT I think normally
the houses missionaries stay in also have little electric heaters. I haven’t had time to buy a caliente cama
(electric blanket) yet, but Hermana Joglar and I are having fun figuring things
out. In short, I´ve learned to wear at
least 3 layers to bed plus a hat and mittens. Meanwhile Hermana Joglar wears
her robe over here pjs and then tucks the cats in her blankets with her (oh,
yeah EVERY ONE here has cats, including Hermana Novoa, the widow sister we live
with) she claims they are like mini heaters. Seriously though, we have SO much
fun! Everything is just like an adventure for us, even for Hmna. Joglar because
she served the majority of her mission right in or around Concepcion. I love
Hermana Novoa, ella es BUENISIMA (she is SO GREAT), BUT there just isn´t enough
room in her house for us. Hmna J and I
sleep in one room and we keep all our suitcases in another because it´s so
small! Hermana Joglar and I have become pretty creative though. This week
we started using our hair dryers as heaters by shutting the doors and plugging
in our hair dryers and just propping them up until our room is warm enough that
we´re not shivering. The only problem is that I think the electricity here is
weird(er) than it should be because Hmna Joglar has had two adapters for her
whole mission that she started using here and one already broke... likewise, my
adapter broke :((( The socket got too
hot and my hair dryer just shut off. I
looked at my adapter and it was like melted around where the prongs are...
hopefully, I can find another one here somewhere in the boonies of the Concepcion
mission.
My area is one of the areas that is
going to be in Rancagua mission soon (3 months). So if I’m here for longer than 3 months, I´m
going to be in the same mission as David Archuleta! LOL that is, assuming he
doesn´t get moved to the mission above Rancagua. Hah.
I wish I could explain everything
better, but I really wouldn’t know where to start! Everything is GREAT! I mean,
sure sometimes ... scratch that... ALL the time I’m exhausted, and
sometimes it gets old not being able to understand too much of what is going on
in lessons and what not, but really, really this has been the coolest week in
my entire life! Me encanta la vida misional!!!
(I am
enchanted with the mission life). And, I am actually learning
pretty rapidly according to a lot of people. In fact, this morning one of the traveling
assistants, Elder Hernandez, told me I had a good accent like a Latina! LOL …it
was definitely an exaggeration but it made me feel awesome none the less!
This past week, two scary things
happened, 1). the traveling assistants came and spent part of a day with us,
just kind of observing, and 2). I had to bear my testimony in sacrament
meeting, but in my opinion, all went pretty well …well, I survived to tell
about it :)
Today for P-day we played basketball
with a less active member and the elders at the church here in Lontué, then
went to Molina to play soccer with the rest of the Elders in our zone, THEN we
went with a recent convert to help her friend take down her stand in the flea
market, emphasis on the word FLEA, the name for it makes all too much sense
here. Getting fleas or something of the
sort is probably my biggest fear! Lol
I´m loving life here in Chile,
everything is SO different and SO cool, and hopefully by the end of this
transfer I will be able to communicate sufficiently with the people here. I love them. They are awesome! Even when they call me Gringa,
I know they mean it in the most endearing way possible, they are SOOO loving
here!
Coolest adventure of my life!!!!
I LOVE MY LIFE! I LOVE CHILE! I LOVE MY MISSION! ... OH and I miss you
:)
I hope all is well at home! tell the
kids I love them and kiss them for me!
I gotta go pretty soon so I have
time before the end of P-day to play guitar! Hmna Joglar and Elder Turner have
one!
I
guess I have a little more time…so, some other things I remembered that you
might appreciate... I met Hermana Lovell when we got our trainers assigned to
us. I told her we followed her blog. I liked her, she is super nice. She is training Hermana Berbert (another blog we follow)...I’m sure they’ll be an amazing team together.
Un poco mas (A little more)... we get
whistled and hollered at all the time! I’m almost used to it, but that’s easy
because I can’t even understand the majority of what they are saying. It might be a little different when I start
understanding though. Oh, and as of yet
my allergies for cats (and everything) have been fine, and I even pet multiple
cats every day. I probably pet more cats
than dogs because dogs here are like rodents, many flea infested yattah, yattah,
so I try to only pet the nice looking dogs. If they look mangy or nasty and they try to
come up to me to be pet I usually call them diablo because I don’t want fleas! I had a mini scare the other day that I had fleas but it turns out it was all in my
head, before then I’d pet any dog I saw, but since then I’ve been more careful.
lol I LOVE YOU! Until next week xoxoxoxoxoxoxo
P.S. the mother’s day thing will be done over Skype
and if I can’t remember my password I will be making a new one. but yeah, hope
the internet cooperates or I’ll cry. lol
Hermana Davis
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