I love Chile - Elder Ryan Mayberry

Hey everyone!
How are things back in the States? Good I hope. So things are settling down here. I'm getting used to the missionary lifestyle now. I still have a hard time waking up in the morning, but oh well.

  So on Monday like I said last week we went to Downtown Talca (Talca Centro), where some other missionaries are. We had some longaniza (basically some hot dog/sausage type thing) which was good, then we went on a hike to a river, which was pretty cool. I'll try and see if I can send the pictures today.
  Anyways, so the work is pretty good. Basically what we do is study in the mornings, go to lunch at a members house, then do our appointments and such. We usually are pretty booked every day with appointments. I'm still not very good at teaching people yet, but I'm getting better. I'm starting to understand people better, but still some people talk sooo fast that I can't understand them. The problem at the moment is that we don’t have many people progressing, (keeping commitments, making return appointments, etc). We are able to find a lot of people, but generally they either don’t want us to come back, or when we go back they're not there. But we do have a couple people who are progressing. Ones named Marta, she's a very kind lady. She has a son who is a member in another ward, so she goes with him almost every Sunday. We think she's probably going to be baptized over there. But we're still teaching her.
  Also, all of the members here are super nice. The Chilean people in general are nice, I haven’t had a door slammed or anything, mostly people listen because they respect us. People here are very religious, most people have a belief in God and Jesus Christ. Most are Catholic, but very few are actually church going, it's more of just a tradition type thing. So yeah, the members here are super nice. They always give us tons of food for lunch or anytime we stop by. The lunches are pretty good usually, almost always its some type of meat, and then some rice or mashed potatoes. Usually there is a salad of some type, which is pretty gross. The eat a lot of palta (avocado) here which I don’t like at all, but I try my best to eat it. Another thing they have here is called a completo. Its basically a hot dog, but with tomatoes, avocados, and mayonnaise. I didn’t like it very much. But they have this stuff called ají here, which is basically some hot sauce like the kind at taco bell or something. I like it.

  So yeah, Chile’s great. About the dogs; most of them just walk around and pay no attention to you. Barely any of them are… I can't remember the word, but most are pretty timid. It has been getting pretty hot here during the day, but almost every night its pretty cold. But in my bed its warm, so that’s good. Today were going out to lunch with the district, then maybe going to play bowling or something. We tried giving an English class on Wednesday, but only a couple members came. Another thing, I'm getting better at doing contacts and stuff. I just need to start speaking more Spanish with my comp so I can improve my speaking Spanish. Another thing we did was we went to the hospital again to give a little girl a blessing. That was a neat experience, but the hospital is not good. I think I talked about it in my last email.
  Oh yeah, we also had a zone conference on Wednesday. Basically all the missionaries that are close come by and the Mission President talks to us. It was pretty cool, its fun meeting the other Missionaries.
  So yeah, I think that’s about it for this week. I just want to have people progress more; hopefully they will. I'm not sure if its us or the people, but we are trying hard, the investigators just aren’t progressing. Hopefully we can see a baptism in the near future. I know how the Gospel can truly change people’s lives, but they just don’t see it.
  Alright, I love you all, thank you for all your letters, and continue writing me. I look forward to hearing from you all week. I hope I didn’t forget anything. ¡Chao!

Elder Ryan Mayberry