1 Month in Chile !!

¡Buenas Tardes a Todos!  (Good Afternoon Everyone!)
  Once again, I apologize for such a short email last week. But I will definitely be making up for it this week. But the big news; baptism! But more on that later. So about the goings on from the 27th to the 1st…
  On Tuesday the 21st I did a minicambio with one of the zone leaders. It's when one of us goes over to their sector, and one comes here. I can't think of what it's called in English at the moment. Lo siento (sorry). Anyways, I went over to the sector of the zone leaders. I was with elder Glissmeyer, he's the guy that’s 6 foot 7. What happens usually is that we exchange in the afternoon, then we change back the next morning. It was a cool experience, Elder Glissmeyer is a super good teacher.

  Then on Friday we had interviews with the Mission President. We meet at our chapel then he talks to our whole district, interviews us individually, and we do some teaching practices. That went well too. Nothing too exciting, but it was good.

  Also, it was Halloween. Like Aaron said, it's not too big here, and its mainly for little kids. There was an activity in the church for the youth, but it started at 10:00pm so we couldn’t go. A funny story, completely unrelated to Halloween: we went to a new converts house, whose son is also a new convert, but is becoming inactive. We went to invite him to church, and he said he couldn’t come because his finger hurt, haha. Just a random, funny excuse to not go to church.

  Ok, so on Sunday we had a good day. At first when we got to church we were disappointed, not many of our investigators were in church, but then a bunch came and we had 8 investigators in church. That was good, it made me happy to see them there, making the right decision. Also on Sunday I gave my first blessing in Spanish, needless to say I felt like it was pretty bad. But oh well, what I say doesn’t really matter, it’s the action that matters. Ok, so that about sums up the activities from the week of the 27th to the 1st.

              So now time for what happened this past week. On Monday we went to Constitución. It’s a smaller city about 2 hours away from Talca, right on the beach. So to start the festivities, all 10 elders in the district stayed in our house on Sunday night. That was pretty crazy, and a lot of fun. We woke up at 5:30 or something,I don’t even remember it was too early. Then we headed to the train station to take the train there. The train ride was super bumpy, the train was uber old, but it was a very pretty ride. So we got there and the beach was really fun. I'll send home some pictures. We played Frisbee, walked on the rocks, and had an asado (a barbeque) on the beach with hot dogs. One of the elders made a joke that we were going to baptize some fish (go swimming, haha). A quick note, they don’t have cheddar cheese here.  So what I like on my hot dogs here is ají (a type of hot sauce is basically what it is), and a little bit of mayonnaise (which im pretty sure is a bit different than the mayonnaise back home). Then we took a bus home, and got home at about 5:50pm . Since P-day ends at 6, I had to write a super short email. Once again, sorry.

  So some more stuff from this past week. We had English class again on Wednesday, and some people actually came back! It was surprising. We had 8 people in class, and like half weren’t members. So that was neat. Also something else that was funny. There was a dog we saw who was chasing his tail and had caught it! He kept going in circles though, at least for 2 minutes. The next day we saw him doing the same thing! Super funny. Ok, so an experience. We were talking to this lady at the door, and she was talking to us, and told us she was giving us a warning, that she wouldn’t get baptized. We talked to her some more, and she even told us she didn’t think her church was true, but she wouldn’t change due to tradition. Kind of got me frustrated.
  So on Friday, we had a noche de hogar (Family home evening) at a members house. We had a couple investigators there, and it was fun. We made rice crispy treats, which are completely new to everyone here. They all love them, but they're super expensive to make, the marshmallows are expensive.

  So let me tell you a little bit about the baptism! Her name is Marta, she's pretty old. Her son is a member, and so we baptized her in the sons ward, called Jardín de Valle. It was a little bit different, it didn’t really feel like a baptism of ours. One because it was in another ward, so we didn’t really prepare for it, and another because we still weren’t sure if it would be counted as our baptism. I know that’s not what matters, definitely not. What matters is that she is now baptized, she is clean of her sins. Anyways, it was a super cool experience, the spirit was very strong. Today we learned that she would be counted as our baptism, so there it is my first baptism! Such a cool experience.
  SO a couple other things. I gave another blessing on Sunday, which felt like I did a lot better this time around (it feels like we give blessings of health out like candy). The "primary" program was in church too, so that was amusing. Also on Sunday we went and taught the wife, (an inactive member), of a member. I'm not gonna lie, talking to her was one of the first times I've been mad here in chile. What made me mad was the reasons she gave for leaving the church: 1) the chapel is cold. 2) she felt she was wronged by the members (she told us that when people are in the church, they should be perfect….[is anyone perfect?]). Yeah, and she was trying to tell us how she knows more about the church then us. Whose been active all their life and is there every Sunday? Ugh, it's frustrating sometimes, she was willing to sacrifice her salvation because the church is cold and people are imperfect. What can you do?
  Alright, so know a bit about our investigators. So we haven’t been able to meet with Marcelo for about 2 weeks. We make appointments, but he's never able to make it. We saw him yesterday, and the first thing he told us is that he didn’t want to share with us anymore. He felt bad that he was letting us down. We assured him he wasn’t, and he was making the correct choices in life. He still has a testimony of the gospel, and he still has desires to be baptized, all he lacks is assistance (the word for "to attend" in Spanish is asistir, hence most of the elders here refer to attendance in church as assistance, haha) in church. So that was good, he may be baptized the 22nd. Also we have Geremías and his brother Alejandro, who are progressing very well. They also have dates for the 22nd. Another for the 22nd is a young boy named Daniel. He is super ADD, thus very hard to teach. His situation is rather complicated, which I won't go into at this time, maybe later. But he too is progressing. Antonella, is a young 10 year old girl. She is at the brink of being baptized, but doesn’t have the desire to. Well she does but she doesn’t know where. So were trying hard with her too. Ok that’s about it for the progressing investigators and what-not.
  So time for some random stuff. Well I'm now down to 74.3 kilos, which is about 163 pounds. Thank goodness. I left the MTC at 179. Please don’t fret, I'm not being starved, not at all. I'm just not overeating anymore. Which is good. Please don’t worry, haha, but I think you might anyways. Another thing interesting, I already have the tanline from the white shirt. Ugh. It's like super high on the neck and looks funny, what can you do. So a little bit about some interesting food experiences. One thing we had at a lunch was some corn, mixed with a lot of mayonnaise, wrapped in a piece of lunch meat ham. Needless to say it was gross. Also, here on their salads they don’t use salad dressing, what they put on it is like lemon juice and vinegar or something. I'm pretty sure that’s what makes it gross. But I definitely am getting better at eating it. Also the other day im 90% sure we had like liver or something. Also gross. But the other days lunches are usually pretty good.
  Spanish is getting better and better. They speak pretty uniquely here. But I am getting better and more confident, which is good.
  So that’s about it for this week, sorry I had so little to write, haha. Love you all, please write, I love looking forward to hearing from you.

Elder Mayberry