Elder Scott McMillan

Ok so I'm sitting in an airport right now waiting to fly to Santiago where I'll spend the night before flying out to Argentina. I'm on my way to Buenos Aires so I can activate my visa. It's pretty much a vacation but it's like "official business" so I get to stay 2 nights in a hotel and I get to go to the Temple of Buenos Aires. It's a kinda goated travel group. I'm with LZ2 of the Valdivia Zone Lords (Elder Arbuckle). We're going to have a crazy study sesh and just figure out all the problems of the mission and what we can do to improve. Still have Shane Littlefield in our heads. Or maybe we will just go buy a bunch of like keychains and mate stuff and pretend we are tourists. But either way it's going to be dope.   Poor Elder Benson is stuck holding down things in Calle Calle but he is going to do great things this week.  His papers have still not come through to get his VISA which appears to be totally random since he goes home soon.   W...

Email on a Tuesday?!?!?!  Yeah so we had a Conference yesterday so we kinda got robbed from our normal pday. But it's ok because it actually ended up being a good day and we had a mini p-day when we returned. Started our venture to the Conference by hopping on a 3 hour bus in order to head down to Pto. Montt where we met up with other missionaries. A missionary leader from Utah named Shane Littlefield hopped on a zoom call with us for like 5 hours and we just went though all these things about our mission and how we can improve. Apparently he was my dad's MTC teacher so he's been teaching missionaries for a really long time. What we came up with was that we need to "shoot the 3", work with members and have more faith. Then because my area is too far away from the mission office to go to and from in 1 day we had to stay overnight in Puerto Montt. We ended up staying with the APs and they planned a blitz where we worked every minute. This time I was with Elder Hayni...

Yo so what's up squad. Honestly this week was like a kinda chopped week because of Christmas. But it actually ended up being a pretty good week.  For Christmas it was like really hot out and probably not the most ideal time to go out to proselyte. Either I have gotten used to the cooler weather or the UV rays down here really make it hotter. Elder Benson and I decided that we where going to try and make cookies for a bunch of members then go deliver them on Christmas. Christmas morning we baked some cookies and it was pretty smooth sailing.  Followed a recipe from my dad and then quickly realized they use the metric system so the measurements were different so we had to eyeball some things but hey it all worked out. We also didn't have a blender so we had to hand mix it all. My forearms were on fire by the end up the baking experience. As we were making the cookie dough the oven was pre-heating and essentially heating our super tiny apartment into a sauna. So the oven was not ...

S o somehow this week is Christmas and I don't really know where the time went or how we've gotten to this point. That also means we are actually entering summer so I am wearing short sleeves and sunscreen now.  We had a stake Christmas devotional. And the stake here is pretty small or about the size of what a healthy ward. There were about 150 people that were able to come.  It is hard for a lot of people to travel in our sector because a lot of people don't have a car.  The stake decided to do it outside since we are in summer. They put up a giant tarp to block the sun which was a really great idea so we didn't die of heat stroke.  Sadly the the metal fence the tarp was attached to began to bend. Like literally started to sway in the wind and halfway through the devotional a lot of people switched seats out of fear of the 15 foot fence falling down. But that didn't happen and didn't stop the devotional and all the missionary's nailed our musical number whi...

  I've decided my sector might just be part of the Truman Show but like pt 2 called the McMillan show.  Some of the people here might be paid actors.  This week while walking two guys on the side of the road started a conversation with us asking us where we were from. They then proceeded to split us off so one was talking to me and the other to my Comp. My conversation was pretty chill, but apparently the other guy told my companion that the only reason he is here is because he was brainwashed and doesn't actually live his own life and stuff. Pretty much told him to "Eat, drink and Be merry" (2 Nephi 28:7) By that point we just cut off the conversation by seeing if they wanted to read a flyer, then all of the sudden they get this huge rush and need to suddenly leave. So that's how we took care of them.  I got to do a intercambio with Elder Duryea this week. He's in the second cambio of his training. And man I do not envy being at the start of the mission. I me...

So this week was a little chaotic. I feel like I say that for a lot but this week was actually a week full of sidequests. We had a Multi-Zone Conference planned for Friday. So we spent time working with a companionship of Hermanas to make a presentation for our zone at Zone Conference. But it was also a special Christmas conference so we had to prepare a Christmas skit to do with our zone that we were going to perform at the end of the conference. Anddd we got a text from the Hermanas that we were going to direct the conference and that they wanted the Elders in our zone to do a special musical number... So we just start plugging away, getting our work done and letting the Elders know that we are going to sing Silent Night which they were not excited to sing! Then on Thursday, the day before the conference, we got a call from the Zone Leaders in Valdivia who were supposed to host the conference and they said that there was a dead body in their chapel so we were going to have to mov...