W11: Beans, Beans and More Beans

Hi All!  I hope everyone is doing well. Down here in Southern Chile I have discovered beans. Now that I am trying to be a healthy missionary instead of eating chocolate cereal I throw some beans in the microwave with cheese and that's what I eat. Plus they are super cheap and pretty easy to make. Just gotta soak them over night then cook them on low heat for like 2 hours. So beans where the breakthrough discovery this week. 

Thanks to my mother I am now living on a great depression type diet. Full of potatoes, beans, oats and the occasional egg. (I will acknowledge this is not what they ate in the depression but I feel like that) Gone are the days of sugar cereal and skipping meals. It's time to start the 2 year mega bulk. It will be the most insane cut in 2026 though...  

We had another pretty good week. We where able to teach some good lessons and meet some good people. Plus it didn't rain and it was actually sunny so that was cool. It is starting to get really cold when we wake up so not looking forward to that. It's generally a brisk 36° F when we wake up so it's a little rough to summon the will power to leave my nice warm sleeping bag with my nice warm fleece liner. Most missionary's sleep in sleeping bags with liners to stay warm enough.  Housing insulation pretty much doesn't exist here.

We had an english lesson with an atheist who learned how to do introductions in english...Hello!  How are you?  Good!  He had respect for parables so we shared a parable with him. A lot of people want to learn English and it's fun to talk to the occasional person in broken English. More on the parable later...

We got a little harassed by a homeless dude. He's always asking us for money on the streets asking for money and follows us and yells at us sometimes. He tried following us a little but we just hit him with that missionary power walk and sped away. For the most part it's pretty chill here in Chile. I've never felt like I'm in danger so that's good. 

I also finally got my tripod for my camera so now I was able to take some cool photos at night. I left the shutter open for like 10 seconds and it was able to capture some cool stuff which you can see below. 

For my P-day I just got back from a total side quest with a member. We ended up driving with him and his wife out to the ocean. Where it was pouring rain by the way so I didn't really get to take out the trusty camera. But we drove out to the ocean and it actually reminded me a lot of NorCal. Just kinda grey and cold but its cool to think that Im on the other side of the world.  

We passed by all of the salmon farms. The town I am in exports all the Salmon for Chile. And Chile is the Number 2 exporter of salmon in the world behind Norway. There are a lot of salmon here but sadly they are not part of many peoples diet because they are so expensive. The gringos will pay a lot of money for good salmon so they aren't willing to sell them to Chileans who can't afford what they export them for.  So next time you eat Salmon think of the Chilean fisherman who are working hard in the rain to bring you your salmon.

So we drove and walked along this beach. Then we got back into the car and just started driving. I didn't really know where but eventually we ended up at this little Mate shop. I ended up buying a Mate and Straw so I don't have to use my companions anymore. I also got this Grapefruit flavored yerba that is super good. (Currently drinking some right now). Then we just drove back to Quellon. It was a super lit P-day excursion. 

The craziest part about the mission is thinking about how I turned 18 like 3 months ago and now I am somehow 8000 miles away in the boonies of an Island of Chile driving along a dirt road to go find the beach. Its all still very surreal.

I had a dream last night and there was some Spanish in it. I was sitting in a class room watching a Spanish class take place. Someone would ask what certain english words were in Spanish and the teacher would repeat the words in Spanish. So it was technically both english and Spanish but still a little bit of Spanish. It was weird. Pretty much by the end of the day my brain is always fried from the Spanish. 

So we had an english lesson with an atheist and we wanted to share something regarding faith and since he liked parables we shared this...there was a farmer who loved his olive tree and he worked on his Olive trees everyday. One day he went outside to find that his favorite olive tree had brought forth bad fruit. He debated cutting it down but instead he chose to prune it and nurture it some more. Eventually it brought forth good fruit. Then a little time passed and the tree produced bad fruit again. The second time this happened the farmer said he was going to cut the tree and cast it into the fire. His worker convinced him to work with the tree a little longer. So him and his worker went to work nurturing the tree and pruning it and eventually it made good fruit again. (this is the parable found in Jacob 5 of the Book of Mormon). It is full of meaning. 

Even when we work really hard at something, sometimes it still might not go our way. But we need to keep on working on those things because eventually all of our hard work will pay off. And even when we want to give up we can rely on our friends to help us push through our lows. I was able to tell the guy trying to learn english that It might not be easy to learn english but if he works hard he will be able to eventually learn it. He appreciated the parable and I thought it was a good story I can share because everyone can learn something from it. So Whenever anything gets hard for any of you guys just remember that eventually it will all be worth it and to just keep focused on the end result. 

Love you all 

- Elder McMillan 

1. Some of our Venezuelan members...Remember I told you about the short ceilings.  Venezuelans are shorter than Chileans.

2. Quellon at night.  

3. My Chino Mall glasses are holding up!

4. Side Quest to the side of the island with large waves about 30 minutes away

5. pier on our side quest. Ocean might be the same but the piers aren't as sturdy as ours.  

6. My mate cup with my grapefuit mate.  YUMM!  I love it! 

7. Our piso. It has our kitchen, our study/family room, a bedroom and bathroom. Small and nice.  We don't spend much time there since we are on daily quests.