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Showing posts from July, 2024

W21: Sea Lions and Naps

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This week was a bit of a blur but tis the life of the mission. You do a lot of the same daily . Took a bus nap almost every day this week which is both a blessing and a curse of the sector I am in right now. Don't get me wrong, a  nice nap every once is great but you lose a lot of time that I could be doing missionary work. Not to mention it is expensive. The mission pays for the busses but I have to wait like a week to get reimbursed so I end of running out of money for essentials.   On Tuesday the APs came to talk to us. Every week all the missionaries in our area have a council. Kinda like a Jedi council. We all just talk about all of the friends we have in teaching and the ways we can help them. This week the APs (assistants to the president) came to our council. The APs are pretty much super righteous baller missionaries that go sidequests to help everyone and pass on training from the president. My previous companion Elder Hollingshead (may he rest in peace) was an AP and he

W20: Solo Espanol

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I wrote an email and it got deleted so here I am writing another one. I am officially one week into my only speaking Spanish with my companion. It's easier than I thought it was going to be but it is still pretty hard. Some things we just don't really connect on because of the language barrier. My movie references aren't a hit yet but don't you worry, we will make progress. As I was waiting for my comp (Elder Cok) to arrive I ended up spending the Day in Castro with an Elder from Uruguay named Elder Castro!! Kinda Ironic spending the day with Elder Castro in Castro. He was pretty cool. He loves to learn slang terms in English from all of us gringo elders. I taught him what gas meant when referring to gas food.  Really quality food for you gringos who don't know teenage slang.  We worked on the pronunciation of vegetable for him. While he worked on saying vegetable I was able to get some practice rolling my r's. Natives are really encouraged to learn English whil

W19: 2 Comps, 2 Dead

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Yooo...what's going on everybody? So to explain the title, I'm finishing my second transfer today.  What is a transfer you might ask?  Every 6 weeks you wait for a call from your zone leader (2 missionaries over your area) who waited for a call from the Assistants (2 missionaries over the mission along with your mission president) who work hard to figure out where each missionary will work and live.  One, both or neither companion might stay in the area. You might be sent to snow, a city or even the far away fishing town of Quellon. You just never know where you'll be for the next 6 weeks.  At least we have the comfort to know that we're most likely going to a place that will rain a lot here in the Puerto Montt Mission.  Usually you stay in an area for a couple transfers and usually with a missionary for more than a transfer but I have yet to experience this.      I've been in the field for 2 transfers (12 weeks) which are also considered my training. Essentially I

W18: The Coldest 4th

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For the 4th we went to only flag of the USA in Quellon  Forget everything I said about it being cold here before. It snowed for like 5 seconds on Wednesday which means it is officially winter.  I am not even in the cold part of Chile. Pretty much it was low 40s high 30s with rain and wind and 100% humidity. The weather app said it felt like 30 degrees one night which isn't bad if you are inside but is cold when you have to stay outside knocking doors for hours. Each day is 3 layer type of day. I generally wear some sort of wool sweater, a heavier jacket and a waterproof shell for all the rain. Essentials to not suffer. Sometimes a beanie and some gloves are necessities. On the bright side, its equivalent to like middle of January in the States which means warmer weather is coming.  Officially the coldest 4th of July I've ever experienced which was strange. As for the 4th of July, we had to finish our day early because there were some extremist groups in Chile that don't lik

W17: Another Week Another Dog

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                      Hey y'all hope you guys are doing good. Im chillin down here in Chile. Like Literally chillin....it is getting pretty cold.  Last week we went to a members house in Castro with our entire zone of 16 missionaries; 8 sisters and 8 elders. They made us a traditional Chilean meal. It was like this pancake potato thing that they cook on a log while spinning over some charcoal. It was good but definitely a little strange. They had a pretty awesome house though! It was like this house built into a hill but the hill was all green with grass and it looked like it was straight out of a movie. Attached are some of the photos I took while there. It is really pretty down here when it is not raining. Also they had sheep in their backyard so I was able to get some pictures with the ovejas (sheep).  Spanish is starting to get a little bit easier. I don't need to concentrate as much when I am listening in order to understand so I can actually put a little bit of effort int