Another week of miracles people.  So remember that woman whose son was murdered and we had been teaching, but that we knew was going to return to her pueblo that was 5 hours away from a church building? Well she has stayed with her sister this entire time just so that we can teach her!!! AND SHE´S GETTING BAPTIZED THIS SUNDAY in between the sessions of General Conference! 

At first we thought that she wouldn´t be able to be baptized until after the transfers that we will have in a couple weeks, so we were thinking that we weren´t going to be able to be at her baptism, which was really sad for us, but then we realized if she was baptized this Sunday, she would complete her three necessary attendances of church and she could be baptized.  But the baptisms are normally Saturday and we weren´t sure if our mission president would go for this.  My companion told me she didn´t want to ask because she was too nervous and so I thought maybe we shouldn´t, but then I heard my mom´s voice in my head saying that if you never ask, you´ll never know!  So I decided to call and ask even though my companion said she would support me but wouldn´t talk.  Anywho, so I called, talked a lot in Spanish and got permission! yay!! so we can be there!! 

She has an incredible testimony and has changed so much.  I don´t have much time this week and I forgot the connector for my camera so I can´t send pictures.  But I love you all and I know the gospel is true yay!!! 

Fiesta with the rest of the missionaries 

The aftermath of the obstacle course 

FIESTAS PATRIAS

Hola, hola, hola todo!  (Clearly the Spanish is really coming along).  Anywho, this week was Independence Week here in Chile.  The actual day is September 18th, but these Chileans know how to party, so the fiesta is basically all week.  The bad thing is, because of this fiesta business going on, we couldn´t leave the house for three days during the week unless we had fixed appointments (Apparently there is quite a lot of drinking that goes on these days).  Although I´m sure everyone wants to have appointments with the lovely missionaries during their fiesta week, we had essentially none (shocking, I know.)  HOWEVER, we did some partying of our own this week and all I can say is, these Chileans also know how to eat.  En serio.  

Last P-day, our zone got together with the senior missionaries in our zone and had a lovely little fiesta for the 18th.  It was very Chilean.  The senior missionaries (who are from Santiago) bought a cow (to eat, not living), but apparently they sell whole cows that you can buy, roast and eat.  So we roasted a cow at the church and had a serious fiesta with rice, Chile bread, potatoes, torta... the works.  The Elders were in seventh heaven with all the steak they could eat and kept saying that this was the best day of their entire mission.  Elders.  Anywho, it was lovely.  And I ate quite a bit.

THEN a couple days later was the 18th.  My companion and I were coming back from a district meeting and el papito (the father of the family that we live with - also the president of the branch) was carrying a huge leg of some animal in a bucket that he was going to roast.  It was too big to be the leg of a pig and too small to be the leg of a cow, so I asked him what it was.  He told me, but it was NOT a word that I knew, so then he was trying to explain it and finally he said, ´como Pumba!´ Ahhhhh.  Warthog.  So later that day I ate roasted Pumba, humming Hakuna Matata to myself as I did so.  Que triste.  Anywho, I also ate quite a few Chilean empanadas and this cookie like thing called alfajores con chancaca.  Quite delicious.  

THEN the next day was the ward activity which was from 10 in the morning until 12 at night (we left at about 9pm), but they had (of course) quite a bit of food and lots of traditional Chilean games.  One traditional game is an obstacle course in which you have to first blow up a balloon and pop it by sitting on it, eat an alfajora, pick up a coin with your mouth that is in a plate of water, find a candy in a pile of flour with your mouth, and then answer a question about Chile.  Nobody wanted to do this, so my companion and I volunteered, and we went to it with gusto.  What I didn´t realize is that they have the water and flour in that order so that the flour sticks to your face.  Lovely.  Also apparently I went to it with so much gusto that I got a bloody nose, so I arrived at the finish line covered in flour and blood.  But victorious people.  Also I learned that having a bloody nose is not common among latinos, that you only have a bloody nose if you have a serious illness, and no one would believe me when I said it was perfectly normal.  Anywho, clearly I am cutting a reputation around here.  I´ll try and send a picture for your enjoyment because one of the elders took it upon himself to take pictures of this event for me.  So kind.  

Anywho people, the gospel is true, I know that life isn´t worth living if you´re not serving someone else.  the woman that had the incredible experience with us that I talked about last time has stayed this entire time just so we can teach her more!!! and she finally finally finally came to church!!! i promise i´m doing missionary work! i love you all!  

First Baptism - Martín

Hello again! 

This week was my very first baptism!  Martin has 11 years, and is the nephew of our mamita (the primary president and wife of the branch president), but his mother and older brother have been inactive for years.  We´ve been teaching his entire family the lessons for about two months and on Saturday he was baptized!  It was really great because now his mom and brother are attending Sacrament and him and his brother have gotten involved in the young men´s program.  Most of their activities are playing soccer, so it wasn´t hard.  Anyway, his entire family came to the baptism, many of whom have also been inactive for years who we´ve also been working with.  It was really great and I sang Cuando Me Bautice (I Like to Look for Rainbows).  YAAY!!

Anywho, I can´t believe this, but I´m almost done with my training.  For the first three months, you´re in training, which means extra studying in the morning and it also means you stay in one place for the whole time too.  But in three weeks I´ll be done and could be training someone else AHHHH!!! I have rather a lot of Spànish to learn still, but it´s much much better.  One of the members who accompanied us to one of our lessons thought I was finishing my mission.  HA! not even close, but I appreciate the sentiment.  

I haven´t eaten any more pig´s blood, but I did eat some type of fish soaked in pancake batter and fried.  It was absolutely delicious.  Also raspberry and chocolate flan soaked in vanilla milk.  So really I´m quite spoiled.

Here in Chile, it´s the custom to greet someone with a kiss on the cheek, which basically means you bump cheeks and make a kissing sound.  I always try and play the prelude music before church but I think it´s an unspoken rule that you greet every single person in the room, so I´m interrupted about 70 times with kisses on the cheek, it´s wonderful.  However, because we´re missionaries, with the men, we shake hands.  But the concept of a firm handshake doesn´t exist here (probably cause it´s all about the kissing), but apparently I have a very firm handshake, and all the men make exaggerated wincing faces whenever I shake their hands and give me a hard time about it.  But I´m trying to instigate the custom, so now every time I shake their hands, they all do their best to give a really firm handshake.  I´m so proud.  

Anyway, the gospel is true people.  Work hard, love others and trust in the Lord and all will be well.  I love you all! 

Chopping Wood 

Emptying Soot 

GOOD GRAVY

Hello dearest everyone, 

This morning I awoke to an absolute torrent of rain and wind battering the house so fiercely that it sounded like the roof might collapse, though I thought I might be warmer if it did (10 points to Gryffindor to anyone who knows exactly where that´s from).  But seriously, it is a hurricane outside people.  And we are officially out of wood.  Yay! The last time, it turns out, we just ran out of wood small enought to fit in our combustion, and all we had to do was chop it.  Which brings me to my first actual experience of chopping wood.  Before, I was under the rather mistaken impression that you just swung the ax as hard as you could and that you had to slive all the way through the log, and if you didn´t you had to dislodge the axa and swing it again right into the same spot.  I clearly hadn´t given this much thought.  It turns out that you swing the ax down onto the log, lodge it in, then lift the ax, lodged log and all over your head and slam it bac on to the tree stump until you´ve cut all the way through.  I´m practically a natural.  So if you and me ever get stranded in the woods with an ax and reasonable sized logs, I ´ve got us covered.  I´ve also been instructed (with admirable detail) in the exact way to kill a pig (ax through the head.  So if we also have a pig stranded with us in the wilderness, we will not freeze nor starve. 

 It seems like everyone here owns pigs (though they keep them in the countryside and go there every weeken, another reason why it´s hard to get anybody to church). But this Sunday my companion and I went to eat dinner at a member´s home and she kept telling us she had a delicacy for us that was muy muy rico.  yay, so I was excited.  When she brought out the dinner, she asked me if I knew what was on my plate.  I didn´t, but my companion did because apparently this is a normal thing in her country too.  Congealed pig´s blood people.  These people use every part of the pig, including the blood.  They basically collect the blood, add herbs, cook it and wait for it to congeal.  And woila, delicacy.  I gritted my teeth, steeled my stomach, and said I would love to try it.  She told me she would only give me a little.  She brought some for both my companion and me, and then I ate congealed pig´s blood.  It wasn´t too bad if I didn´t think about what it was.  Then my companion said she couldn´t eat it and dumped hers on my plate.  I told he I would love to eat it, so I did.  Lots of blood people but The people there took a great liking to me after that.  Then they brought out the meat, which was actually all fat, which apparently they eat too.  I was strongly reminded of James Herriott´s experience.  I think I was sent to a dirtier, poorer, more Chilean Darrowby.   

Anyway, the woman we taught last week stayed an extra week so we could finish teaching her everything.  It´s been great! Also every sunday i get to practice christmas songs with the six person youth choir, it´s great!

I love you all! Until next week!

The pictures are of me chopping wood, I think trying to dislodge the ax and emptying the soot.  what can i say, i´m a natural.

This is as real as life gets people, it´s truly been a week of miracles.  

So remember that story I told last week of the woman whose son was murdered?  One week ago, she was telling me that she respected the Mormons for what they believed, but that she didn´t believe in Jesus Christ and she believed God was basically just the nature and some strange combination of metaphysics.  Yesterday she told me that she knew God was her father, that He loved her, that Jesus Christ was her Savior and had died for her, and that she knew Joseph Smith was a prophet who restored the gospel and that she wants to be baptized.  And that people is the gospel of Jesus Christ.  It can change someone in one week.  There´s only a tiny snag.  she is visiting her sister and she´s going to return home sometime this week and her home is on a remote archipelago five hours away from a church.  We told her we would talk to our mission president about sending missionaries.

We taught her every day this week, and every lesson was incredible.  She has been depressed and unable to work ever since her son was murdered three years ago, but she told us this has changed everything.  She feels peace and hope and faith that she will see her son again.  She told us that the day before we came, she prayed to God that He would send help because she was feeling incredible pain about her son, and she looked up and saw a light in the middle of her dark room that immediately went off.  The next day, as she was waiting for us and her sisters to arrive, she randomly opened her sister´s Bible and read a passage about the Lord sending angels to those in need.  And 20 minutes later we arrived and her nephew bore his testimony.  She calls us her angels and says that she´s going to take a picture together with us to hang in her home to remember.  This experience has truly humbled me because I know I am no angel and I know I can´t have this effect on people, but the gospel of Jesus Christ can.  I wish I could explain this experience better, but it´s been truly inexplicable.  She has completely changed in one week.  She says she no longer feels the same emotional pain that she did one week prior.  I know this gospel is true and I know there are those who might say this experience is a result of something else.  But I was there.  And I saw that change.  And I know nothing but the Savior of the world and His gospel can do that.

In other news, I´m playing piano for the youth choir that are preparing for christmas.  I think they´re banking on me staying I LOVE YOU ALL GOODBYE!!!