SO I had a recording to send you guys, but I can't seem to get the recorder to work. Nuts! I told you the lazer pointer story in it and everything!! I guess I have to tell you about it in this letter instead. Also if all goes well I'll be able to send you guys a video! New! I hope it works, I'm excited to try it out. Most missions don't allow the missionaries to take videos but we can, and we can even send em home if we can figure out how to fit them in emails. My roomate claims that we can, so I will try!
Entonces I got a lot of comments about how I didn't talk about my companion at all. Yeeeeeah I forgot. Sorry all. So here I'll tell you about it! His name is Elder Hadlock, he's from St. George so he's very gringo but his biological Father is Indian so he looks very Indian. He's really cool and has been teaching me a ton. He's an amazing teacher and I have a ton to learn from him. Elder Anuarve and Elder Schley are the two other elders in our apartment. Elder Anuarve is from Argentina but understands and speaks English perfectly, and Elder Schley was born in Kazahkstan and was adopted into Utah when he was 9. He says he spoke Russion (of course) but forgot a lot of the Russian in the CCM. His English still isn't flawless and nor is his Spanish, so he doesn't exactly have a native language anymore which is unique. All three of them are amazing Elders and have been a big help to me, mostly just by being a ton of fun to live with. We have SO much fun it's great.
A little more about Chile! I don't know if I've already mentioned the bread here but it's reeeeeeeally good. Like rediculously good. And extremely cheap. I bought two loaves the other day for 666 pesos (about $1.) They also love completos here. Like love them. Whenever anyone feeds you completos it's an insult to their culture if you don't eat at least two of them. Also, the food here is way better than the CCM, I figured it would be but I'm still a little relieved. The meat is also better than it is in the U.S, it's fantastic. They also love herbal tea and this fake coffee stuff (I forgot it's name) and drinking these things is such a big part of their culture that President lets us drink it with people who give it to us because none of it's caffeinated. The tea is alright, but the coffee is pretty nasty. I don't know how something that smells so good can taste so, so bad. In addition to all their Chilean food they have everything normal that we also have in the United States, I bought a Snickers the other day and I'm probably gunna stock up on Ice Cream this pday.
The dogs! The dogs. I see more stray dogs every day than I see stray people. And every person that I see is stray because... well... they're people. The dog situation is horrible here, especially in Conti. Often the dogs are too apathetic to bother us but ocasional one charges us. The miracles that I see here most often are that the dogs that attack us usually come within a few feet of us and then turn around and run away as if they forgot we were even there. So that's always pretty cool, I silently say a prayer of thanks whenever that happens.
Language! With the practice that I've had these two weeks I've become at very least proficient in Spanish, I can say everything I want to with correct grammar and pronunciation at a pretty good pace. The only problem is that I can't understand anything that anybody says at all. We had lunch with a member this week who had a son who went to Mexico on his mission and had just come home and he spoke sooooo slowly. I could understand every single word that he said it was soooo nice. I couldn't help thinking ''if only I got called to Mexico'' but I repented because I really love Chile. Mexico is the slowest Spanish in the world and Chile is the fastest, so there's quite a significant difference. I know I'll get used to it eventually though. I'm getting a ton of my compliments about my Spanish out here though, which is really encouraging. Most members tell me that I speak extremely well for having just gotten there, and a lot of them tell my companion while my attention is directed elsewhere that my Spanish is really good and then he tells me afterward about what they said. At some houses I tell people guess how long I've been studying Spanish and then I tell them that I've been studying it for 8 weeks and they go like ''Miiiiiish enserio?!'' and I'm like ''Si, es la verdad!'' One of the members even told me that I didn't sound like a gringo, that I sounded like a Chileno. So that's all really encouraging, I just need to work a lot on being able to understand them.
Oh by the way 'mish' is Chileno for 'wow'. Pretty sure that's just a Chilean thing. Also here they say 'painting monkeys' and 'giving juice' to mean 'messing around' which I find is really funny.
Stories! SO background is needed, Elder Anuarve and Elder Schley have these lazer pointers that they play with every night, they're so powerful that you can see the whole beam of the lazer even if there's no smoke or steam or anything. But of course it's brighter when there's more smoke or steam. So the lazer pointer story is like this: it all started while I was eating my cereal in a daze on my second day in the field. I was kind of out of it, because it was my second day in the field. Somebody had put oil in a pan and it was on the stove, and it gradually started to smoke. The pan continued smoking, as I continued eating my cereal in silence, until the entire apartment was filled with smoke and the smoke was coming quickly. This is when I began to dazedly think ''you know what... maybe this isn't supposed to be happening'' which is when I went to Elder Schley and Elder Anuarve and told them that oil was burning on the stove. Elder Anuarve then ran out of the room yelling ''WAIT WAIT WAIT DON'T OPEN ANY OF THE DOORS OR WINDOWS THIS IS IMPORTANT'' then he turns the lights off and gets his lazer pointer out and pretends that it's a light saber. I was laughing for a very long time. Elder Schley and Elder Anuarve made a little Star Wars video before they let us open the doors and windos to let the smoke out. It was hilarious.
Aaaaah there's never enough time! I feel really bad that I STILL haven't talked to you much about teaching or about my investigators yet so I'm gunna try to figure out how to make recordings and put them on the computer for next week so I can try to catch up, since I'm sending you the video though I need to explain the background behind it. So the beaches here are absolutely incredible, easily the most incredible thing I've ever seen. They're like normal beaches, but there are also rock spires and caves and giant sentinels and cliffs that just extend up from the surface of the black sand and AH it's cool. So today for p-day we had fun playing in the caves and stuff on the beaches. We can go to the beaches in the wintertime because nobody else is there usually, and of course we can't get in the water but we can get wet. So we spent the day making up these games where we had to go run and touch a rock while the surf is receding before another wave comes, or run from cave to cave before the surf comes in and gets you wet. It's a little hard to explain, but you'll see what I'm talking about in the video. Also today we were standing on this pier type thing watching the waves come in, and occasionally one wave would be bigger than other waves and would hit the rocks and splash up and look really cool. So all four of us we're standing right on the edge trying to get a video or a picture of this happening, when a huge wave came and hit the rocks and came down on us like 50 buckets of salt water were dropped on our head. It was hilarious, and the whole ordeal was caught on video. So you'll hopefully get to see those two videos today.
SO this week was a ton better than the last week. Getting to know the investigators and the area better has allowed me to lose myself in the work more and be able to simply forget myself in the effort to help these people. The people we teach are often in very difficult situations and circumstances, and all of them are living in circumstances far more meager than what we're used to in Utah. We take a lot of things for granted, for sure. What Chilenos call rich we call poor and what they call poor we call destitute. I'm greatful for being able to serve here because it's so easy to lose yourself in the efforts to bring them the only thing that can bring them true happiness. We teach English every week to two different families (both nonmembers, we just started teaching one of them the gospel too! That was an exciting story that will have to be told another day) and one of the families that we taught this week was expressing such surprise that we would sacrifice two years of our young lives to go so far away from our houses just to teach about our religious. I bore testimony to her that this isn't just our religion, that this is the most important thing in the entire world and the only way that families can find true happiness in this life. And because of that, it's far worth any sacrifice. I think that was a lesson I had to learn here in the mission, because missions aren't easy and it's simply not worth it if you don't realize the importance of what you're doing. This is truly the restored gospel of Jesus Christ, and through Jesus Christ people can find rest in a world where there is none. Through Christ we can rise from anything, and be able to face any challenge. To a people like the people I teach, who work 12 hours a day 7 days a week and struggle with depression, poverty, sickness, and every other kind of trial, this message of finding peace through Jesus Christ is of utmost importance. It's my testimony that we can find peace through Jesus Christ, that through His love and His grace and His mercy for us those who are weary and are heavy laden can find rest to their souls. I hope in the future to be able to send you much more stories about investigators, because I've already had so many incredible experiences. Until then, nos vemos!
Elder Fox
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