Happy Easter!

The Food, The House, The Good Ol Boring Details

 

Work as usual this week, the next week I`ll have a new companion and possibly be in a new sector! I hope I stay a lot longer in this ward though, although I`ve contacted every door in the sector and a lot of them twice, and know a good chunk of these people by name, I still feel like there`s a lot more I can do in this ward. This week, we had a special musical number in ward conference! I`m pretty sure this is the first special musical number done by the youth in the history of our stake, El Bosque, haha and I`ll tell you what: we nailed it. A couple weeks ago the mutual theme song "Come Unto Christ" got stuck in my head, and I couldn`t get it out. I thought about Dakota`s Farewell, we sang that song in Sacrament meeting, and the spirit that I felt during the number. I remembered the same feeling when we did the song in a seminary conference my senior year. So I set aside some time to go over to the church and try to make a Spanish version. Once I got a rough draft of lyrics, Hermana Fanny and Claudia (the two most incredible women, other than my mom, that I have ever met) fixed some grammar issues and we came up with a Spanish version of the song. We`ve been working on it at mutual for the past couple weeks, and on Sunday we performed it, and it was sweet. Super super powerful. I was grateful for that moment! I`ll send a video of a practice home this week.

My mom asked for a letter with details on what we eat, how we eat, and details on our living conditions, so I thought I could share a little bit of that here. In Chile, there`s really just 1 and a half meals recognized in one day. Lunch (huge, ridiculously big, kids come home in the middle of the day to eat lunch, then go back after), and Once. Like the number 11 in Spanish. It`s like the equivalent of a night time Brunch. Normally they drink tea, coffee, juice, or soda, and have bread and some kind of delicious jam and ham. If the family is wealthy, maybe they have completos (Chilean, tastier version over the American Hot dog, with diced tomatoes, avocado (not guac), and mayo. maybe some Aji). It`s pretty good, but we don`t get a break as missionaries to take Once, so we`re pretty grateful if the people we are teaching that night give us Once. If not, you kind of live off the big lunch. I have a bowl of Oatmeal and some Mate in the mornings (Mate I think is originally from Argentina, Chileans are unoriginal in almost everything. The only completely unique thing in Chile is the language...I`d say 30% of the vocabulary is made up Chilean words and sayings, which are all really funny and fun to use). Just about everyday, a family in the ward provides us lunch. The idea for the missionaries is that they can eat lunch in the members' houses, and get references at lunch appointments to pass by during the day. But a majority of the time we have to pick up lunch from the members and eat in our house, because we can`t go into homes if a man with more than 18 years old isn`t there...and that`s the case for most Chilean homes at 1:30 in the afternoon.  Some wards never really give the missionaries lunch, which means the missionaries have to buy or make lunch every day. But I am convinced that I am serving in the best ward in this mission, and we receive lunch almost every day.

Yes, we do live in a house. I live with 3 other Elders. We are the Elders of our ward, and our sector is split into two halves. The house is a 2 room little place with a bathroom and a kitchen, two little couches and one couch a little bit bigger. We have a washer and a dryer, a shower, hot water, and a couple weeks ago we got some SWEET medicine cabinet in the bathroom and a pantry thing in the kitchen. They also added a fan in the bathroom that turns on with the light, which is super cool :) It`s really convenient, has everything we need, but the hot water almost always runs out before the end of the month, and it is expensive to buy another gas tank for the house.

We used to have a dog named Almendra living with us, on our patio, but when our dueña died, her daughter and son-in-law took Almendra to their house, so we`re a pretty lonesome 4 Elders now. 

Our schedule is as follows:

7:30 wake up, exercise, shower

9:00 personal study

10:00 comp study

11:00 HIT THE STREETS BABY

1:30 Lunch

3 STREETS

10:30 In the house, off the streets, journal

11:30 Bed Time :)

Yep, we do everything one hour later than the majority of the missions in the world. Chile is weird, everything starts and ends way later. For example, Mutual starts at 8:30 in the night and ends at 10:30! Whackooo.

To close this uneventful letter, I'm happy to say that I've seen small miracles this week with my companion. That makes me happy. I feel like I am behind on my mission. I don't feel like I am 25% done. Really. I need to catch up or something, I feel like I have so much more work to do and things to learn. I love this gospel and I am so grateful for this opportunity to serve. Happy Easter to you all!

Smmmmmoooooooch!

-Elder Hixon