This letter prompted me to send him a box full of breakfast food. I think he is probably exaggerating the being hungry statement (I hope so) and teasing me a bit. He was online and I asked him about it and he said "Ya I am a little hungry but it's okay because I had been eating too much", that's it and he was gone. It didn't make me feel much better lol.
 |
| No new photos but this is one of my favorites! |
Mom,
The weeks really do fly by. I´ve already been out for two months,
which is so weird to think about. It feels like a week or two. I´m sure that´s what it will feel like for me too after my mission is over. Chile is starting to feel like home, so that´s kinda nice. The weather changed really fast, and it´s really hot here now.
I haven´t had to use that jacket at all for the last week. There are tons of stray
dogs. It´s a sad sight. I´ve already seen two dead dogs in the street.
Yeah he (Elder Leon) just wants me to study for another hour. It´s tough. He is an
amazing missionary, but not the best trainer. It would be a lot easier
if I knew what I was doing, and I spoke the language. But I don´t, and
he´s not really teaching me that much. Spanish is pretty hard to
translate perfectly. Some of it just doesn´t make sense lol. (He is referring to when we try to translate his mission newsletter).
I haven´t really cooked much at all. And I don´t really eat breakfast.
We never have food. And when we do, Elder Leon just eats it all. So I
hardly ever eat breakfast. The water here is safe to drink, but I
still use the filtered water bottle that the MTC gave me. Ecco is made
by Nestle. It´s pretty much just like chocolate milk, but it´s like
coffee. Mate is weird, but I like it. I love having other English
speaking elders. I would go crazy if I couldn´t ever speak English.
For now we don't have an actual baptism, we just set a date for him. He hasn´t been home the last week though, so we haven´t gotten to teach him. It´s
been tough because we were white washed into the area. So we don´t
really have any investigators yet. Most of the contacts have been
really friendly! There have been a few rude, but most have been nice.
Most of it has just been listening, but I get to teach a little here
and there in Spanish. The mission is tough. Say the wrong thing and you can screw the whole thing up.
We were going to watch conference in Spanish, but the District Leader called
on Saturday morning before conference, and said that the new
missionaries could watch it in English! So we got to watch it in
English. It was the first time I was actually really excited for
conference haha. There were a lot of talks that I really enjoyed. I
went a little crazy with the note taking, I took 43 half pages of
notes. I liked that they started doing the different languages too.
I realized that I forgot to tell you about once. It literally means
eleven in Spanish, but that´s not what it means at all. Instead of
dinner here, they have once. In once, they usually have pan (bread)
and ham and cheese, usually with avocado as well. A small salad, and
Ecco. Usually when we have a late appointment, they give us once. It´s
awesome.
I also had a food called wata on Monday. Wata is stomach. We don´t
know what animal it was, but it was definitely stomach. It was
disgusting. The weirdest thing I´ve had here so far. All the other
food I´ve had here has been phenominal though.
The mission president actually told us not to carry our cameras with
us. Apparently the missionaries here get robbed a lot. So I don´t
carry it with me too many places. I´ve still had a lot of
opportunities for pictures though, I think I have like 180 so far.
I really can´t figure out the sending pictures home thing. So
sorry.
Things are going good. The language still hasn´t come, and I still
can´t really understand anything, but I´ve only been here for two
weeks. I still have to translate in my mind when I hear it. If I
can tell the words apart that is. They talk ridiculously fast here,
and they fuse words together. Like if they were to say "Para aca",
they just say "Paraca" and it´s so hard to understand.
We get to go to whatever we want on P Day, with permission of
the mission president. We do laundry, we have a washer, and we can do
it whenever we need it. We haven´t had much opportunity for service,
but we have pulled weeds once. We´re picking up garbage tomorrow. So
just the usual. I think that we get to go to the Santiago temple next P Day, so that
should be really fun. They also have a special session in English, so
that´s even better hah. But today for P Day, 8 of us got to go up to the mountains. We had a little picnic up there, and we got to play soccer too. It was one of
the prettiest places I´ve ever seen. It looked a lot like the Dominican Republic on the ride up. I have some super awesome pictures of it. It was really really cool. I had a lot of fun today. I unfortunately have three blisters on my left
foot now, and I can barely walk. I´m starting to get used to all the
walking now though.
Love,
Elder Stam
No comments:
Post a Comment