Learn to Speak English by Watching Friends

¡Hola familia y amigos de nuevo!

So my first week in a new sector! Ya so the first day was interesting.  We went and pretty much wandered around, and I tryed to get to know my new companion a little.  His name is Elder Concha, he is from Chile, and we get along really well. The strange thing was he knew a lot of random English words, ya well Tuesday I figured it out... HE SPEAKS ENGLISH!!! Haha ya he finally told me that he speaks English, and the best part is how he learned it, ya by watching Friends with Spanish subtitles! He speaks freaking amazing!!! Oh and I also found out that he is 26 and already has graduated de universidad. So that was crazy!

Next, the house that I am now living in is tiny, but at the same time it is an actual house thing, so that is ok.  It has a bathroom, a bedroom, and study area, and a kitchen area.  The water heater is different here than in my last apartment.  Before all I had to do was turn the hot water on and it turned on and did everything, but here we have to attach the gas, turn on the gas, and light the fire to get the water working  The thing was my companion and I didn't know how to do it, so we went 4 days with a freezing cold shower until the other elders showed up and taught us how to do it, and now the shower is wonderful, a little getto, but wonderful none the less.

With only the 2 of us living in the house I have found a lot more time to do nothing haha. Before there were 3 other elders to keep me busy, and now there is just my companion who usually goes to bed early, so it's interesting, and in the mornings with only 2 people to shower we have extra time to sit around and study more.  It's interesting.

One thing amazing about my companion is that he literally asks for references from everyone! This is good because when we contact them we get more numbers which is good, and we have found some really good people that way.

Ya so this new sector has a lot of little streets, a lot of parks, and not as many druggies (but all of the druggies here are like hard core druggies that are scary), and the dogs. For some reason the dogs here are a lot meaner! I don't know why but they all want to eat us, and ya it's fun.

So we have lunches with the members, or the members make us lunch, the first 3 days we took the lunches back to the house and ate it, so when we finally had a lunch that we were going to eat with the members we were very excited, that was until we got there haha. They are a great family, but ya we have to work with them... first there was a lady with cuts all over, like self-inflicted cuts, that was a little scary, then we watched them as they tried to sneak beer past us, the little kids were entertaining as usual, and one of them had a mini skirt on that was ya... don't know if you could classify it as a skirt even... so it ends up that pretty much all of them are members, but there is only one of them that is active.  So after we finished, everyone scattered except for the active grandma, and one of the grandaugters, and that's when I shared my scripture. To be a missionary you learn to love people really fast, so you want to share with them the happiness that you know they could feel. Well this lady kept saying someday she was going to go to church and read the scriptures and all of this stuff. Well ya that's when the spirit starts working and I know exactly what I need to share even though it's kinda harsh, but then the other scripture comes to mind that the wicked take the truth to be harsh, so I shared the scriptures anyway. Alma 5 is really good for less active members, especially when it asks "if you died right now would you be able to lie to God?" but then it goes on and I make it really spiritual with the shepherd is calling you, and is still calling, and in the end she was in tears... and then the grandma started talking and would not shut up... everything I did to invite the spirit was ruined, and so I had to do it all over again... and then the grandma started talking again! Ya phrase of this week, Obuela, SHUT UP!!! Ya that was the lame fast version of this story, I'm almost out of time so...

Just got off the phone with the mission president, and I am now in a trio... but it's ok. I'm now with 2 latinos!!!  This elder is returning to the mission, he had to go home because of some knee problems but now he is back.  He is from Argentina.

Sunday I got to talk in church!!! But before that happened... I got to... CONFIRM SOMEONE!!!!!!!! That's right my first blessing ever, and in Spanish... it was interesting to say the least, and the best part is we only had one lesson with her so I didn't really know her, but that the whole loving people really fast thing. not going to lie being a missionary is awesome!

 

 

Nate, Oscar, and Elder Nichols

 

Out of time!!!! AHHH I have more to write about so hopefully I remember next week, but chao for now!!!

Special Face?

¡¡¡HOLA FAMILIA Y AMIGOS!!!

Ya first of all, this week has been absolutely crazy! Ya where do I
start? Ok I don't have my list of cool things that happened this week
so it might be a little fome, but that's ok, and fome is a Spanish
word for like a lot of things. so ya get used to it haha!

Primero! OSCAR WAS BAPTIZED!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yes, Oscar was my very
first ever lesson in Chile, and he was baptized last week with one of
the strongest testimonies I have ever seen. Pretty much it was, "Hey
Oscar we have this commandment that we are freaking out about you
accepting" within 3 minutes of the lesson he just says ya I understand,
it's a commandment, I may not know exactly why I have to do it, but I'm
going to do it. Can you say OH MY GOODNESS!!! Ya, but I love that man,
and am so glad that I was able to see him get baptized!

Segundo! We had a conference with Elder Bednar, and it was amazing! I
learned so much, and let me just tell you, first they do not look the
same as they do on TV during conference, and second, they do not talk
or act the same as they do on TV during conference.  I swear they are
competely different people! But none the less it was so much fun, and
he really knows how to teach people, which in turn is going to help me
teach people.

Tircero! We had a recent convert of before I got to the sector say
that she was done going to church. So we spent a long time with her
trying to figure out why. Then after about an hour of trying to
explain where these feelings were coming from (aka Satan), I went all
blunt on her. I asked her some questions, figured out what she
thought the importance of the sacrament was, and she said the first
time she took it, it was like a forgiveness, a salvation. So with the
fact that she recognized this I told her straight up that she was
exactly right, and that when she didn't go to church to participate in
the santa cena (sacrament) she couldn't receive this forgivness, and
in the end, she couldn't get the salvation. Now of course all of this
I was getting from the spirit, but I think it worked pretty well to
kind of make her think about what she was doing.

Cuarto! Ya I don't know what else happened this week cause I don't have
my list, but today we had changes!!! Ya so my new companion, his
name is Elder Concha, he is Chileno, doesn't speak very much English,
but he is very nice and I think we are going to get along very well.
Now I don't mean to sound mean when I say this, but I think it's
important for all of you to know. He has a little bit of a lazy eye,
and a problem with his leg so he walks a little funny, and a little
slow, but that just means that I will get to serve him that much
more! But he is really humble and I really do think we will get along
well!  I am in a sector called Dorsal 1.  We are now living in a little
house thing, but the best part is, I'm opening the sector, which means
both of the elders in the sector are new so pretty much we have to
start over with everything!

I finished with the rabies shots today, so I'm good for the next 3
years with that.

I need you to tell people that I love getting letters, but it's really
hard to write back, but I will write back eventually. To send letters
home we have to go into the center of the city, and we can't do that
every week, and we haven't done it for several weeks now so I haven't
been able to send anything to anyone yet, but tell Sister Kanaval that
I got her letter, and the letter from the little girls in the ward, and the
book from someone, and yes I got Brian's Diablo letter!

Pictures of everything to come next week, of the baptism, my old
companion, my new companion, the new house thing, all of that fun
stuff. Oh ya how could I forget!!! So I went on an intercambio this
week with Elder Hjelm. It was an interesting little change, and
pretty much all we did was contacts, but I got a new nickname, we
knocked this one door, and halfway through our conversation she looks
at me and says, "you have a special face"... WHAT!!! Ya I didn't know
how to take that, I still don't know how to take that, but ya apparently I
have a special face! Ya so it just gets better, we were waiting at
a bus stop, and this guy comes up and gives me this newspaper, so ya
I start looking at it, and next thing I know this lady comes and
starts taking pictures of me reading the paper. Not that I really
care, but ya special face moment number 2. But ya after that I kept
being called special face!

That's all I can remember for this week haha, love you all and miss you tons!!!

Earthquake!

¡Querido Familia y amigos!

 

Ya so straight to my week.

This week was crazy! First of all we finally found someone that let us help them!!! This is a big accomplishment here because nobody wants your help, but we finally found a lady painting her fence and she just so happened to have 2 more brushes.  Talk about following the spirit, but ya we helped her paint her fence, taught her all of lesson one, and part of lesson two because she was asking questions about it, and we are going to go back Wednesday to teach her again. The problem is, the paint she was using doesn't come out of clothes so... one shirt down, not many more to go haha but it was totally worth it. Her salvation for my shirt, sounds like a good trade to me.

Ok ya so we are teaching this guy named Oscar, I love him to death! He is this really funny guy that I doubt I will ever have an investigator like him again! So we taught him the restoration like 6 weeks ago, and since then he has watched probably every single movie the church has made about Joseph Smith ever! Like on his own, he just goes onto the church website and reads stuff, and watches movies and stuff it's crazy.  We were worried about teaching him the law of tithing, so we fasted for him the day before we taught it, and we went in and within 5 minutes he had accepted it! Talk about prayer and fasting testimony booster! We also taught him the Word of Wisdom.  He thought it was ridiculous that he couldn't drink tea and coffee, but he was willing to do it, and now for the bad news... he was supposed to be baptized this past Sunday... but because of a miscommunication on our part we didn't know he was drinking wine everyday for a heart problem. His doctor prescribed it for him and we never taught him it was bad so we had to pospone the baptism, but he is completely willing to give it up, and he understands that we are not perfect so he is getting baptised next week!

We were led by the spirit a lot this week. For some reason we just always seem to be in the right place at the right time. One day it was with an investigator that is 8 1/2 months pregnant and she isn't married, so we are trying to get her and her boyfriend married. They work every day, and one day I said to my companion, hey we are close to Dalila, let's stop by and see is someone is there, and she was. We talked with her for a little, and then had her say the prayer, and in her prayer, she said thanks for sending me someone to talk to, I really needed it. AHHH!!! Ya the Lord knows each of our circumstances, and what we need. The same thing happend with another guy last night, but he lives out of our bounderies so the other missionaries are going to teach him.

Now for the craziest news! I officially can say that I have been in an earthquake!!!!!!! That's right, on Thursday there was an earthquake. Ok ya so apparently according to everyone here it was only a tremor, but to me the ground was moving and I wasn't doing anything so it's an earthquake! But apparently it was a 5 something and ya pretty much I was just a little freaked out, but everyone else acted like it was normal. Guess it happens a lot so don't worry I'm ok, nothing even fell over. It was boring,  but it still was an earthquake haha!

 

(The earthquake epicenter was off shore 130 miles away from Santiago.  It was a magnitude 5.2)

But ya I think that's all for now. I only have one more rabies shot left next Monday! So that will be over with. Changes are this next Monday so we´ll see where I am next week. But I love you all, and miss you tons!

General Conference

 

This is the street where Nate lives in the Alberdi Ward

 

 

Nate's First Apartment

 

 

¡Hola familia y amigos! Well haha what a crazy General Conference!!!

Ok here we go. So first of all I just want to say that its Conferencia General in Spanish so that was fun, and we got to watch conference in Spanish so that made it even more fun, and then the Profeta totally just changed the world with one annoucment.  Let's just say that the entire first session of conference all of the missionaries were going crazy. It was fun haha. But ya who knows how many thoughts went through my mind at that point and then we had how many talks about missionary work after that annoucement. Haha ya I think the Lord wants more missionaries. The best part was the press conference after the first session, it was in English so we could understand it, but to quote Elder Holland, "I'm on the edge of giddy!" Haha ya I'm right there with him. He couldn't even talk he was so excited, and then he said that there were only 15 people in the world that knew about this announcement. I wanted to see the MTC presidents face so bad. People all over the world getting shocked by the news. Oh how much fun that must have been for the Prophet to announce that. Ya well here is my little input for those people who are now trying to decide what to do about a mission. The Lord is calling. A mission is by far the hardest thing I have ever done; by far the most draining spiritually and physically;  by far the most emotionally and suspenseful thing, but by the farthest of the far, the most rewarding and best decision I have made in my life so far. If you have doubts or if you want to go at all, my advice, reread the conference talks, and then make a descision. If you choose to go on a mission you won't regret it I can promise you that.

Ya so what else happened this week. Let's see, we went on divisions this week with some members because we had way too many people to visit! Yay, but that meant that I had to teach people. Ya I discovered this week at our zone conference that I can actually do stuff and teach people. So ya it was a fun little experience. I taught a guy in the middle of the sidewalk because he said he didn't believe in God, and by the end he admitted that he believed in God, and that he knew that there was something special about our religion. So I felt pretty good about being able to help him realize the existence of God.

So it has been raining the past couple of days and when it rains here it rains nonstop for a couple days and then nothing, so people used the rain as an excuse not to go to conference. Ya that didn't make me very happy, but I got to wear my boots! Too bad it was my first time wearing them and they gave me blisters.  The exciting news, I got kissed by a guy on the cheek, and when I didn't kiss him back he got offended so then I got another kiss and had to kiss him back. It was a fun little adventure, but other than that pretty much the same old stuff happened. Ya and Oscar, he is one of those people that you can't read how he is feeling which is really frustrating!!! Ya but that's ok he is getting baptised si o si, we just are still trying to figure out if we need to move his baptism date or not.  If we move it the chances of me not being here for it are extremely high which is fome (Spanish Chilean slang word). But ya changes are early this cambio because Elder Bednar is coming to talk to our mission so that will be fun! Ya pretty much everyone everywhere is freaking out about the new annoucement with the changed ages, and we are starting to see the effect of it now with all of the new letters we are getting asking if there is room for more missionaries in our ward. Haha oh this is going to be fun. Glad I'm out of the MTC!

Missions are awesome! I recommend it to anyone that is thinking about serving!

Guess that's all for now, love you and miss you all lots and lots!

The Lord Blesses Us For Our Work

 

Missionaries in the Huelen Stake

Hola familia y amigos!!!

 

Goodness where to begin... this week was crazy! So ya I went to the hospital to get a rabies shot, wasted all of my p-day last week trying to figure out what was going on, but that night I almost cried. We got back and went out to teach Oscar, our progressing investigator that is awesome and has a cool mustache, and he said that he was super busy and had a ton of work, but we could talk to his son. We  taught his son a lesson, and let me tell you this kid is very interesting to teach. He says he is Catholic, but he doesn't believe in the church. So pretty much he is his own contradicting religion, but we taught him and at the end of lesson Oscar prayed and said that pretty much he knew this church is true. It was amazing. Then as we were walking away he said, "ya I´ll walk you to the corner".  As we were walking he told us that he didn't really have any work he just wanted us to teach his son. Ya my love for this guy is huge, he is awesome.

Ya later that night our next lesson failed and so we did contacts back and forth the same street, when we got a phone call from Sebastian's dad, (recent convert Sebastian) saying that his wife needs a blessing. Good thing the street we were on was his street and we were no joke 30 seconds from his door. So we gave her a blessing and everyone was crying including us because ya I love this family too. But the Lord put us where he wanted us to be. He really does know everyone's needs and he is taking care of us.

Next, we pushed a bus!!! Haha it was so funny! We were walking away after lunch and suddenly there is a guy waving us down. Turns out he needed help, so we helped him push his bus. Ya it was fun. We also pushed another car out of the street too.

So Thursday I woke up with a fever of 100.7, a massive headache, sore throat, and a cough. I took some drugs and went to the doctor for my second shot. The problem was we didn't know where it was so it took a while to get there but it was fun. Ya so I have been getting over being sick, and getting rabies shots. It's been a fun week haha, but the Lord has blessed us for our work, and we have had a lot of sucess this week! 27 lessons with 150 contacts. That's a lot. One of the blessings was being able to get to all of our lessons one day. We made a random stop for Oscar, and it ends up he had gone searching for more stuff about us, he found the mormon.org website and had been reading testimonies, and then he had gone to youtube to watch the restoration movie, but his computer froze so he wasn't able to finish it. Ya we didn't ask him to do any of that. So we had a good lesson with him and answered a lot of questions. But that made us late for our other lessons. Just turns out that our next lesson had read the pamphlet that we gave her, and she loved it and wanted a Book of Mormon to start reading... ha ok. After that we went to our next lesson and they cancelled! Ah how rude... so we some other investigators to see if they were home, and they were! Like they got home 2 mins ago! Haha ya where and when we are supposed to be I'm telling you. So we had a good lesson with them. When we got home for the night we had a very long thank you prayer.

Ya the other day my companion was robbed. some guy stole his pen it was so funny! Oh ya and the father that I baptised, Hermano Quispe, ya his work got robbed, and so while he was attacking the guy with a shotgun another robber hit him on the head and he had to get stiches and everything.  It was scary, but he is ok, and getting hit with a gun is better than getting shot right?

Well that's all for this week, love you and miss you tons!!!

Rabies?

Hola Familia y amigos

Ya not much time so here we go!

This week we celebrated Independence Day of Chile! Woo! We had a ward activity on Monday with a lot of dancing and food and just having a good time. They invited a group to come dance from not the church and the girls were practically not wearing pants. Like pretty much their skirt came down to... well ya pretty much they weren't wearing a skirt haha. But that took up almost all of our p-day which kind of sucked.

Ya so for this Independence Day stuff pretty much all of Chile shuts down.   There were no cars or people in the streets, and if they were, they were drunk so that was pretty fun, dancing and talking to drunk people, and ya we were invited to several drunk parties, and ate a lot of empanadas. It was really hard to teach our investigators at this time because most of them were out of town or partying and didn't want to hear from us, so we taught our recent converts the lessons again.

Then the highlight of the week, well 2 things really. Oscar came to church and loved it!!! Oscar is an investigator that we have been working with for a while. He has a baptism date, and we are working away. He came to church and loved it and can't wait to come next week too!!! Haha we didn't even have to invite him; it was awesome!  The second thing... I went to the hospital today! Woo!!! Haha ya don't freak out, it was nothing. On Friday I got bit by a dog.  It randomly attacked me out of nowhere and it barely broke the skin where it bit, but because it was a wild dog and we couldn't watch it for 10 days to see if it got sick, I had to go to the hospital to get it checked out and to start getting rabies vaccinations. It's a series of 5 shots over a 4 week period. It doesn't hurt, and really it's just a precaution. I'm fine don't worry. Well my p-day was taken up with my trip to the hospital so I will write more next week.

 

(Of course Mom researched the rabies shots and found out that the long needles into the stomach 21 days in a row and very painful was a thing of the past (1970s to be exact).  They now use this vaccine to prevent rabies in veterinarians, their staff, animal control people, etc.  It really isn't a big deal and he should be protected for about a year against another bite.  It is a good precaution to take though because rabies is 100% fatal if you get it.)

Things are going awesome, I am doing great, and love my new companion. Love you and miss you all!

It's a Great Week in the Alberdi Ward!

 

View from Alberdi apartment window

 

 

Is that pollution or fog?  Probably both!

 

 

A 40 cm hot dog?  Did you eat the whole thing?  Almost!

 

 

 

¡Hola todos las personas que leer el blog de mi, gracias por todo, y por querer a saber sobre mi vida!

Ok here we go!

¡¡¡¡¡ I HAVE A NEW COMPANION !!!!! Ya I'm companions with Elder Nicoll from Arizona. He is way awesome! Ya pretty much the exact opposite of my last companion so we get along great haha. He is super nice, and constructive about how he tells me stuff instead of being destructive so that's a nice change. I actually feel like a missionary now, and we are keeping all of the rules, so we are having a lot of success! Ya it's pretty amazing, that and he helped clean the apartment so things are great!  He is crazy about being excited to help people and talk to them, which helps me, and the people want to talk to us because we are so energenic. There is this thing called contacts, where we go and just contact people.  We go and talk to them, well ya we were doing contacts in the street, and then next thing I know my companion wasn't next to me, but he was talking to someone else across the street, ya kinda freaked a little, and then realized that I could do it. I knew what I needed to say, and for the most part how to say it. It was awesome.

 

 

Other crazy stuff. This week we saw miracles, almost everyday. But first, when there is a soccer game on, and Chile scores a goal, you know almost instantly, because everywhere we were when they scored got really loud and crazy. It was fun. Other crazy stuff, a lady stole Elder Nicoll`s Book of Mormon, it was way funny. She took it from his hand and then everytime we asked for it back she said "what book"? Then we asked her if she was ok and she said she was sick and just got back from the hospital, so we then asked her if she was on pain meds, ya she was haha that explains it.

We were called 2 interesting things this week. One guy said that I was an angel sent from heaven to preach and to help people, he then wouldn't let go of my hand and at that point I just started to ignore him because he was saying how I was sent from God. Made me feel good. Then the other a guy said that we were prophets, ya we tried to explain what a prophet was and he wouldn't have it. We were prophets and that's that.

 

One day we contacted this lady and she said we had 5 minutes, so we started talking.  We asked if we could start with a prayer and then explained the steps of prayer. We started to say blessings that we could see in her life, and that's when she started crying. It was true, and she realized how blessed she is. so we will be teaching her later. Then we went upstairs to a family and their baby was sick so we explained a little about the resurrection and then said that we had the authority to give a blessing.  They accepted, and I had to bless the oil in Spanish, ya first time doing that, and in spanish.

 

What else. One night my companion killed the electricity in our apartment, and so we had to go ask the people to fix it.  We were without lights for about an hour it was fun haha. Oh ya! Tomorrow is Chile's Independence Day, so there are drunk people everywhere. Ya yesterday one came up behind us and brushed our butts with his coat, and when we turned around he was like "dance with me" and started dancing. When we shook his hand to leave he wouldn't let go of me and he just started dancing.  Haha I can officially say that I danced with a drunk guy.

Ya but this week was amazing we had 190 contacts, 17 new investigators, and we got the zone norma which means we made the goal for all of the stuff we have to do.  So we get a party thing. Ya I know cool. But right now everything is closed for the Independence Day so I am writing this in the Family History part of our church building, there is a ward party outside this, and ya that's pretty much it.

 

The Quiespe family that we baptised a few weeks ago are doing great.  They got the Aaronic Priesthood last week and are preparing for the Melchizedek Priesthood in a few weeks.  The father only needs an interview and Josba passed the sacrament yesterday.  The ward is great here, they try to help. There are some families that are awesome with helping the new families, and we actually have a lot a very active youth in our ward.

I figured out today that I can email whoever I want from back home so ya email me people!  I may not respond every week but I will read it and try to reply as soon as I can.  ( If you are interested in Nate's email address send your request to LaurieAlder@comcast.net and I will respond to you.)

Love you all and miss you tons!!!