Week #7
This was my first full week in Chile and it was great! It is just me and elder Kau living at a little house in Chile. One of the
biggest changes is not the kind of food but when they eat food. Chileans
only eat one meal a day that is comparable to an American meal, which
is a little different then the usual 4 I normally ate. All they really do is eat a big lunch and that is their food for a whole day, and then they
have like a snack for breakfast. Dinner doesn`t even exist. This does
make it easy to eat whatever people give us for lunch because I am
always starving. I have to eat whatever I am
given and they do not eat very healthy. They eat a lot of
really fatty meat and put a ton of oil on everything.
Chile is an awesome place and I am serving in a part called El Bosque. In Chile there are dogs everywhere, everywhere you step there are more dogs so I might get a little sick of dogs.
My first week at church was also a very interesting experience. Only 19 people showed up to church and this was including us, an investigator and the bishopric. The first counselor in the ward is inactive and so is pretty much everyone else except for a couple of really old people. For the hymns no one can play the piano except for this old guy who thinks he can play. So he goes and bangs on the keyboard while we try to sing. It is kind of hard to bring investigators to that but we have to or he goes inactive when he doesn`t play the piano. We are technically the youngmen leaders if any youth existed in the ward. The ward doesn`t have most programs like home-teaching and visiting teaching and the same few people give the talks almost every time so I will probably be speaking a lot
Chileans are a
very interesting people, they are all amazing talkers. If we can start a
conversation with someone they will go on forever. Because of this
most people don`t even answer the door for us because they feel it is rude to get rid of
us quick. The life of a missionary is great though. I love everyday and
the opportunity to work to improve the area.
One great experience I had this week came on September 18 which is Chile`s independence day. It was nighttime about 9:20pm and we were trying to contact, which was impossible because it was a holiday. Its like trying to get into someone`s house on Christmas morning. We were walking down the street and walked past a Haitian guy and said hello and then we both stopped since we knew he had said hello way friendlier then they normally do missionaries, and we knew we needed to talk to him. We turned around and started to talk to him in Spanish which was great because a lot of the Haitians around here don`t speak very much Spanish. His name was Audi and we found out he spoke English in addition to Spanish, french and creole. He then invited us back to his house to teach him and his brother. His brother Makanaki only speaks french and creole and little bit of Spanish. We taught in Spanish and it was definitely one of my favorite lessons. It was definitely a huge blessing to be able to find Audi and Makanaki on a day where it seemed impossible to teach everyone else. I have been loving everything about my mission, the language is hard but I love learning Spanish.
Chile is an awesome place and I am serving in a part called El Bosque. In Chile there are dogs everywhere, everywhere you step there are more dogs so I might get a little sick of dogs.
My first week at church was also a very interesting experience. Only 19 people showed up to church and this was including us, an investigator and the bishopric. The first counselor in the ward is inactive and so is pretty much everyone else except for a couple of really old people. For the hymns no one can play the piano except for this old guy who thinks he can play. So he goes and bangs on the keyboard while we try to sing. It is kind of hard to bring investigators to that but we have to or he goes inactive when he doesn`t play the piano. We are technically the youngmen leaders if any youth existed in the ward. The ward doesn`t have most programs like home-teaching and visiting teaching and the same few people give the talks almost every time so I will probably be speaking a lot
One great experience I had this week came on September 18 which is Chile`s independence day. It was nighttime about 9:20pm and we were trying to contact, which was impossible because it was a holiday. Its like trying to get into someone`s house on Christmas morning. We were walking down the street and walked past a Haitian guy and said hello and then we both stopped since we knew he had said hello way friendlier then they normally do missionaries, and we knew we needed to talk to him. We turned around and started to talk to him in Spanish which was great because a lot of the Haitians around here don`t speak very much Spanish. His name was Audi and we found out he spoke English in addition to Spanish, french and creole. He then invited us back to his house to teach him and his brother. His brother Makanaki only speaks french and creole and little bit of Spanish. We taught in Spanish and it was definitely one of my favorite lessons. It was definitely a huge blessing to be able to find Audi and Makanaki on a day where it seemed impossible to teach everyone else. I have been loving everything about my mission, the language is hard but I love learning Spanish.
Love Elder Austin
hello nate
ReplyDelete