So this week was not very eventful. But there were a lot of funnier things that happenned this week that I want to tell you about. So first off, I had to wash my clothes this week, but we do not actually wash our own clothes, the Familia Gonzales (I will tell you about them later) washes our clothes for us, which you think would be nice but it is definitely not ideal, at least in my opinion. They don´t have dryers here in Chile, so after the wash cycle they just hang things up to dry. But because my companion and I had so many clothes, she ended up draping things over the wall and stuff, so most of my clothes came back dirtier than they went. Not fun. But the funniest one was my shirt that came back with a huge glob of bird poo. She also washed all my clothes inside out so that she would be able to tell which clothes were mine and which ones were my companions. So the whole week I kept putting on my garments inside out. But on the bright side, I´m glad that she does them because we don´t have a washing machine so it is much better than washing all our clothes by hand.
The beginning of this last week and the week before that my companion had a cold and lost her voice. This was absolutely not the most ideal situation, because I can´t speak spanish and she couldn´t talk at all. It was just kind of those situations that you have to laugh at.
Here in Chile they are all super paranoid about their health. For example, the branch president´s son had a tiny sore throat two weeks ago; he has stayed home from school and church ever since. This past week it has gotten a lot colder and the rain has finally started. Everyone is really grateful for the rain because Chile´s economy revolves mainly around the produce, but most of the Chileans won´t even go outside when it is cold, which I find funny because it is just as cold inside the houses as it is outside. But because of this it was a lot harder to find people to teach and to get everyone to go to church. Yesterday we had only 37 people in sacrament meeting, whereas the week before we had 72. Chilean´s are just really paranoid about getting sick. When my companion lost her voice there would be people who would back up as soon as they heard her because they didn´t want to get anywhere near something that was sickly, I thought it was super funny.
So I am going to attatch a picture of my first day of rain here in Chile. My companion and I were going to do before and after pictures, but after we got home we thought that it would be too horrific, not to mention that we were dead tired and frozen. But on this first day of rain, I realized very fast that my shoes were not rain-proof. I had puddles on the inside of my shoes. It was absolutely awful. We had a menos activo (less active)who we were trying to find her house because we promised we would come, but she was drunk at the time she gave us the directions to her house so we couldn´t find it, which is really sad, because she´s already called us liars once. Anyways, as we were looking for this house we spent an hour just searching, trudging through the mud and huge puddles. My feet were so wet and cold, but I am happy to report that my super-duper raincoat is indeed wonderful. So after the hour of searching for this house we went back to our house because my companion had some rainboots that another missionary had left her. So I changed into these rainboots, changed into a dryer pair of wool tights, and we went on our way. These rainboots were awful, first off, they had a hole in them, so they weren´t truly waterproof, secondly the soles had gone out on them so I felt like I was walking on waffle-irons. It was absolutely awful. Needless to say, I will be buying my own boots today.
But this is not the end of this sad story, the next day was sunday and we ended up having to run to pick up an investigator (who ended up not being there) and then running back to the church. My poor feet hurt so bad, they were all sore and tender from the previous day´s waffle boots, and my shins hurt so bad just because they are not used to all of the running and walking in church shoes. I was not a happy missionary. I really just did not want to be a missionary for most of the day. My feet were swollen and my shin muscles (which i didn´t even know existed) kept cramping. I kept falling asleep in Church, because I really didn´t have much of an idea of what was going on (we were talking about signs of the second coming, I sure didn´t know all of the words that that entails in spanish). Later on that night we were walking to an appointment, when I just had a feeling that I needed to stop and talk to a person, but I didn´t at first, just because I didn´t want to. But the feeling stayed and I kind of chased after him and we just did a brief contact and gave him a pamphlet.
Anyways, this whole experience just made me think about how many people I could be missing because of my grumpiness. So I took a fair amount of ibuprofen to make the swelling in my legs and feet go down, and we went to work. Nothing super profound happenned, but I think I caught a glimpse of the saying "Forget yourself and go to work." I know that sounds lame, but it really did make me realize that although I just wanted to crawl into bed and watch a movie, that is not what a missionary does. A missionary is here for other people. So that is my new goal, to focus more on other people.
So back to funny stories for the week, my companion likes to cook, but she still hasn´t quite gotten used to cooking in Chile. My first week she made brownies for one of our investigators in a noche de hogar (Family Home Evening), we compared Christ to the recipe and how through Christ we can have salvation, and through a recipe we can have delicious brownies. Brownies don´t really exist in Chile. Anyways the cocoa here isn´t quite the same as in the states, or at least the kind that she used is not. The brownies were awful, but we didn´t tell her that, we just finished our lesson and told her how delicious they were and left.
The next week she decided to make cookies for our zone, they turned out quite similair to rocks. But all of the elders ate them. My prediction as to why this is, is because everyone is just so used to the rule of eating everything that is put in front of you and saying it is delicious afterwards, which is pretty much exactly what happenned. I just think it is so funny. I am glad that we don´t actually have a stove in our apartment, otherwise I might have to eat more of her cooking.
So now to answer some of your questions, yes my sector does have bikes, but we have not yet used them, we are not exactly sure how big our sector is, but we think that we have the part where we do all of our work which can all be reached by foot, and then we think that we have a little village that is like half-hour away by car. One of the members took us out there to their house and vineyard out there (so yes it is a vineyard behind us) for lunch one time. But the collectivos (like taxi) and buses don´t really go out there, so those people may have to wait a little bit for their salvation because it is too far for us to bike. It would take the entire day just to get there.
Q. Sawyer asked, if you bring your on toilet paper can you use the tiolet for free?
I don´t think the rule of bringing your own toilet paper would work, although I did have to use a tissue that I had in my bag last week because there wasn´t anyone selling toilet paper that day.
Family! Can you find out if Katie got her mission call! And if so tell her to email me pronto! As of right now we can email anyone we want, so tell Uncle Joe that as well, because he was wondering, but we get a new mission president next week so a lot of the rules could change. Right now we get an hour and a half of email time, I really hope that doesn´t change because it is quite nice.
Thank you for the email today, it was nice to hear from everybody but Hunter. Hunter, you slacker, are you still alive?!?! I haven´t heard from you since before I left home, this is not acceptable, you are my brother and are under obligation to write your sister when she is living halfway accross the world. So I expect at least a paragraph next week. A joint email is fine with me. I usually do get to read Walker´s emails because he replies to something and so I can usually find them, but not always. I always send my email to him as well, I´m not sure if he has time to read it though, do you Walker?
Well I love you all and miss you a lot!
Hermana Evans
Just as a little side note that I thought the boys would enjoy, I saw a mural on my way into town today of Mario and the other Mario characters, but Mario had brown skin!!
Second side note that kind of goes along with that. A lot of the culture and stuff is from the States, so you hear a lot of music in English and t-shirts and stuff in English even though no one here actually speaks english. It was funny though, one of our investigators (a like 23 year old guy) was wearing a shirt one day that said "I´M THE MOM" in English. I thought about telling him what his shirt said, but it was just too funny.
Third side note, all of the movies and stuff are just voiced-over into Spanish. It is quite comical and it actually makes movies not really appealing to me at all, because it is so dang funny some of the voices that they choose for the actors and it totally loses it´s affect.
Love you!!
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