Okay, well today has been a little bit crazy. We had an activity with the rama (branch) today. The plan was to just go and play games and then leave at about two, run home and change, and then go to town to get our full hour and a half of email time before 4 (that is the rule of when we have to finish by), but as we were going to leave we realized that our cell phone was gone. Some little kid had taken off with it and we ended up searching for it for 25 minutes. Then we had a 10 minute friendly argument with the members about why it was so important that we left instead of staying for lunch. Anyways, point of the story. We only have an hour to write instead of an hour and a half. And we get a new mission president today. So that rule could be changed anyways.
So I will start off with a little cultural spotlight today, and I´m going to try to add a little tidbit about the culture each week:
It is very rude here to point with your finger, so instead all of the people point with their lips. It is so funny to me, because they are always making pucker faces. Just try to imagine a Chilean, and chileans don´t usually have big lips, making a kissy-face, and talking at the same time. So funny!
Also I thought I better add this as well. I don´t think there are llamas in Chile. I haven´t seen one at all. And Hermana Stevens said that even when she was in the most northern part of the mission up in mountain country she never saw a llama. Sorry mom. But there are dogs EVERYWHERE.
Funny Story that I was reminded of as I am sitting here in the cyber listening to "One Love, One Heart, Let´s get together and feel alright" playing over the speakers. I love when the Chileans listen to American music that they cleary don´t understand. Today we entered the capilla (chaple) for the activity and they had a "Black-eyed Peas" song playing that was really groovy, but not not appropriate for the church. I just started busting up, but then the Chileans wanted to know what the song said. We, however, did not tell them.
I have never been so loved in my life. It is so funny. We had a garbage man confess his undying love to us the other night. It was quite humerous. We had 5 people tell us how beautiful we were that night, and the funny thing is, is that that is totally acceptable in this culture. Also, the day before I had a menos activo (less active) make fun of me because she said that I walk like I am trying to catch attention, and then she mimicked the way she said I walk. I am a little self-concious now. I wanted to tell her that if she wasn´t drunk all the time, then she would be able to walk properly too instead of like a man, but I don´t have enough Spanish to say that.
Our investigator Hector has a hard time getting the motivation to get up in the morning to go to church so we went over there yesterday and cooked him breakfast before church. It was kind of funny, I´m pretty sure they all hate french toast, they just kind of stared at it and poked it with their fork. We had to leave to get to the church a little early and they tried to get us to take the french toast with us. We told them that they could just keep it, they were not thrilled. Anyways, when we saw them later in the day, they all told us how delicious they thought it was, but I´m pretty sure their mom told them they had to say that.
So a couple weeks ago we thought we had 0 investigators at church and we were kind of bummed about that. So after we submitted our numbers for the week we got a call from the zone leaders, (who we share the branch with) and they told us that we really had two investigators at church. We had a little party for ourselves, but we could not track down these investigators until they were pointed out to us the next week. There was a joven (young), about 16, named Marcelo who would come with his friend who is about 13. We finally found out an address and tracked them down this last week. We taught him and his mom, they had never heard from the missionaries, but they just had a desire to have religion be a part of their life, they have a cousin on a mission in Peru, so they decided to try out Mormonism. We were pretty thrilled about this, because it is so hard to find people who already realize the importance of going to church. They are pretty much golden, but they declined the commitment to be baptized, but I fully expect them to be baptized within the next month or so.
Point of the story. So we taught them about the Plan of Salvation, and Marcelo asked after we taught about the kingdoms about what happens to animals. I didn´t want to give him the answer that it doesn´t really matter because I didn´t know if he was a big animal lover and that would be a serious problem. My companion told him that she didn´t know, but he was welcome to ask other people to see if they know. The zone leaders were teaching the Young Men yesterday and they asked if anyone had any questions. Marcelo said, "Where do the animals go after they die, the Hermanas said that you would know" Anyways, the Zone leaders teased us about that afterwards, I guess they spent all of sunday school discussing what was going to happen to the animals. They decided that they are going to the celestial kingdom because they don´t have sins.
So I want to end on a slightly more spiritual note, we have an investigator name Jovita. She has two kids, Nicolas who is 9 and a baby that is like 3 months old. She is pretty golden as well, but she said something the other day that was kind of cool. We met Jovita while we were knocking doors (well, yelling at gates really) and as I was trying to communicate her husband just said that he didn´t understand English. My companion piped up and said that we spoke spanish, anyways Jovita came out to talk to us, and just said immediately before we could say anything, "hey, can you come another day". Jovita is one of those people that it you can just see how cool it is that we really did know all of this in the preexistence, and all the missionaries are doing is just reminding people of it. Jovita told us the other day how she had turned down the missionaries so many times, but for some reason when she saw me struggling so hard to speak spanish she thought that if I would come so far from home into a country where I don´t speak the language, than I must have something to share that is really important to me. It was just so cool to hear because, Jovita was waiting for me. A missionary who does not blend in with the Chileans and cannot speak spanish. And not just for those traits, but I think that I must have some trait that is so critical for me to be able to teach her. It was really cool to see how true it really is that people here are being prepared just for me.
So I have been meaning to tell you about the Familia Gonzales for the past few weeks. They are so cool and such a great example, they cook Almuerzo (lunch) for us and the zone leaders Tuesday thru Friday. She also does all of our laundry and will come with us if we need an escort to teach a man. They will do anything for the missionaries or the ward. They are so strong. This family does not have very much though, but they give everything they have for us and they still seem to have enough. Hermana Jenny only got baptized a year ago, she got baptized two days after they got married. And their son Maxi, who is 11, got baptized like a month later. Now they are working so hard to get to the temple because they realize that it is so important. They also are a huge testimony of tithing, Hermano Manuel was out of work for a while, but they said that they were better off then than they were before because they were paying their tithing and feeding the missionaries, and the blessings would pour in. Its just really cool to see how strong a family can be, and how precious the gospel is to them in their lives, because sometimes I take it so forgranted.
Anyways, I am out of time. I did not get a chance to read everyones emails, but I am going to print them off and respond next week.
Love you all!
I miss you Family!!
Hermana Evans
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