I love hearing about what´s going on, even if it is just the little things.
So my cultural spotlight for this week: Here in Chile they sweep and water their dirt. They sweep it apparently to get all the garbage and stuff off, but it just really makes me laugh when they water it. I think they water it to keep the dust down, but it is still really funny.
Second cultural spotlight of the week was brought to my attention saturday, when they had a ward activity to clean the church. We decided we would go help out for like an hour, my thought was that we could get the whole church clean in an hour, but no. First of all, Latinos in general are really bad about being on time. Even sacrament meeting starts at least 20 minutes late every week. So when we came half an hour after the alloted time, there was still hardly anyone there. But it was so funny, my companion and I started cleaning the chairs and I noticed that no one was really diligently cleaning. My companion explained that chileans and probably latinos in general just don´t have a very good work ethic. While americans tend to work as hard as they can so that they can get in and get out as fast as they can, the chileans prefer to just mosie their way through so that they can enjoy themselves. So point of the story we left after like 45 minutes but when we went back to pick up a member to take with us to a lesson 3 hours later, they were still "cleaning the church." It just made me laugh. Also the stuff that they gave me to clean the chairs was not actually cleaning. It was all greasy and stuff, so I felt more like I was oiling a bowling-ball rather than cleaning the chairs. But they were much shinier afterwards.
This past week I went through serious sugar-withdrawals. I never noticed how much sugar and sweet things I eat, but apparently it used to be a lot. The chileans don´t really enjoy super sweet things, so I haven´t eaten a whole lot, but this week I exhausted the candy supply that I brought with me, and so one week I found myself searching for anything and everything that had sugar. It was pretty bad, but maybe I will be healthier when I come home. But if you could send me some more Mike and Ikes when you get a chance that would be spectacular, nothing like that exists here.
On that same note, my companion loves coughdrops. So she gives her coughdrops to all the little kids as candy. I keep telling her that she needs to stop drugging all the kids, but if coughdrops have sugar, that may be where I will turn for my sugar fix as well.
So this last week we decided to set aside an afternoon and take our bicis out to explore the far ends of our sector. F is for Failure. It was pretty awful. We were so excited to take our bikes out because we had just gotten our brand-new cascos (helmets) from the office. My companion took the crappier looking bike because she is a better person than me. But we had to go find air for her tires. So we headed to a place that we knew fixed bikes, but they weren´t there so we asked people if there was another place to fill up our tires. The directions here go something like this: "If you go up its just down from the plaza next to the almacen (store)." This is not helpful at all, because first of all, who is to say which way is down and which way is up in a neighborhood. Secondly, there are quite a few plazas here and an almacen like every fourth house.
Anyways, we finally found air, and we went on our way. We took pictures with our happy faces and went off. I realized very quickly that my bike was meant for someone smaller than Sawyer, or like Hermana Stevens told me, a guatamalan. Also the gears were really messed up. I was dying on this little bike, but Hermana Stevens just thought I was a total pansy, so she offered to trade. I glady took this offer. Two minutes later she decided we were going home....So point of the story, my companion admitted that I am not just a pansy, she actually apologized for making me ride that bike for so long. We walked the bikes home. Funniest part of this story is that this adventure took two hours, and we didn´t even make it as far as we can walk in 25 minutes. This week we asked for bikes from the office instead of helmets.
As far as the work goes my companion and I are pretty much amazing, we teach a lot, but despite our best effort we can´t get anyone to accept a baptismal date. We had three with fecha, but they all lost their date last week because they stopped coming to church. We have been trying so hard, but we are just trying to get them to connect that having faith leads to action. So this has been a really big focus this week.
We do have one investigator with a baptismal date though, but it is not until August 18th. She chose this date because it is the same day that her husband was baptized. We were so excited, she has been investagating the church for a long time, and has had several baptismal dates before and has lost them all, so we decided that instead of feeling obligated to get baptized like she did with the other missionaries, she had to really want it. So we dropped her down on our list of priorities until we thought she was ready, when we went to visit her you could just tell that something had definitely changed, she was excited to see us and she just asked us, "Hey, I want a baptismal date on this day, is that okay?" Anyways, we are super excited for her. But we took the Relief Society president with us to a lesson with her this last week and she started talking about how many are called but few are chosen. And how she needed to ask herself if she is really chosen. We Really Really hope that it didn´t scare her off. The Relief Society president was really excited though and she set up another afternoon for her to come with us for the whole day, we are not so excited about this though. She is very intense. For example, I do not enjoy relief society at all here, because the announcements always turn out to be an argument. It is definitely not uplifting, and very uncomfortable when we have investigators there.
You should definitely send pictures though, it would make me quite happy.
Well, suprisingly enough, I am kind of running out of things to say and I still have fifteen minutes of email time. Maybe my typing skills are improving, which would be shocking because it is freezing in this silly cyber and my fingers can barely bend because they are so cold. A lot of the pictures that I want to send are actually on my companions camera because she is braver than me about taking it with her in the shady parts of town and about remembering to take pictures in general. But I think I might have to wait until next week to steal her camera.
So a little note about my spanish, I am doing pretty well if I do say so myself. I am getting better at adapting what I want to say to my vocabulary, and more than that, my understanding is almost three-quarters. I am just so grateful for the gift of tongues, it is pretty awesome. I still can´t say electrical engineering in Spanish though, it is always a struggle.
Changes are next monday, but I am almost 100% positive that I will still be with my trainer, because we have to complete a little 12 week program where we have an extra hour of companionship study. I actually don´t like companionship study too much just because it is the only time when my companion makes me feel like I am actually a trainee rather than just an awesome missionary. But that´s okay, it is only 2 hours of the day, the rest of the time we are more like equals.
Well, I am out of time, but I love you all bunches and bunches. Thanks for your letters. Oh just an update in case you were wondering, pouch mail and dearElders get here just like a week and a half after they were submitted. Which I think is pretty speedy. We get mail once a week during zone-class.
I love you!! Miss you all!!
Hermana Evans
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