Week 11 - Hey!

November 11, 2013

Hey!

Great week! You’ll be happy to know that your package has arrived and I'm enjoying it! Even the retainer and yes it fits fine. I don't really need anything. I'm wearing the shirt and I may or may not be wearing half a bag of Reeses on my face...Hey I'm not complaining or anything but it turns out that Lider has the great value peanut butter cups. The Reeses are definitely better but I can live with the other stuff. The only thing I can think I'd want from home though is a 6 to 7 piece fly kit or at least blanks to make one. There are so many streams and my companion would like to learn. Maybe for my birthday?

It’s been a good week like I said, we've really focused on inactive members and because of this, we've gotten in 5 lessons with them this week and one was even with a member! Total luck. We were sitting at the D__'s and we were about to read a chapter out of the Book of Mormon when we hear a knock at the door. In walks a member from the other rama Volcan! (branch in Volcan) Turns out he's Hermano D__'s father and was just stopping in for a visit. The lesson went pretty well. This Sunday, lo and behold, who walks in for church? Hermano D__! Unfortunately his wife and daughter couldn't make it but we'll take what we can get!

Well besides that we also had the international food activity that I asked for the scones recipe for. You’ll be happy to hear that it went fantastic! I’m going to send you guys a picture of Papito and Mamita. The scones however were almost the end of me. I decided to make a triple batch and tripled everything but the flour. Don’t ask me, I don't know how I did it! Well I fixed the dough and started on the honey butter, but the mess almost killed me when we came back home. The actual activity went great. We came a bit late but to no one’s surprise it started about an hour late (Chilean standard time).  After things got going it went great. So we were starting and we had totally forgotten to get music that's typical for our country (ours was the UK, the scones were American but they didn't know the difference and they liked them better!) Well Papito’s son just picked something for us. I about died laughing when the speakers started blaring Daft Punk's Get Lucky! After our scones we had some amazing Mapuche, Thai, and lastly the worst hamburgers I have ever eaten. But, there was real music playing and I can't possibly tell you how good that was!

Well we've been working with a few families. We have our only true investigators, Sergio and Karen and they have a little 6 month old. We also have the J__ family who are kinda sad. They live in a tiny run down shack, the grand father's in a wheel chair and the real head of the house is a single mother to a daughter with downs-syndrome and I believe the other daughters a druggie. We also have the D__’s (who I mentioned earlier), an inactive family that’s just great from the couple of times I've seen them. The father is a carabinero (uniformed Chilean national police) and the mother's in school. They have two daughters, one who was baptized last year before they fell into inactivity again… Our biggest problem isn’t the people it’s the members and the presidency.  They just want the missionaries to do everything and its not really effective.  Oh well, things are going great here.  I just can’t wait for the work to pick up!  Either way I’m loving the people and the work!

The weather this week has been cold and miserable.  Tomorrow is a zone meeting in Lanco, it’s the ugliest place I’ve ever seen and I “get” to stay the night and have an intercambio (split) with one of the zone leaders. I’ll make the best of it but what bugs me is that I don’t get to eat my own food when I’m there, I just get to starve!

Well it's been a good week and I'm glad to hear you are all having fun too.

Elder Washburn