Week 24 - I'm getting transferred!

February 10, 2014

Hey guys,

I’m getting transferred!  Puerto Varas! The prettiest area in the mission!  Everyone hates me right now ;) My companion is Elder Abarca. It’s a Spanish name but everyone has told me he is super gringo! I move on Wednesday.

Puerto Varas

 It’s been a pretty good week! After writing you guys we walked to Lider and I spent 16 mill instead of 15.  I know, extremely irresponsible of me but I only have one year left to be a teen... and lets be honest who can decide between steak and cake, so I took both! Went out at 6 as usual, didn't find anyone but as we were about home we said hi to a man in his yard and started talking to him. He had gotten hit with a truck and while it's healing, he still has a pretty massive head wound.  Well we started to teach a little when his daughter came out with a list of scriptures for us to read, you know to destroy our faith and convert us to the Pentecostal faith... what any 15 year old would do... and then his other daughter who knew a ton about the Book of Mormon, and as I knew and Elder Wise figured out, not in a good way... and then his wife... well by then it was four on two but we got a few actual decent lessons out of it and "resolved" all of their questions.

Tuesday was great! I woke up, got in my suit and got all of my things ready for my intercambio (split) with elder Souza and for my birthday.  I found out that the zone leaders and all of Pucon was going to be there and you just don't have many occasions to have a birthday party with half your zone! So I filled my zippo lighter, sharpened a knife, made a case for the knife, brought some candles, the cake of course and headed out. We got there and it turned out that the sisters had made me a pie and wrapped a gift for me! Everyone sang happy birthday and made sure to include Sister Biggs (her's is next week). We cut the cake and it wasn't as good as I thought it would be.  It's called mil hojas and it's essentially phyllo with a literal ton of manjar. But I had my cake and ate it too so I can't really whine about it. After that I went to Volcan with Elder Souza, we had a couple of citas (appointments) fall and it rained a ton but we ended up teaching a really cool family.  In the end, he did want me to teach the curse on the Lamanites though... luckily I was smart enough to opt out. We came home, planned, and then he taught me how to cook the perfect pot of rice. Woke up the next day and after a hilarious attempt to have a one handed push up contest we finished the other half of the pie the sisters gave me and opened the present to find a kinder egg. I got a sick gorilla and some grizzly bear stickers! Came home and opened the presents from home and got a fantastic Duck Dynasty card, some ties and 3-2-1 cake mix!  We had a fun noche de hogar with the Presidente and Sergio and finished the night off with some birthday steak! I'll have to write about the rest of the week next week because I'm out of time but I can tell you right now it was fantastic!

Love you all!

Elder Washburn 

Asado!

Week 23 - Pizza de Doritos!

February 3, 2014

Elder Rivera and Elder Santisteban

Hey guys!

How was your week? Mine was a little bit nuts but still amazing! After we emailed last week we went to Lider of course!  I bought cheese, tortilla chips, salsa, and jalapeños. You can guess what the food of the week was... After we came home we went out at 6:00 to proselyte as usual. As we were walking down the hill I heard some heavy metal playing so I swung a left and headed to Jacob's house. Of course he was playing a little Metallica so we popped in an set up a cita for this week and hung out and talked for a bit. We then headed down to fix a date for a noche de hogar with the Barrias. We also needed to take the Elders of Pucòn up to our place. This would have been really easy if someone had charged the cell but of course someone forgot again... so we ended up going down to central and walking around searching instead of going to the house, charging the phone, and telling them the directions for a radio taxi.. ya! Not a fun night. We came home, charged the cell and what do ya know… got a call not 10 minutes later! We told them our directions and they took a radio up while we planned. They got there at about 10:10. I made nacho's, which Elder Santisteban laughed at, calling it a pizza de doritos. It was a little hard to laugh though, when he had his mouth full with my nachos as he was eating his words! Woke up at 6 a.m. and caught the 7:20 to Lanco. It was weird because it was actually on time, which meant we had to wait an hour till the meeting started. The meeting was great and I got some pictures with my plane buddies and Elder Gubler. Left the meeting at 1 but didn't get home till like 5 because we spent 3 hours waiting for a bus instead of taking one to Loncoche and heading out from there. That evening we taught Barbara and she told us that she had honestly never felt like she had received an answer to a prayer. I bore my testimony of revelation through scripture study and she told us she would try to find answers in the Book of Mormon every day.

Wednesday was kind of a bummer. It started as usual. Woke up, showered, got dressed, made breakfast and started studying, (these past few weeks I've been compiling all of my bible underlines, it took a while but I have 287 of them! now I'm transferring them all to my Spanish scriptures). We left the house at 10:30 a.m. and did some service weeding. Afterwards we went to mamita's for lunch and she told us that she couldn't be our mamita anymore. We didn't teach after that, unfortunately. Thursday was a little crazy we taught Sergio and got him to commit to come to church.  We were supposed to leave for correlation but ended up getting called into a young single adults meeting to set up for Friday. We left at about 9:30 and came home. Friday we woke up at 6 and headed to the old high school with the elders of Pucon who had slept at our house again. We got there and started to wake up the 300 young men sleeping in the polytechnico. Elder Santisteban had the cool pinch lip whistle that made our work easy and our ears bleed! Afterwards we went to the devotional our mission president gave on missionary work and we then took out 300 young men and women and did a chapel open house and some contacting. They taught a lot but we didn't get anyone that day. Had interviews with President and then came home.

Saturday was really crazy. We got up and left with the Biggs to do some record work.  We were in the middle of sending out dead names when we got a call from the sisters.  We heard screaming in the back ground as Hermana M told us that her companion had burnt herself with boiling water. Well we all freaked out and rallied all of the matromonial missionaries, including President and Sister Rappleye, who happened to be in town. Fortunately, it turned out to be nothing but some superficial 1st degrees and not the 3rd's that popped into my head! Not too much happened after that and we ended up taking a bus to Relun and teaching Carlos.  He's still got a few things to work on but he's progressing. We watched the air show in town as we walked back home and they had some amazing pilots.  Sunday was absolutely amazing! We had three investigators come to church including Carlos and Sergio and his family. Considering how rare it is to get one person to church, this was nuts for me! We had lunch with the President and taught the Cuevas family afterwards. Well as you can see my week was hectic/awesome I hope you guys have a great week too!

Elder Washburn

My Zone Leader,  Elder Gubler

Week 22 - My first progressing investigator!

January 27, 2014

Hey Guys!

Well it's been a long week, but I made it! A lot happened and I've had a few crazy days but I'm here again a week older and a bit better than I was last.

Monday was a bit nuts. We left the server with maybe an hour and a half of P-day left and we still hadn't bought food yet. So, I was a bit shocked to get dragged into another wild goose chase for lapiz lazuli... luckily this one only took 20 minutes. We hauled to Lider and took a collectivo back to the house, made it home at 5:45 and didn't have time to eat anything. We got ready and headed out to proselyte. It was raining and none of our investigators were around so we knocked on doors. We bumped into an aspiring dentist and Elder W__asked him a ton of questions about his teeth. He let us in. Reminded me about Uncle Bengt's joke about how any topic is better to get in the door than religion. I might just try his "could you take a look at my rash?"  Well we got some delicious cake out of it which I thought was funny being in a dentist's house and better yet a lesson. We came home and made nachos and tried out the Pancho Villa "picante" Salsa Mexicana. It’s the tamest salsa I've ever had but hey, it was made in Chile where casi nadie likes spicy food! Oh, last weeks dinner was grilled cheese with carmelized red onions in it! Don't knock it till you try it 'cause it tasted like I was eating mom's french onion soup!

Tuesday no rain, we had a district meeting and gave brother D a blessing. He's an inactive member who's a carabinero. A week ago a drunk elbowed him and broke a rib. We had a short lesson on fe as well and a little Book of Mormon reading. Wednesday it rained all day and I found out how waterproof your coat is after 8 hours in the rain. We took a bus out to Relun and ended up teaching Carlos. Afterwards we caught the last bus out and went to a noche de hogar we planned with Barbara.  She wasn't there but we still read the Book of Mormon and had once with the Lopez's. Thursday it stopped raining! I got your package and we wasted an hour at the PDI trying to get my visa but the extranjero person wasn't there. Friday we went to the PDI again in the morning and she was there so in about an hour she stamped my visa.  Also we were waiting in line and bumped into a nice family from Arizona. It was so weird to say “hola” and get a “hi” back! They were very familiar with the church and wanted absolutely nothing to do with it but they were still really nice.

Saturday was INSANE! I had my regular morning schedule except that I thought I was going to have an intercambio with the elders of Volcan while Elder W had a meeting in Osorno. WRONG! I get a call telling me that I'm going to be helping with a sobre cambio to Valdivia which in reality meant I would be sitting on a bus for 6 hours. But before that we were going to help Elder Biggs become an auxiliary clerk in the Anchual branch. He needed some more information and so Sister Biggs checked her email for it and she found Mom's letter on top.  I was prepared for it, but it was still a bit shocking to find out that your grandmother had died from someone else's email. After that I picked up Elder Linares from the bus station and we took a bus to Valdivia.  He is a really cool guy who served two years in the military starting at 16 and likes to hunt crocodiles in the jungle during his spare time. I was sitting next to a psychologist during the bus so it was fun to review a little AP psych. Got to Valdivia and met the guy I was supposed to pick up Elder Santisteban, turns out he's one of my friends from the airplane to Puerto Montt.  I flew in with Elder Rivera and him. We had a lot of laughs and it was a good trip home. We got home at about 6:45 and ate lunch. Elder W and Elder W came by at about 7:30 to pick him up and take him to Pucón.

We then left on the last bus OUT to Relun for a hail mary attempt to get Carlos to church.  Turns out that Hermano Puentes had already told him that he would pick him up at 9:30 Sunday morning! We taught a short lesson and were lucky to find out that because of a nearby fair the buses were going till 12 a.m. and so we caught another bus out and got home at 10:00p.m.  

Sunday was great!  We had Carlos come to church, which means HE’S MY FIRST PROGRESSING INVESTIGATOR WOOOOO! After that we blessed a sister at her home with Hermano Puentes and then had lunch at his house. By far the biggest asado I've been to yet.  There had to be at least 20 kilos of pork, chorizo, and beef! So good! We then came home, got out of our suits, and started proselyting.  We taught Jonathan and he accepted a fecha baptismal which was pretty great! After that we went out looking for an antiguo investigator and ended up finding the mother at her house. I noticed that an odd looking stick was attached to her fence and I soon realized it wasn't a stick but a bug! Man! I had just picked it up when Elder Wise started screaming. The bug freaked out as much as he did and started flipping all of its legs around! I set it in a tree and everybody was ok. Still nuts how much it… well, looked like a stick! Came home after that and ate some nachos. Hey that’s my week in a short novel, I hope you guys have a great week!

Elder Washburn 

Walking Stick bug!