November 19, 2012

November 19, 2012

Dear Friends and Family! :)

Mother for your paper on the Sermon on the Mount, maybe you can use the parallel of the beatitudes with the gospel of Christ (faith, repentance, baptism, holy ghost, endure to the end) :)

Cultural Notes:

I think I´m completely over my culture shock now :) Not only because the dogs don´t scare me anymore, but because I´m letting myself see the beauty around me instead of missing Colorado. I´ve been so focused on learning the streets around me that I didn´t really look in the distance and notice the mountains that actually remind me of Colorado :)

Plus this week I had some top notch lasagna :) and I´ve discovered the awesomeness of Chilean hand made bread :) There is this guy in our sector who walks around all day selling fresh, still warm, hand made bread. 20 cents is enough to buy the perfect little snack in-between appointments :)

The next transfers are December 2nd, so it is possible that I´ll be transferred before Christmas; but President Kähnlein said that he wants missionaries in sectors for longer. The normal would be about 6 months, so I don´t think I´ll be transferred.

No, the divorce wasn´t finalized because the lawyers car got stolen; so they had to postpone the agreement. And now the guy has to go work in the south of Chile for a few weeks, so that situation is on ice for a while :/

In all honesty, I haven´t had a desire to go home at all :P Not that I don´t miss you all, but I´m in Chile to stay for 2 years. I have felt inadequate and useless, but that's just the time when the Lord blesses me with an experience to strengthen me and uphold me. In fact this week I had an experience that made me feel like dirt :P We were walking and saw two rockers completely decked out in tattoos - the whole get up. I motioned to my companion that we should contact them, so we start walking towards them and the guy says, "Hey dude, what's up?" Turns out they were from California and didn´t speak a lick of Spanish. I started to talk to them and I lament to say that I didn´t know what to say IN ENGLISH! I literally didn´t know how to do a contact in English :( Later that night, back in the apartment, my zone leader told me the same thing happened to his trainer; so I didn´t feel too bad :P But still this experience taught me that my approach to contacting is too rote, too memorized, to a degree that it just comes out of my mouth and I don´t really have a connection to English. That or I´m forgetting English which is also sad :P

This week one of our appointments fell through and we had just enough time to visit one more person. We decided to go visit an inactive member who's husband is not a member. When we arrived she was almost in tears sitting at the table while her husband was playing on the computer (which was the first thing I found weird). We invited him to join us but he was more interested in his game. With the Spanish I didn´t understand completely what her problem was; but it was something with work. We helped her to realize that not going to church definitely doesn´t help, just like leaving safety at the beginning of a storm. But also, I realized that not only was this woman missing support received from the church, but also at home. It's important to be strong in the gospel individually; but also important to marry within the covenant, so that you can have that extra pillar of support that this woman was lacking. But she came to church this week!

All is well :)

Elder Hall