Changes

Well we just hit a new change cycle, and I am still here in Covarrubias, which means I have 11 months in the mission and I have been here for 7 and a half months. Which is a loooong time. So I'm still here with Elder Groen and we are doing really good!

Elder Torres left the ward and left the house, and we were living together for 5 months, so that's kind of sad, but it's all right. We got to be good friends. But now we have Elder Mallado. He's Chilean, so that will be interesting. He is a cool guy so we'll probably have an interesting change.

Well this week we had a pretty interesting thing happen. This past week, the 18th to the 21st, Chile celebrates it's Independence from Spain. So there is just a lot of fiestas and a lot of fun stuff that they do. To start, they all have barbecues and make a lot of empanadas, so we ate a lot of both! Then the ward had a party the 19th and it was super fun! Pictures will come, but it was a blast! We played traditional Chilean games, some people danced the Cueca (the traditional dance) and we had the typical Chilean drink which is Mote con Guesillo (which I don't actually know what it is but it was good!)

So first of all, this is a picture of us all in the house. This is me, Elder Groen, Elder Purnell and then Elder Torres.

The second picture is the classic Chilean barbecue,

 un asado is what they call it. Super good!

And then I thought I got a picture of the Cueca, but I only got a video and I don't think I can send it, but when they dance it, all the guys dress up like Guassos (a Chilean cowboy) and it is pretty cool.

Too fast!

I really don't like how fast the time is passing. I almost have 11 months now. But I haven't hit it yet, and I still have a month and a half until I hit a year so I am not quite there yet. I'm trying to think that the time will slow down because I don't want it to go faster, just slow down.

Anyway, last week was pretty interesting. The 11 on Thursday we had to stay inside all day. On the 11, if I didn't say last week, all the Chileans observe a really dark time in their history, but now it has turned into a day when all the hooligans just try to cause trouble. So we had to stay in the house all day and cleaned like crazy. So that was pretty good I guess.

Anyway, we are doing pretty good in the sector. One of the hard things we had recently is finding new investigators and less active members to teach, but that is getting better! We have actually been finding a lot of people! 

Elder Groen is doing really well! We just are about to finish half of his training. He is doing really well, but we still have a lot of time to work together, so that's really exciting!

The pictures that I have today are both of me and the zone. These are all the missionaries in my zone!

We had a pretty tough week this week. We walked around a lot, a lot, and a lot. We had a lot of investigators that weren't progressing and we just had to move on. So we have been contacting a lot, and a lot haha. So we are pretty tired, but we have tomorrow to completely recover. We can't leave the house all day tomorrow because Chile, on the 11 of September, has a bunch of riots and public showings and stuff like that. So we have to stay in because it's dangerous. Especially for us. So we will be able to have a nice little rest and recuperation. 

Anyway we had a really good week this week. We recently had a reactivation. Her name is Nicole and she is super awesome! Her assignment is to be the ward Zumba instructor, so she is super pumped about that! And so are we! Especially because now her husband is getting more and more interested in the church. His name (or nickname rather because that's what everyone calls him) is Pato. So we are excited about that!

We also got a pretty funny noticia this past week. We sang in the ward choir this last week during our ward conference. And I guess us 4 missionaries are just so good at singing that they asked us to sing for stake conference! That'll be interesting!

Well, there we are. Hope everything is good over there! Oh! And one more thing, I took one picture this week! We went on divisions with the Zone Leaders and that's the picture I took of the two of us!

We had a super good week this week, although it wasn't too easy. We didn't have too much time to work but it turned out pretty well! We had ward conference this past week so it was pretty nice because we got a lot of ward involvement in the last little while. 

All Wednesday after P Day we went to practice for the ward choir. It was super good, the only problem was it took all day so were weren't able to work that whole day, but it was all right because we were able to help out the ward in some way which was super good!

Then on Friday there was a Ward Night in the chapel that we were in charge of. So we chose to talk about Unity within the ward. It turned out super good and so it was pretty awesome! We used a lot of examples and just tried to make everyone realize that without unity in the ward, nothing will go right. Which is really the same in everything we do with everyone we do it with. If we aren't united, nothing's going to work out.  And then on Saturday the young men and women put on a show as part of a stake activity which was super good and we were asked to be there, but it was super good, and it helped out the ward a lot.

Then today we had a super fun P Day! We bought what's called a Fardo de Corbatas. A Tie fardo, although I don't know what fardo means. But it is just a huge bag of ties (I'll send a picture to show what it is.) It is basically a bag that weighs 40 Kilograms of just straight ties. The first pic I sent is just a pic of the bag!

The Second one I'll send it me laying in a pile of only the bad ties that nobody wanted. There were a lot!

And the the third is a picture of my clean study desk. I had kind of an OCD panic attack and cleaned everything. So that was the result! But now it's clean!