Reflections of a True Millennial

Hola from San Clemente! This week went pretty well. I am still trying to get the hang of this missionary thing, so my mood often changes from super eager to work and doubting my will to do anything. But that is normal, and I am figuring it out. My biggest challenge has been actually talking to people. I feel pretty good about speaking in Spanish, but my comprehension isn´t as fast. But, I am progressing and trying to love the people and open up to them. This week our numbers weren´t quite as high for lessons and such, but it was still a good week. San Clemente is usually divided into two sectors (so 4 missionaries split up), but as a trio we take the whole city, which gives us a lot of people to visit. But, a lot of people aren´t really progressing, so this week we will try to do more contacting and focusing on a few solid investigators. We had a lot of rain this past week, so it sounds like we weren´t too different from Florida. On Wednesday night we all woke up at about 4 am to terri...

Hola hola from San Clemente, This was a pretty good week, I am starting to get into the schedule of things and working hard. We are having a lot of good success here, teaching about 25 lessons in total this week. Each day we visit with converts, less active members, and investigators and usually get into several houses a day. Yesterday we had 8 investigators in Sacrament meeting, which is really a lot! Some days it doesn´t seem like we do a lot, but when we total all our numbers it really adds up. One cool thing we did twice this week was host Noche de Hogar (Family Home Evening) with families. For the occasions we baked cookies at our house and then went to visit with the families, taught a lesson, talked a lot, and did some little games and stuff. On Saturday we did it with the family of Andrea, who is a recent convert. We had Noche de Hogar with her, and her mom, sister, and sisters pololo (boyfriend), who are all nonmembres. Yesterday we had a Noche de Hogar with Carolina (a recent...

Hola from San Clemente! I am now in my first area in the mission, San Clemente, Chile. It is a small town in the very southern part of the mission, about 30 minutes east of Talca. Our area is really big, and extends all the way to Argentina, but we don´t have a car so will be staying around the city mostly. Our branch is very small (like 8 people I think) so there will be a lot of work to do. Today was mostly spent traveling from Santiago. We stopped in Rancagua for the afternoon for mission orientation and such. Also, I am in a trio yet again! My companions are Elder Bustamante (from El  Paso, Texas) and Elder Izquierdo (from Peru). They are really funny, and great missionaries. I am excited to be working with them. Somehow I´ve managed to have a trio in the CCM, a trio with one elder and one hermana, and now a trio with trainers. Elder Izquierdo is going home after this transfer though. This last week in the CCM was really great. We took the Micro and Metro to the Santiago Sur missio...

Hola! It is my last week here at the CCM. This week has been a crazy one. This week I got a new companion, new beedroom, new roommates, new teachers, and a new classroom. We are now the oldest group here in the CCM, which is very exciting. One week from today I will be leaving from here with all the other Rancagua missionaries and going out to the field. A new batch of missionaries came last week, including lots of Latino missionaries (in the 2-week program) who are also going to Rancagua. It has been cool to meet some of them. I hope my first companion in the mission is from South America. Anyway, this week has been great. It has been good working with my new companion and teaching with him. I am actually kind of still in a trio, because we only have one Hermana in our district and she teachers and does class activities with Elder Nolan and I. Hermana Porter and Elder Nolan came to the CCM knowing no Spanish at all, but they have progressed incredibly in 5 weeks. In our lessons, I hav...