Trabajando

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 convert) and her sister Catalina (nonmember). Both events were really fun, and hopefully lead to good things. 

Our branch president is trying to get more involved with the missionary work too, and we had the first missionary correlation meeting here for a while. I hope we can get all the branch involved and really strengthen it. 

In the mornings we often do service for people. This is usually chopping firewood, but this week we also trimmed a big tree, and tore down an old greenhouse. So it is good work, and greatly appreciated by the people.

I haven´t really had any trouble adjusting to the food here. Apparently most gringos do, but I haven´t noticed much difference. The worst part is that nobody really eats dinner, so I am always hungry by the time we get home. Also everyone we visit gives us juice or soda, so hopefully my teeth survive all of that.. But a common lunch is just chicken and rice. We´ve also had spaghetti, beans, and plenty of other things.

Anyway, life is pretty good. Some days are still hard, and being in Chile for 22 more months is intimidating, but all is well.

Elder Richards