09-29-09

I am doing great. Today is my last preparation day at the MTC. This time has really just flown by and I feel like I really just got here, but I have learned so much and loved it here a lot. So this week we got our flight plans, and I had a little scare. Dad, I thought that I was going to come to Florida in a month and see you. I'll explain. We got our flight plans and it said that we were going to Chile and then in November that we were taking a flight back to Miami Florida. I was really confused. Everyone in my district had this ticket back to Florida and I didn't know why. No one did. I started worrying. I was thinking, what if they needed Spanish-speaking missionaries in Florida and so they transferred us there. We couldn't figure out why we would be flying back to the US a month after we got to Chile. But then some members of my district went and asked the travel office and it turns out that it was all okay. To go to Chile we need this extra ticket. Because we don't need visas to fly to Chile, but if we are in Chile for longer than three months then we do. And so since we are staying for longer and don't have our visas yet, we have to have proof that we have a ticket out of the country within three months if we aren't able to get our visas. They just cancel the ticket once we get our visas. I was pretty scared, I guess they call it a ghost ticket or something like that. But anyways this week has been really great.

I fly out from the Salt Lake City airport on Oct 5 to Los Angeles. We go from LA to Santiago, Chile. We get to Santiago the next morning. Then we wait for a few hours and leave the Santiago airport and fly to Osorno, Chile. So the whole trip takes around 30 hours is what I have heard. I am on a different flight than Scott, I think he flies from SLC to Texas or Florida and then to Chile. But we should be in the Santiago airport waiting for him when he gets in. He gets in to Santiago while I am waiting to fly to Osorno.

Well, I want to write more, but I am running out of time.

Elder Welling and I had a great experience at the TEC this week. We have been teaching there in Spanish for the last two weeks and this week we taught a lady in Spanish. We taught her about the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ in our simple Spanish. But the cool thing was that we really felt the love of God during the lesson. It felt great and she was touched by the message. Our Spanish was simple, but good enough, good enough to have the spirit of God there and that is what teaches the heart what truth is. It was a great experience. We still have a ton of Spanish to learn and more to learn about being missionaries, but Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ are with us and that is what we need. It was soo cool.

I am excited to be going to Chile! So excited and nervous at the same time. I hear that they speak very, very, very fast there.