11-02-09

So last Monday, I conquered the bathroom and now it is so clean and nice. It is enjoyable!!! Ha.

We taught some really cool people this week. We taught a lady named Luisa and it went so well. We will meet with her again tomorrow I think. It was just a really cool lesson, because at the end she just told us about how she was Catholic and then Evangelical and how they just weren´t right. She is reading the Book of Mormon now. We are also teaching a couple with a young baby, Leo and Susan. We met them two weeks ago. This week we had a really cool lesson with them. We watched The Restoration DVD, about 20 minutes, and then read in the Book of Mormon. At the end, Susan said that they would read it and pray and ask God if the Book of Mormon is true. When she said the prayer at the end, she included that question. They were going to come to church, but they slept in and so they will come next week. They are awesome people. We have been teaching some other really cool people this week.

I am learning more and more each day. I still have so much to learn, but I am working hard each day.

A little bit more about my area. We live north of Osorno in a city called Valdivia. About 130,000 people live here. It is a decent-sized city. Our area is not in the central part of the city, but is more on the outside. We are along a river, and I guess that this used to be a town that the Spanish had control of. There is part of an old Spanish fort here that they would use to defend the city from pirates, I guess. The people here are pretty relaxed. They don´t work a ton ton. But they work I think like 6 hours a day. Most people are pretty accustomed to the life they have and aren´t looking to change, it is hard for them. Some people are soo nice and others aren´t. It is sad, you see all sorts of people. The drunks make me sad, it is so sad to see them- what a miserable life. My area is just streets of small houses. There are small little stores everywhere, a lot just in the side of a house, small little food stores. There are dogs everywhere here. I haven´t had a problem with them yet. But they bark too much. The people here are religious. Mostly Evangelical or Catholic, all of them. Some go to church and some don´t, just like in the States. But most people aren´t too eager to talk to missionaries. They are funny, but I am doing my best to learn to love them. We are trying to work more with the members here. We have 4 people or so that go out with us every week, but we want to work more with the other members. There are about 40 people that come to my ward (congregation) on a good full day, but I guess there are 5 stakes here in Valdivia, which is a lot. My ward is just smaller, I think. There are some incredible members here.

For Halloween here, some kids dress up. Most kids will go out and go door to door for candy. At night when were came back in, there were kids knocking on our gate, but we couldn´t give them anything because if we did, more and more would come. They saw our lights on! I guess the kids just go out and play and go door to door for candy, but we didn´t see too many people outside. Hope you all had a fun Halloween and that everything went well.