Numero Dos

Hola Familia!

How is everyone doing? Utah had any snow yet? It´s still blazing hot down here and only getting hotter. It´s throwing me off because I´m not used to not having snow and being with the family. I did although get a third package, it had a feliz navidad sign and the ensigns and everything. I think there is one more but I don´t know whats in it. I´m guessing the ties? How many did you send? Also don´t waste any money, space, and time sending more seasoning packets and Ensigns. We can get those here. It was nice getting the Ensign a little early but i don´t think it was worth the money it costs to send it here. I feel bad every time I look at the price on these packages. I will be able to use skype on Sunday so I´m setting up an account today. I only get to use it for one hour.

Well this week has been a week of ¨trunky¨ thoughts. (bags are already in the trunk/wanting to go home.) Christmas isn´t going to be the same. To tell you the truth it´s going to suck. This week has been a little tough thinking about family, friends, skiing and Christmas. The week has also been a little crazy so I haven´t had much time to sit and think. We had 2 service projects and mission Conference for the outside missions. We helped the older guy in our wood with his fire wood again. This time it was only me and Elder Teske. I ended up going through a whole pile of wood pulling nails. He kept getting mad at me because he wanted me to pull nails the way he did it. Even though I was doing it faster my way. It was really funny. On Saturday we helped a family with Cement. I definitely felt Chilean on Saturday. I mixed Cement by hand in the street, watered the dirt and street, and swept the dirt. They often don´t want to pay for cement mixers and so they do it by hand in the street. They also for some reason spray the dirt and the cement, I understand spraying the dirt to keep down on dust but the cement part, I´m a little confused. They also sweep the dirt. I´ll have to get a picture of them sweeping dirt. It´s really funny. Mixing cement in the street was awesome. It was really hard and really hot outside but I now know why a lot of Chileans have really bad backs.

Mission Conference was with all of the missions from a city called Chillan and north. It was the ¨Outside¨ half of the mission. Any of the missions that are south by Conce are the ¨Inside¨. Both inside and outside have there perks. Inside gets mail and packages every week. We on the other hand don´t. The truck they drove up was chuck full of Christmas packages. We had a huge lunch of really good chicken and potatoes. We had 3 different work shops from President and his wife. It was really cool. We watched a video they made for the mission with pictures from all of our activities and zones. Elder Teske sent in a picture of me with my first Completo without me knowing and they put it in.

President told us about how we need to use the members to help in our lessons. After we baptize our investigators we need help from the members to help be friends. He also said they needed a calling. President told us a story about an older guy the had joined the church. He was paralyzed on the whole left side of his body. President saw him out in the hall during classes and asked what he was doing. The guy had told him that he was in charge of ringing the bell for classes. President told us that if it wasn´t for that simple calling to ring the bell, He wouldn´t be there at church. He told us the importance of getting new members a calling even if it´s as simple as ringing a bell. Conference was almost like a Spiritual recharge.

On Saturday night we had a ward party. It was a complete let down. We invited over 100 people and like 20 showed up. They absolutely love fruit cake down here. It´s so gross. Elder Teske decided to have an eating contest to see who could eat a kilo of Pan de Pascua. Of course no one showed up so we had to be one of the eight to eat it. It was so gross. It was quite a sad Christmas party. Nothing goes as planned down here. It has really bugged me because people don´t plan anything until the day of and nothing goes right. If we talk to an investigator or member and ask why they didn´t come to church or something they usually say, I was tired or I was being lazy. The excuses we get are amazing. We knocked a door and a guy came out and said, ¨Estoy ocupado¨ We asked him why and his excuse was that his sister was in the shower...? He was drinking a beer and watching soccer. It drives all of us missionaries nuts. We all share stories of the excuses we have gotten but so far the sister in the shower was the best.

This Sunday we had a surprise though. We had a taxi Driver that the rest of his family had been baptized tell us he didn´t want to get baptized yet. He kept changing his mind and finally Saturday night we got a call saying he wanted to. Sunday we had our second baptism. It kinda bugs me but our investigators think that since I don´t speak very well that I can´t perform a baptism so they automatically choose Elder Teske to baptize them. It´s still a baptism but it just bugs me that they think i´m not capable of doing it. We went through with the baptism and everything went great. They now have a full family baptized. They are waiting for the little kid named Ricardo to be baptized. He´s still only 7. I love the kid though. He´s hilarious. His dads name is Ricardo so they call him Ricardito. They add the -ito or -ita to every word here. It just means small. During service the guy asked me to hand him the hammer with the -ito on the ending of the word. Its really funny.

Jose is doing great he has given up drinking tea and the only problem is, he was married before and not divorced. They are now having to get divorced but that could often take up to a year. His paraja/girlfriend was willing to move out so that he could be baptized. So I guess we´ll see what happens.

The other day we were knocking doors and an older lady answered. She let us in and I really thought it was Mckay´s Grandma. It was like a Chilean Grandma Walker. It was hilarious. She looked exactly like her.

I´m going ahead and buying a bike here. My bike has almost killed me twice. I can get a better bike for about $60 at Lider (Chilean Walmart.) I´m gonna be here for awhile anyway and I´ll try to sell it if I leave to the ¨inside¨. I´m also going to use some money to buy some other random stuff I need. I was also wondering if I should get my suits dry cleaned. They haven´t been done since the 4th week in the MTC. I was wondering if I should trust the Dry cleaning and get them done?

Well I love you guys and hope everything is well. Hopefully the Elf on the Shelf will report good things to Santa and maybe Ainsley will get some good presents. Love you guys and miss you tons.

Con Amor y Feliz Navidad,

Elder Torgersen