O-15: A Couple Things + a Few more Fotos, October 9, 2023

Hola!!

This week has been a good week! A couple things happened!

1. One of our friends told us she is ready to get baptized, her children were baptized a while ago and now she is wanting to enter into the same covenants as them!

2. During church there was about 40ish people in the meeting (normally we have around 25-35 people attend) and then after the first hymn ended, 40+ more people walked in!! Resulting 80+ people that come to church! I was in awe and my heart was filled with joy and excitement!

3. We finally got the Elders quorum (the guys group of our church) to have a weekly activity. And they chose to play fútbol every Wednesday and challenge the other ward to a game, it is fun because we are allowed to play with them. And the four of us missionaries were put on one team with one of our friends and we ran a play called "gringo swarm" where we would all go for the person with the ball haha! It worked 4 times out of 10 haha, but we had a great time!

4. We had a ward activity called "Master Chef", so everyone brought one dish that they prepared and set it up all nicely and there were three judges (my comp, bishop, and the young women's president) that tasted each dish and chose the top three winners. And well they were deciding that, it was everyone's else's turn to try all the food! It was sooooo good, all the best of the best! There were cakes, pies, donuts, rice with sauces, stuffed potatoes, coke (of course), asado (bbq) and more! But the best of all was what we brought (in my opinion haha) and that was.... drum rolllllllll.... pretzels! We made pretzel bites with a spicy cheese sauce! Everybody loved it as it was their first time trying it. When our bishop tried it he said it brought him back to the days of his childhood haha! Anyways we got first place haha, but who's keeping track. Our members in our ward are so great, fun and kind, and they feed us well; don't worry mom!

5. It was Elder Carlson's birthday yesterday, so we got a lot of good food from members, and Elder Call and I surprised him with a cookies and cream cake we bought, and we ate it with the neighbours! And we made empanadas with them and it was really fun! Oh and bishop shined all of our shoes for us!

6. Today we hiked renca hill! It was super fun! When we got to the top we could see all of Santiago and the mountains that literally surrounded us. It was incredible! We went with our district and two other elders in my zone. It was definitely a more difficult hike but it was well worth it under the sweltering sun!

7. The great vaccine hunt. We have been trying for the past 2 weeks to get a vaccine that I need. The place the mission office told us to go to is 2 hours away, and when we went it wasn't there. And then we went to a clinic close to us and they had it! But only for little kids... sadly my acting skills aren't good enough to get that vaccine. So we are going to keep hunting around. At this point the office said just find one and don't care about insurance covering it and they'll reimburse us haha.

I now realize that that was more than a couple things haha!

I'm now entering the stage of spanish learning where I don't really know how to speak it and I'm forgetting how to speak english haha, it is super funny and entertaining! I'm very grateful for spell check lol.

If anyone is bored and doesn't have anything to do, you could send me a letter or a package! I probably won't send one back because I don't know how the mailing system works here... to be fair I don't really know how it worked in Canada as well... ignorance is bliss. But I will send an email in return at least! My mailing address is

Mission Address

Letters (in Mission)

María Graham 312

8420164 Recoleta

Region Metropolitana (Santiago)

Chile

Packages (in Mission)

Unit #2011379

María Graham 312

8420164 Recoleta

Region Metropolitana (Santiago)

Chile

Anyways, don't feel pressured to haha!

Elder Call, my companion, has taught me through example some incredible lessons. The man always always always has a smile on his face. BOOM rejection in his face, smile. BOOM friend cancels last minute, smile. BOOM someone pushes his buttons, smile. BOOM no food have to eat sleep for the night, smile. Etc... he is very patient, very cheerful has control over his emotions from an outside appearance. His secret he told me was: "I don't let things faze me if it's out of my control. Someone does something at home, sure I'll think about it for 15 min and that 15 min will suck, but at the end of the day, I'm here in Chile doing my work. If someone turns us down for an opportunity to meet and for us to share a message about Christ and they say no, we've done our purpose; which is to invite others to come unto Christ." I have enjoyed this transfer with him and I at least have two-ish more weeks with him. I hope we stay together for the next 6 weeks as he has become an example, a leader, and a good friend to me.

I'll stop before this gets to long, but before I go... it's time for 🚨question of the week🚨 WOOOOO.

Anyways, what has been a lesson you've learned from a friend this past month?

I love you all!

Elder Spencer

Elder Call and me

The mayonnaise section in the grocery store, Chileans love their mayo

A BBQ, grace, salsa, queso sauce, all on fries, the closest I'll probably get to poutine

Neighbourhood

A shout out to all those that play handball, I found this random court with handball lines, the crease is a couple meters short, probably 4.5m but still a cool find!