Well, things have been going pretty well here in Los Ángeles. Parts of last week were kind of weird but as always I have plans for what I´m going to change next week. Let's see here... first off, I will start by answering questions.
No, we don't have a mamita but as far as lunch appointments go here, the members almost fight over who gets to feed us. All of the members invite us to eat with them and we have to turn down offers all of the time. We are only allowed to make appointments for lunch in our mission. We are on our own for breakfast and once (dinner). And we have a mamita for laundry but she doesn't iron our stuff. From what I´ve seen, irons dont exist in Chile haha. Oh, and we are out of the house working for 8 hours a day.
My companion and I are getting along just great. He has a bunch of weird quirks about him and some things about the way he operates as a missionary don't make too much sense, but overall we get along great and he is a good missionary from what I can tell. He is great with people and is very good at gaining the trust of investigators which is very important. Communication is definitely still a problem sometimes when he has to take 5 or so minutes to explain something, but overall I think it's getting easier to converse with him.
I can understand most of what he says and even though I usually can't say everything I want to say to him in the right way, I can usually get my point accross to him. My grammar is still terribly painful but he says that I´ve already improved a lot since I´ve gotten here and that I need to give myself more credit and have more faith in myself. He always chastises me for my lack of confidence and faith in myself when it comes to the language. I think that he's right and that I'm still being a little too hard on myself. It's just hard to see your own progress sometimes. But I´m working on being more bold and confident. I just wish the chilenos didnt talk so fast. I can understand some of them but then there are just some who speak way flaite or just stereo type poster child chileno. It's kind of funny because a lot of times if I don't understand a question or something that someone says, I can turn to my companion and he basically says the same exact thing they said and I can understand it. He translates from chileno into spanish for me hahaha.
Anyways, for most of last week I just let my companion do most of the contacts and most of the teaching because of my lack of confidence, but the last few days he's forced me to do a lot more of the teaching and the conversing and it's helping me to just start talking without fear of making mistakes and overthinking what I´m going to say and how I´m going to say it. I've started to notice that when I just start talking and conversing without thinking so much on the language and how I'm going to say things, is when I speak the best and understand the most. Oh, and by the way mom, sometimes parts of my dreams are in spanish but it's really broken spanish and I can never remember what was said.
Anyways, the work still isn´t going how we would like it to, but it's starting to pick up a lot and we are starting to see little miracles happen in the lives of our investigators. Right now we have 3 firm fechas (baptismal dates) and are working hard to start setting more. One of them is this old stubborn 70 year old man who has a shoe repair shop, and until recently, refused to let us teach him becuase we are just "children" and thought that he didn't need baptism. He went to church every week but wouldn't really let us teach him. Then, out of the blue, when we stopped by his shop last week, he told us that he wanted us to teach him and after that he said that he wants to get baptized.
The other, Marcela, is the "wife"(they are getting married in two weeks because she really wants to get baptized) of a just until recently, innactive member, Marcos. We weren't sure about Marcela until yesterday when during church, there was some drama and it's a long story, but we ended up helping them solve some marital problems and resolved all of her doubts about the church and her worthiness to be baptized. Hahaha it's too long of a story to say but man, it's crazy what we 19 and 20 year old missionaries have to do sometimes. I´ll tell you it wouldn't be possible without the help of the Lord.
The last fecha is a friend of Marcos who until yesterday we had only talked to for 15 or so minutes and gave him a Book of Mormon. Then out of nowhere. yesterday he shows up to church and after church said that after only reading like 2 chapters of the Book of Mormon he knows that it's true and he wants to get baptized. Yesterday was crazy but awesome, I felt the spirit really strong the whole day and for some reason my spanish was pretty dang good yesterday. It's gone back to being blah now jajaja. I guess the Lord just needed me to speak better yesterday.
As far as the area goes, we are safe. In some of the seedier parts of town and at night the flaites will yell things at us but I´ve learned that if you show them you're not scared of them then they leave you alone. They just like giving the mormons a hard time, mostly because they think all mormons and all gringos are rich. But anyways, when the yell at us, I just yell something in English back, doesn't matter what, just anything, and they´ll laugh and let us be. But igual (even still) we stay away from some of the neighborhoods after dark.
Oh, and some random things that I've noticed that are different here then from Pitruf are the majority of people, even the old ones, have teeth and despite it being one of the more "ghetto" sectors of LA, overall, the people here are wealthier than the people of Pitrufquén. Well I think that I´ve done enough rambling for this week. As always, I´m doing good and enjoying my time here. It's not easy and it is very draining work sometimes but I wouldn't have it any other way. I see where I am now and I can envision the missionary that I want to be and it seems impossibly far off sometimes but I´m determined to get there. Sometimes I feel a little discouraged or lazy but whenever I get those feelings, I try to shake them as soon as possible. It´s not possible to be perfect but you know we have to try like it is. I love you guys very much and I will talk to you next week!
Con amor, Élder Harper :)
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