Hey Everybody, Well I´m here finally in Concepción Chile where the keyboards actually are able to do español. :-) There is a ton to write about I don´t even know where to start. :-) Well first at the airport after Mom sam grace and sophie dropped me off, i learned that my flight didn´t leave for another two hours so i just walked around a lot until Forrest showed up. The group of missionaries he was in were late cuz of traffic so i mostly just hanged out until 2 o´clock. I actually ran into a friend from rexburg who was coming from Florida. Then forrest came and we eventually got onto the flight. Then Dallas where i probably had my last big mac for dos anos and then we got onto the flight to Chile. I fell asleep at around11 or 12 and woke up at 6 chilean time. We eventually made it to Santiago where I said my goodbyes to Forrest and then headed off to my next flight. I found out that i had lost my camera on the dallas flight so I was looking for a place where i could get in contact with the plane when this guy showed up and started helping out with my bags and tickets. I didn´t realize until later that he wasn´t actually like assigned to help the elders until after but anyways he helped me get my bags checked and took me to the american airlines office to see if i could get my camera. Ididn´t have pesos on me so he took me to a atm to get money but we couldn´t get any money off of the cards at first. I felt bad a little cuz by this time i figured out he wasn´t just helping me out for fun but he had helped me alot. We could only get i think 18 mil off of the debit card which is like almost 40 dollares and then i was on the flight to chile. before we took off a flight attendant walked up to me and gave me my camera. I don´t know how she knew me or how she knew the camera was mine but i´m glad that i have it. Eventually i made it to concepcio´n where pres and sis swenson were waiting and then they took me around the city for a bit and i got to see that building that was in all the newspapers back home that was on its side. Then we went to the mission home where we had almuerza with the asistants and then they took me to my first sector. When we got there, Elders Bustos, Wilde, and Escobillana were waiting for me. Elder Bustos is from colombia, elder escobiliana is from the northest part of chile, and elder wilde is from ogden. Elder Bustos is my comp. After that we got everything unpacked and then we went to a members house for the rest of the evening. For the rest of the week we did alot of the same things. We contacted and visited members and less actives and investigators.I hardly did much except walk with elder bustos cuz i cant understand anything that the people are saying:-) Elder Bustos AND me taught a lesson together once when before he tild me what parts i was going to do and that was fun. It was really cool to be teaching an actuall investigator. On saturday (shout out to Sam, three years :-D) the people off chile have like a ton of protests that actually get pretty dangerous. We didn´t have any problems here but we didn´t do anything that day because of the protests. Sunday was fun because up until recently there had been only one chapel in our sector that was pretty far away and a lot of our less actives and investigators wouldn´t come to church simply because they couldn´t do the walk. But recently a new chapel was built and the first sacrament meeting in it was sunday. Elder Bustos said we had like 14 investigators come to church :-D count it. Yesterday we had a zone conference with pres swenson which was pretty fun. THey played some talks and movies that were english so i was finally able to figure out what was going on. and thats pretty much it :-D
I´m doing alright down here in the other side of the world. I´m tired, confused most of the time, my feet hurt, and just kind of hanging out with my comp when things are happening around us , but i´m doing great :-) The first wek was hard but it was good all at the same time.
I want to write more but this stupid keyboard can´t freaking backspace and i´m going to go nuts in a little bit. :-D M ynext Pday is saturday and I´ll explain why then :-D
Things that are important:
THey still do dear elders down here :-D They aren´t delivered , we have to go to concepcion to get them which is like a twenty or thirty minute busride . Its the same way with packages and letters
I am understanding more each day:-DBecause elder Bustos is colombian, he doesn´t speak crazy spanish so i can understand him
Forrest has my gloves pillowcase and baptism pants so if someone can tell him to mail those, that would be great.
this keyboard is driving me up a wall so i´m going to wrap thins up. I´ll definetely write much better on saturday and answer the questions better. Until then Mom dadsam meri grace and sophie, I love you a ton, i miss you like crazy but its not making me sad :-) 19 months and 3 weeks is nothing to 2 years and it´ll pass so fast when i´m working so much :-) Stay cool and be happy
Sincerely
Fortunately the one and only
Elder McConnell