Hey, I´ve successfully got one change under my belt. And tomorrow I´m not going to be a newbie anymore. There is a group of new missionaries coming in tomorrow. We had changes today so I have a new companion, but I´m staying in the same area. My old companion is an AP now. My new companion is from Peru so he thought it was pretty cool when I told him that Dad went to Peru. But it was pretty cool, I told him that this was only my second change and I had only been in Chile for 6 weeks and he was really surprised. He said that from my Spanish, he guessed that I had been in Chile for 3 or 4 months. That was pretty flattering, even though I don´t think I´m quite at that level myself. While you guys are buried in snow I think it´s getting hotter and hotter everyday here. But this change has been really great. I´m going to miss my old companion because he was really cool, but this new guy seems like he´s going to be a good companion. I don´t know when the next time I´ll be able to send pictures because when my companion left, he took his memory card reader with him. But it´s all good, we don´t really ever have time to take pictures anyway. That is so cool that Mike and Lindsey are having a boy. I can´t even imagine how excited Mike must be. So how many generations of members are on Mom´s side of the family, and Dad´s? I´ve got to get going, love you, talk to you next week.
Love,
Matt

Pictures!

Matt's first Baptism.

Matt and his companion Elder Ramos in their apartment.

Two Letters

Matt's e-mail to us didn't send last week, so we got two this week!

The mission lets us use gmail and it is way better than myldsmail. Here´s some pictures of Chile. My companion is letting me use his memory card reader because I don´t have any other way to get the pictures on the computer. The picture of where I´m am in the house, that is my companion and I in our house. His name is Elder Ramos and he is Mexican. This week has been pretty tiring. We have been doing a lot. It´s still really hot down here. A lot of people having been asking me about my geneology. I guess because I´m white the people here think that all of my ancestors were pioneers. So in your next e-mail could you tell me a little bit about how many generations our family goes back in the church and stuff like that. Nothing really exciting happened this week. I haven´t gotten the letters yet but I´m sure they are on their way. Tell the Whettens thanks, last week I got a letter from them that had little notes from a primary class or something like that. Hope you like the pictures, talk to you next week.
Love,
Matt

This is for this week.

Yesterday I had my first baptism. It was a really cool experience. We have an investigator who is really poor and at the end of one of our lessons this week, he told us that he would come to church if we brought him some breakfast. I thought it was a little weird, but we did it. In the MTC they taught us to do anything to get your investigators to church, so I guess that`s what we were doing. I was eating lunch in a members house and they had the radio on. I heard that San Francisco song that Dad loves and it made me think of listening to that song in the car with Dad. This week has been really good. Spanish is coming along. It seems like the less I worry about it the faster it progresses. I love you and will talk to you next week.
Love,
Matt

Matt's New E-mail

Matt has a different e-mail address, it's now through Gmail. It's kwajimbo@gmail.com

Another letter...

I actually have to teach the Gospel Principles class in Spanish this week. It is about prophets. Oh yeah, and I forgot to tell you, I had to give a 15 minute talk in Sacrament meeting last week. The Bishop called us on Saturday, so I had about 15 minutes before bed that night to work on it. But it actually went really well, because the topic was missionary work, so I used a bunch of stuff from my farewell talk. The people here all celebrate New Year`s, and they do it by getting drunk and staying up until like 4 in the morning. So these last two weeks haven`t been too good about teaching lessons because of the holidays. And my companion tells me that a lot of people go on vacation for like two or three weeks in January, so this month could be tough too. But it has been good. The other day we found a lady and taught her a little bit on Saturday, and she came to church with us on Sunday. I was really surprised because people will let us teach them but they rarely will come to church. So that was really cool. Hopefully things go well with her in the next couple of weeks. My companion is the district leader so he has to go on splits with all the missionaries in our district. He went to another area and another missionary came to my area and was my companion for the day. I was a little nervous because I kind of follow my companion around all day, so I don`t really know the area. But that day was really good. I surprised myself with how well I actually knew the area. I just barely got around to opening all the presents earlier this week because you sent so much stuff. Thanks for the ties, they are perfect. When I got down here I realized that I don`t want to wear my nice ties very much, so they were perfect. Thanks for everything else too, although you overdid yourself, like always. Thanks again for everything.

Love,
Matt