Viña del Mar is North East of Santiago so I am probably never going to see it, but that is ok. There are tons of inactive families here in Chile. So many that when we are knocking doors we usually find a family or two that hasn´t been to Church for years. So that is a big part of the missionary work down here, reactivation. But this week was insane because we found a ton of new investigators. The mission goal is that each companionship find twenty new investigators a week. But that is insane, the average is like six to eight in a week. But this last week my companion and I found twenty, we reached the goal and we were pretty proud of ourselves. But now we have a lot of work ahead of us to get all of these people progressing. On Wednesdays we have a zone meeting and at the end of the meeting we get mail, and I got two of your letters. One form Jan. 16 and one from Jan. 22. But also we got the rule that you can only open mail on Preparation day. We have been getting stupid rules like that every week since I got here. But I was talking to another Elder that has been here a little longer that me and he told me that the new rules every week started in like November. So I guess something happened and now he is cracking down hard. But I read your letters this morning so I´m going to answer some of your questions. Every day except for Preparation Day we eat a big lunch at a members house. Lunch is the big meal down here. But breakfast in the morning and a small dinner is up to us. But we don´t have time to cook at night so we don`t ever eat a meal for dinner. I am in a ward that has about 90 to 100 active members. The area is so big that there are two companionships in this ward. My companionship and Elder Hansen´s companionship. Elder Hansen was in my district in the MTC. The person that we baptized a few weeks ago was baptized three weeks after we found her. So I knew her from the beginning. Also, this week we have a baptism scheduled and this lady has a really strong testimony of the Book of Mormon so that is really cool. You said that you were going to by a memory card reader and send it, if you haven´t already sent it could you also send a pocket knife and a scripture bag. The scripture bag from missionary mall is way too big and is annoying. Elder Hansen told me that there are scripture bags at the Distribution Center that are good. I just want a bag that is big enough to hold my scriptures and a book of mormon and some pamphlets, but it also needs to have a shoulder strap. If you have already sent the memory card reader don´t worry about this stuff, it isn´t life or death, I can wait. Also, you said that you had to give a lesson on following Christ. I had to give a talk a couple weeks ago about that. And your lesson about enjoying the journey. That is really important. In my first weeks here in Chile I kept thinking to myself, things are going to be so much better when I know Spanish, and things are going to be better when ... But then I got that Christmas package with the Christmas card and Dad wrote on that, enjoy every day. And after I started to have that attitude things went so much better, and all of the little things came together, like Spanish got a lot easier when I stopped worrying about it. Thanks for everything, it was really cool to get those letters. I love you, talk to you next week.
Love,
Matt