March 2010

March 29, 2010

Time is flying by just as fast for me as it is for you. I just got an e-mail from Jory this week. He´s already home. I gave him the home phone number because he said he wanted to stop by the house and eat dinner with you guys one Sunday or something like that. So hopefully he gives you guys a call before too long.

Things are going good here in the mission. I was a little worried about my new companion because he didn´t talk to me at all for the first couple of days. I think he was just a little disappointed because an older missionary doesn´t get put with a zone leader unless there is something wrong, and I think he was taking it out on me by giving me the cold shoulder. But he has loosened up and now things are just fine. He´s a really good guy and things are just fine now. Plus, it´s really nice being with a companion that speaks spanish, because my last companion that I was with for four months couldn´t speak very much, which forces me to talk a lot. But I´m happy with changes, things are good.

I got the package this last week. Thank you so much for everything. All of the Elders in my pension and I have been enjoying the instant pudding. All they have down here is flan, and pudding is way better. Also thanks for the protein bars. And thank you so much for the notebook. It is perfect. I´m using it as my study notebook, so every morning when I study, I write down what I learn in that book. I´m actually going to run out of pages in my journal in a couple of months, and I was thinking that it would be cool to have one of those notebooks, but the smaller ones, would be nice for my journal. But I won´t need that for a while, probably around my birthday or something like that, but I´ll let you know when I run out.

This last week went pretty well. We found a family that is from Southern Chile, near Concepción. And they had to move to Santiago because the tsunami that came after the earthquake destroyed their house. They moved in with their son who lives here in my area. It was pretty humbling to hear their experience with the earthquake because for them it changed their lives completely, when it didn´t do nearly as much here in Santiago. But it´s good because we found them because of the earthquake. Well, thanks for everything. And thanks for filling me in on things happening to the family. Thanks for everything.




March 22, 2010

Well this week went a lot better for me than last week. Actually, last week wasn´t bad except for that one thing that happened on Sunday. But I have really good news. On Wednesday night we went over to José and Johana´s house to talk to them. That is the couple that we have been teaching, Johana is the recent convert and José is the investigator. We got there, and only Johana was there, so we didn´t even get a chance to see José that night. But we had a good talk with Johana and we scheduled an appointment for Thursday night when we could go over there and talk to José. So when we get there Thursday night, José starts by explaining to us what happened and why he didn´t get baptized. He said that on Sunday he woke up and wasn´t feeling good at all emotionally, and that he didn´t want to get baptized feeling like that and I could tell that he is afraid of making committments. So I started talking to him a little bit about being afraid to do what´s right, and I shared one of my favorite scriptures with him, Doctrine and Covenants 6:33-37. Then Johana started talking to him about how important the baptism is to her and their family. Then my companion walked him through the day of his baptism, about how he would feel nervous and a little scared in the morning, and how he would have butterflies in his stomach when he got to church, and how he would feel calm and content when he got in the water, and clean and pure when he got out. The spirit was so strong in that moment that we didn´t have to say another word, and José asked us if he could get baptized on Sunday. It was one of the most spiritual experiences that I have ever had in my whole mission. So after that we were scrambling around to get everything organized for the baptismal service, and then he got baptized on Sunday. I´ve got a few pictures, I´ll send them to you next week if I can remember to bring my camera to the Internet place.
Also, we had changes today. I´m still in the same sector but my companion left, so I have a new one now. In this mission the zone leaders are always put with really new missionaries or problem missionaries. My last companion was a really new missionary, now it´s my turn for a problem missionary. He´s not really a problem, but he only has four months left until he goes home and I can tell that he is on the downhill. But it´s going to be a good change, he seems like a really laid back guy. So it shouldn´t be too bad. Thanks for everything. I´ll talk to you guys next week.
Love,
Matt

March 15, 2010

So this week was terrible. I´m sorry, but it really was horrible. I try to keep a good attitude, but something really bad happened. Remember last week when I told you that our investigator possibly was going to get baptized on the 14th. We talked to him Monday and apparently he had a little freakout, but he got over it. So everything was fine and dandy, then we kept visiting him every day during the week and everything was fine. He passed the baptismal interview on friday, then on Saturday he tried on the baptismal clothing and everything was fine. But on Sunday morning we went to church, and he didn´t make it to Sacrament meeting. So we ran over to his house during Sunday School, and we talked to his wife, who was baptized a year ago. He wouldn´t even come out to talk to us, so we don´t really know why he didn´t get baptized, but I think he just got scared right in the last minute. So we had to go back to church and cancel the baptism that we planned. It was horrible. I think it was the worst I´ve ever felt in my whole mission. So the last couple of days haven´t been that great.

The earthquake last Thursday wasn´t nearly as strong as the first one, but we definately felt it. It was during the day so I was in another person´s apartment on the second floor. But nothing really happened. Although the lights went out in almost all of Chile last night, but we got them back after about an hour. Nothing else has happened lately. Thanks for sending the package. I´ll probably get it in a couple of weeks. Thanks for everything.
Love,
Matt


March 8, 2010

Things have calmed down pretty much after the earthquake, at least around here. It´s still a hot topic of discussion because supposedly there are aftershocks all the time. But I haven´t felt very many of them, I think because it´s hard to feel them if you are walking around and moving. As far as we´ve seen around here, there isn´t too much damage to the houses. But there are a couple of houses that were messed up, and a lot of the cement walls that people have as fences fell down. We´ve been offering service like crazy but really nobody has accepted it. Like I told you, we made pancakes for one family that didn´t have water or power. Then we went to the church one afternoon because we had a ward service project of making fleece blankets to send to Southern Chile. And this Saturday we´re going to help a member fix a wall in his house that cracked during the earthquake and is crumbling down. But it has been hard because everytime we see a person that needs help, we offer and get rejected every time. Chileans are very proud, even after a huge earthquake. I´m sure it´s a different story down where a lot of damage was done, but at least around here it hasn´t changed too many things.

For the last couple of months my companion and I have been working with the husband of a recent convert, we´ve been teaching him and he was progressing pretty good. He´s kind of stubborn, he was going to church and doing everything, but for some reason he didn´t want to get baptized quite yet. So he was progressing slow, but this last week we finally got him to accept a baptismal date for this next Sunday. I was so excited when he told us that he would get baptized of the 14th. And everything was going good. Then on Sunday, apparently he got in an argument with his wife and didn´t go to church. And we went over to their house on Sunday to see what happened and he left with one of his friends all day, so we´re going to talk to him tonight but I´m really worried that he´s going to back out. So we´re going to see how that goes, but if all goes well, we should have a baptism this Sunday.

Thanks for checking on the BYU thing for me. That means a lot to me. I´ll get that done as soon as I get it. Also, in that package, could you send me some instant pudding packs. Oh yeah, thanks for the extra dried mangoes from the last package, I put them in my emergency backpack that we put together before the earthquake. I guess I didn´t have to use it, but I would have been fine if something big did happen.

Also, there is this guy here in Santiago that makes hand made suits for just about all of the missionaries. My companion just got one made today so I was down there and I was looking at some of the fabric that he had. He had one material that was dark charcoal that I liked a lot. The suits cost 140 dollars and they´re hand made so they fit really well, and I was thinking about getting one. I just wanted to ask you what you think about it before I did anything crazy. So next week tell me what you think about me getting a hand made suit here.

Thanks for everything Mom. Tell everyone I say hi.


March 3, 2010 Earthquake!

Well, the power finally came back on today where the internet cafes are. We´ve had power since Saturday, but most of the houses where we live didn´t get power until last night. It was good to talk to you guys on Sunday. I´m pretty lucky to be in this sector because I probably wouldn´t have been able to talk to you guys if I was in another sector. But anyway, the earthquake was an 8.8 on the richter scale. It was a really big earthquake, but didn´t really do anything to our apartment. Chile is a pretty seismic country, so they have built everything to resist big earthquakes. Around the sector where I am, there wasn´t too much structural damage to the buildings, we just heard about how a bunch of stuff fell off the walls in people´s houses. We heard about a couple of flat screen tv´s that were destroyed, some microwaves that fell and broke. But nothing happened in our apartment. I guess there really isn´t too much to break in a missionary´s apartment though. So anyway, the story actually starts a couple of months ago, because a couple of months ago a couple of missionaries in my zone had some weird dreams about a giant earthquake hitting chile. Then all the missionaries in our mission got water bottles that have a built in filter about a week later. Then a couple weeks later all the missionaries got a piece of paper that told us what to do before, during, and after an earthquake. Then about two weeks after that the earthquake hit. So it actually wasn´t that big of a surprise Saturday morning. The mission president´s wife woke up in the middle of the night a couple of weeks ago and had a feeling that an earthquake was going to hit. So that´s why all of that stuff came out and we were all pretty prepared. So on Saturday morning, I woke up to our entire apartment shaking like crazy. And my first instinct was to yell ¨Terremoto,¨ which is earthquake in spanish. Although I don´t know why, because the four missionaries in the apartment are all american. But also, I got a cold last week and lost my voice for a couple of days, so my voice was really low. My voice was pretty much like Batman from the Dark Knight. So you guys can imagine Batman yelling TERREMOTO in the midst of everything shaking, I think that is what freaked out my companions more than anything. Anyway, we all woke up, then after two and half minutes of shaking, things calmed down. So I tried to go to sleep, but I couldn´t, so I made pancakes at like 5 in the morning. Then all day saturday we went out in P-day clothes and helped people clean up messes that the earthquake caused. It was a pretty crazy experience. A third of Santiago has been without light for almost a week now. But everything is getting back to normal now. Although it is still pretty bad in Southern Chile, where the epicenter was. The big supermarkets opened up and were letting the people take what they needed to survive down there because it was so bad, and the freaking Chileans started taking Plasma screen tv´s and washing machines. I don´t know how anyone could even think of taking those things when they don´t even have running water or power. Well, everything is somewhat getting back to normal now. Have a good week.
Love,
Matt