July 27, 2009 P Day

Today was a fun day. In the morning we went with the family that welive with to a campsite and went on a hike in the morning. Then after the hike we ate lunch around the campfire. On the way back home the dad of the family got pulled over for going too fast, and he didn´t have his license or the documents for the car. So we had to go to thepolice station. And the dad has to spend the night in jail, and possibly a couple more days. So today has been pretty interesting. Don´t worry too much about the birthday package. I already bought a sweater vest and a sweatshirt down here. Like Dad said, I should be thankful for what I get, so thank you, and don´t worry about it. Talk to you next week.Love,Matt

Yeah, we got Rockports from Mr. Mac, and they´re waterproof. They actually have been really nice the couple of times that it has rained really hard here in Santiago. I asked Courtney what you guys put in my birthday package because what I got and what was written on the customs slip didn´t really match up, and it turns out like half of the package got stolen. That´s too bad. I´m not going to lie, when I opened it up I thought to myself, hmm I expected a little bit more out of a birthday package. But I didn´t want to say anything. Oh well. This week has been pretty good. It is my first week with Elder Sánchez. He is new to the mission. But he´s a good missionary. He reminds me of how it was for me when I first got out here, not knowing anything. But at least he speaks spanish. We had a baptism yesterday. It was really good. We made a slideshow of pictures of Christ and put some church music on in the background, it was pretty cool. Elder Sánchez is pretty lucky to have a baptism his first week in the mission. He´s from Perú and from what he tells me missionary work is a little bit different there. Chileans are a little bit harder when it comes to the gospel. It was funny, we were knocking doors and I did a contact, and the person was kind of rude. I´ve gotten used to it, so I just started walking to the next door but Elder Sánchez told me that if I did that contact in Perú the person would have let us in. Really nothing much has happened this week, besides the baptism and getting a new companion. Our new president is letting us do zone activities and play sports on p-day so I´m going to buy some shoes down here. I transfered $200 from my savings account to my checking account so that I can use my debit card and have a little bit of spending money. Things are going good. Interviews with the new President are this Thursday. I´m pretty excited to finally talk to President Laycock. Talk to you later.
Love,
Matt

This just made me laugh... :]

Birthday Photos

That is crazy about Ross and Jeff. It doesn´t seem like long ago when they left. This week has been pretty good. There is snow up in the Mountains and so my companion and I decided to take the bikes out and try and reach the snow. We rode about 25 miles and still didn´t make it. But we still got some pretty good pictures. Also, the other day we were knocking doors and found an ostrich. I thought that was pretty cool. I never thought that I would see an ostrich in Chile. The new president got here last week. I´m pretty excited. We had a zone conference last friday where he told us a little bit about him and his family. He is from Alpine and he was a lawyer. Things are going to be completely different with this guy. I think things are going to be a lot better. We have interviews with him this week. Sounds like your 4th of July went pretty well. We didn´t really do anything. Things are going good down here. It didn´t rain yesterday so there were quite a few people at church. Thanks for everything. Talk to you later.
Love,
Matt

Hey, things are going good. My birthday was pretty fun. As a mission we went to the temple friday morning. That was a good experience. They needed a couple of missionaries to do baptisms for the dead, and I got to help out with that. On Sunday it rained hard, and all day. And we had seven good investigators committed to go to church. But none went because of the rain. Chileans are such babies when it comes to the rain. We only had 29 people at church yesterday. Then after church the whole mission gathered together and we had a last conference for President Morán. I´m going to miss that guy. He´s a really good speaker, the problem is he talks for too long. But he always gives good talks. For my birthday the family that we live with made a cake so that was pretty cool. I´ve got a couple of pictures but the computer I´m on doesn´t have a USB drive. I got the package today. Thank you so much. Everything is great. The pants, the fleece, and the scarf. And espcially the long johns, I´m excited for those, because it is getting really cold here. And there isn´t any time of heating in the house except for a little space heater that the mission doesn´t want us to use because of the electricity bill. The new President gets here Tuesday, but it will be at least a week before I even see him. Things are going good. Thanks for everything.
Love,
Matt

Hey I´m sending a couple pictures this week. One is when we were riding the bikes, the other is just us in the pension. First of all, Happy Father´s Day to Dad. Yesterday was a good day. The Mission President went to our church yesterday and gave a talk. It was kind of ridiculous. Because of his talk, Sacrament Meeting ended up being an hour and forty minutes long. We had an investigator who has a 2 year old kid and the kid was going crazy because that is a really long time for a kid to be in Church. So our investigator was worrying about her kid the whole time and not really focusing on the Spirit of the meeting. It was kind of lame. This is President Morán´s last week as mission president. Next Sunday we´re going to have a big meeting with the entire mission as a last thing for President. And I bet that we´ll get to meet our new President there, even though his reign doesn´t officially start until July 1st. This year my birthday is going to be kind of weird. Although as a mission we´re going to the temple this week. And it just so happens that my zone is going on Friday. That will be cool. Last week when we found out that Elder Dickson was going to speak to us I had no idea who he was. And I looked in the Ensign and saw his picture, still had no idea. Then at the conference, when he walked into the room I realized that I had seen him before at Spencer´s ordination, and that he is related to Carl. But I didn´t talk to him or anything. Also Elder Oaks was here in Chile, but he didn´t talk to our mission. He gave a talk to all of the single adults in our area. Also, it started raining this week. It´s crazy. Santiago doesn´t have a drain system in the streets so the streets just flood. I got soaked. It rained for a day and a half straight. But it´s not supposed to rain until this weekend. That´s about it for this week. Talk to you later.
Love,
Matt