Week #8

Hey everyone,

This has been such a fun but busy week.  It has been a little harder because it is a holiday week so a lot of people have been out of town or have family in town, so we didn't have very many appointments. It’s hard to contact when everyone is busy or not home, but it was fun because on the 18th we got to just go to ward party that lasted all day for 18 de septiembre, which is there Independence day.  It was really fun to spend time with the ward and play games and a lot of futboll(soccer), because they are so crazy competitive and way good at it here. We also watched people dance the “cueca”, their national dance. It was a lot of fun and nice to have a break from the normal schedule.

Okay, so my daily routine: I wake up every day at 7 and we have time to exercise until 7:30 and then time to get ready from 7:30 to  8. This  is a really short amount of time when you have four girls sharing a shower, so I have learned how to get ready fast.  After that we have study time until 12.  Personal study, companionship, language and then 12 samanas, which is just a bunch of videos and stuff we have to do for the first 12 weeks.  After the first 12 weeks, we leave at 11.  We then go to work contacting or if we have appointments. Then we have lunch from 1:30 to 3:30 which is always huge.  After that more contacting and appointments.  We return each night at 9:30 and plan for about an hour, then got to bed at 11.  Everyday is pretty much the same except for Pdays, District meetings wednesday mornings, and Sundays are slightly different with church. But for the most part, we just do a lot of contacting and teaching, which is fun.

 My companion is really great we get along amazingly well and she helps me alot.  We have a lot of fun together.  Her Spanish is amazing and she actually has a really good accent, which most of the gringos don’t, so she helps me a lot with my spanish and saying things correct.  The language is still pretty hard.  I am definitely getting better every day, but understanding is the hardest thing for me because they talk so fast and it all sounds like one long string of sounds. But I am starting to understand and a lot of people have told me this week that my Spanish is a lot better and my pronunciation is good, but I cant really tell.

Our casa is really cute.  I like it because it is really colorful.  All the houses and walls here are very bright and colorful I love it.  I will send pictures when I get time to take one and when I have time to send it.

I got your pictures and video.  I just can't hear the sound so I am going to try again next week because I Think it is just the computer I am on this week, but we will see.

Okay, so I definitely stand out a lot here with my hair.  We get a lot of people staring at us and whistling. I hardly notice anymore but it is funny because people here are always obsessed with my hair.  Also there are a lot of North American things here.  A lot of there clothes have english words. They know and use a lot of random english words, and they listen to a lot of music in English.

I had my first experience with someone hating the church last week.  We have some, but this one was more extreme because it was in the middle of a lesson. We were teaching someone in a little shop and we had a lady come up and bring up all this random stuff about the church and how we don’t let anyone in our temples stuff like that and how she hates mormons. But it was weird because we were able to talk to her and she actually didn’t say it in a really rude voice or anything because the people here are a lot nicer than at home. But it was really distracting from our lesson and really bad because it led away a perspective investigator.  We haven’t been able to teach her yet since.  

Church in Rancagua is pretty much the same as it is at home except for in spanish.  Except for we have this gospel doctrine teacher who goes into really profound things and sometimes teaches things that aren’t really doctrine. Which is hard because it is confusing for investigators, but other than that it is normal.  I really love church here, though. Sunday are the best, because even if you cant understand what they are saying you can at least always feel the spirit.  

Investigators

Our only real progressing investigator, keeping commitments, is Jacqueline.

Jacqueline- She is this young single Mom that we love teaching.  She always has this huge smile when we come and throughout our whole lesson and she has a real desire to learn.  We have had some really good lessons with her and she came to church with us on Sunday. But she was really overwhelmed with sunday school and she cant meet with us this week so we are a little worried about her. But I know she has a testimony and knows what we are teaching is true, so I really think she will progress.

Victor- He was progressing but then he didn’t show up to church this week and we weren’t able to get a hold of him yet. He is this sweet old man that I have only got to teach once.  We invited him to be baptized and he says he has to pray and think about it first so we are really hoping he will progress, but I don’t know because we weren’t able to teach him this week because he was out of town and he said he would come to church but didn’t answer the door when a member went by for him.

Monica and Sabastion-  This is a cute couple who has two little kids.  Monica is a less active, but her husband Sabstion is really interested, but moves really slowly.  They aren’t progressing right now, because they don’t come to church.  I guess they came once, but they always say that they will only come if its a nice day out.  I think they will progress and he is interested but they don’t want to get married. Because they say they fight to much, and so thats what is really holding him back.  A lot of people are like that here because they don’t have the money to get married and a divorce is way hard to get and very expensive here. They’re always worried about getting married.  I really like working with this family.  I think they will progress as well. They just take a lot of time and we have to take a lot of time teaching them, because he has a lot of questions.  It is cool though because I can see that he has a desire.

Jorge and Jacqueline- I got to teach them for the first time last night and they are seriously so sweet.  I loved teaching them and they love having the missionaries over, but he has already read the Book of mormon and a lot of the pamphlets and says that he knows they are true, but he doesn’t want to go to just one church. He likes visiting lots of different churches, so thats a little hard. But it was really cool, because he has such a strong testimony and faith. He just doesn’t believe that there is only one true church. So we are going to continue to teach them, and I can’t wait to see where that goes.

We are teaching a lot of others. They are mostly all just first lessons, less actives, and recent converts.  I will tell you about more of them but I don’t have much more time this week.

Ask me any questions you have it is much easier to answer questions, because so much happens in one week and forget.

Love ya,

Hermana Stringham