Week 6: ELDER NORD MADE IT TO CHILE!!!!!

September 14, 2017

Hey! So I have officially been in Chile for a week now. I have one word. FREEZING. I have so much to say wow becauseit has been 2 weeks. So rewind. Elder Smith ended up going home in the MTC for his concussion, but he should be coming to Concepcion soon. I was put into a trio with his comp. We had to move into the dorms, which was fun. We took the spanish assessment at the end of the MTC and everyone in my district failed lol, but the average is between 30 and 40 percent so its chill. Already said this but I was praying for 2 things like the whole MTC. That I could call myfamily at the airport and that my trainer would be from the USA to help me with english to spanish translations and to tell me when I did stuff wrong. We got ot the airport and itwas so funny it is is this little airport and everyone was waiting for us. We had a welcome party type thing with a traditional chilean meal: dominos pizza. We had a testimony meeting and then they did the revealing our our companions. The light turn off and my picture is first. Everyone was like ooooooo lol. But my comp is awesome tho very strict and ignores all my comments that aren't related to missionary work and man is a on the dot person. He stands in the doorway and counts down at 10:59 for lights out. Anyways.... I was sent to LINARES. The farthest city north in our mission. It was a 4 hour bus ride from the mission office. There are 2 branches here and 6 missionaries in each branch. There are 130 active members in our branch,which is I guess one of the biggest in the mission. My comps said Linares and 2 othe cities are like the promised land here. The mission president goes to all ofthe zones in the mission every transfer and does a conference and intweviews so I will see him quite often. He also does not speak english to us, nor does he even speak it well, but my comp has never heard him speak english. He is a numbers man. We have numbers that we have to get each week, it is a commandment here almost. We are supposed to teach 20 lessons with members each week and have 1 baptism and recieve 14 references. He is a business man and he send us a LONG letter each week of what we need to do (legit step by step). My area is HUGE, so we have bikes and gosh are the seats uncomfy. They have peanut butter here. We are not allowed to play soccer with people. There is no ping pong in the church here. I literally wear my patagonia everyday all day. I wake up and bundle up and sit in front of the heat fan. But thankfully, everyone has heated blankets on their beds here so Ialways go to bed warm but wake up as an ice cube. My trainer has been here in Linares for 7 months, so he will probably leave next transfer and I will get a new trainer. I have essentially felt like a nomad this week. I follow my comp and do not really say all that much and I am so lost and do not understand almost anything. They talk SO fast here and drop all of their s's. We had 2 activities this week. Family home evening at the church (which nobody came to haha), which I guess is normal and then Bingo night saturday with the branch. I am the only blonde person here. Someone asked me this week if my hair was real or if I died it haha. Nobody can say my name. It is SSSOOOO hard for them. They don not have salad dressing here. Water is clean! There are wierdly a lot of hatians here and we have been teaching them, but they do not speak spanish that well so our lessons consist kind of a joke because we just use pictures and have a hatian member translate when they can. I taught a spanish lessons to the haitains haha and it was funny because my comp was on the phone with the DL the whole time, so I was essentially teaching them what I was still trying to learn and I think one of them knew it better than me. Funny story: yesterday in church they called my up to introduce myself and I accidentally said.... I am so scared to be here instead of I am so excited to be here. Everyone here says to me "usted es bonito" meaning I am pretty lol becaseu they dont see blondes often. My comp had a PR this week on saturday. We taught 11 lessons in one day. There is a fresh market right by our house where we buy all our fruits and veggies from a member. We also had 2 investigators come to church on sunday and they have a baptism date!!! The church buildings are nice. Last thing, there is this lady here who literally does not speak spanish, I swear it is a diff language. But she sounds like you stuffed her mouth with marbles, squirted whipped cream to fill the rest of the space, and shoved her underwater. That is the best image I can create. Anyways, sorry for the long email there was just so much to fill you guys in on. Also, packages take about 2-3 weeks to get here, but they are brought to me on the zone conference with president. The address you send all letters and boxes to is the mission home. Love you guys!

~ Elder Nord