March 14th, 2011

Hi all,

I´m glad to hear that things are going good! Everyone is busy and excited for spring I'm sure. Today is the first day it feels like fall here, my fingers are hard to move because they are cold, so my letter might be a little short because I am typing so slow... haha:)

I have a new address because the mission is changing offices so from now on send anything and everything to

Mision Chile Santiago Norte

Sucursal Correo Patronato

Casilla 60

Santiago

CHILE

and only use the us post office. Because if you use FedEx or UPS or Algo, it probably wont get to me.

This week was good. We have been working hard and teaching a lot. We had breakfast as a zone this week before people changed, so that was really fun. One Elder from here in Chile is such a good cook! He made the best bread and ahh, it was good. I´m still here in the same area with Hermana Dymock. This is her last change so it´s going to be crazy. I'm excited to stay here, we have a lot of investigators whom I´m excited to help. They are sending Elders (from my zone) to the Island of Juan Fernando for the first time since the earthquake and all that jazz (over a year ago) I´m a little jealous that I´m not going... haha... but things are good here.

We have been teaching a lady (I´m not sure if I told you about her) Sandra, we talked to her in the feria and she took all the pamphlets and a Book of Mormon. When we went to visit her she had read half of the BOM. Its so great. She was asking us about the tithing pamphlet and all. She is cute but has some problems at home with her daughter. She is progressing and wants to get baptized when she knows more but she needs to get divorced and get married. So it will be a process but hopefully she keeps working for it. That is the problem with a lot of our investigators. They have all these things to sort out so it will be a long process, but who said the salvation of souls was easy?!

Yesterday we were sooo happy though. Por fin we had investigators at church. We had 3 there for the sacrament and then 2 came after. It was so great! And this ward is so good to include them and help them. In this ward, I almost feel like I´m in a ward in the US. There are priesthood holders, young men to pass the sacrament. It is so cool! We had 112 people there yesterday (normally there are about 80) so we were super happy.

We had a training with President May this week. It was good, about half of the time we talked about rules (I guess we are just super rebellious or something) but it was good. And then we also had intercambios. I went to the other Hermanas area (San Francisco) and it was fun. I liked it because they had a little bit of everything (rich and poor) in one street it was almost dirt floors, but in another it was like a suburb home in the US) It was a good change for a day. Here it is rich but the people are still pretty nice so it´s not horrible. But I do like places a little more ghetto.  :)

In our English class this week we had a lot of new people and some from the week before. Its so fun to help them, they get so excited to say little things, I love it. I realize how much English and Spanish I don´t know. But it is super fun. There is one lady, Karen, about 30, who comes because she wants to help her daughter learn English. She came with a long list of words she wanted to learn that she had seen from billboards and heard in songs and on the TV. She is so awesome, she walks in the church and is so excited to learn the most simple things, and is so grateful that we give the class. I´m sorry, I think my spelling has gotten worse but hopefully you still understand. As far as my Spanish coming along. I feel like I can actually communicate myself. I can´t say a lot of things in the way I want to say them but I'm not a mute anymore... so its progress haha:)

That is pretty much all that happened. The weeks are just flying by and I don´t make anything exciting happen. I´ll try to work on that so my letters are more interesting to read instead of me just rambling on. But it´s good to hear from you all there! I hope life is good! Liz and Joel, I´m sure your talks were amazing! That´s one thing I'm not a huge fan of here. The Bishop will just announce from the pulpit that Hermana Whyte will give us a talk and then I have no idea what to say. It´s one thing if I was speaking English, I could just make up a lot of stuff, but in Spanish it´s pretty interesting ( I just bear a really long testimony... haha)  I got a dear elder letter from Katherine Merrill. I will try to write her when I have time but tell her thanks for the letter. Ahh, good old Jr Miss, I miss going to that. Hannah will be a great Jr Miss! I´m sure she did amazing! I actually had a dream about her and her Mom the other night. Annie and I were at their house and they wouldn´t talk to me, just Annie. I thought it was weird but then when we went to leave I went to kiss Peggy´s cheek (like they do here) but she was smoking and blew the smoke in my face so I just said bye and we left. It was so weird. Anywho, sorry about the tangent, half of you don´t even know who I'm talking about but ya...

Thanks for all you do! You are so great! I hope and pray things are good and that you are all enjoying life. Keep me updated on everything exciting. (oh man, the stuff in Japan and everywhere, we hear all about it, but it´s so sad/crazy, did it do much to the other places?)

This is a picture of the family Urea Carter (Luis, Alma (yes, her whole family are members, obviously), and their son Jorge). They are inactives who moved here from Mexico (Tijuana) and are trying to reactivate and baptize their son. They are from Chile but lived in Mexico for 6 years. So we went and got them for church yesterday and they just looked so good and we are so excited for them to come so church I took a picture:)

 Well, I hope you have a great week. Remember there is a missionary in Chile who loves you!

TE AMO, TE AMO, TE AMO

Steph