hello wonderful people! hopefully you have been having a good week this week! my week has been, how the chileans say," ma oh meno bien no ma". basically saying that this week has been pretty good, more or less. i went on my first divisions with the zone leaders this week and it was so much fun! basically, divisions are when you trade companions for a day and go and teach in another area in the sector. i got paried with elder franco! he is an elder from brasil, and by golly gee he is literally the nicest guy to talk to. he helped me with my spanish, and he talked to me about literally that was going on in my life as the missionary. i got to teach one of his investigators, a very inquisitive 8 year old girl! she liked to ask all the suepr hard questions like,"who was god's mum" and stuff like "how do i not die?" like girl, please, chill out thanks bye *death drops* in the chilean culture, you eat breakfast, no biggy. then you go to a members house and eat literally so much food you might die. then you go home at like 10 or so and then you have this thing called once, which is basically like a little snack before you go to bed. this past sunday, i ate with the bishops daughter and her husband. they gave us empanadas and salad and fruit salad and it was literally so good. S T U F F E D. elder scott and i then go to another members house to give the sacrament to them, but alas, THEY WANTED TO GIVE US FOOD TOO. THEY WERE LIKE 90 AND CMON YOU CANT TURN DOWN A 90 YEAR OLD GRAND MA MA WHO SLAVED OVER THE STOVE TO MAKE FOOD. she fed us sopaipillas, which is like fried pumpkin frisbees. they kind of look l ike hashbrowns. i ate two, and the grandfather asked me if i wantted more. withiout even responding, he slapped two more onto my plate. oh i was definatley screaming in my flesh trash. then we went to another house for a family home evening, AND THEN THEY FED US EGG SANDWCHICHES. at this point, a lot of praying was undergoing so i didnt actually explode from over consumption of food. we then went to another members house to check up on them and then they fed us pan amosado, which is like the most dense bread they have here. :,)))) #ded i gave my first blessing in spanish to an elderly women this week! it was such a spiritual experience. she has congenital heart failure, and also has diabetes. she wanted me to give the blessing just becuase i was new, and i panicked a little. in the end, it was all good. i just let the spirit take over and then let go. so awesome. this week has been super busy with citas! the past couple of nights, we have been running back home to try and get in our casa on time. it feels so awesome just having something to do every single second of the day. contacting, trying to bring others to christ. i loev it down here. sometimes it gets sketchy with the flaites (really annoying gangsters that just like to do poppy cock and tom foolery) but they dont matter, becuase i am doing the lords work. love all of you to pieces!! i would love to hear from all of you and see how all yall are doing! EKW package from my mumma. ugh much love......so much love for her! (and my poppa and sis who also helped send me love and comfort from home) me and the zone leader omg theres this thing called a farda. its basically a huge bag full of ties and its a huge game of russian roulette. it was so fun so. many. ties. #itslit
0 Comments
hello people on the outside world! i hope all of you are having the best of weeks! this week was the first full week i have had in the mission and it was crazy!! throughout the week, we´ve been doing a hecka ton of contacting and seeing which members have moved and visiting all the less actives. its been nice to walk around my area and get to all the members and to see where all the whole in the wall shops are. elder scott and i were in a lesson with a member earlier in the week. he was telling us stories about how he navigated through the city and how he uses his cane to ward off dogs if they start to chase him and whatves. we were seriously just making as much small talk as we could, and we saw that the tv was on. so, we promptly asked him what his favorite show to watch was. um.... he kind of looked at us for a sec and was like"um you realize that i seriously cant see anything right" we all kind of laughed though becuase he totally understood our mistake. it was so funny. we started teaching a teenage investigator this week too! his name is alexander, and he is probablly the cutest kid ever. he lives with his mum and dad, and has a member friend that takes him to church all the time. we shared the first lesson with him, and we committed him to baptism!! it was such a tender experience!! so i didnt know this was a thing, but p day eves here are literally psycho. basically, elders from other local areas come to someones house and we make food and watch a smol movie of some sorts. for this p day eve, we invited 8 other elders to our little house and cooked meat and one of the elders from peru made us a native dish! i literally dont remember what it was called, but it was SO GOOD. im excited for what this week has to offer down here. no vemos! EKW we out here cookin mariscos (me and Elder Scott) cali vibin! you do not understand how good carls junior is when you have chilean food all the time my tio trying to start a fire Peruvian food....YUMMMMYY sick pic of my luggage in my casa so many trains and tracks
YOU HEARD ME RIGHT. IM IN AN INTERNET CAFE TALKTING TO ALL OF YOU PEOPLE IN CHILE. I COULD NOT BE ANY HAPPIER. but first, some events that happened prior. so leaving the mtc was really hard. my maestras were telling us stories of their missions and how they loved literally every minute of it. they all bore testimony of the wonderful blessings that you recieve when you serve missions and it was such a spiritual moment for me. a lot of tears were shed when i said goodbye to them. luckily on monday, i had a flight to chile at 4 in the afternoon, so i had the whole day to relax and hang out with district before we said out goodbyes. the plane ride over here was insane. they put us on this huge jet with touch screen tvs and stuff like that. they served us the best quality airplane food they could muster. i slept a whopping 3 out of the 8 hours on that plane, so that was really good. we landed, went through customs and whatevs. some really awesome ap´s came and picked up all 17 of us to the capilla next to the mission home. we drive a 20 minute car ride over there and then we go through a quick orientation meeting. i get my card, some cool books and then we all sit in the capilla to get our trainers. what i didnt know was that transfers were like the super bowl for missionaries down here. its kind of psychotic to be real. everyone is yelling and screaming and hugging when they meet there new companion. they put your picture on a huge screen in the capilla and they announce your name to the group of elders and sisters. "Elder Wattles, you have been assigned to your trainer Elder Scott, doing a white wash in el boosque" i had no idea what any of those trailing words meant, but i saw my new companion and absolutley freaked out. he absolutely freaked out. we´re basically in love right now. Elder Scott is the exact same person as me, its so amazing. we havent even been with each other for more that 2 days and i already love him to death. the only problem was, was what the term "white wash" meant for him and i. basically, they pick a coulpe compañerismos who have no idea what the area is like and plop them dead in the middle of it to proselyte and teach. i, being a gringo, have 0 knowledge of literally anything here. he got transfered from an area a little bit north of us, so it has been interesting to try and figure out where the heck everything is. i grabbed my things and went on a bus ride to my new casita! i threw my stuff down, and went straight to work! i had the opportunity to teach some investigators in my sector, and it was so amazing. the two people i taught only spoke creole. that was un poco weird, but it ended up working out. we taught them on the gospel of jesus christ, and we committed them to church this sunday and baptism! so excited!! i got to meet the bishop of my new ward and got to talk to him about the goals for the ward. then i went to the house to meet my tíos! tíos in the mission field are the other elders in the house. ( i am the bb, my comp is my papá, the other elders are my tíos) they are the coolest and nicest guys ever. they gave me my first completo on the mission and have taken me under their wing. so far, the mission is good! even though im pretty sure chinese is spoken here, instead of spanish, i am learning as i go along. love all of you to pieces! EKW Me before leaving the MTC packed our bags, ready to go, to get destroyed, by español! The presidente and his wife un poco de mi area! (translation...a little view of my area) me being edgy ..on my apartment balcony the only picture i have with me and my comp. thats me holding a completo that my tíos bought for me. thats elder scott in a onsie. you know how it is. a trashy pic of my casita. its gets like really cold at night. not one house in Santiago has heating or cooling....mmmhhmmm, it's lit
EVERYBODY. LISTEN UP. I GOT A STICKER. I REPEAT. I GOT A STICKER. when bold a missionary gets a sticker, that means they will be leaving within the next week. you do not even know how crazy it feels to walk around the campus of the ccm with a sticker on MY badge that basically says,"THIS KID GETS TO LEAVE SOON. BASK IN HIS PRESENCE" it just makes me so excited. i leave for chile on monday at 7:55 at night, so ill get to chile around 6 in the morning! its going to be the longest flight I've ever been on, but dont fret because im going to self medicate. (oops, don't worry) this week in TRC (where you get to teach actual people), i had the opportunity to teach an actual investigator of the church!! she was a 12 year old girl and she was the sweetest. she was sooo hard to understand because she was sick, and talking really quiet, and sluring all of her words, and speaking really fast. it was a little hard to try and understand her, but it was still cool nonetheless!! she said my spanish was really good!! being with a companion through the day, you have a lot of opportunities to teach him things that will help better him as a missionary. for me, i literally hate NOT being punctual. to. the. extreme. my companion on the other hand, thinks that punctuality is a waste of time. so, ive been progressively teaching him that its not a waste of time and that punctuality is vvvvv christ-like. i didnt know about you guys, but bring able to fast on the mission is so awesome. i had never fasted for more than like 8 hours before, so this was a little bit of a game changer. i was able to feel the spirit soooo much. if any of you want spiritual strength and want to be more in tune with the holy ghost, than i HIGHLY RECOMMEND fasting. so one thing that made me literally cry from laughter was when the district and i were reading in moses. we came across the verse where it was talking about how eve was a "help meet" for adam. one person in the district was completely shook by this verse. not by confusion, but with an immense amount of confusion. "what!?!?! I THOUGHT EVE WAS A MEAT SACK, NOT A HELP MEET! I HAVE BEEN LIED TO THIS WHOLE TIME" ..........literally in tears over here! by the time you read my next email, ill be in chile!! hope all of you are doing well wherever you are in the world! here are some of the pics that have happened in the past week. Love you all to bits! EKW the beautiful mop in front of my house. we named her paula. she is beautiful The last time I got to see the Mexico City temple elder jex looking fly as heck hermas and elder miller
On to week five!! yay! I'm literally so close to going to chile to preach the gospel, its not even funny at this point. straight out of Compton, (or straight in to I could say) i just want to go to chile and teach and preach and exhort the gospel!! for the most part, its been learning and loving the gospel. to me, i fell like the mtc is like the pre mortal life, where we learn and get prepared to come down to earth....the mission field!! now i have a sort of feeling of what it was like to be in the pre mortal life. ugh. i was so excited to get out of there. some of the funny things and cool things that have happened this week were pretty awesome. (and in no particular order) time has no relevance here at the ccm. one moment you're reading a book about the gospel for what seems to be 5 m minutes, but you get so invested into it, that you've been reading for an hour! one of the hermanas was very much in the void of no existence of time when she was trying to figure out how many days were in a year. she sat down, and consulted with the rest of us on how many days were in each month. she had literally 5 math problems on here paper, calculating the amount of days were in a year. after 15 minutes, she concluded that there are 365 days in one year.....yup. time isn't even real here. here at the mtc, there are a lot of palm trees, which is awesome because it reminds me of home. my district and i started to make little cute rings out of the palm fronds that fall down. SO MANY PEOPLE HAVE BEEN ASKING FOR THEM, ITS RIDICULOUS. we were thinking that we should start selling them for money or something because um wow that would be literally the best. alas, the black market for rings isn't allowed here at the ccm, so i cant make any money. when i come back though, ill present these rings to the shark tank. gym time down here is really awesome. as you are well aware, dear reader, i am now a volleyball expert who has lost his knees and can serve like no bodies business. the hermanas in my district like to do house exercises sometimes. i was informed that while hermana Hansen was doing some hardy house sprints, in flip flops, mind you, she ate it so hard, that she groaned in pain, walked back into her room without saying a word, and then just slept away. i was literally crying so hard. my district is literally "The Office". teaching trc this week was really fun!! TRC is a little activity here at the ccm where you get to teach legit people, and not just some teachers or other missionaries. we taught this kid who talked so fast, that im pretty sure he said that his grandma died, and i said "how exciting! well, the lesson we have for you today is...." it was pretty grand. (face palm) well, today im going to the temple and i couldn't be more excited to go!! the bus ride over there is a little scary (we saw a bus get robbed on the way over there last trip, pretty cool), but the work that im going to be doing is more important than my irrational fear of being jumped in Mexico city. love you all to bits & pieces! EKW |
Elder Karson Wattles
Chile Santiago South Mission apartado postal No. 544 San Bernardo, Chile Archives
May 2019
|