Twenty-one Weeks

Hello everyone! So this last week has been somewhat interesting, but it'll be more in a bunch of little tidbits than any one large story or anything like that.

First of all the people we are teaching:

Familia Suarez - the couple that we have been teaching that are living together and have been living all the commandments since before they even really had a testimony - decided to get married! They are going to the civil court this next week so that they can start the papers and in about a month they can get married, and after that they can be baptized. :D They were on the fence for the longest time about staying together and getting married or splitting up but we got them to read the scriptures and pray together (instead of just alone) and it made a HUGE difference for them. They also helped volunteer their time for some service for a few hours, just the two of them together (without their kids) and now they want to try and do it every week and that helped them strengthen their relationship even more as well. It was awesome when they told us they are going to get married though. They're such capos.

Also, we are teaching a man who is about 50 years old that is super receptive to what we are teaching and soaks it up like a sponge and his eyes almost started watering when we gave him a Book of Mormon. He is a bit of a unique situation though because he was in Prison for a time for committing Homicide. Sooooo, in order to be baptized he would really need to show that he is truly repentant of what he did by going to church for a long time (6+ months) living all the commandments and doing all the things he should, and then my mission president can ask the first presidency of the church if he can be baptized and the decision falls on them whether he is worthy or not. So oops. We have high hopes for him though and whenever we come over he always gives us food and he has a super nice girlfriend that lives with him (another thing; they'd need to get married) and they have two young kids that run around too and are super fun so there is no need to worry for us teaching there. Just an interesting situation.

Also, we were trying to get in touch with a member of the church who hasn't been going for a long time when we decided to visit her house and knock on her door. She came out and then told us that we surprised her because not 5 minutes before she had been watching some religious video of some sort that said that "If god knocks on your door, you better let him in". We're going to visit her today though so an update on how that goes potentially next week.

Now for some fun tidbits that come from having a companion from Chile:

He knows English pretty well at this point but just needs to work on speaking but still he likes to poke fun at random things about the language. For example, there is an instrumental music track we listen to titled "Summer Jam" and he said (knowing what it meant), "Oh, so ¿Verano con Marmalada? (summer with Marmalade?).

He also saw a dog with golden blonde hair once and said "look, it's a gringo!" Due to that, I now have goals to name a dog "Gringo" if I ever have one with that color fur. I was chuckling at that one for a good few minutes.

Also, spanish is a little bit different in Chile, and there is one word in particular that I found very amusing. Normally, baby would be "bebe" or "nena/nene" in spanish. In Chile however, you say "wawa" for the sound it makes.

As far as other interesting things/fun stories for the week, we saw a car flooring it in reverse down a street last Monday (with the direction it was heading in reverse being the wrong way as well). That was a fun sight.

Also, people here are normally shorter as a general rule so I smashed my head on the metal awning outside a store as we were walking down the sidewalk one day. It gave the people around a laugh but I had a little but of a headache afterwards.

Also, it is getting to be pretty cold now. I am now wearing a sweater and a light coat, as well as a beanie and gloves. That, and both me and my companion have been sick since Friday but working regardless so the days have been long and tiring but bringing lots of success so I can't really complain.

I do believe that is all though, other than the pictures: The first is a somewhat cool looking car that is outside of our pension (that doesn't run or drive). It's the first sight we get to see when we leave for the day and the last sight we get when we come home at night, and when we can see it from down the road then we know that we are close. The second is the patch that I made in our washer with packing tape. Still holding up :) Lastly is our dryer. Kind of boring this week haha but I had to grab photos of something as I was heading out the door to share so don't judge too hard haha.

Hope everyone is doing well though and love hearing from you all! 

Until next week,

Elder McCollum