December 4 and 11 New area: Alerce

Dec 4This new sector is awesome, I can't even begin to describe it.  The ward here is huge for the mission here, with 100 or so people every week.  Also people are way more receptive here than in Lago Ranco.  We found 4 new investigators in the short time I've been here.  We also have a family, Roxana and her 3 daughters, with a date four baptism, Elder Hernandez and his old companion put them with a date just a few days before I got here.  They should be baptized on the 30th of this month.  We are also teaching a few more families, one of them more consistently.  I have no idea how to spell their last name, but we are teaching three mutual aged kids, their mom, and their grandmother as well.  One of the kids, Juan, is really interested and loves hanging out with us, and we are planning on asking him to set a date for baptism this week.  We want the whole family to be baptized at the same time, and we feel if Juan accepts thn the rest of the family will follow close behind.  

So here in Alerce there are 4 missionaries.  My companion, Elder Hernandez, and I are in the south half.  The other two, Elder Spencer and Elder Longo, are in the north.  It is still one ward and the members give us lunch so we always end up seeing them.  Its a really fun group of guys, but all of us take the work seriously.  This area has been having great success recently with the missionary work, and it seems like its set to continue with that. 

Today with the other Alerce elders we made a Pichanga, a giant plate of french fries with all sorts of stuff on top.  Its different being so close to other missionaries, we feel much less isolated.  Its really awesome here in this new sector
letter to mom
That sounds like a lot of fun.  Her day is really close now, how is she feeling? I bet its really exciting and scary at the same time.  I can't imagine that.  Alerce is really great, its huge, there are tons of people to talk to and the members are really excited to help us.  They feed us every day of the week except for P-days, and they're all really nice and helpful.  My companion is great, its really kinda fun to constantly speak Spanish, and I've been progressing quite a lot.  I'm way more confident in my ability to have a normal conversation with people already.  I don't know if Monica got baptized, I'll be able to find out next week when the announcements of the mission come out.  I hope she dd.  

So there are other missionaries here, but they live in the northern part of town.  We see them often though, today they came over to make a pichanga, and usually we eat lunch together.  The members feed us now, and this is nice because I have the opportunity to talk and introduce myself to a lot more people.  

We are going to wath the devotional this week as a district sometime, this will be kind of fun.  My new district is bigger, and one kid from my MTC district is in it too.  It is really heating up here, not as hot as California but warm enough to be uncomfortable.  It has yet to rain here in Alerce, hopefully it stays mostly dry.

We have several investigators now, and all of them are really nice.  We have three families that I have met, and apparently we are teaching two more.  Its such a different type of work here, its awesome.  

Love, Elder Price

  

Dec 11

 So this week was pretty great, we've started focusing more on the Light The World initiative the church is putting on.  We designate a day of each week to go serve people in any way possible.  We helped move wood or furniture for people, we even helped tear down a wall in someone's house.  We've also begun sharing all the videos of for each day with the members we eat with and also for short visits with investigators.  

   We have a family with a baptismial date, I met them this week.  Roxana and her 3 daughters.  I still haven't had a lesson with them because they are always busy but we stopped by and gave a spiritual thought and invited them to church.  They came, and they enjoyed it.  They only need to come one more time to be ready for their date.  We worked a lot with Juan, and invited him to be baptized, but he said he still needs to prepare and find out more.  We've been involving him with all the activities in the ward and he's been having a good time.  Its awesome having a ward where we can do activities to help youth be more comfortable in the church, this ward is a huge help.  

   I'm progressing more and more each day in my Spanish and my teaching skills, this area is a huge help for me. The missionaries and ward are all really nice and help me, and I'm getting tons of practice.  

letter to mom (Mondays make me super happy!)

I'm doing great, I'm loving every second here.  I'm quite happy with how things are going.  I wish we could have gotten Juan to set a date for his baptism, but we can't rush him.  Other then that everything's been going really well.  We've been able to teach a lot of our investigators and recent converts, and I've been progressing well in every aspect.  

The wedding is really soon, people keep asking me if I'm sad that I'm missing it.  It is a little sad, but I wouldn't want to change here for anyhting right now.  

So we email in a littl store around the corner from our house.  This sector has everything we need, we don't have to travel unless we want too.  We go to Puerto Varas, which is about 10 minutes away, to play some soccer and get some fruit from a member on p-days, but thats all the travelling I've done here.  

We got Christmas and New Years already set up, we are going to spend them with a family in the ward.  This family is awesome, they remind me a lot of ours.  They offered to cook a lamb for New Years for us if we helped them catch it.  I'll let you know the plans for the vdeo call when we have it more figured out. 

If the package isn't here by Thursday I will probably get it after Christmas, we're a bit further away from the mission home so its not as easy to move things through the mission.  If it gets here before, I'll do my best to save it.  We'll see how it goes.  

Thank you, Love you,