Austin has arrived in Chile!!!

well its official. im in chile and i cant understand nothin! yay! haha just kiddin i can. but not a lot of it. they all talk so freakin fast but i love it. i have been here almost a week and its awesome. my feet hurt so bad at the end of the day but its cool cuz i am baptising someone this week!!! he´s 14 and his name is pedro aquiles. he is a way awesome kid. and he is really excited. the missionaries were already teaching him when i got here but i picked up with my comp where they left off and we are going to baptise him!


ok so now about my comp. his name is elder rodriquez. i told my mission president that i wanted a comp that didn´t speak english at all and was a latino. and i ended up getting him and two other roomates that are also latinos and only know how to say won chu tree. soooooooooooooooooooo i dont talk that much hahaha. ok no im lying one know very little but i can say what i need to. im really not that helpless here. my companion is actually from santiago chile and has been serving for 9 months. the other 2 are from columbia and boliva. the columbian one has been serving for 10 months i think and the other only a month. we have a lot of fun together. my comp is a way chill kid. he talks slower for me so i can catch everything so that is definatley really really nice.

we have been teaching a lot of lessons already and talking to tons of people on the street. its crazy, we´ll just be walking along and we stop and stick our hand out to shake someones hand and they´ll stop and talk to you no matter who you are. well except for the butt wholes who just look at us like we´re satan. its pretty much the best moment of the day haha i really do think its hilarious. my comp does most of the talking while we talk to people on the street mainly because i dont understand much of what they people say(because most people have like 3 teeth) and still talk sooooo fast. but now im starting to get used to it. its great

ok so the bread. holy crap. its so freakin goooooood!!! but i guess its really fattening so i cant eat a ton of it. but i love it. i dont know how they make it but they make it good. just for the record..:)

ok so my comp and i were walking to the church the other day like thursday or something and right when we got they they was a girl with a little kid walking so we stopped and talked to her. we ended up talking about baptisms and stuff and we brought her in the church and gave her a tour becuase she was interested and had never seen the inside. we also showed her the baptismal font and she thought it was really cool. we even taught about the restoration right there in the church and also about the importance of baptism. we talked for probably 45 min or so. it was really awesome. the only crappy thing is that she lives like 9 hours north and is only visiting here for another week or so. so we´ll see! it was really cool.

oh ya! i am working in a little town called cabrero. its east of concepcion im pretty sure. i think its north of a town called los angeles. look it up. its pretty sweet. like 30,000 people and 29,000 are evangelic and hate us! hahaha no not that many. but the evangelics really do hate us. its the best! i loooove it! its totally kinda a run down town. im going to try to upload pictures for you all. hopefully it works. tons on dogs everywhere!!!! there all just muts too. there so loud at night. our house is so awesome! two rooms and a bathroom. the bathroom is about the same as the bathroom as my friend brady´s apartments bathroom. its disgusting. i have to wear sandals everywhere in my house or i get this disease that comes up through your feet and does something bad to you. i forget. but its really bad! so yes. i wear shoes all the time which sucks cuz i just wanna not wear anything when i get home. but who cares i´m freakin in chile!

the flights were so freakin long. you have no idea. well some of you do. but still holy crap. at least the food was good! they fed us like terriaki chicken and stuff which was cool. im glad i dont have to do that again for another 22 months.

so guess what. we can listen to any disney music and church music. and we can also watch disney movies! hahaha we´re going to go watch konfu panda in a half hour! hahaha

ok as far as emailing goes for me. i can recieve emails from anyone but i think can only email family..................so i dont know how im gonna do this. but ya email me.

so my favorite people to talk to here are the ´´borachos´´ which means drunks. there are freakin crazy. i always tell them to stop drinking there life away and they need to change there life and they say they know they need to and try to hug me and stuff. but we haven´t had a chance to teach any of them lessons while they are sober. still working on that one.....

well things are going great here. i love it so much. oh ya!!! i only can speak in spanish obviously but i had a conversation in english on saturday! we talked with a professor that teaches english here. her english is not that good tho......haha. but it was so freakin weird because at first i really didn´t know what to say. i forgot hahahaha man im excited for when i can actually have full conversations in spanish so i can completely forget english. it will be way tight. well, love you all.

sorry that i couldn´t talk to everyone on the phone while i was at the airport. but those of you that i did talk to i loved it so much. it was great to here your voices again. well im gonna upload me pictures now.

bye for now until next monday which is my new preparation day.

Elder Elder


A note from Austin's dad:  The upload must not of worked...darn!  We didn't receive any pictures!  When we do, we will post!  Thanks for your support!

Last week at the MTC!

Well hello! so guess what. they sent me a letter and said i cant go to chile anymore. they dont want me to baptise a ton of people or something like that. they said i dont listen in class or something like that, i dont know i wasnt really payin attention. but really! i got my flight plans on thursday and had to wait till today to right you all! i leave monday morning from salt lake to LAX at 8:30. then i land at 9:37 and have a layover till 2:40. so thats when i will call! i dont know if my schedule apply's to different time zones and all that but i have a lot of time. then leave LAX at 2:40 to santiago until 6:45. yes. in the morning. matame. (kill me) it will be such a freakin long flight but im way stoked so its cool. from there i leave at 10:30 or so i think and land in the promised land at 11:45 in concepcion Chile! then i have to ride a bus for 8 more freakin hours to my mission home! oh man this is just great huh! thats like 35 hours of traveling! but i really am so excited.

 
dad, i am looking forward to receiving your package this week. thank you so so much i will thank you in advance. that phone card will be very very welcomed. i also enjoyed those shirts you sent. you know that first one you sent me? did you send the other ones back or are you sending them in the package? i guess i can wait a day but i am too lazy to delete what i have written and its kinda ironic because if i didn't really need to know and was too lazy you would think i would stop wasting my time and stop typing! sorry.

Well i think i understood right, chris and dasha a really hard time gettting the house closed but i think it pulled through right? i hope so! tell dasha's mom hello for me.

things are going awesome here this last week. i had to say goodbye to all my mexicans in my zone today and yesterday. muchas lagrimas. pero esta bien. van al campo! voy al campo en 6 dias! estoy muy animado. no quiero traducir esto por ustedes. necesitan aprender espanol a leer mis cartas.

so i bought 2 books of mormon and 2 libros do mormones and some pass along cards for the airport. hopefully i can talk to some people. copies of the book of mormon are like 2 bucks here! pretty cheap for salvation ya? i told my mission president that i was gonna stand on the bench and hold the book of mormon in the air and call everyone to repentance. then he told me about the recent terrorist attempt and chewed everyone out making sure we knew not to do that. i think he thought i was seriouse..............................which of course i was. im a freakin elder.

so how is everyone doing? krystal is poppin one out soon i hear. way to go daniel. and i am pretty sure someone else is heavy laden with hijos. i cant remember who tho! sorry....i am just so focused on the gospel you know? ha

well i love you all so much. i will call and say hello to your voices in a few days. bye

Elder Elder

Two more Weeks of the MTC!!!

Well hellp!

i am doing really great this week. well except for right now. i have a freakin huge head ache because i am sick but who cares. So a few weeks ago i talked about a man named Benjamin Hooper. Anyway i called him back the other day and checked to see if the missionaries had met with him and he said he has talked to them 4-5 times and they were coming again in a couple days. he is really interested in what they are teaching him and is reading the BOM and praying and a lot of other really good stuff. its cool for me because i have talked to him a ton and also sent the missionaries to his house.

Some of my goals this year: dont get fat. hahahahahahahahahahahahahahah like that could ever happen.
Be fluent by june with no questions on how to speak and also just think always in spanish.
completely lose myself in the work.

baptise 100 people this year.

there is some more but i cant remember them and my time is almost done!

Things are going great. spanish is continually improving. for those of you that know what subjunctive is in the spanish language....just know that it freakin sucks!

i love you all. and i only have 2 weeks and ill be in chile!

welp see ya later, elder elder

Happy New Year Everyone!!!

Well Christmas day was great!  I had some of the coolest experiences.  On Christmas, L. Tom Perry spoke to us and before that, Elder Neil Anderson spoke.  I have seen four apostles since I have been here!  So yes, Christmas is a little different here. To start things off we had a special roomate gathering Christmas Eve.  We made the best fort ever!  It looked like a sheperds tent so that's how we tide it into Christmas! 

Thank you so much for the gifts.  I apreciate them all.  The $$ and the supplies will help very much.  I am sorry I couldn't get presents out.  I hope all of you who received pictures of me appreciated that gift!  I do pray for you all nightly and keep you in my thoughts.  So what did everyone get??? I will be excited to hear how things went.  Did you all enjoy Yellowstone afterwards?  I bet everyone met at Uncles Steves.  How did that go??? 

Oh my gosh!!  Ok, so as I have been writing this letter wating for  Elder L Tom Perry to come speak to us and there was a special musical number that a sister missionary just sang.  When the piano played just the first 3 notes of the sone I started crying.  It was "Mary's Lullaby" My friend immediately asked me what was wrong, but I couldn't answer him.  When I could I explain what this song meant to me and that is was Mom's (Rena) song she sang every year at Christmas.  I hate to say it but I felt like I haven't been able to feel her spirit yet since I have been here, but I felt her love so much during that song...It was so beautiful.  Obvoiusly it wasn't as good as mom sang it because let's be serious no one sings it as good as she did.  That was such an amazing thing for me.  It happened about 10 mins ago so about 10:05am Christmas morning.  Who knows maybe you all did something special at that time.  I'm going to listen to an apostal of our Lord now.

Man, that was a good talk from Elder Perry.  It was hard to pay attention because of that song though.  I still can't believe she sang that song , I am so happy and grateful she did.  I just saw Sister Amber Kempton and talked to her about it and she said she was thinking about me when she was singing it.  I see her all the time actually...it is awesome!  Also after the meeting was over, I went and talked to the sister who sang the song and asked why she sang it.  She told me she was actually going to sing "Oh Holy Night" but everyone sings it so the music people (AKA mom)...hahahah  Just kidding...they had her sing that song.  I told her how much that song meant to me and said thank you.  She was really lad to have sung it.  It was so cool. 

So again, I hope you all had a Merry Christmas....Happy New Year now!!! 

I am  still workin hard with my comp and teachings like 3-4 lessons a day. in spanish i might add! but they dont understand what i say so i guess it doesn't count.......no they do. so tell me how yellow stone was. what all did you do there? it sounded like it was going to be a really fun trip for you all.

well three weeks from this freakin second i am going to be in Chile! So if you have anything else you need to send me you better make it quick! haha just messin. but seriously. today i talked with this one guy who went to my mission. he actually opened the mission. i may have mentioned that last week but we spoke with him again today. we talked how we could scare away the wild dogs that always bark at you and try to bite you with your umbrella. when they come running at you i guess you can open it at the right time and it opens and snaps and their scared. i know it sounds stupid but i'd rather do that than get rabies. and i dont want to kick them (welll i wouldn't mind if it was freakin annoying) but i wouldn't becasue i dont want people thinkin ima jerk. so you know. "sometimes Chancho, you wear stretchy pants just for fun".

so one of my teachers left the other day. he is going to study abroad in jerusalem so we have two new teachers that teach us along as hermana ampuno. She is still here. she is the one i had that really embarrassing thing happen with.....but she's way cool. All my teachers are super chill.

So Elder Tolman left a week ago, that was weird saying bye to him. that was way awesome to be able to see him and spend some time with him being a missionary. we ate together a few times and sat bye each other at a couple devotionals. with our comps of course. seriously i am so excited to find out where all you guys are going. i see Sam Spencer here all the time. Shane Sterr, Zach Lindley (who is also actually a Zone Leader), ANDREW SPROUL! haha oh man i love that kid, he's way funny, oh ya josh you will like this one...that one army kid who you played basketball against. i think he was on john warners team or something. There's a lot of people i know here.

Well, things are going great for me. Just trying to keep up the continual growth and learning all that i can here. Oh ya! Last night in the referal center i was doing spanish calls. It was really cool. i actually had real conversations with real people. In spanish! one thing is for sure. the gift of tongues is so real and amazing. i am a living example of that. i mean i know im totally amazing and stuff already but it helps me a ton. on the calls its really fun to talk to them. Especially old mexican ladies. their the funniest. they always drag out their words. like hoooolaaaaaaa como estaaaaaaaaaaa. like that. so i just do it right back. i think they think im fluent when i do that. it kinda tricks them you know? and if i dont know what to say back i just mumble stuff back really fast and they'll go, o si! its awesome i love talking to people that speak spanish here. its so funny. when ever i start speaking with someone i say lo siento mi espanol es terriiiiiiiiible. they always laught even tho it is a way stupid joke. but i am pretty sure ever missionary joke is horrible. seriously i have heard some of the dumbest things here. hahaha but its ok and everything is funnier in spanish. its just a given fact.
ok i love you all. my time is up. i will write next week!
nos vemos,

Elder Elder