Week #4

holy crap what a week. seriously this letter is gonna be a good one so read it instead of pretending to read it. it consists of stuff starting with translelating songs of the brown people i live with and digging graves with ``surprises``. i´ll start.

ok so our mission pres is super chill with the music we can listen to so its really nice. we listen to a lot of music in english and i always have to translate for my roomates for instance like tarzan and aladin and other music its pretty cool to tell you the truth being able to do that. they constantly say que dice? and then i give them a crappy sentence or completely make it up if i dont know how to do it haha.......all well they dont know the difference.

i found out i can play the guitar down here too so i want to buy one! there only 20,000 pesos!!! haha thats like 40 bucks or so. so we`ll see it i buy one.

my spanish is doing a lot better to tell you the truth. occasionaly i dont dont what some one wants and i just smile and say no entiendo haha and my comp tells me really simply. but that doesn´t happen too often anymore. i can understand so much more than i speak tho. so im working on that....

well happy birthday everyone who had birthdays!! ashlee! chris ryan! emily barfuss! adam and tracy like a month ago! crap....i cant remember anymore.....sorry if i forgot yours. but happy birthday anyway!!!

ok now for the juicy stuff. litterally. so as i told you all in my previous letter we had a member of the church in my area that passed away last sunday. monday night we had a viewing for him and tuesday we got a very strange call. his son called us asking if we could hacer un ollo which means dig a hole for his dad....i never imagined in my life that i would do that. but we willingly accepted and told him we would be there in a hour or so. anyway when we got there, there was a couple other men there already who are his uncles but we came to relieve them. and when we arrived there were wearing masks, i just figured it was for the dirt that was getting stirred up. it smelled different when we were walking up but nothing totally crazy. anyway, i jumped in the hole that was like 2 feet deep at that point and i was going along for like an hour straight cuz im so freakin buff and i hit something hard with my shovel. i dug it up and it was a freakin shoe. i was like what the heck is this doing here and one of the guys told me it was from a dead person. i told him i didn´t believe him and he said no im serious. i looked closer and there was freakin bones inside the shoe! i was digging up a grave of someone that died like 20 years ago to replace it with someone else. ya. it surprised the crap out of me. i looked at my companion and he just shrugged his shoulders and so i just kept digging! as i continued i pulled out ribs, legs, fingers freakin everything!!!! messed up! i did not like it but it needed to be done. we all we switching spots because it is way hard work to tell you the truth. especially when you are digging a 6 foot deep hole by 7 feet by 3 feet. it was huge. and it didn´t only have one skeleton. but three. they dont like to waste space in the graves down here in chile aparently. so there you go. there is my most strangest experience i have had on the mission. oh ya!!!!!!!! i forgot. sorry this is a little graphic but there was still....flesh on the skulls. and a bunch of hair and teeth. after we dug them up it started to stink. i dont like it. nope. i dont.

im not gonna lie this week was a little slower as far as the work down here goes. with that, the funeral and trying to regain strength phisically and spiritualy it was a pretty challenging for me this week. but all in all it has been good. ive helped with 4-5 baptisms this week and we have our own this saturday!!

i love you all and i hope all is well.

later

elder elder

Letter #3 from Chile...

well hello family and friends! how is everyone doing? great.

i am doing really well, we are teaching tons of lessons and having a lot of good times. i had a lady in my branch email you all pictures so i hope that it worked becuase i got a letter from you dad that said you havent gotten any. if i try to send any from this website it freakin sucks......so i dont.

the address to always send letters, packages any thing is OHiggins 940 Oficina 503 Concepcion Chile. please tell everyone who wants to know. wow!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! chris is going to baptise dasha! when i read that i was seriously so freakinn happy. please tell him congratulations and i love him and her. that is so awesome seriously. and he is even going to bless their baby. man that is so cool. tell ashlee happy birthday and i love her pants! there coooooool.


so last night was pretty crazy for us. at 1130 we got a call saying that one of the members in the ward (a dad of a teenager that works with us all the time) died. he had a sudden heart attack. it was horrible last night. we were asked to come visit the family and give them a blessing so we called our district leader but he said no. so we are going in an hour. dad, if you die while i am out here or any of you for that matter....................you know what just dont. it made me think of arlynn rounds. man i miss him. he was not only a great leader but a great friend to us. life really is fragile. i wish there was more we could do for this family, but we are going to do all that we can.

so i bought a mp3 player today with the money you sent. 100 bucks! haha its a sony so its not great but works fine.

today we had a zone party kinda thing. it was sweet. except for one thing. i played soccer with tons of latinos and.......................................................i am. freakin bad hahahahaha it was sweet tho. so dang hot tho. hahaha the latinos were drippin with sweat tho, i dont know why but they just sweat! i did score tho so i wasnt completely worthless on the team just mostly.

things are going great for us missionaries right now and i am so grateful for all your prayers. you are in mine. have a great week!


chau, elder elder

Post 2 from Chile Feb 1st, 2010

well hello again family! so yes. i baptised my first convert yesterday at 130 my time so 930 in the morning for you. what were you all doing?? it was so freakin awesome! im sorry that the the pictures i sent didnt work so i will send them again. well try.......

chile is very freakin hot. except at night its freezing. but it is awesome! hahaha im having a little difficulties trying to communicate with my roomates. some days are good and some arent. i hate to say it but i have gotten a little quieter but i am working on saying what i want to. but it is really fun. figuring out spanish is like a puzzle. or a rompa cabeza (head breaker).

so i almost got my leg eatin off buy a huge rabies infested mutt last night. it was sick! i was walking to our house and i stomped my foot and it jumped and bit my leg and almost tore it off. there was blood every where. so we went to the doctor and he stitched me up in like 5 minutes and now im completely healed. i cant believe how much better the doctors are here in this little pueblo compared to the states. its ridiculous. ok none of that happened. well, i did stomp my foot by a sleeping dog and he barked. the end. wow that was a retarted story. i a sorry for wasting your time.

everything is definately going really well for the most part. haha i dont know why but bolivians are a little hard for me to get a long with. not the best hiegine habits. i had a roomate in the mtc that was a little more on the gross side and i have one now! but dont get me wrong there both really good people. just stink and stuff........anyways!

the work here is going really strong. we have about 10 or so investigators and a ton of new contacts everyday. i love you all and i will write more next week!

elder elder

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