Coquimbo Letter #6

Date: December 20, 2010
Area: Coquimbo, Chile
Companion: Elder Haney
 

Caleb’s Coquimbo #6
December 20, 2010

Hola!

It seems like a lot of great things are happening in the emails I get! That´s awesome to hear that Ryan is back out!

Well, we found out on Saturday if we´re transferring or not, and I´m stay in La Cantera with my trainer Elder Haney for another change! I was okay with it as we still have a lot of work to do in our area. I just hope we´re able to find a pension so that there´s not 6 of us in one apartment.

This week we have had to drop a lot of investigators because they weren´t progressing and didn´t have a desire to learn more. This was a little hard, but alright because now we can dedicate more time back to finding. Here´s how my week went..

On Monday of last week I forgot to mention that in the morning I ate a red chili pepper. Get it? I ate a Chili in Chile! Ha! Then that night we had a Family Home Evening with Jasmina at a member´s house. She sure does like to talk a lot, but loves the activities we do in the church! (She was the one with attended last week).
Then on Tuesday, we figured out that it would take an hour and 15 minutes to walk from our area to our pension! But we did a lot of tracting on that day because all of our lessons fell through.

On Wednesday, we were told by an investigator with a baptismal date that she doesn´t really have a desire to change because of how others would view her. It was a sad lesson, but we know that in a time down the road, she´ll be ready. Then we taught Jim and Lorena. Jim is the retired Marine from New York who has lived here for about a year because he retired with his Chilean wife and they decided to move down here. He doesn´t speak any Spanish, so we taught again in English. It´s so weird teaching in English, but it´s also a nice break from the Spanish 24/7. They are really nice and she reads a lot and always has questions about what she reads, like we answered why Nephi was commanded to kill Laban for here. He doesn´t like reading, but promised that he will with his wife now and try to work on his Spanish. We talked about Baptism and he said "I guess I never really thought about baptism before". I think they´ll have a date next lesson, after the holiday season!
On Thursday we ate lunch at Jasmina and Ricardo´s house. It was a fun lunch and nice to eat with investigators and afterwards we were able to teach a lesson. They accepted to be baptized, but then said I don´t know how long it´ll be till I’m ready, so we didn´t set a date. Then we were told by a potential investigator that her husband didn´t want her sharing with us. The men are always the hard ones to get! That night, Elder Petersen found another Rincon, or Brown Recluse. That makes two so far!

Friday was a day of service. We moved dirt from a field to a backyard in a wheelbarrow with a flat tire up a hill in the morning, which was quite the workout! Then help a less-active pour rocks around his backyard. Tomas works at the jail and his wife, Nevenka, at the daycare and are really nice and have the desire to attend church, get married, and she has a desire to be baptized! Tomas said that working at the jail, he goes to work then doesn´t know when he´ll get off. Could be a day, could be a month. It´s interesting to see the difference.
Then Saturday was a day of finding new investigators. We have lessons set up with the ones we found this whole week, so we shall see how they go!
Yesterday, we went to Tomas and Nevenka´s house to pick them up, but they weren´t there! So we went to church and then they came in after the Sacrament. It was a total surprise as we thought they weren´t coming. But they did and loved it. It was a nice surprise! Jasmina wasn´t able to attend though because she was in Santiago.

Well, that was my week! This change will be different than the last because we don´t have to start from scratch and we have realized what we need to change to make these next 6 weeks successful. I hope all is going well and you all are enjoy the Christmas time. It´s completely different here because they´re on their summer break and its sunny and hot! But it helps me focus on the Spiritual side of Christmas. On that note, Merry Christmas from Chile!

Con Mucho Amor,
Elder Whittle