September 23, 2013

September 23, 2013

Hey, Everyone!

It has been a crazy week in Chile, what with cambios falling in the same week as the 18 of Septiembre, Chilean Independence! Chileans take the whole week off and eat and drink and party like it’s the end of the world. Learned a lot about Chilean alcohol!

Big news of the week, Elder S headed out to Chillan. We were finishing up a long day of contacts after finding no one on the 18 of September, everyone drunk and partying in the streets. President calls us and tells us that he didn’t want to do it, but Elder S has a new assignment as zone leader in Chillan. It was sad but obviously inspired so we were excited, too. President told me that Elder R would be getting to the sector with me, an elder that served in Cancha Rayada, right next to Talca Centro, he got there six weeks before me. That was good to hear--he is a great guy, very spiritual, very humble. We are going to see great progress in this ward together I think, and we are very excited.

For the 18th in the morning, we went out to Dichato to do some service and then came back and had a barbeque with D. Tons of meat, potatoes, and he gave us something they call chicha, that, if you wait, it ferments and becomes alcoholic, but he said it was fresh and without alcohol. We made Sister Martinez, a Chilena, try it first and verify that, but it was just like sparkling cider. Not bad.

Then on Friday we had the big ward activity, did some fun activities, basically like field day games. They made the missionaries do this one where first you have to take out a candy from a pile of flour with your mouth, then eat a half apple as fast as you can, then drink a cup of bebida as fast as you can, then open up a candy really fast, and lastly blow up a balloon and sit on it to pop it to mark the finish. I lost to Sister Martinez. What an embarrasment. They call that game the Jincana, or something like that. 

Working hard and starting to see little by little how universal all the principles of the gospel are. It’s interesting that the doctrine and all the principles will never change but the applications are always different. We can apply the same basic principles to almost any situation--just be good and love everyone and everything basically works out.

Have a great week everyone! Love you all a lot!

Elder Brown