Week 38

Hola Familia

Well, this week was pretty normal. Haha there isn't much to write about. Just... working. Learning my sector and everything. This week was pretty slow, to be honest. 

First off, I'm finally beginning to understand my companion! I've been trying to help him with his accent ;) And he's coming around, slowly! He really is a solid missionary! He was trained super well, and knows his sector well! I'm glad for that because he's learned how to plan well! His teaching is a little different, but I think he's just getting used to it still. 

With our investigators, a lot has been falling through. The thing here is that nobody is married... and absolutely nobody wants to get married! I've taught the law of chastity a ton, and everyone rejects it! It gets kinda frustrating. But that's ok. We continue to find new people, and that's what's important. Eventually, we'll find somebody 'ready for the harvest'. We have a family that's pretty solid right now from Ecuador, especially the mom, Magdalena. They love everything we are teaching, and accepted it all, save for the law of chastity. Magdalena isn't married to her partner right now, Claudio. And when we brought it up, they shot it down. They didn't even just say 'in the future, maybe', they said 'Never'! I tried to bear my testimony as strong as possible, but I don't know. They didn't seem to like it. We have another cita with them tomorrow, so we'll see what happens. We've also been working with a kid named Jhoadel, who's been on and off with the missionaries for a while. He was supposed to come to church again yesterday, but didn't come. But he knows everything. The other family we are working with is a part member family. Ana Maria, the mom, is a member, as well as most of her children, excpet for the last two, Maria and Rodrigo. Maria is solid, and wants only to get baptized, but can't get off work on Sundays to come to church! Which sucks, because she works for her dad, and he doesn't like us. Rodrigo is a joven, and will do whatever his sister does, but he doesn't seem completely there yet.

Yesterday was interesting. Apparently, all of the missionaries give talks every third Sunday about 'la obra misional'. So Saturday comes, and we meet up with our mission leader, Javier, and he gives us a bunch of papers with our topics, and I'm like, what are these? And he tells us that the next day we're giving talks!! I thought he was joking haha! But, nope! We basically had 30 minutes that night, and 15 the next morning to quickly study and put together a talk for Sunday!  My topic was humility. It went well, I think, but I was basically just reiterating some talk that he gave me. None of the investigators we had invited came to church. We called them all the morning of, and two told us they were on their way to the building... they never showed up. The people we tried going to, to bring them with us to the church, told us no, so that was hard. Oh well. 

I'm getting better at the district leader thing. My district is smaller, so that makes it easy. The Philipinos are rocking it with talking with everyone and finding news, but everyone they have keep falling too. We're going to have inter-cambios this week to see if there are things we can help in. Leading my companionship is also getting easier, especially as I get to know people and the sector. 

Y... eso! Haha no mucho paso esta semana! Lo siento mamá, pero todavía no tengo fotos. La cosa es, no tengo algo para conectar la cámara con la computadora, y no hay nada por SD card. Yo creo que la próxima semana tendré algo para ti. Cuídense todos! (Haha not much has happened this week! I'm sorry, Mom, but I still have no photos. The thing is, I do not have anything to connect the camera to the computer, and there is nothing for SD card. I think next week I'll have something for you. Take care everyone!)

Les amo a todos!

Elder Schmid 

Week 37

Querida Familia,

Whassup?? Jaja I'm finding myself saying that a lot more than I would've thought here. There's this snake that lives on our street that likes to try to talk in English with me as I pass by. It's funny because she doesn't know anything! But anyways, whoa!!! That was one hefty email! Haha it looks and sounds like your week in Utah was amazing! I'm so jealous hahaha! Fireworks, hikes, family, the works! You know what I did for fourth of July? I bought a completo... haha but it's chill! I loved seeing all those pictures! Knowing you, mom, I think for every one picture I saw, there are at least 15 more for each! But that's super cool, all that you could do! 

My week hasn't been quite as eventful as yours, I must admit, but it's been pretty good! My fourth of July was pretty much the same as any day, except at the end, we bought completos and sang the Star Spangled Banner as loud as possible! Which is not too good, because I've learned that the neighbors don't like us too much because we are 'too loud' and even 'keep them up until 3 or 4 in the morning'! Jaja psych! This week has been me pretty much trying to get to know my sector. It's so different from Pozo! It is very strange being in a big city, but I really like it! I like being in the city here way better than a small town. But the number one thing about my sector is that it is straight uphill or downhill. There is no flat space. We are always either walking uphill or downhill! And it's super steep! My sector is where the city meets the mountains, and it's almost straight tomas, or... I don't know what you'd call them. Tomas are like more ghetto houses, all made together with scrap wood that they found and most don't even have a floor. It's been interesting to get to know it. A lot of the streets don't have names, and we just have to memorize where people are, which kinda sucks. Especially when we are looking for menos activos and we have no idea where they live. My ward is broken up into 2 parts: Caliche A, the upper part, our part, with more tomas and more hills, and Caliche B, the lower, richer part. 

Elder Blanco is super cool! He's Argentinian, and only has 3 months in the mission! This is his first sector, Caliche. The thing about Elder Blanco is... I cannot understand one dang word he says! The Argentinian accent is soooooo strong! Basically, everything sounds like the shh sound, and he doesn't bother trying to change his accent haha! So, I feel kinda bad, but I've pretty much given up on talking to him! It's not because he isn't cool, he's awesome! And funny. But I have no idea what he's saying. His teaching style is definitely new, like he's not as practiced, and I feel excited to teach him a little more about that, because from what I can tell, he is a super good teacher! We're definitely going to baptize here! The scary thing is, now I'm compañero mayor! So the work here is more my responsibility. It's honestly been a little rough doing that. I am definitely not used to it. He's looking at me to know what to do, and I'm just sitting there like... I don't know! But, we've ran into some super awesome people, and I feel like Elder Barney taught me really well en cuanto de eso (in terms of that). Haha, I realized now that my English is going away. Even during this letter I've had to pause and wonder on how to say something. So that's weird...

The people here in Antofa are surprisingly receptive! In my opinion, more receptive than in Pozo! I love it! Being in the tomas really helps, because the people there are real humble. But even in our more rich part of our sector we've been having success! On Wednesday, we had our ward council, and I really learned how unprepared I am. It was so different! It was actually efficient! It kinda scared me. We were talking about the missionary work, and they asked me how we were doing with a bunch of things that I honestly had no idea we were supposed to be doing! It was kinda bad, because they knew I was the new district leader, and they realized how bad I am at it. They asked me about three different things that I had to straight up ask, ''what's that?'', after which they just kinda stared at me and explained it as if you were explaining to a five year old... it was honestly kind of embarrasing. I got really frustrated. But here, the bishop and everyone want us to focus heavily on menos activos. The bishop doesn't feel like the ward is ready to have Ward Missionaries, and so the missionaries are the Ward Missionaries... which is also a little stressful. We are working a lot with them and getting them their interviews and reteaching them and basically doing everything that I feel the home teachers should be doing. I don't know, I'm still getting to know how things work here.

Being district leader is interesting. Basically it's not really anything. I just ask for numbers and pass those to the zone leaders, and then try to be a good example. That's hard, though, because my district is just us and Caliche B, and they are super good missionaries. They are two Philipinos, both basically 5 foot nothing hahaha, but they are super good missionaries. They crack me up too! It's hilarious, because their laughs are like the minions off of Dispicable Me, and they speak 4 languages each. So they'll be speaking some language, Tagalog or something, and then just bust up laughing like minions, and then talk a little again, and then laugh again! But they have really funny stories, because the people here don't take them as seriously, because they're some small oriental looking people haha! But anyways, leading them is basically nothing, because they're already doing everything better than I can. both have already been district leader once. So, that's my life as leader...

But life here is good! La Portada, my zone, has 13 sectors, 26 missionaries. It's the biggest in the mission. It's the northern part of Antofagasta, and usually has the most baptisms. My sector is the highest, and usually while walking, I can see the whole city underneath us, so that's always cool. La Portada is super different than Alto Hospicio, but it's cool. I like it. I'm having a stressful time learning to lead, but that's ok! The work moves forward! Hope you all have a good week!

Les amo a todos!

Elder Schmid

Week 36

Hola Mamá!

This email will also be shorter, but more so because I do not have any time. The cambio was super crazy haha! Speaking of, I had a cambio! During our zone training meeting, the assistants called and gave everyone in our zone their cambios at the same time. One Hermana went home, three missionaries went to Calama, and I got mine. I was sent to....... Antofagasta!!! I'm in the big city! My sector is in the zone La Portada, and it's called Caliche. It's an actual ward now, not just a branch. I have also been called as district leader. So,pretty much the highlight of the week was finding that out. So now that's out of the way hahaha.

This week was not to great in regards to the missionary work in Pozo Almonte. We worked hard, of course, but we did not find nearly as much success. We were working hard especially with the family of Cristina. Their baptism was set for Sunday, yesterday, right after church, and we got permission to confirm them right there after their baptism, which normally does not happen. So we were visiting them everyday to make sure everything was going smoothly for their baptism and whatnot. We were also working with a few other families, but their baptisms were not so fijado (set). But we continued finding news and inviting and everything. It was hard right before Friday,  when we received cambios, because I was getting super worried that I was going to stay again, and so I was not as focused as maybe I should have been, but that's ok, because we still got stuff done. After Friday, my ánimo (excitement) was higher, and it was easier to work. But then Saturday night came, and I was calling all of our investigators that we had invited to church, and basically, every single one of them canceled out. Everyone had some excuse! Some were good, and I understood why not, but then others were saying that they were going to be at their brother's house or something, and their brother's house was even closer to the church!! What?! I don't get it... but I was feeling alright, because we were at least going to have baptism. But then I called Cristina, and she told me that she was going to be traveling, and couldn't make it to church or her baptism. And her 13 year old kid wasn't going to get baptised without her. So we were really counting on her 17 year old daughter to at least come to church, because she wasn't traveling. But then she ended up telling us no, simply because she was going to spend the night at her boyfriend's house, and didn't want to wake up. That call basically broke me... I got frustrated, and just kind of gave up a little. I still called everyone to see if they can go, to offer help, and do everything I needed to, but my heart wasn't in it.

Sunday was alright. There were not too many people at church, though, because there was a partido de Chile (party of Chile) going on. Actually, it was a very big game, because it was for the Russia confederation cup, and it was the finals. Chile made it to finals versus Germany, the world champions. So everyone was super pumped, and nobody wanted to come to church, not even the members. But it was a good service, and peaceful, and very relaxing. I did not realize how stressed I was until it all went away during church. I am very grateful that I was able to decompress a little, though. After church, we had our lunch at a family's house, who happened to be watching the game at the same time. It was also kinda sad to watch, because Chile basically gave them their only goal because of a simple mistake. But oh well! The zone leaders called during lunch and told us that my bus would be leaving from Iquique at 8:00 in the morning, which meant that I had to pack everything in a couple hours and head down to Alto Hospicio to spend the night in the zone leaders pension. I said a few goodbyes to some members, and then headed out! Fun fact, they're opening a sector in Pozo, bringing in 2 more missionaries, and now there are 4 there. So basically, they need 3 missionaries to be able to do what I can do there! ;) Hahaha jk, but it's just cool because the work is going to explode now! 

The zone leaders pension was disgusting. Completely disgusting. It was such a big mess that we could not even put our stuff down. Elder Barney and I spent the next several hours trying to clean a little for them, until we found the fetching rat's nest! That was too much. Apparently, they found it the other day, and cleaned it out with a stick, and out came 20 baby rats!! Little hairless red disgusting things that seemed dead, until they started spraying them with bugspray and they starrted to squirm. But then they left them there, and went to sleep, because I don't know why, and when they woke up, they were gone. The parents are still alive. But basically, Elder Barney and I slept on some chairs that night, and in the morning, I went to Iquique, boarded my bus, and said my goodbyes and everything, and left. It was a 6 hour ride to Antofagasta, not too bad, and I was on the bus with a real good friend of mine who is also coming to La Portada, Elder Gali. We basically just chatted the entire time, because they didn't play any movies on the bus, and we arrived at around 2:00. I met my new companion, Elder Blanco. He is Argentinean, from Buenos Aires. He just barely finished his training. He seems really cool. His papíto was super cool, and I'm excited for this cambio! We are going to slay it here in Caliche! We be baptisin everyone! Just throwin 'em in the water! 

Elder Schmid