First Letter from Chile

Date: September 05, 2011 Area: Santiago, Chile Companion: Elder Metcalf

Hola Familia!

It’s  been a while since I´ve been able to write to you! Sorry for that. But it was great to talk to you in the airport, even though it was for such a short time. I´m sorry about that. And Lindy, again I´m sorry that I wasn´t able to talk to you the other day. I had to go which is why I couldn´t call back. But the message cut off!! Sorry! Probably a good thing=)

And sorry, no pictures or recordings this week. I´ll definitely try to get some for next week though. I have to figure out how the recorder works and I just forgot my camera today.

Dad- thanks for the Dearelders. I loved the tale of Catalina! It made me laugh like the whole time! It sounded like it would have been a blast! Wish I could have been there!

But thanks for the questions Mom, it gives me somewhere to start. My companion is Elder Metcalf (Timothy) and he is really nice. He has been in the field for 10 months or so now and in the area we are serving in for almost 5 months now. He is a great guy and I´m learning a lot from him which is great. He is from Utah which all the members here call the Fabrica (or factory) because there are so many missionaries that come from there. He is from Kearns which is somewhat close to South Jordan. He is planning on going to BYU for school when he returns so I´ll see him there after the mission. We get along well which is really nice. We try to make it as fun here as we can=)

The city of Santiago is very European I would say. There are some run down places and nicer areas that I´ve seen and it just feels like a European city. There is a ton of smog and the mountains really are huge! I´d love to go out to the mountains sometime! I guess in 2 years.

We are serving in an area called Corona Sueca. It is one of the poorer areas in the mission which normally I´d be excited about but it’s more just rundown. There are a lot of fliete here (gangs) and borrachos (drunks) and what not but don´t worry Mom, they don´t bother us all that much. I´ve only had one rock thrown at me. =) The area isn´t all that big. We can walk the width in 10 minutes and the length in 30 or so. We do lots of walking here, too much! =) but I’m slowly getting used to it.

Yesterday was the first Sunday and there were only 62 people in the ward that were there. There should be a ton more but there are a lot of inactive people so we are going to be working with the less actives to try to get them coming again.

Finding people isn´t too hard but it’s not easy. The Chileans are all very nice so they will all (almost all) stop and talk to you but most of them really don´t want to listen. The most frustrating thing to me is that we will set up an appointment but then when we show up they aren´t there, almost without fail. It just frustrates me because then we have wasted so much time and walked all the way (we walk everywhere by the way). And there is the last hour of the day from 9a to 10 that is always hard because there isn´t anything to do. The only people that are out walking around are the fliete so it’s not really a productive hour because all the other people are in their homes sleeping or eating dinner and don´t want to be disturbed. That’s easily the worst hour of the day because lots of times feel like I am just wasting time.

We are teaching a couple of families right now. One, the family of Ronal, who is from southern Chile. He moved here only temporarily because his sister has cancer and is helping her before she passes away. They don´t like the city and want to go back to the south. He is really enjoying the discussions and always wants to learn more. I think he´ll come to church next Sunday and I could easily see him getting baptized with his wife and kid.

Another family that we are teaching is the family of Maria. Her sister is a member but she isn´t a member of any particular religion. We were knocking doors one night and knocked her door and she started freaking out. After about 4 minutes of non-stop talking she finally let us in. She explained to us that every time something terribly wrong happens in her life the missionaries seem to show up. We were the fourth ones to do it. Apparently the night before we knocked something bad happened and she was having a rough time. She was about to call her member sister when we knocked (actually you stand at the gate in front of the house and shout ¨HALO). She and her two kids are reading the Book of Mormon and last night we had a lesson with them and committed them to baptism in the beginning of October. Super exciting!!!

As for the Spanish, it is coming along really well! I think the year in Spain is helping- a lot. I can communicate just about anything with Elder Metcalf and I am beginning to understand the Chileans. They speak differently that the Spaniards. They only say half the word, drop the Ss and have a LOT of influctuation when they speak so they say like one word really soft and you can barely hear and then the next is loud. It’s funny. But I´m starting to understand them more and more, to pick out the words and what not which I´m excited about. I can carry on some pretty good conversations now.

We have a mamita that washes our clothes and cooks every other week for us which is really nice. I´ve been practicing my Spanish with her. She speaks pretty quickly. She is super nice though and she makes us really good food! Last week we had like a shepherd’s pie dish, spaghetti with a sauce of tomatoes, onions and hotdog and chicken with rice. It’s all pretty American and really good. We ate with members and they both cooked chicken (well one was hen, gallina) so the food is really good, not a shock. This coming week we have to cook our own food so we are going to make some good omelets and spaghetti and rice dishes, easy stuff because we don´t have an oven, only a stove. Some Chilean foods that I LOVE are the Empenadas- Lindy, even better than Pantrucas. They are soo good! Packed with onions and meat and olives-mmm so good! They have these things called zopaipllas and it’s basically a fried bread. Amazing! It’s so good! Simple but delicious. And for lunch today we are going to have my first completo with a member which I’m super excited about! It should be good!

We only get to have dinner appointments with members on the weekends.

The apartment is pretty cool. It’s a two bedroom place with the living area, bathroom, and kitchen. It’s nice- a little dirty though. We are going to do a deep clean today on it. But it is COLD especially at night! So THANK YOU MOM and LINDY for the thermals and gloves! I am actually using them. It’s warm enough during the day to just wear a coat but at night it is really, really cold so I wear them around the house. Well it’s like a house/apartment thing. But yeah, much better than I was expecting. And we even get hot water which is nice!

Last question I have time for. The plane over Robinson Crusoe is too bad! Lots of people are upset by it and I haven´t seen any rioting.

Well I’m out of time. I miss you all so much and I hope you are all doing ok! If you have any more questions please ask!! I love you!

Elder Holland