Hello! I hope that everyone had a happy 18th of
September! It was a fun week here in Chile. Slow for the work though as we were
not able to work on the 18th, 19th and 20t. There were a bunch of drunks
and that's one reason why we arent allowed to work very much those days. We had
a good time that day with our ward at the ward activity and we ate alot of food and passed time
with the members. Wednesday we were at the church all day. We had a ton of
empenadas, danced the Cueca and had a ping-pong tournament. Surprisingly there
are some really good ping-pong players here in Los Muermos! I went undefeated
in doubles ping-pong with my recent convert. In singles I held my own,
losing a little, but beating "the best one in Muermos" who is
the only one that I had never beaten. I also ate my fair share of empanadas. I think I
had about 15 or so. I also had empenadas for Thursday and Friday so I am ready
to take a good long break from empenadas at least for a couple of weeks. An empanada is a fatty fried bread with meat in them and they are sooooooo good. I´ll
see how long I can last without them before I give in. We
took advantage of not having to plan to go to bed early which was nice. Thursday we had to do
some things to do at the chapel and on the way home we stopped by a member to pick up our
laundry. She invited us in to have lunch which was a barbecue and then we
stayed pretty much the whole day playing games. We learned some crazy chilean
card games called Briska and Scova, which are way fun. We had a really fun
day. There are also some kids about our age here so that made it a fun day as well. Friday we ate
more empenadas at lunch and then played cards with the dad of the mamita. He loves to play cards and we ended
up beating the Chileans in their own game of Briska. They were pretty
arrogant about winning but we showed them. I´ll teach it to you when I get home. You need a special deck of cards to play but I'm sure you could play
with whatever type. On Friday night we taught a lesson that we had set up. It
went well.
We had the zone leaders come to Los Muermos on Saturday to do a
baptismal interview for someone we have been teaching. It's a weird situation. We had been on MLS one day and we noticed that a 17 year old member who is
active and everyone thought was a member had never been baptized. We told
the branch president and he didn't really do anything about it so we were
like whatever, but now they are planning a trip to the temple and she needs
to be a member. So now we have to go through the whole process of teaching her and
she will be baptized on Saturday.
On Sunday, our branch president and most of the members were
gone, so I was presiding and gave a talk in sacrament meeting. Then I gave the
class in Sunday school to the people who came (4). (That was our attendance after
sacrament meeting). More attendance from the drunks that are outside the church
than in Sunday school. So we did a long class because the people who were supposed to teach the
classes in relief society and priesthood didn't show up so we just ended church
half hour early otherwise priesthood would´ve been us and 1 other person.
Well, this week it will be nice to get back to working a normal day. With everything that we have, I am so grateful for the wonderful plan of
happiness that our Father in Heaven has for us. I know that he loves every one
of his children. Have a wonderful week!
Love, Elder Nelson
