E-mail

October 22, 2012

Hola!!  Man, I realized on Saturday that I do not speak Spanish one little bit!!  haha, or at least I can't understand Spanish one little bit!!  Chileans speak waaay fast and they have their own dialect. Definitely sounds a lot different from the Spanish they were speaking in the MTC!!  My Companion, Elders Myers is from San Diego and he is a great guy.  He will for sure be a real help to me for sure both with the Espanola and the gospel.  I have already learned a bunch!  We are in the Olimpia stake and that is also the name of our area and we are assigned to one ward here.  Yesterday it was fun going to church and meeting all the members.  There are about 80 or 100 in this ward which is about average.  The members and the investigators are really patient with my Spanish.  The only people that aren't are just people that don't want to listen to us, haha.  Every day except p-day we eat at a members house for lunch and wow they feed the missionaries a lot!!  The only times I have eaten since I've been here is just at the mission home once and then at members houses.  They give us plenty of food to go throughout the day! We just rotate through all the members for lunch each day and on Wednesday we eat with the same lady and that is who does our laundry.  We live in an apartment  - just me and my companion, and it is pretty nice for Chile.  Definitely not too nice for America, but pretty decent for Chile!!  Can't complain!!  We only have hot water in the mornings though because we have to light a gas furnace that heats the water, so after we take our showers no more hot water!  I'm in a suburb kind of thing of Santiago which is called Maipu, which is pretty big itself.  It is pretty dumpy everywhere and a lot of the members houses are pretty small and pretty trashy but they are all super happy!  It is awesome to see!  They are for the most part pretty humble and great people!  Just a couple things I have eaten so far here - well for all the meals I have had at members houses they have all had papa fritas every time (french fries).  They love those down here!  And then one day we had a huge plate of rice with 5 hotdogs on top!  Who eats five hot dogs in one meal!!  I guess I do now!  And then another one we had some chicken to go along with the papa fritas, it wasn't too bad!  The ward mission leader is super nice and he reminds me a lot like a Chilean version of Calvin!  It is kind of crazy!!  We just email at this little internet place down the street in a little shop..  Dad, I really don't know my address but you could go on the church locator and look for the Olimpia stake center and that is about the area where I live!  We are just a few blocks away from the church.  I forgot to bring my camera this time so I will have to wait until next Monday to send some pictures!  Sorry!  The day I got here, Friday, we were able to hear from Elder Bednar and that was amazing!  Oh ya, and David Archulleta also sang at it because it was his mission, Rancauga, and our mission combined for Elder Bednar and that was pretty cool!!  Elder Bednar spoke to us for 3 hours straight!  It was intense!  It was just a big question and answer thing.  That guy is awesome!  I really am not sure the best way to write - they say the mail is pretty safe here and stuff should come so you could just send regular mail or Dear Elders would probably work pretty good and emails are fine too.  If you just send regular mail look on the church site for the pouch mail and see how that works, that could be a pretty good option too!  I think it takes about two weeks for mail to get to the states from here and also two weeks to get down here and about a month or so for packages.  It has been kind of a rough couple of days because I have been so tired from the flight and I just don't seem like I can catch up on my sleep!! so hopefully I can get over that sometime soon!!  and hopefully I can start understanding because my companion goes home in eight or nine weeks and I will be leading the sector when he goes home which is crazy to think about, because I'm pretty lost everywhere we go and such.  It isn't too big, there is just a ton of little streets everywhere and it is pretty hard to keep track of where we are.  There are a ton of dogs everywhere!  It is crazy!  Everywhere!!!  They are for the most part scared of people though, but it seems like I always have dog poop on my shoe!  Well I hope everyone is doing well!!  Monday will be my p-day from now on.  Have a great week!  Oh and the pictures you sent of Carrie and Missy's families were great! Thanks!

Elder Moser

hah and oh ya, another fun fact about our mission is we go to bed at 11:30 and get up at 7:30!!

it is great!! :)

also the address to the mission home is :

Mission Chile Santiago Oeste

Casilla de Correos 149

Pajaritos 1921

Maipu, Chile

(Note - it looks to me like the best way to write to Elder Moser is to use Dear Elder.com , There is no charge and if you type your letter by midnight on Sundays, it will go out in the Church pouch mail on Monday.  If we all use e-mail, by the time he reads an e-mail from each of us, he won't have computer time to write back :)