Serving in Santiago

Kyrstin's 2nd Letter from the Chile MTC

Oh my goodness its been a week!! It honestly feels like it has been 3 million years.  I dont know how that works but yeah it feels like its been forever.  No way its only been a week.  Wierd.

Well I'm suuuper happy and having THE BEST TIME EVER.  Like it is so so so so fun.  And really spiritual too.  Finally we have a schedule going but its still not the same or as rigid on the schedule as I think Provo is. 

Ok.... so there is soooooo much to say and not much time and I just have no Idea how to organize it so its just going to be a bunch of random stuff and I'm sorry I can't make it more organized!!

First, the food. Uhhhh its wierd but its good! For breakfast we have pan and manjar, basically bread and dulce de leche, but in Chile dulce de leche is called manjar.  For those of you that don't speak spanish it sounds like manhar.  Its soooo good.  We also have cereal with yogurt not milk.  Its actually really really good! For lunch and dinner we have more pan, loooooots of bread and we choose like a base and a meat type of thing.  So there is an assortment of rice, lentils, potatos made from potato pearls, pasta, or soup and you choose some type of meat in sauce or whatever to eat with it.  I'm getting creative with my food but its actually pretty great! The salad.... is kinda no bueno but its ok.  I really miss lettuce, instead its like chopped celery and peas, or diced beets and corn or something as the base of your salad and the salad dressings are mayo, oil, or lemon juice.  Sooooo I'm getting creative hahaha. Oh and its not just oatmeal pudding now.  There are LOTS of wierd puddings and gelatins.  Every day is a new adventure because you never know what you are going to get! Like I think they just grab stuff and put gelatin in it. Like handsoap, and gogurt, and oatmeal, and WIERD STUFF.  I think I liked one or two of them ok but we have two every day one for lunch and one for dinner and you just never know what you are going to get.... WIERD

But I haven't been as picky with the food and I'm not sick of it!! I may get fat from all the carbs but its good!!

Next, My companion!!! Her name is Hermana Lofgreen she is from northern Arizona and she is soooo great!! She is very obedient, hard working, and she helps me lots with spanish because although we both struggle she speaks italian so she can understand more. We flew over with like 16 ish people and 6 of the elders and 3 of the other hermanas are in my district.  I LOVE MY DISTRICT.  Seriously its like I've known these people my whole life and its only been one week.  \

So While we have been here they have put almost all their focus on adjusting your teaching to meet the needs of the investigators.  So dad I think I could give a really good talk on that now.  Its amazing how much they focus on finding the need.  I almost feel like our pracitce lessons are like detective work trying to uncover the mystery... but its good to focus so much on the person, its just hard when I ask them a question and don't understand a thing they say in response.... But I'm slowly getting better.  I have to remind myself that although it feels like its been a year this is only week 1 haha.

Sooo for those of you wondering about my carry on, welcome to miracle uno of my mission.  We were about to board the plane and I was terrified because I knew I was going to have to lift my 50 lb carry on over my head and it was going to be an embarrasing struggle.  And I didn't think it would fit.  Then a man stops me and says

Ma'am I'm sorry we just ran out of overhead space so we will check your back all the way through to Chile.  MIRACLE.  I was FREAKING OUT.  If I've learned anything out here its that God loves me very very much.  Like another miracle was on sunday, I was thinking about how much I wanted a Chocolate chip cookie and I couldn't stop thinking about it and it was really hard because I REALLY REALLY WANTED A CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIE.  And then that night

 out of nowhere they brought us chocolate chip cookies in CHILE.  That doesn't happen.  Or I guess it did, but that is not normal hahaha. So yeah I was just like GOD LOVES ME AND KNOWS ME!!!!! There have been so many moments like that this first week. 

My first lesson was scary.  I don't speak spanish!! So yeah the spirit was there and it helped me a lot but lets be real I am TERRIBLE at teaching in spanish, its hard not to be able to share your feelings well in lessons or to understand what they are saying in order to help them, but even though I don't comprehend the words, somehow I pick up the general message which is a huge blessing.

So my advice for you, use a planner, plan your day, don't sit around.  DAYS HERE ARE SOOOOOO LONG but its because we get sooooo much done!!! You can get so much done with your life if you just work!! I heard in one of our devotionals, that if you waste 30 min a day on your mission you lost more than 3 months of work.  Time adds up when you only have so many hours to be awake and working in the day, so don't waste your time its precious!

Advice for Mallory, get a spanish Hymn book, I'm regretting not getting one right now but I'll pick one up athe distribution center later.  PRACTICE SPANISH.  Its not like you get here and they start at the begging teaching you spanish.  They don't begin anywhere.  They just expect you to pick things up and seriously the more you know the better because otherwise you are just more behind!!

Can I have some good Elder Holland quotes... I don't know how to make the question mark work.... or the parenthesis, or the quotes button, or anything else for that matter hahaha

I met my mission president for the Santiago Mission!! I FLIPPED OUT!!! I was eating dinner in the cafeteria and I saw this man and got sooooooo excited and I didn't know why, my first thought was OH ITS AN APOSTLE OR SOMETHING!! Because he just had this aura about him and I recognized him somehow but I looked at his name tag and saw that it was president wright!! So I flipped out and shook his hand and introduced him to my district.  I may have cried because I was so excited...

My teachers are super great.  First it Hermano Figueroa, he is really good at helping with the language and he is really fun.  My favorite teacher is Hermano Traverso.  He looks kind of like Chris Hatch and he has the funniest Chilean accent and he is sooooo crazy fun but he also gives some of the most spiritual lessons.  And my third teacher is Hermana Leyton, she is really sweet and helpful, I like her a lot.

Exercising is also really fun, we go to a park, which other than our 2 hours of pday is the only time we get to leave the compound.  It feels like a white stucco prison here haha but its fun! But the park is fun because we teach the Latinas american games in broken spanish and they teach us games that we half understand haha.  There are wild dogs everywhere.  Super cute but super scary.  They always want to play with us but we don't want to get a disease haha.

Well I have to go, sorry hopefully my next email is better and has more spiritual messages, I just have so much to say and nooooo time!!

Love,

Hermana Millett!