Week 12

To start off this letter, just know that right now theres a giant fiesta going on at the church today and a ton of food, games, and dances because 18 de september is the national holiday of Chile so its a gigantic celebration here. We actually got out P-day changed to Wednesday so that we could fully enjoy the festivities! Empanadas galore, These things called sopaipillas, and whatever carne you could dream of. Funny thing about all this is that yesterday we had a zone meeting where our zone leaders told us that we were going to FAST this day! They were saying that if we wanted to have miracles happen here and baptize the 18 people that we set the goal to baptize, we needed to make a serious sacrifice... like giving up everything good in this mission -- THE FOOD!!!!! Then after like 10 minutes of all the missionaries testifying how this seemed like a great idea (while I was sitting in my chair like CRAP IM GOING TO STARVE) they told us that it was just a joke and to enjoy our 18!

This week I had MY first baptism, in the sense that I actually was the one to baptize the girl. I felt so cool in all white and then realized that, Ah shoot I dont know the baptismal prayer in Spanish! So my comp taught me the prayer like 5 minutes before I was going into the fount... I got down there into position ready to baptize and totally forgot the prayer. All of it. My mind went completely blank and this 12 year old girl, Josefina, had to wisper the words into my ear hahaha... hows that for a baptism?! But I was so happy to be doing it, and the entire night I just had a huge grin on my face.

This week I also got my new comp (mi madre), se llama Elder Overson. And as if my missionary family couldnt be any more confusing... hes the hijo of Elder Tengberg. I`ll need to draw a picture of my missionary family tree and send it next week because it is the craziest thing. And now Im thrown into the role of teaching him about my sector which I still hardly know while he trains me. Needless to say its been pretty stressful the past week, with struggling to find more investigators to teach.

And obviously I need to throw in something about how my language skills are doing... Im a lot better. I can speak more or less without pausing and having to think so much about my words and now it just sort of flows out of my mouth. Next will come the vocabulary, now that I have the grammar down for the most part! Wooo-Hooo!!!

This weekend I have another Baptism of a mom and her daughter who are SUUUUUUPER awesome!!!

Thats all Ive got for now... Hasta proxima semana!

CHAO, VIVA CHILE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ELDER MUNDELL