The Craziness in Chile

This past week has just been full of radness! So New Years here is a HUGE thing and everyone parties till the sun comes up, the problm is that we as missionaries are supposed to go bed at 11:30, but we may or may not have been in bed awake till the new year. But how can you sleep when there are people screaming outside and giant speakers in the area counting down the time, seriously every twently minutes he would scream a time, and at 10 minutes he just counted down haha, and at 12 sharp there were screams all around, one odd thing though, it is illegal to have fireworks in our area, mainly because they lead to fires. And speaking of fires there is always a fire going on somewhere, not so much in our town, but way into the distance you can see the smoke from the forest fires, good thing there is nothing but dirt where I live! But back to Año Nuevo, the problem was the next day, because everyone was either sleeping, gone somewhere, or taking it easy at their homes so we contacted for hours and got like 4 people, and no one was able to have lessons so we just tried to find things to do!

After New Years there was a Conference for all the new missionaries in Concepcion and it lasted two days. We had classes with the Mission Presidency and then went on Splits with the missionaries in Concepcion. It was real neat, I found out that people speak completely different Spanish where I live and in the city! So I am in the campo part wich is just the country and everyone has a slur, when I went on a splits into concepcion the city I was able to understand them! It was a really good experience to go on a split because my new comp spoke english and so he was able to teach me some cool things about the mission that I would need to know, and what to look out for, and we have some sweet lessons with the city folk. One thing I do like better about my area, no one has much to do and in such everyone wants to talk, in the city everyone has somewhere to go or is too busy to stop to talk to you!

After we finished that, we returned to Quillon and camped it for the night. The next few days we worked and worked and where able to get 4 new investigators, hopefully we can keep teaching them and they accept our message and feel the Spirit! The language is coming little by little and hopefully I can understand even the people with no teeth and mumble as well! 

Thanks for the package and the gifts! I already opened the box and put everything in order, all that is left is the letter itself, I can wait a few days for that. So far my favorite thing in the box, besides the food, was the picture that I believe Curtis drew, I loved it so much! I was going to mount it on the wall, but I just keep it in my journal. Thank you so much for the package again, I can´t believe I am almost 20 haha, but if you look at it like I will only be in Chile for one more birthday it doesn´t seem that long huh! Well, let me tell you one thing that you will probably be shocked about. So after the year had ended my zone had achieved its goal for baptisms and in such we got to go PAINTBALLING haha, who would have thought! Plus we got all decked out, and it was burning hot, in army gear and went all out haha! Best Birthday party event ever for being out on the mission! 

Miss you all at home, I came to the mission at a odd time where everyone was fiesta-ing but now the work begins! Hope to make everyone proud, especially God yah! Love everyone and wish you well!

Elder Siaosi