July 20, 2015

This week was a really cool week- we learned that in Mapuche, the language of the natives, "Pichidegua" means "little city of rats," which is weird, because I haven't seen a single rat in the last 3 weeks. But maybe the rats are a summer thing or something, haha, so I'll be keeping an eye out in the coming months.

     Some other things that happened this week that made it such an interesting week: 

-We were kind of scolded by some of the members for showing up to a family night late, because they didn't know how to do it without us. 

-On Tuesday we watched The Other Side of Heaven with a recent convert who just had his pinky toe amputated and is stuck in bed all day. 

-On Wendesday I did some divs with another Elder in a sector called Las Cabras (the goats), but didn't see a single goat. Kind of a let down. But on Thursday we met up in Peumo (another little town over here) so we could go back with our normal companions, and we were stuck outside that dang town for like 3 hours waiting for a bus on the side of the highway... Thursday was a holiday here(no one works on holidays...), so none of the bus drivers were working... And without public transportation, Chile doesn't really function. SO we ended up getting a ride from a really cool matrimonial missionary couple, and they came an fixed some stuff that was wring with our house.

-On Saturday we had a mission prep class thing in Peumo, and afterwards had a ping pong tounament, and I was totally going to win until I played against the branch president, and he just demolished me.

-We also have been talking with this family for the past week, and we passed be their house on Saturday night to invite them to church, and they were kind of indecisive about whether or not they were going to go. But on Sunday they showed up, and loved it! And like half the members invited them to a family night and they all talked to them. The members were all super excited to see some new faces in the branch!

-Also, on Sunday, as I was leading the music for the opening hymn for the 20 members that showed up, I saw a silver Ford Explorer that looked familiar roll up to the parking lot, and then President Warne and his wife got out, and came to Sacrament Meeting in out branch. My companion was conducting the meeting, and he said he got super nervous! But he did a good job, and President Warne said we're doing a good job out here in Pichidegua, so we were pretty happy that day,

     

And that was basically our week. This morning we got up and rode ou bikes over to some members's restaurant/house, and made breakfast for them. We're trying to be really good friends with the members here, and make them love the missionaries evern more! And then we went to the church and had a fat ping pong tournament with some of the local hooligans from around here! I won one of the 3 tournaments that we had, so that was pretty sweet.

I hope everyone has an awesome week!

Love,

Elder Hamilton