September 21, 2015

Haha, so I'm sure a few of you have heard of the earthquake in Illapel a few days ago, and yeah we totally felt it here in Pichidegua! A guy we talked to a few days ago went fishing and invited us to eat some fried fish with him that night. He lives in a little tin shack thing, and we were out there sitting under the roof eating some fried fish, and all of the sudden my chair started rocking back and forth, and the next thing we know is that the whole shack is shaking! We thought it was going to fall on top of us, so we ran out of there pretty fast with our hands full of fish, and all the chickens outside were freaking out like their heads just got chopped off. We waited and kind of land surfed for like 2 minutes until it stopped, and then all the chickens calmed down and we resumed eating our fried fish. After all the cell signal got restored, like an hour after the earthquake, we got a bunch of calls from the members asking if we were alright; they take pretty good care of us. And actually like half an hour ago there was another earthquake a little bit closer to our mission! I'm totally going to pull out my camera the next time, haha!

     This week was the independence week here in Chile, and nobody wanted to receive us this week, so we just kind of hung out with the members. They gave us SO MANY empanadas. It was awesome. The celebrations were a little bit calmer than normal this year because of the earthquake, but it was still really fun, and we ate a whole bunch of really good food!

     We had a pretty crazy day on Sunday. Since this week was the independence week, almost no one came to church, which is kind of sad... But what happened was that we went to church like normal, and the branch president just didn't show up... So we just got everything ready like normal, and by the time 9:50 rolled around, it was still just me and my companion. (church is supposed to start at 10:00 sharp) 9:55 it ws me and my comp and 1 old lady. 10:00 It was me, my comp, the old lady, and one other lady. 10:05 a young woman showed up. 10:15 rolled around, 10:30 passed by, and 10:40 came around and it was us 5... My companion and I couldn't go into the chapel because there has to be 3 women older than 18, and there were only 2! So we seriously couldn't start church until someone else showed up!  But we called EVERYONE we knew, and by 10:45 a couple we had called had woken up and come to the chapel really quick, and we got started at 10:45. I presided and conducted Sacrament meeting, and my companion and I blessed and passed the sacrament, and then I gave my testimony, and then it was time to end! We ended church after Sacrament Meeting, and went home. So Sunday was really crazy. Definitely never had a church attendance of 7 in my mission before...

     Also, we got the call for the transfers... And I'm leaving Pichidegua... But I'm going to a sector called Tupahue, and I think it's going to be similar to Pichidegua. I' going to miss Pichidegua, but I know there are lots of people in Tupahue that need to hear the gospel from a giant gringo!

     I hope everyone has an awesome week, and thanks for all the emails!

From,

Elder Hamilton

 

I got to play with a mountain goat the other day.