1st week in Chile

This is a picture of a man named Ivan.  He contacted us on facebook and said that Elder Noel lived in his area.  He told us that he would take care of him while he was there.

Hey Family,

  It’s me. This week has been hard for me. I don’t know what I’m doing. I feel alone and helpless at times. 

 I have two comps. They are good guys.    One goes home next monday. He is from Guatemala.  We live with the zone leaders. They are good guys. We live in sort of a two-story apartment. Its okay I guess. One of the Z Leaders leaves in feb and the other has 17 months like my comp.

 Spanish is hard. Everyone here speaks so fast its insane! I can only pick up certain words and phrases. When we teach my comps will say something and then just look at me. All I do basically is say what I know. I testify and try to relate everything back to the Atonement and Book of Mormon. 

 When we contact people I just say we have a message about your brother Jesus Christ. This message can help you with your life and your family. We would like to share it with you. Then they say they are catholic or evangelist or something like that. Then my comps just try to convince them to let us in. About 95 percent of the time they don’t. It’s hard.

 I think about you guys and home and things like that. Dad your journal helps. I read some of your past journal entries and you explain how I feel some of the time. The other night I was laughing cause what you had said I felt exactly. It was funny.

 Anyway Chile is a different country than America. Its funny cause everybody’s house is usually just small! But then when you go inside some of the houses, they have nice furniture and like a plasma screen tv. The Elders here were telling me that they buy a plasma screen tv before they would by life insurance.

 I was reading an article about adjusting to missionary life. It’s probably that you will feel stressed out at first, but they said it will pass.  Anyways I love you! And I miss you like crazy!

           -Con Mucho Amor -Elder Noel

I will pray hard! and by the way I’m in a place called Temuco. My area is Catrihuala.