Circunvalacion 1 - Week #17

¡Feliz 18 de Septiembre!

Today is the 200 year celebration of the independence of Chile... se llama la Fiesta Patria! We are all pretty excited to have our P-day today and see what kind of fun we can get into. Unfortunately tonight will be fairly limited as far as the amount of proselyting we can do, unless of course we want to talk to a lot of borachos. Yesterday we had a fairly lengthy activity to celebrate la Fiesta Patria in our ward. It started about 11:00 AM (with people getting there finally around 12:30 PM... you've got to take into account Mormon Standard Time thrown on top of Chilean Time), and ended about 6:00 PM... all in all it was fairly short compared to most of the ward/stake parties in the area.

My first and only 18 de Septiembre in Chile is currently underway... so far it doesn't look like there is a whole variety of activities available for us today, so I'm not sure what we'll be doing for P-day. Lots of times it kinda sucks to have P-day on a national holiday... everything is closed today so we can't even hit up the mall for food.

This week has been fairly laid back. Fortunately I haven't had any big deadlines and I've been able to get on top of almost all of my work, let's hope this next week proves to allow the same thing. Monday will be a pretty relaxed day in the office since all of Chile will still be on vacation for the holiday weekend, but Tuesday we'll kick back into full swing!

September 11th went well, we entered the house at 8:00 PM and just hung out with all of the missionaries in the condominiums for a couple hours. We were told the next day that it got a little crazy right around midnight with all of the jovenes hanging out in the street and building bonfires in front of the apartment buildings. All in all it was pretty chill though, and as far as I know there wasn't anything super crazy or exciting that went down. Also the cemetery was pretty cool, it is HUGE!!!... and a little bit creepy. I'll try to get some pictures out to y'all pretty soon, the architecture there is amazing. And you know how I am about architecture! If it didn't know that I was going to be a doctor or that I needed to be a doctor I might consider architecture or something similar.

Work and everything sounds pretty stressful... unfortunately it is about the same here in the mission too, with missionaries who can't really behave themselves. It is also good to hear that Lufkin won again, they are undefeated right now if I'm not mistaken, right?

So Gabe got a new calling? I was looking on the new LDS.org website and it has listed all of the leadership of the ward, I didn't see his name on the list of Elder's Quorum teachers and was wondering what was up. Mom, are you still working in the family history center too? And is Gabe taking over my work I was doing with the family geneology, or is he just there? Sounds like everybody elses callings are doing great, Dad with High Council, and Ryah with president of the Laurels.

I'm kinda tired of not hearing from Gabe and Ryah... even when I send letters they don't respond. If I didn't know better I'd think they were happy I was gone.

¡Felicitaciones a Scott y Amanda! This was the first I had heard of that, since Gabe never sends me news and stuff like that. I feel so out of the loop now, compared to how it was at the beginning of my mission when everyone was still letting me know every little tidbit of information. I'm going to run into a technology and a news overload when I get back and I'm able to get connected back to the outside world!!!

This last week was kinda tough in the Gospel sharing category. Fortunately for us last night went very well! We were in interchanges so I was not able to be in my sector, but Elder Moore and Elder Barrett were able to teach 3 lessons with members present and find a family of 3 new investigators who are all planning on going to church on Sunday (tomorrow). Also I was able to do my first baptismal interview as district leader (first ever) for an 11 year-old investigator in Circunvalación 2 who will be baptized this Sunday. His name is Alfonso and he is ready!!! I was kinda worried at first, but the whole process went very well. I was sweating bullets but we both came out of the interview and he still wanted to be baptized, so that worked out very well. I think I was more nervous about the interview than he was!!!

So like I said I'm going to work on sending out some pictures in the next little bit. Sorry my letter seems short, everytime I write it seems like I write less and less! I love y'all and miss y'all! You've just got to hang in there for a little over 11 months!

¡Todo mi amor y cariño!

-- Élder Todd