Circunvalacion 1 - Week #23

Happy Halloween!!!

We are right around the corner from one of the big American holidays that is celebrated here in Chile, Halloween! Halloween here doesn't bring a whole lot of Trick-or-Treating but every once in a while you see a little ghoul or goblin on the next street over. The Evangelical Churches here don't appreciate the day much (and there are a lot of them) so they received approval from the government to have October 31st as a national holiday called Día de las Iglesias Evangelicas y Protestantes (Evangelical & Protestant Churches Day)... Seems like just another excuse to not work to me, and Monday will be again since it is "All Saints Day".

This week was like a roller coaster. I was reading the e-mails from home and noticed the drastic differences in Mom's and Dad's weeks. As far as the office and the missionary work goes I've had a pretty good week. Tomorrow morning we plan on having a baptism for Margarita, our investigator that we started teaching just over a week ago, and hopefully she will be confirmed in Sacrament Meeting tomorrow. (The baptism will probably be at about 9 o'clock in the morning). As for myself, my week has been kind of a bummer. I've become a total klutz this last week and for about 3 days straight I was running into EVERYTHING... It wasn't very fun...

It has been a whirlwind of a change! It is very possible that in 1 more week, with changes, that I will be training here in the office and preparing to be on my way out of here. There is part of me that is so ready to get back out to working in a normal assignment in the mission, but there is another part of me that enjoys it here in the office amidst all of the stress and problems that come up. (I admit it... I'm crazy!). Either way it happens I'm game! (But then again I'm not really left with much of a choice).

On November 8th we will be receiving 22 new missionaries from North America (18 elders & 4 sisters). We have been, and will be, running all over the mission in preparation for their arrival. Because of several other events happening that same week they will be arriving on change day... YAY!!! That means that none of us have any idea exactly how things will be running and will be hoping and praying that everything turns out alright.

P-day today is going to be pretty chill again. Recently by the time we get around to Saturday we are too tired to really do much, anything exciting or adventurous at least. This morning however we went to a big outlet mall a little north of the office and looked at soccer stuff, shoes/jerseys (that kind of stuff). Elder Marin (my favorite assistant... I was obligated to say that) has been creating a donation fund of "monedas de diez" (10 peso coins). It has been going on for a while and he is now up to over 40,000 pesos. The plan is to use these coins to buy new tennis shoes or soccer shoes, Nike being the brand specified at the birth of the fund, so we are now looking for shoes worthy enough to spend the money on. To kind of give you an idea of how worthless a 10 peso coin is and how much time this took I'll liken it unto American money. 10 pesos = 2 cents. Pretty worthless!!! (I'm attaching a photo). Also a 10 peso coin is about the same size as a nickel but weighs a little less. Either way the backpack we had full of 41,000 pesos in monedas de diez was pretty darn heavy!!! I'll keep you posted on the buy and probably will send a video when it finally happens.

Even with everything that has been going on this week I'm still surviving... That's normally a good sign, right? We did a lot of good for the mission this week, but our sector suffered a little bit. Everything is looking up still for tomorrow morning and then we'll be looking a little bit dry for most of November (unless we get another miracle... like Margarita). I love this work, it wears me out sometimes but even those days are good. I miss ya'll and love ya'll lots! Sorry my letter was kind of short!

¡Todo mi amor! ¡Besitos!

-- Élder Todd