A Week Walking in the Heat...

Well, a new companion is definitely an adjustment. I'll have to spend
a while learning how to deal with a new style of teaching and a new
way of doing things, but it's certainly not all bad. I've already seen
more goods and bads of being a missionary and I can always learn from
that. But my companion's name is Elder Vilchez and he's from Lima.
He's a pretty laid back nerd type, so I figure we should be able to
get along pretty well.

The week went by really slow. Probably because we couldn't teach a
single lesson in the afternoon. One of the biggest downsides of
Huanchaco is that everyone leaves to the beach on hot days and your
appointments just fall left and right. So I'm hoping for a few more
cloudy days so we can get some lessons in. Or just some way to keep
the investigators in their houses. We'll have to figure something out.

Spanish is still coming along greatly. It's now feeling more natural
to speak the language. And I'm certainly able to think in Spanish now.
I'll just be working on expanding my vocabulary each day and I feel
like I'll progress a lot in the next month. But now that the language
is more natural, I find myself talking a lot during the lessons. It's
feels great to be able to share my own thoughts and feeling and really
put in my own spin.

I'll miss all of the awesome Chilean slang, though. Words like
"anti-nice" and "anti-boom" just to mean lame. That was always really
entertaining. Especially with the accent.

I got to see the actual effects of a charity project! People donated
clothing to some children in my area! Including to children of several
of my investigators. Some people came down with tons of clothes and
shoes and shuch from the US. I always wondered why all the kids had
clothes with English on it, but now I know why. Anyway, I got to see
how it really affects people and how appreciative they are for the
help. So that was pretty awesome. You can actually touch lives with
stuff like that.

I actually had to give a surprise 10 minute talk on missionary work (every member a missionary) yesterday. It was my first ever talk in Spanish and my first ever talk without any preparation. That was super crazy. Good thing I'm a missionary and can talk for 10 minutes about any Gospel subject, lol.

Oh, and my last companion knew Invader Zim. GIR is just as funny in Spanish.

There's a dog that reminds me of Mr. Furious for Mystery Men. He gets
super angry over nothing and has the sideburns too.

I FOUND ROOT BEER TOO! Did you know that it actually tastes amazing? I
really missed it.

But that's about all I have for now. The work'll pick up next week, hopefully.

Hope all is well and you're enjoying the cold!
Elder Seth