Alo!
Wow, what a crazy week. Unfortunately, the baptism with Lorena fell through. After we had done the pre-entrevista con ella, she began to feel a little bit of fear. Not a problem. We visited her with President Essig, and she´ll hopefully be getting baptized the 9th.
We´ve also been working with two other investigadores, Emilio y Celinda. Emilio is almost completely blind, and Celinda has elephantism. They both have very poor self image, but want to do the right thing, so we are helping them to progress a little at a time. Emilio is an inactive member whose health problems began occurring after he left the church, and we encountered him lost in the streets. His faith is weak at times, but he wants to come back to the fold and gain forgiveness for his past.
We are also working with a family who has very strong belief in God and the Bible, but has problems with organized religion because so many of the churches have problems. We went to teach them on saturday (my birthday), and in the middle of the lesson the lights went out. The spirit told us to finish the lesson, which went well, and when we left we realized that there was NO light except cars and a few stars. When you´re in a city of 5.5 million and can´t see any light, that´s big. We made our way through the streets as safely and quickly as we could and returned to our apartment. Along the way we could here the radios going, and as the news reports came in we learned first that all of Santiago was out, then that regions 3-8 (nearly the entire country) didn´t have power. I´m not entirely sure what the cause was, so if any of you know more, tell us. :P
At any rate, that meant that we had to return home early, and since the power was out we did what we could to end the day, prepared whatever emergency supplies we had, and went to bed. Extra sleep was a wonderful birthday present.
We´ve been having adventures with intercambios, porque Elder King y Elder Dearden are the Zone Leaders. This means that they have to do the interviews for District Leaders´ Investigators, so Elder Binks and I have had various exchanges this week. There was one day in particular that it worked out that I was with an elder with only one change´s worth( 6 weeks) more experience than me, and an accent like a true texan. This made it fun to teach and work. We spent a lot of the day translating for each other, and relying on the spirit to hope that what came out of our mouths during lessons was somehow related to what the investigator had just asked/said(I´m pretty sure that for the most part, it was).
Overall, we´ve had a wonderful week! Thank you for all of your emails and prayers! We need them.
Les Amamos.
¡A Dios, Con Dios!
-Elder Wheelhouse
Tidbit #1: Fletés y the Voz form
In Chile, we have a huge gang called the Fleté (think FLY-tay). They don´t bother people when they are individual, but when they gather in groups of 3 or more they will harrass women and Gringos (yes, that is a real term here), and if they have more than 5 or 6 then you need to be careful. Once a year, on the 11th of September (the day that Pinochet took over in a coux) they basically take over the city, rioting, burning, and breaking things. If you stick to the main parts of the city and don´t mess with them, they´ll typically leave you alone, but it´s still an adventure, and the missionaries have to be home by nightfall. Typically around 10 or 11 the power gets cut, and the fleté go home. Overall, don´t be alone and don´t mess with them and you won´t have any problems.
Another fun thing about Castellano (note that i´m talking about the Chilean "Castellano" and not true Castellano) is that they have a unique form of speech, caused by their natural isolation and historical way of life. This form is called "Voz". It is not officially recognized as a grammatical form, even in Chile, but everyone uses it. Por ejemplo, the formal ¿Como está? would normally become "¿Como Estas?" in the regular "tu", or familiar, form. However, they use an even less formal "¿Como Estais?", which when you add the accent and the dropped s at the end sounds like "Comb is thai" (english equivalent). This means that unless you are expecting it, you have no hope of understanding what they are saying with experience solely in grammatically correct spanish. Plus they will throw on the word "po" to the end of words and sentences, which in reality means NOTHING whatsoever. I will write out a typical conversation in the next letter.
Gotta run!
-Elder Wheelhouse
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