January 9, 2012

hola!

so i finally made it to my mission area of victoria, chile! my trainer and i had to take a 3 1/2 hour bus to the south of concepcion to get here, but we made it! speaking of my companion, her name is hna miller, and she´s from provo! she´s seriously SO great. this is her 4th week in the mission field, so she has a good hold of the language, but she´s able to speak english with me when i need it. i´ve been surprised with spanish though because people expect me to not be able to speak at all after having only been here a few days, but luckily i´m able to understand quite a bit in most situations, and can for the most part express what i want to say. i even ordered my own food at lunch today, and the only part i dodn´t get was when she asked me if i wanted mustard, and i had no clue what that meant, so i had to call over my companion...the people here are super nice though and are usually just surprised that this little ¨rubia¨can speak spanish at all, so it was just funny.

my companion and i have been working REALLY hard, and we´re so excited to be here and share the gospel with everyone we meet! literally...because we´re actually opening this sector, meaning that there haven´t been any hermanas here for a couple of months, so we have to find our own new investigators and everything! it´s been a little overwhelming starting from scratch, but luckily i don´t know anything different, so it´s all good to me! we´ve been talking to TONS of people in the streets, and many of them have been receptive and allowed us to make appointments to meet with them in their homes. i´ve seriously already seen so many miracles since arriving, and it´s so clear to me that the lord has his hand in this work, cause there´s no way i could be doing this on my own.

so about the area: the people here are so fun. for the most part they´re warm and friendly, and they always love asking us where we´re from cause we have such weird accents. they´re very affe4ctionate too. you always greet people individually when you first see them, and when you leave. for the women you do the little european kiss on the cheek thing, and shake hands with the men. i´m pretty sure you´d do the kiss thing to men if we weren´t missionaries, cause that´s just normal in the culture here. it so great though because they just value recognizing each person, and i think it´s really sweet. i wouldn´t be surprised if i have a hard time giving up that habit after the mission cause i think it´s so much more friendly than how we do it in the states.

the food. so good! i´ve eaten chicken, rice, vegetables (corn, peas, carrots), mashed potatoes (my FAVORITE!), pasta with some ground beef stuff on top, empanadas, and today i had a chicken sub type thing with sliced avocados on it. there hasn´t been a single thing i´ve eaten here that i didn´t like, so i definitely won´t have to worry about starving! if anything, i have to worry about not eating too much, because there´s seriously  a little gas-station type food place on every block where you can buy snacks. i´m going to have to be careful or they´ll have to roll/float me back to the states i´ll be such a gordita.

the scenery is gorgeous too. it´s really green, and so warm right now! i wear a cardigan and no mas and i´m just fine. it starts to sprinkle every once in a while, and it can get pretty windy, but i love it. there are lots of rose bushes and other flowers outside of people´s houses, which is super pretty.

well, that´s all i have time for this week. sorry i can´t write more, but i still have to write president and i only have 10 more minutes. uh oh! i´ll try and make sure to take time to send pics next time too. thanks for sending me so many pictures in your emails! they´re so fun to look at.

love you!

-hermana wright