February 16, 2016

So last week for p-day I got a haircut. After looking for someone to give me a haircut for an hour we finally found a place. The guy that was cutting hair was South African and I thought that was great because he spoke English. But apparently even though he has been cutting hair for something like 20 years mine was a challenge haha. He was cutting my hair and it looked kinda weird and I thought I´d get over it and it was fine, whatever. But then, he tried to shave my eyebrows or something and I had to bail haha. He also used gel to spike my hair straight up. Overall I looked pretty goofy after that.

Lately we´ve had a problem with letting stray dogs onto the compound after exercises and yesterday we were walking in and this dog started running to try and get in so I like stiff legged it to stop it. It worked pretty well until the gate guy opened the gate even more and the dog got around. So we had this crazy dog just running around the compound so it was pretty funny. But it´s ok because this morning we only let in three dogs so don't worry haha. 

So we're learning stuff in Spanish that I don't know in English . I know all of my high school English teachers would be pretty disappointed. I felt like I was decent at English before I came but I guess not.

So an Elder from Argentina told me a riddle. He also looks like a Latino Jake Gyllenhal (I don´t know if that´s how you spell it). But anyways here it is: I have 200 chairs and 150 monkeys. How many chairs I have? You guys might be able to get the answer next week but whoever answers it with the correct reasoning gets a prize. 

So this past Sunday was valentine´s day, and I wore my pink tie. Sadly I did not get a picture but you will have to take my word for it. Some other Elders in my district gave me some valentines so don't worry I was taken care of. 

Also today for pday we all went and got matching ties for everyone in our district. We'll get a picture for next week but we look pretty fresh . 

 For our culturally diverse experience today we went to McDonald's and got fries. It was pretty great and they tasted pretty similar to North American fries.

So this week I was thinking a lot more about eternal perspective. I think if we could really understand how minuscule this life is compared to the rest of eternity, we would live a lot differently. So this week I don't have any sweet quotes but just try to shift to a focus on the eternal perspective and think if your decisions are bringing you closer or farther to God and then adjust. I know if we focus on bringing ourselves closer to God then everything else in our lives will fall into place where it needs to be. 

 

Also, lastly, this is my last email from the MTC and I'm not sure what will happen next week because I will be in the field. So I might only have time to just email back that I get here. If that's the case love you guys and good luck!

 

 

Elder Cheney

February 9, 2016

Just to start off I want to let you know that if you ever show a Latino that you know any Spanish they will talk as fast as possible. It's not a joke they actually talk so fast that I'm not sure if they actually are using real words anymore. But Spanish is going great.

Also I want you guys to know the stress that goes into every single letter. I have an hour to write and put a week of activities into one letter. It is probably the most stressful hour every week. I just hope you guys appreciate the letters for the gold they are.

So I got sick this week for my birthday haha. One of the elders in my room was sick and I´m pretty sure I got some Colombian strain of a cold. It's fine though because my companion's mom gave him a pharmacy so he had me covered. I'm still recovering but it's just a runny nose now. Being sick is not as fun when you can't just lay around all day.

Also on my birthday I guess someone told the zone leaders so before we started personal study they sang happy birthday to me. I wasn't really paying attention so they said my name and I thought they were calling on me to give a prayer so I stood up and everyone started singing happy birthday to me. It was pretty embarassing , but luckily they made me give the prayer after that anyways. Also the sisters in my district gave me some Chilean candy so it was a pretty dope birthday.

One of the Elders in my room wanted to learn some English (The same one that infected me) and he likes Rocky so I taught him "How you doin'?" As in "How you doin' Adrian?" So he went around all day saying that to everyone he saw. It was really funny but he started saying to all the sisters too. I told him not too but it's fine.

Going along with that, for one of the devotionals on Sunday we practiced helping all the Latinos say the apostles names with a North American accent. It was pretty funny because names like "Christofferson" and "Uchtdorf" don't come very naturally.

I don't know how many of you have seen the Scott Sterling video on YouTube but that was me in soccer today. I don't know what it was but for some reason the ball was really attracted to my face. I caught it straight to the face about 3 or 4 times, I can't remember because I have a concussion haha, just kidding. But yeah I won't be goalie for a little bit.

Also I learned a magic trick from one of my teachers. So I can make a coin disappear at the snap of a finger. It's probably the most useful thing I've learned so far haha. But it is pretty sweet and if you guys are lucky I'll show you in two years.

Sundays at the MTC are pretty sweet because it's just a bunch of classes and devotionals that are usually in English. Next week we go with the Latinos becuase we'll be 5 and 6 weekers. But the devotionals are always super awesome and they are recordings from the Provo MTC so it's usually an apostle. Also we get massive breaks which is awesome (By massive I mean like ten extra minutes in between classes).

So all the Latinos left and the Gringo district right above us too. I was actually pretty sad. I'm going to miss them but they are all going to go out there and kill it. We'll be getting a new group on Wednesday. It is 30 Latinos and no Gringos so that will be interesting.

This week I want to share a quote from Elder Henry B. Eyring. He says "When my body begs for rest and I'm tempted to look to something other than my duty, I say REMEMBER HIM!" I really like this quote because I'm tired a lot haha and it's really easy to say "Oh I worked hard, I deserve a break" but really no matter how much we work or how much we serve we are always in debt to the Lord. We can't repay it back no matter how much we try. We should always be striving to go the extra mile and be a good representative of Jesus Christ. And by being a representative of Jesus Christ we need to do what He did, say what He said, and go where He went. I encourage all of you to try and see where you can improve to be a better example of Jesus Christ or step up and serve someone else better. I know that if we all do this we will be happier and more satisfied in our lives.

That's a wrap for the fourth week in the MTC!!

Love you guys,

Elder Cheney

 

 

February 2, 2016

First off I want to start with one of the weirder experiences I have ever had. We were on break so we were standing outside and this guy outside the gate comes up and starts talking to us. He lived in the U.S. for like 10 years so he could speak really good English. He starts to talk about how Chile was Heaven. We were like yea it's a nice place, and he said no it is literally Heaven. We were super confused but he said if you take the letters of Chile and put the H at the end and circle it it makes cielo, which is Heaven in Spanish. He had little pieces of paper and had a whole diagram of it. And an H in Hebrew has something to do with a star and what country has a single star in their flag? That's right, Chile. We were all super sketched out and then he handed us more paper with the names of the people who had been reincarnated. These were actual people and he said they were the reincarnation of John the Baptist, Mary Magdalene, Joseph, and Mary. So I said "Thanks but we gotta go back to class." So we left but it was super weird and I´m pretty sure the guy was crazy but it's a good story for the letter home.

Last week for p-day we got empanadas and they were super good. I think I have some pictures. We went back to the same place and got some more today. For some reason today we had p-day before we wrote our families.

So a new group came in and there are so many of them. There were like 50 new people. So everything is crazy and we have 6 people in our room now. It makes it a lot tougher to shower but they are all pretty good guys. They are all Latinos too so it's a lot more charades and whatnot. One of them told me I don't look like a Gringo so I'm feeling pretty confident that I can blend in down here. 

So this week our district decided to do an English fast one day. We were not supposed to speak English all day, only Spanish. That lasted until about before dinner. Turns out it is a little harder to speak a foreign language than we thought. But we´re going to try again sometime. 

A funny story: one of our teachers is engaged and he was talking about how they met and whatnot. He is extremely Chileno and he said "I was a young man and she was a girl man." And we all died laughing. 

Another Elder that is in my room from Argentina told me how whenever they don't know anything in English they add "shun" to the end of the word. So cama is bed in Spanish so they would say "camashun."I thought that was pretty funny. (Side note from Daniel's mom:  This is so funny, because I remember Daniel's Grandma Money "speaking" Spanish after a trip to Mexico by putting an o on the end of every word.  Like, "Let's go for a ride-o in the car-o."  : )

So we had a movie night because I convinced our teacher to let us watch the District. We got to watch a couple episodes and they were pretty funny because it's a lot easier to see what they are doing wrong. 

We played soccer with the Latinos today for the first time and we did Gringos v. Latinos. It turns out this group is a lot better than the last one and they play as a team. We, as Gringos, do neither of those things so we got walloped. It was fun though and I think we're going to play basketball tomorrow so I'll have to show them what's what. 

We are going to the temple after we email you guys so I'm super excited for that and it will be good to take a break. Then back to classes haha. We have around 12 hours of classes a day.

This week I read from Jesus the Christ and I read a quote that I really liked. I think sometimes that we get too full of ourselves or think we know how to do something, but without Jesus Christ we are just dust. The quote says "The need of a redeemer lies in the inability of man to raise himself from the temporal to the spiritual plane, from the lower kingdom to the higher." We can't do anything, no matter how bad we want it or will it, to save ourselves. By our nature we are incapable of doing that. That is why we need someone that knows more than us, is stronger than us, and better than us. Without Jesus Christ we would die and that's it. So I think it´s good to get some perspective and realize that we can't do it on our own. We need help.

 

Love you guys and thanks for all the birthday wishes!

Elder Cheney

 

Empanadas!!!

The Santiago Temple

The Mall

A haircut place that caters to Elders

This guy

Doing the Lord's work. . .

American food