Si Vas Para Chile...: 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