1st Area: San Felipe !

Elder King with new companion/trainer Elder Chung from Peru. 

I am in Los Andes!  Somewhat.. it's a town called San Felipe!  It's awesome :) It's a smaller town.  My companion and trainer is again way awesome!  His name is Elder Chung.  He is from Peru, but knows English really well!  I was asked how my Spanish was in my meeting with the president and how I would feel about having a companion who's native language is Spanish but knows pretty good English, and I welcomed the challenge!   He is extremely sarcastic and hilarious!  We get along really well :)   The apartment we live in is more of a house!  We share it with 2 other missionaries!  One from Logan, Utah and the other from Peru as well!  We all are really good friends already! Our house is nothing extremely fancy but not poor either!  We have what we need except... it doesn't have heating!!! So we have to use portable heaters.   Only one can be used at once because it uses too much electricity so it flips the fuse when we have the lights on and the two heaters on... so during personal study in the morning we have to keep switching off having the heater on in our room!   The earthquake last week was AWESOME!  We only felt the after shocks of it and the others were a little scared but I was over flowing with excitement!  They all looked at me so funny!   I had to explain that we don't have anything like this in Utah.  The work is EXTREMELY hard both mentally and physically!  I come home every day completely exhausted from trying to translate everything and the miles and miles that we walk each day.  Check out the giant hot dog!!!  They are called Italianos and they are amazing!  It's a foot long hot dog with avocado, mayo, ketchup, and a spicy sauce that I love.  Easily my favorite food down here by far!

Enjoying an Italiano hot dog.  My favorite food in Chile!

Last Week in the Chile M.T.C.!

A group picture of all of the elders and sister missionaries staying at the mission house called Alcantra with the mission couple Brother and Sister Gilbert on the left side front row.  Elder Jordan King is on the back row, second from the right.

Hey guys!   Yeah, the weeks and days are flying by!  It seems like just yesterday that we were just arriving and now we only have a week left!  We have so much going on this week that it will fly by as well and before we know it we will be in the field!  I also found out that empenadas are amazing!!! It's a really popular food down here in Chile!  Its like a really amazingly good hot pocket!  This week for one of our classes we get to go ride the metro and learn about how to use it!  When we do that we will head into the heart of Santiago!  We got our new roommates!  They are awesome!  Elder Medina from Argentina and Elder Condor from Peru.  They are hilarious!  We have lots of fun hanging around and talking with them!  We went contacting twice this week.  It is much easier than we thought once we relax and just talk to people, and now I'm excited to be able to do it a lot more!   Since we go into the field on Tuesday next week and p days in the field are on Monday, you guys won't hear from me till the week after next week...  but love and miss you guys sooo much!!!  Things are great here and I love it:)

Week 4: Pero Nosotros Son Gringos de Utah! Nosotros No Sabamos Frio!

New Spanish Scriptures!

  We only have 2 weeks left in the MTC!  This week we move up into Spanish only for the remainder or our stay in the MTC, and the investigators are really difficult so we have to work pretty hard with them!   The weather is amazing here!   Usually not a cloud in the sky and it feels about 60 degrees or so.  Haha we love the weather!   Everybody else is cold though... pero nosotros son gringos de Utah! nosotros no sabamos frio!  Everybody thinks the house we are staying in is haunted!  The cold water keeps getting turned off somehow.  The knobs to turn it off are pretty difficult to get to and nobody is owning up to turning it off.  A few weeks ago, a girl couldn't sleep for like a week because she said she felt a "presence"watching her the entire time.  It was way creepy! I bought some scriptures in Spanish, and a Spanish hymn book, and today I bought a Libro de Mormon book so I can keep that one in its own case.  The books are weird here! They don't have quads. The Bible is separate and the b.o.m., pearl, and D&C are in a triple combo!  My new case is way cool though! It has a llama on it :) hahaha  I'll send a picture home!  Oh, and today during our P day we got insulted for the first time!!  It was awesome!  As we walked past, this guy yells in perfect English, which was weird... but he yelled, ¨Go back to Utah!¨ hahaha...We all just laughed because it was pretty funny!   Love you all and miss you guys!! Can't wait to hear from you and talk to you again next week :) Things are amazing here and I love every minute of this experience!  -Elder ¨ Rey ¨