"MY MISSION IS LITERALLY THE BEST!!!"

    

Does she looked entertained or annoyed?

The first update from Elder Colvin in Chile was a bit disjointed, so I will attempt to summarize for him.   The flight was uneventful with the exception that his carry on bag was over weight and he had to pay overage fees on it. (who weighs a carry on bag?) But at least all of his luggage made it there and they actually arrived early at the mission office.  He did mention that he tried and failed to place a Book of Mormon in the airport. He took several pictures on the bus ride to the mission office.

      The president, President Cook, planned a great welcome/training meeting for the 16 arriving elders and 1 sister. Elder Colvin was blown away by his well organized, enthusiastic, spiritual, personable President.  He said, "basically he is the bomb!"  We are equally if not more impressed especially when we received the weekly newsletter in our email today.  WOW! This president is amazing.  We got to read his message to the missionaries, spotlights on a few of the missionaries, a conversion story, photos and description of a community service project that the mission work on, and a little blurb about the incoming and outgoing missionaries.  It was really informative and had a great calming affect on us.  Elder Colvin was assigned to an American companion, Elder Soulier from Colorado.  He is very impressed with his companion who he describes as "tall, smart, exceptionally kind, and very dedicated to the work."
      Some of the rules that he mentioned includes that he gets 1 1/2 hours to email on Wednesdays, he will be given a DVD player to show movies to investigators, he is allowed to look at his missionary siblings blogs on his p-day so that he can keep up with them. In his mission, the workday starts at 7:30 and ends at 11:30. (this is thrilling news for him since this matches his normal schedule.)  Another great thing is that if we ask permission we can travel within one hour of our mission boundaries. 

      He loves Santiago already even though the Spanish in Chile is nothing like he learned in the CCM in Mexico.  He thinks that he can figure out how to drop the "s" sound within a couple of weeks. He says that so far he does not feel any culture shock.  The city is pretty modern and western with the exception that houses are poorly heated. He is grateful for his coat!  His first day there involved 40 hours of work with only a 3 hour power nap on a plane. He was thrilled to have his first package from home waiting for him when he arrived especially because it was full of sugar that helped him survive his first day. 
     His housing situation is comfortable despite the fact that they do not have closets.  He fried his alarm clock and is relying on his little cheap phone to wake him up in the morning. He says that he is "totally fine except a fence attacked my face today."  There are no other details about that, so we will just have to wait another week to learn about that story. 

Elder Colvin said that this picture was taken right after arriving and before he had a chance to put everything away. Yeah...that's his story.  I just hope his companion is a patient guy.

September 23, 2014

         Today was crazy!  After a long 40 hours of traveling and teaching, I am beat!  The people here are great and my trainer, Elder Soulier, is awesome.  After tons of meetings, he and I changed and went tracting.  It was a tad cold, but one sweater solved the problem.  After lots of meeings I feel full of excitement, but I don’t understand Chileans.  There was on particularly long-winded man who was straight up unintelligible.