La Semana Santa‏

Ok to answer some quick questions. Yes you can Email me, but i can only send one email home a month to someone outside of my family so feel free to email me anything, but more often then not i´ll just reply using actual letters, because there is a ton of hoops i have to jump through to email home. But yes you can email me. My email is Hamilton.Crockett@myldsmail.net

Ok part two of my story from last week. My lesson with the family went late, and i was later than i promised i would be back. Being a man on my word though i return to the police station, to find the officer who let me go outside washing all of the cars, and was now without any of his weapons. And so i go and i talk to him, and we start talking, and he didn´t have much time to read the restoration pamphlet. So at this point he still doesn´t know anything about the church. So we start talking to him some more when another police officer walk outside and seeing us, and just starts yelling! And i could not understand anything he said, but the officer who we were just talking to said something to him and he walked away, he then went inside with him, and asked us to come with him. So we are chillin in the police station when Officer Saul, one who let us go, leaves into a room, and comes back about 15 mins later and is no longer in police clothes, and just tells us hey it´s all good we can go. And then officers to take us out to dinner. Now in normal circumstances we should say no. But who knows how much he went through for us so we said sure. And while we were eating dinner I bring up the pamphlet of the restoration that we gave him. And we bust it out and start to talk about it....

More next week hhahaha

So i totally forgot that yesterday was my birthday. In fact one of the members told me about it (the entire town freakin knows everything about me!, even the people i´ve never talked to prior, who are not even members.) But i was in sunday school teaching the Gospel Doctrines class,and i was teaching about the Life of Christ, when one of the sisters in the ward says Elder ClarkKent (no one here knows how to pronounce Crockett, and they all think i look like superman so a bunch of people call me that) (I knew people said that in America all the time but shoot apparently i look like him here too in Chile) Isn´t today your birthday? I stop my lesson for a second to ask what day it was, and she said the 31st. And then i said Yup. It is. But back to my lesson... And i just got back to teaching. And honestly i forgot about my birthday pretty much the rest of the day. I would say that someone cooked me some awesome Chilean birthday meal, but that would be a lie haha The Sister who is paid to prepare me food is stuff in out of town for the holiday, so in her house she left a bunch of raw food, and a note that told me the directions to cool it. So i still got to eat some legit Chilean food, but i had to cook it haha But i was super excited about it because it was the first time i got to cook for myself here in Chile. And i wish i had the time too cook but i dont haha I get home in time to do my planning and eat a bowl of cereal or a piece of bread and then go to bed. Same thing in the mornings.

On top of my normal super busy scheduled this week has just been crazy for me. I had some degree of a meeting every single day this week except for Saturday, and so my teaching numbers where terrible this week because i had to travel all around Chile. I had to go up to Valdivia like 2 times this week for meetings. Once because i was to take my companion to the hospital (story for another time haha) and buy him medication. And i had to go to Osorno once to talk to the Mission President, and oh my goodness i have4 spent more time on buses this week than i think i have walking because of all the cities i´ve had to travel too. One would think that a missionary who is in his first transfer would have less meeting to go to. And talking to other missionaries from different sectors they have no idea why i have so many meetings it doesn´t even make sense.

But one meeting that i was super excited to have this week was one about dividing the sector so we could have the Sister missionaries come to Paillaco. I had a meeting with the APs earlier that day in Valdivia so i drove with them back to Paillaco where we met up with the branch president and our zone leaders. And i showed them the map of Paillaco, and told them where i think the safest area is for the sister missionaries to live and work in, and then the branch president confirmed what isaid and just said it with more details. And So we where all talking about which areas are safest for the Hermanas to live in, when my zone leader asks my companion Elder Larsen ¨How do you feel about living here (points to the area we will be living) because from what i understand it´s not to safest area, and the little gang activity there is in Paillaco all of it is going to be in the secot you will be working¨Then nonchalantly Elder Larson replies Öh it will be fine! I haven´t been robbed sense Elder Crockett has gotten here. The Chileans just haven´t ever seen anyone as big as him before and so no one wants to mess with us. Even the pastors who would yell at us on a regular basis hide when they see us walking down the down the street. This has been the most tranquil time in my mission that i´ve ever had!¨ And so without a second though they said alright cool you get all the dangerous sectors. Hahahaha

Since then i´ve been working a lot more in the area i´m going to be in and it is just going fantastic. In the past missionaries have kind of avoided being up there and stayed in the south end of the city where it is safer, not that it´s dangerous, my personal opinion is i just think they were lazy, but i´ll rant about that another time. But i have found a couple of people who have clearly have been prepared to receive the gospel. There was one man who came up to me. And when i first saw him he was leaning up against a corner or a building around of bunch of people who generally just ask for me for money. Which until just Today i have literally had None. That´s not even an exaggeration. And we aren´t aloud to give money away anyway, but that's beside the point. But he comes up to me and starts talking to me and the first thing he says is ¨I recognize you as a man of Jesus (makes more sense in spanish) and i want to be like you. He then tells me this story about how his wife and all of his children are all dead. And how mad he was at God for letting something so terrible happen to his family. And one day he was in his front yard praying for help when he saw me (And i totally remember this part it was only like a week ago, because i saw him praying so i decided i was going to go talk to him) and he didn´t want to talk to me so he went inside and hid from us. And i went up to his door and knocked but he wouldn´t answer. So after a couple of mins i walked away. And he told me how he watched me walk away out his window, and how terrible he felt. Because he knew he was praying for help. And then saw me come along, and recognized me as a person who claims to teach about Jesus Christ, but then ran away because he knew i was coming to help him. And how he thought that he blew his chance. But then when he saw me again he knew God hadn´t given up on him.

I wish i had time to keep writing but i already went over my time. Love you all!