"Labor all your days" in Santiago Chile: Week Two and the Game of "If You Step in the Poop, You Lose!"

Ok. I realize that the subject to this email is rather weird but I´ll explain it. Here in Renca there are TONS of dogs and because these dogs just live in the street there is doggie poop everywhere. Because of this Elder Bullock and I like to play a game that we call the "if you step in poop you lose." The rules are pretty simple. If you step in poop, you lose. We´ve been playing this game since day one and neither of us lost until the other day. It had just rained and I stepped on the smallest dot of what I thought was mud... I was wrong... Luckily it wasn´t a lot but I don´t like to lose! It´s ok though I am determined to win round two!

Alright so on to my week! So Monday was my first p-day and not p-hours and it was freaking awesome! We had 8 stinking hours to do stuff. We did our grocery shopping and some cleaning and we went to play some fútbol (soccer) and mail letters. Unfortunately the only place to mail letters in my sector is this Chile Xpress place and it is only for super important documents. Because of this it costs like 20 mil per letter! That´s like 40 dollars a letter! No thank you... So I will be sending my letters home today because we got permission to leave the sector. Anyways, fútbol was super fun but it was freaking hot outside! We ended our p-day with weekly planning but we only have an hour and a half to do it! That is kind of hard. But it was awesome to get on the same page and have goals for the week. That night we swung by Chano´s and just talked for a quick second because he was watching a movie. AFterwards we finally got to talk with Brian who is Patricio and Fallons son. He is the newest convert in the ward. He plays rugby and is pretty much a stud. He and I are gonna be buds.

So Tuesday morning I got to read Kirstens email cause I can print stuff off now and a talk called "Being a consecrated missionary." It is seriously the coolest talk ever and it got me super motivated and provided some great advice on how to become the type of missionary I want to be. So during companionship study we got a killer plan together for all of the lessons that we played to teach that day and we literally didn´t get to teach ANY of those lessons. All of our plans seemed to fall to pot. It was still an AWESOME day though! We were in great spirits the whole time and I exceeded my goal for contacts that day and it felt so good! Unfortunately one of the appointments that fell through was with my first contact Nancho. We found him that night stumbling around pretty drunk. He said something made him sad so he started to drink wine. It was really sad for me to see do that because I know our message can help him. We found out later this week that he got kicked out of his sisters house for some reason and everytime we see him he´s hanging around with some pretty sketchy people... Unfortunately I don´t think that we are gonna be able to continue teaching him. So my final contact that Sunday was a guy that seemed normal but the second I started talking to him I realized that he was pretty drunk. It was kind of funny because he said "I don´t have a lot of faith and God but I have a lot respect for him so I´m not gonna talk about him while I´m drunk." The really funny thing was that we went to one of the houses on the ward list and guess who answered the door.. Yup it was that guy and he wasn´t drunk but he didn´t want to talk with us. Maybe another day! This was a really long day because we didn´t eat dinner at our usual time of 6:30 because we had an appointment to eat with Alex and Carola. It´s super awesome because they call there late night meal once which is kind of like elevensies from Lord of the Rings. They had frozen on in spanish on the TV and it took every ounce of my concentration to not watch it. But from the little that I heard lets just say it´s not the same in Spanish. A very long day ended well with a super cool lesson over "hamburgers" with Alex and Carola.

Wednesday Morning we had our district class. My districts super awesome and helpful with my Spanish I like them a lot. We also got we call the "caja feliz" which means happy box. It has all the letters and what not from the office. I was expected a box from my family but unfortunately it didn´t get here this week. It´ll be here next week though! So after that we had lunch with the Asavedo family. It was super good but she also cooked some shellfish stuff and it´s a mission rule that we can´t eat that. Luckily she had also made all sorts of meat so it was all good but I felt kind of bad because she worked hard on that. But I know we will be blessed for being obedient. After lunch we got our laundry from the lady that does it. She even irons our stuff it´s a pretty legit system! We´re spoiled. That afternoon we talked with some less actives and helped one of the sisters with her english homework. That was fun. That night we visisted Chano and we had eggs and bread and this coffee stuff that´s not coffee called ecco. I didn´t like it very much. It´s made out of some wheat stuff I think.

So Thursday morning we were kind of worried because nobody could get a hold of Elder Larson and Elder Prince the night before. They are the other Elders in our ward. Luckily we saw them at lunch the next day and everything was all good their phone just wasn´t working. We had a lot of contacts in the morning but most of them practically ran away saying "NO, NO, NO." It´s ok we´ll get em next time. We had a cool lesson with Brian about the temple and the spirit was super strong. I sure hope he goes soon! After that we visted Alex and Carola and had a lesson on the ten commandments. It was a tougher day on Thursday because I was just tired and I was having a tough time understanding everything but it´s ok cause we still worked hard!

So on Friday we didn´t sit down once when we were outside of the house. Yup not a single lesson all day. We just walked and walked and walked. It reminded me about that primary song about the pioneers. But after dinner we killed it with contacts! We met this guy named Jose Luis and he is super awesome. We´re gonna go visit with him tomorrow so hopefully we can be successful in that endeavor.

Ok so Saturday was a killer day! We started off by cleaning the Chapel. It was in pretty rough shape but we worked super hard and left it practically spotless. It felt so good to clean it and just to serve the people of our ward. After that something weird started going on with my upper left part of my back. I felt something kind move funny and then move back. This happened while we were getting ready to go to coordination and lunch with the Paraguez family. I was a little bit preoccupied with what was going on with my back and finally I just prayed and I was able to relax and just focus on the work. We went to Patricios after lunch and read a chapter of the Book of Mormon with him which was cool because it was 2 Nephi 2 which is an awesome chapter. We had fun with Martin as well. We started copying him while he was tapping his foot and he decided to see our commitment to our copying him. He started going crazy and we did our best to follow. He´s super awesome. And they found a sign language school for him!!! WE had a cool lesson with Brandon after about the restoration. We felt like he needed a little bit of a reminder and motivation to read the Book of Mormon. The spirit was super strong and in the middle of a lesson there was a legit earthquake! Like everything was shaking pretty hard. We found out later that it was a 6.6! Technically that´s just a really strong tremor because an earthquake is considered a 7 or higher but dang that sucker was strong so I´m calling it an earthquake! It was pretty awesome. That night we had a lesson about the plan of salvation with Alex and Carola to try and get them ready for our lesson on the Law of Chastity with them. They aren´t married so that needs to happen before they can get baptized. It was an AMAZING lesson. I´m serious the spirit was super super strong and they committed to come to church!

Sunday morning was awesome. EVERYONE that we invited to church came. That is Brandon (less active), Brian and Patricio (recent converts), Chano (less active), and Alex (investigator) and Carola (less active) and there son Felipe! The rest of the day Elder Bullock was a little frustrated because all of our appointments fell through. I was too a little I guess. But after dinner on our way to Alex and Carola´s I just felt like I should bear my testimony too him and I finished right as we got there. WE had a super cool lesson about Helaman 5:12 and we had some hot chocolate and just talked. Both of us are super energetic and the day ended great. Alex and Carola invite us over pretty much every night now! And on the 4th of September they want to feed both sets of missionaries for lunch! They are so getting baptized!!!

This was kind of a weird week but it sure ended really well! Here´s the quote for the week! "True Christianity is love in action" David O. McKay. I love that quote! And I love all of you! Take care!

Elder Shell