I Hate the Neighbors

This Wednesday, we got to go to Melipilla for our multi zone conference. That was pretty fun. It’s always fun being on and off buses all day with a whole bunch of missionaries. Melipilla is the sector right before the coast, so it’s all country (like Idaho!) It’s really pretty! The conference was really good. As a mission we are learning about teaching with the poder y autoridad (power and authority) that we have! It’s really interesting. It’s kind of hard too because it’s sort of hard to measure! But Hna Vilches and I have seen the difference as we have applied it, because this week, we were able to have five investigators at church with us! As we’ve tried to invite people to make commitments, remembering that we have the authority to call these people to repentance, people have really been keeping the commitments they make! We have two investigators especially who are really progressing. One’s name is Kernizan, he is Hattian! He’s really cool because he has a lot A LOT of faith. The struggle with the Haitians is always that they can’t understand why they need to be baptized again. Kernizan came to church last week, so we really wanted to have a fecha (baptismal date) with him. As we invited, we realized that we were going to have that same struggle! But through the help of the spirit, we were able to help him understand, and now he is preparing to be baptized on the 13 of Oct!! Our other awesome investigator is Kattia, also Hattian! She’s pregnant, and she’s been really hard to understand. She’s never felt ready to go to church, and all of a sudden, this week she decided she was ready! So on Sunday, we went and got her. She was sooo pretty! And she said she loved the church and she can’t wait to come back! on Sunday night, we went to visit her, and she gave us Hattian food. It was so good!! It’s good because it was just chicken and rice, but it actually had flavor! ha-ha It’s a miracle! Then we sat there and watched soccer and listened to music and creole with them. They were having a really intense conversation in creole about something. I didn’t catch much, but I did enjoy trying! We met a Haitian this week who didn’t speak much Spanish, or English, but he did speak Portuguese. So I took a step of faith, prayed for the gift of tongues, and started teaching in Portuguese!! The gift of tongues is real you guys!! 

In our sector, there’s an old microbus that some people hollowed out and turned into a restaurant, the kind of food that here in Chile is called "comida chatarra"  or rather, garbage food, or fast food. Hna Vilches and I went once this week. We love eating there, but we can’t afford it and we don’t want to weigh 1000 pounds, so we never go. This week, we were a little bit crazy with hambre (hunger) so we went for it, ha-ha it was fun! 

On Saturday night, our neighbors decided to have a party.... all. night. long. The problem is that parties in Latino America involve having your music as loud as it will go, and drinking a lot of alcohol. The other problem is that in Chile, the houses are really close to together, so much so that our neighbor’s house and ours share a wall. So we can hear everything. They were outside in their backyard, and their music was so strong that my wall, right by my head goes when I sleep, was shaking..... until 4:30. I didn’t sleep at all. At 4:30, I was over it, so I decided to turn on the lights, and open the curtains where you can see directly into their backyard. I stood there in the window where I knew they could see me for 20 minutes, until they saw me. then I motioned "hola... la hora.... puedo escuchar.... bajen el volumen..." I did that about ten times, but they were all so drunk, they couldn’t figure it out. Finally, the fourteen year old girl who wasn’t drunk figured it out and turned it down just a tiny bit...Hna Vilches and I just made ourselves a nice little fruit salad and sat down on her bad and talked about life... that would be the exact moment this week when I figured out that I have no idea what I’m gonna do with my life, and I’m going home in like six months... so I’m really looking forward to general conference so that the prophets can tell me what to do with my life! But anyway, on Saturday night I slept a grand total of two hours.. and in Chile, calling the cops isn’t thing you can do....  so that’s fun, but hey it’s over. 

Today in the morning we invited all of the Hnas from the zone to come over and eat breakfast with us! It was pretty fun!! 

This Saturday, we have an investigator who’s getting married Pics to come!! 

Love Hna Stanley