November 13, 2012

Okay, so this week has been a little more of a downer week.  Me and my companion have not been getting along very well.  Mostly because he tends to insult me when he is trying to help me, but I can take some of the blame too in not being very patient.  But oh well.   It is amazing that how you treat other people can have such a huge impact on how you feel yourself.  I think it's cause your actions reflect your emotions, as well as your emotions reflect your actions.  So change one of them and both are going to be affected.  I know from experience, especially here in the mission, that the way that someone treats you can make you feel so much better or so much worse.  It is so refreshing when we meet someone who isn't completely rude.

Things with the mission work are going pretty well.  We don´t have as many investigators as we have had before, but we are really focusing on the investigators that we do have to get them progressing.  Right now we are really focusing on three people.  Janis, whose baptism is planned for this next week, but she has been having problems with the word of wisdom, so we may have to push it back a week or two.  But she is awesome and still progressing.  We don´t know yet who is going to do the baptism and confirmation.  Her boyfriend left because she told him if he wanted to be there he couldn't do drugs anymore.  A man named Juan that is super awesome.  He loves the Book of Mormon and learning about the church.  And a girl named Francisca   She is only 12 but her mom is an inactive member who served a mission and everything.  She is amazing and the girls in the ward really made friends with her this past Sunday.  It is great to see people progressing in the gospel and the change that it can have in their lives.

Lets see... I don´t know what else.  I guess I don´t know if you all knew this, but we don´t speak English at all, except with the president's wife cause she doesn't speak Spanish.  It's because there are so many native missionaries that it would exclude them if we spoke English.   I don´t know why, but the native missionaries don´t really have a drive to learn English.  They know it could totally change their lives, but they just don´t do it.

I had my mom send me the weekly weather forecast cause we have no way of knowing what the weather is going to be like.  It is really nice to actually know how hot it is.  It feels so much hotter than 87 degrees.  Wow.  But we can never cool down either.  There is no air conditioning anywhere.  It is also humid here.  It was funny when I first opened my scriptures here, the pages started to curl up because of the humidity.  So yeah, that doesn't help how hot we feel either.  I'm jealous hearing about your big snow storm there.

I don´t really having any more for now.  Love you all!

Elder Michael Knapp

November 5, 2012

Hey ya'll!!!  so another week has come and gone.  Well... not much has happened... hmm...

This week has been lots of work.  ¡estamos sacando la mugre!  Yeah for those of you that don't understand, that means, we are taking out the trash.  Kind of a weird phrase in missionary work considering we are actually bringing people to baptism, but still.  Think of it as we are taking the trash out of people lives?  Yeah, let's go with that one.  haha.  We have been working really hard.

It is really hot here.  I am jealous of all of you that have winter right now.  It has been like 32 degrees Celsius this past week.  I don't know what that is in Fahrenheit, but it is really hot.

This past week Janis finally decided she is ready to be baptized.  She will be baptized on the 18th!  Woot!  Finally!  She is so awesome.  We had a family night with her and another family from the ward last night and it was so much fun.  I'm so excited that she is finally ready.

Other than that, it has been fine here.  Me and my companion argued a bit, but what do you expect when you are with someone 24/7, and you are outside boiling for most of the day.  haha.  But we are cool now.  Not really anything else to report.  I guess I will talk a little bit about random stuff here.  The most common street food is completos/italianos.  It is basically a hot dog with diced tomato (lots), palta... (I don't remember the name in English ..), oh yeah, guacamole (lots), and mayonnaise (quite a bit),  and ketchup and mustard if you want it.  Pretty much every place has completos.

One more random fact is that the people always greet each other by giving besos, a kiss on the cheek.  Except for one man to another, unless they are family.  It is really funny because the girls always try and give us besos, but we can't as missionaries so we always have to say, "disculpe, solo podemos saludar con la mano como missionaros", or sorry we can only greet you with the hand (direct translation is kinda odd), but yeah.  So we have a lot of really awkward situations with that.

All the new missionaries going out is crazy.  They are opening an MTC-like place here for our mission alone to handle the new missionaries.  So they will leave straight from the U.S. to the mission to be trained.  They are doing that in a lot of other missions too.  That is their first plan to be able to handle all the missionaries.


That's all for now.  ¡Chao!

¬Elder Michael Knapp

October 29, 2012

20 years old!

Wow, I'm not a teenager anymore.  How weird is that?  Seems like just yesterday that we were all back in junior high or high school.  Those were some really good times, when we didn't have to worry about anything but school and stupid drama that was usually our own fault anyway, haha.  But we are all grown up now. How weird is that.

Well, this week was definitely .. different.  It started out amazing.  I was in a trio with Elder Metcalf (my old companion) and Elder Soto (my new companion).  It was so amazing the energy and excitement that was always there.  We had an amazing week with all the teaching and contacting that we did.  It was also weird how much success we had when we had so many other things going on.  We lost about a day and a half, if not two days, worth of work because we had so much stuff going on.  One day, I had some post training in the mission home and Elder Metcalf had a conference with all the missionaries that were leaving.  Another day, Elder Metcalf had an interview at the mission home, and then on another day we had to take him to the mission office when he was leaving.  It was crazy.  But we had more success this week than any other week so far.  It just shows how much potential there is.  Friday, Elder Metcalf finished his mission here in Santiago.  It was really sad to say goodbye.  He became a really good friend of mine.  I will always remember the things that I learned from him.  Saturday was my birthday!  Woo!  It started out really good, with opening my package from my mom. I had luckily gotten the package on Friday when we took Elder Metcalf to the mission office.  Normally I wouldn't have gotten it until the next Tuesday.  After that I kind of forgot that it was my birthday until the night time.  Haha.  But it was still a really good birthday.  One of the members baked a cake for me on Friday too. :)  Not much else happened.  Just a lot of teaching.  We found a lot of new investigators too.

One new investigator we found by a member of the ward who invited her boyfriend to come listen the lessons with us.  There are so many opportunities for missionary work as members.  Please, please, please, always be looking for them.  They are there, you just don't realize it.  Also, I am going to recount an experience that Janis (an investigator) had.  She went to church one Sunday a few weeks back and not a single person talked to her.  She knew people at church, she sat with them the time before when she when to church.  We told people to go talk to her and all they did was say hi.  She felt horrible after that experience and almost stopped letting us teach her.  I want to share a little of what I learned from this experience, because I didn't know this before my mission either.  There are people that go to church all the time that are investigators, that stop going because of the members.  I just have a little bit to say about this.  WATCH FOR THOSE PEOPLE IN CHURCH, and go and talk to them.  Become their friends.  It doesn't matter if they are dressed weird or not like everyone else, because let me tell you something, a lot of people don't have dressy clothes like we wear to church.  Something that I read in a talk said, those who really understand the Atonement and its significance will do all they can to share the gospel. All I have left to say is, please, watch for these opportunities, and have the confidence to act.

A little bit about my new companion, his name is Elder Soto and he is from Peru.  He is super awesome and an absolutely amazing teacher.  I'm so excited to get to serve with him and learn from him.   Everything it good here with me.  I'm happy and we are working hard.  Hope you are all well!

¬Elder Michael Knapp