Elder Holt's in Chile: Week 9 Preparations for the party

Hello my Fans from Home,

That was kinda fun to say... :) How are things? From the sounds of all the emails, things are going great! :)

To answer your questions:

First, if you think the mold is bad, the stuff in the bathroom isn't as bad as on our ceiling in our rooms, and I wouldn't be surprised if there is some in the kitchen. The new findings in the bathroom are the mushrooms that grow in all sorts of different places on the floor! :) That is fun stuff! Maybe we'll fry em and eat em for once one night! (just kidding don't have a heart attack...) and there is a window in there that is always open because it is broken I think.

Mamita? No we don't pay her, it is her calling I think? I think maybe the church might pay her? I know they pay her for the Missionaries that live in the house on their property. The missionaries who live on their Property are Elder Carlisle and Elder Barney.

I think you must have sent it to the Mission Office, that is where all the mail goes. The whole Casilla 7-0 address is the office I think. But of course I will enjoy my B-day... because its on a P-day!! :) (Perfect)

So the guys we live with, their names are Elder Nielson (short one) Elder Goobler (tall one) and the hermanas in our district are Hermana Florez and Hermana Sumaran.

So this past week has... Hmmmm well it went by slow and fast. On the daily super slow, but when I look back at it, no idea where it went!

On Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, we couldn't be out when it was dark, because things were suppose to get sketchy. Like 30 years ago there was a dictator here in Chile that overthrew the government and so every year, the first night, everyone riots and the people who support the dictator fight the people who don't support him. Why? Good question, I still don't even know. Then the second night, everyone gets Drunk. Party! So we would work all that we could during the day, and then at night, we came back and partied early (by going to bed super early.) Although Tuesday night neither Elder Walker or I slept very much because well. Let me explain, that day we were walking on the far side of the sector and an less active member's dog started to follow us, and ended up following us all the way home. NONE of the other dogs liked this and barked at us the entire day. We figured once we went inside, it would leave! Nope. It was there an hour later, when we went to Once with the Chaipuls who live on the compound, (farm land) and EVERY dog barked. SO Loud! One dog started and it started the chain for every other dog to know a new dog was hitting up their territory. So after Once, we went back home, and Negra (we found out the name at the Chaipuls home) followed us. We named the dog Oso which is Bear in English cause it was big! It was a dog a little bigger than Becky and looked just like Becky but with shaggy hair. SUPER friendly so I loved it! But the dog followed us home that night, and we went to bed, and the dogs that live on our street weren't happy. Every time Negra moved that night, the dogs came running down the street barking, and the walls of the houses are super thin, so we kept waking up all night long.... Anyways, Negra was still there in the morning and followed the other Elders to District meeting, when we showed up, she was sitting outside the doors at the church. After we left, she was still there and followed us to Mamita's for lunch. We were going to give her a piece of Pan (bread) to eat, but we found out that Mamita's daughter chased Negra away. We thought Negra was lost forever and felt bad, because she wasn't ours. But we found out on Saturday, that somehow she made it the twenty minute walk to the other side of the sector back to her house. Thank Goodness!

Then lets see.... On Thursday we did some service for the Chaipul family, it was a party I guess, it was raining and we cleaned up their yard of trash so they can build a new chicken coop or something like that.

Friday, we did more service in the after noon, Since everyone uses firewood, we went to Ruth's house (The crazy cat lady) and helped her son Christian move a huge pile of wood to their wood shed and stack it. That took like a half hour, then we went over to the family Supovida and did the same thing, this time just Elder Walker and I, but the wood pile was like twice the size, so it took like an hour and a half. Our backs were dead after, and our shirts were super dirty! Then once we were done there we went over to the Chaipuls and hauled the trash from the day before to street so it could be taken for trash on Saturday. Then we had Once with the family, which was sweet! And then Camilla (one of their daughters) made me eat a lemon. We put salt on it which was a different thing I had never tried before. Not my favorite but it was not bad!

Saturday, we went over to the church and helped the Youth make Empanadas for two hours, so they could sell them to people to raise money for a Temple trip up to Santiago the first week of October! That was fun because we listened to lots of English Music from our High school days... (so long ago.) ;) But we were happy with it! After, we went to a less active member who I had never seen before at church, she had a wood pile that was bigger then either of the piles on Friday, but there we had to chop it all. It was us, and an Old man in the ward. The Old man amazed me. When he chopped he made it look like a butter knife and butter. It took me a while to get use to it, but once I figured out what "Fuerza" which means Strength meant. Then I used all my strength and sooner than later my chops were going into a harder butter but becoming like the old man's chops. It was pretty sweet! When I got tired, I started to think that I was Wolverine, and would get the muscles like him... ;) It took us a good 3 hours and we only got 1/3 of the pile done. So we are going back some other Saturday to finish, hopefully more people show up. After we were done with our labor, hot and tired. We received a glass. Then she brought out a bottle of water, which we found out happened to be carbonated water. I found out very quickly that many people enjoy Carbonated water... It was pretty hard to get down, and because she offered me a second glass and I didn't want to offend her, I chugged it down real fast!

But that was pretty much our week! That is super crazy to hear about the two boys, But we now know they are in a better place, and this kid is for sure jealous.

I am not positive about the sleeping bag. I will have to look harder. But it is maybe a little bigger than Smith's. It isn't too big of a store. I definitely don't want to get a used one, because it could have fleas.

I Love hearing from the real world, it is one of my highlights of the week! :) SO yes, don't stop writing me! :)

I Love you guys,

From the South Pole,

Elder Holt

P.S.

What is the Walker's nephews name??

How is Brother Jacbosen doing??

There are Hawks EVERYWHERE HERE.

In the next package, could you send me two flash drives?

On one with only church music like motab and what not. and on the other put on music from LotR, Star wars, Tron, Inception, Harry Potter, Halo, Fable. Ask Brandon to do it when you get a chance, thanks!