A Few Pictures from Teno, Chile

4.25.11

Hey mom thanks for the email. i dont have much time again, so ill just send one weekly one again. Hope everyone understands.

So yeah lifes been fine here. Not much out of the ordinary. Teaching people, inviting them to church, waiting for them to show, getting deppressd when they dont. the usual haha But everyonce in awhile you have those moments that make it all worth it. And other moments that you wont ever forget. Like the other day we had our lunch with a member family of a mom and her daughter, and their grandmother. It was kind of a cold day, but it was warming up. and we went inside, and they had it really warm in there. Cuz they use this little furnace thing. and they just kept putting wood in it. So anyways, they served us this huge meal of bread and beans(Chileans love their beans) and hot chocolate and just tons of warm, filling food. and then after we ate, the mom had to go somewhere, and the daughter was still at school and wasnt goin to be back till like 4, and so we didnt want to leave the grandmother alone, so we sat down on the little incredibly compfy couch next to the furnace, and just started chatting with her while she was nitting something. and she just kept going on and on and on, and all we did was nod our heads every once in a while and say stuff like "oh yeah ill bet that was hard" or "haha wow i dont believe it!" So there i was in this really nice warm house, compfy couch, full to the brim with food, zoning in and out of the conversating, and i start to feel my head drooping, and i start to fall asleep lol so this is bad. and i start fighting to stay awake and trying to pay attention, but by this point my "translate" button is broken and i cant focus, so i start to look for ways to stay awake, like holding my breath and stuff but nothing works. Then when all hope seemed to be gone, i decided to save myself by putting my finger on the furnace about every 10 seconds or so to stay awake lol it worked amazingly well. then after what seemed like a year the daughter finally got home from school and we got up and went back outside for some fresh cool air lol so yeah that was pretty funny. and i probly wont forget that haha Chili is great. but there are some things i would really like to change. They have gambling machines in every coner store and anyother place you can think of. And out in the middle of the streets all the magazine racks sell porn. So a general rule here is to never look at the magazine racks haha but other than that, the people are great. and the teachings going good.

So anyways. thanks for being the best mom ever. i love you and miss you.
Love Elder Philpott

4.18.11

Glad you liked the pix! :) My comp is happy haha like all the time. i dont know how he does it haha. Glad eli had fun at prom. sounds fun. That really stinks about adam and jens house! man they never have it easy... :/ And yes tell grandma i did  get her package, and it was great! actually ill just type her and email that you can print up and give to her. lifes been good here. we have a baptism scheduled for the 30th and another 2 on may 7th or 8th. so be praying for those to work out please. :) i was supposed to go to concepcion for a training thing today, but i ended up not going. instead, we had a big meeting in Talca with the mission pres. it was good. we ate Mcdonalds for lunch haha cuz thats the only city around here that has one.but it was pretty disgusting... lol but i still ate 3 big macs, fries, cake thing, banana, apple, and orange juice for lunch lol safe to say i can eat like a chilean now hahaha we just got done playing soccer here in Curico`. it was great. freezing. but great.my comp is really good at playing. well... he´s a crazy player anyway.. actually hes just crazy haha. but i kinda figured out why hes so crazy the other night. we got home kind of early, so we went and got something to eat and then just started telling eachother stuff about our lives haha and it turns out that before he joined the church when he was like 15 he used to go to a church with his unlce that did satanic rituals like sacrificing animals and letting demons into their bodies and they had the cut off head of a dead person in a box, it was creepy.... but i told him its cool that he was able to see both extremes of the spiritual spectrum on the earth and turn his life around with the gospel, and now he has a super strong testimony and has been in the temple and everything. i love the gospel. it really is so great and a shelter from the nasty things of the world that satan makes look like fun. like one day we were in the street and this guy was walkin g next to us that was So drunk he could barely walk and was using his bike to support him, and we walked him home, and he invited us in and started telling us that he wanted to stop drinking. and he showed us all these bills that he couldnt pay and said his daughter was going to kill himn cuz of it, and started crying and slobbering all over himself... it was so sad to see.. and thats when i decided im NEVER drinking ever.  So yeah thats what lifes like for me here haha its fun. i dont have much time today, so if you could tell everyone sorry i didnt send them anything and forward most of this to them, i would love it :) thanks mom you´re the best :) i love you, and miss all of you so much. see you in 20 months.

Love Elder Philpott

4.11.11

Hey Mom! :) Im still good haha my suits are good. i dont ever hardly have to wear the jacket, but i do need to get some more pants, and ones that i dont have to dry clean haha good to hear adam and jen are doing great haha im glad they got a house. hows adam liking his job? aww i miss dalling haha he´s sooo cute haha

my week has been pretty good. This sunday there were some dogs that came into the church, but no one did anything about it or even seemed to notice lol and some people just bring their dogs to church lol there are so many dogs here haha im pretty sure theres like 20 new breeds of dogs here that have never been discovered haha some of them are pretty cute and will follow you around for long time haha but some of them are really big and scary looking, but the people here are all mean to the dogs, so they dont do anything cuz they know theyll get punished. and if a dog does start barking and coming at you, all you have to do is bend down like you´re picking up a rock and they´ll take off running haha so yeah thats about all the "wildlife" there is in chili haha The people are whats interesting lol Oh and last night at this one appointment we were eating ...Once? Eleven is what it litterally means haha but its just a little evening meal, and we were having that coffee type stuff and bread with this meat that you squirt out of a little package haha it was good. after we were done they gave us some fruit to take home, just like a bunch of other people haha we have TONS of fruit in our house haha its ridiculous. So yeah that was fun. All the people are really nice here. its going to be hard to go back. and they always "salud" EVERYONE when they arrive or leave anywhere. Its also really nice when appointments make themselves haha people all the time just ask us when we´re coming back haha and at this one house theres a guy that is pretty good at speaking english, and lives with his mom, and he used to be a jehovas witness, and he wanted a book of mormon to read, and he asked me in english so his mom wouldnt understand, and he wants me to give it to him secretly, so we´ll see how thatr goes haha. The other cool person we met this week was Oscar. We were just walking down a random street, and my comp was like Uhhh this door. i was like alright... and we "knocked" and this couple opened the door, and we´re like hey were the missionaries, and they were like oh hey, yeah come on in! so we went in and started talking with them, and came to find out that Oscar has a bad cancer of the stomach, they call it 3rd cancer? idk. anyways and he´s doing Chemo Therapy and things arent looking good for him, so they were really grateful to talk to us. and it turns out they also have a daughter thats 18 and a son thats like 12 and another thats like 8, so if they start progressing well, this will be a really great family to start teaching. and they are all so nice. i would love to bring them into the kingdom..  So yeah the work is going good still. life is good haha :) One thing i would like yopu to send in the package are some nice pictures of our family. i dopnt have any really good ones, and the chileans love to pix of your family, so i need some to show to people :) thanks :) I miss and love you tons.

Love Elder Philpott

4-4-2011

well this week was alright, numbers wise, but not great. General Conference was great. we had to travel to the city Curico to watch it in the stake center. there was a room for all the gringos where we got to watch it in english and bring in a bunch of snacks n stuff haha it almost felt like i was back in the US, but then aother "temblora" hit and reminded me  i was still in chile haha we went saturday to watch the priesthood session, and then stayed the night at the missionaries house in curico and went the next mornig to the general session. I loved all the talks. they were all so helpful. Those men truly are called of God to lead this church. I love the Prophet. His sense of humor is just another testament of how great a man he is. not much happened this week out of the ordinary. But we did have this one cool experience. we were walking on the sidewalk of this one street, and we saw this lady sitting on a bench knitting, or stitching, whatever its called, and she was stitching this picture of a tree, and we went up and talked with her and were like so waht are ya makin there, and she was like this is the tree of life. haha we were like oh really??  shes like yeah im not sure why i decided to make it, but i think it looks good. anf then we told her about the story of the tree of life in the book of mormon, and she got really interested, so we gave her a book of mormon and have an appointment with her next week :) it was great. other experiences arent so spiritual. alike this one day when this drunk guy came up and started talking to us haha we started telling him that these were the last days, and that scary stuff is going to happen and then we left him with a pamphlet on the word of wisdom haha and then there was this other guy we talked to on the street that just started breaking down crying while talking to us, but thats not uncommon. thats like the 4th time thats happened. but the work is going good. we´re teaching 3 families at the same time right now. and they are all super great. but on of them has some problems to overcome before they can be baptized. but they are way cool and love having us over. and we gave the father Antonio a blessing of health on friday cuz he fell off of a camion, or a big semi truck thing and was home from the hospital, but amazingly nothing was broken, and he should be back at work soon.

so yeah. life is good here still. tiring, but good. Oh haha and you should be happy to know that im getting to like avocados haha cuz chileans put avocados on EVERYTHING haha so when i get back, we can make all the chip dip stuff you want lol and yeah that was pretty sad eating the chicken lol but it was for a good cause, and the lord will bless her for her service.

Until then,
Love, Elder Jared Philpott