12.26.11

Elder Philpot had a wonderful Christmas in Chile.  His favorite part was being able to call home.  He got to talk to each of his family members as well as Aryan.  He was excited to "see" (by Skype) his new niece and nephew.  Jared said that Christmas in Chile is a bit different then Christmas in the US.  Here it's more centered on the family and there it's just another reason to party and drink.  He loves what he's doing though and loves the people of Chile.
Because he spoke to his family, he didn't write much home this week.  I asked him if his baptism came through on Friday the 23rd and this is what he wrote:

Yes the baptism did happen :) BUT it was not easy. we went to Deloisas house thursday at like 430 and talked with her a long time about it cuz she was still undecided but after like 2 hours she decided to do it on the day we planned wich was the 23rd. so i called the zone leaders and they came and did an interview with her, and she passed. so then we had to plan a baptism all in one night and in the morning. so we called and invited a ton of members and called the bishop and found the white clothes for her and a whoile bunch other stuff, but we got it all together and friday we met in the church at 430 and there wasnt anyone there, and by the time the baptism started there were only a handful of members. and the bishop wasnt there yet so we couldnt do it, and we called him and he says he has to work, so we called someone from the bishoprick to do it, and they had to get home first from work and then come, so we sat in the sacrament room for like an hour and a half watching the Joy to the world dvd. but he finally got there and we did the baptism. she was super nervous the whole time, but she did it, and then got confirmed on christmas in sacrament mtg. so now theres one more person brought into the fold of Christ. a ton of work, but worth every bit of it. 

Thanks for all the gifts!  I love and miss you lots

Elder Jared Philpott

 

He also said that he took lots of picture on Christmas and will send them to us next week.

Pictures from Penco

11.19.12

Training is going good. its different having to do almost everything myself, but he´s really good. and learning really fast. so im proud of my son haha 

oh and when i went to concepcion to pick up my son i saw elder scott there! he was the one that twisted his foot playing soccer, he came back to the mission! after being home for a few months. he said it was even harder coming back the 2nd time, i dont doubt it.

the only other note worthy thing from this week, was pretty funny/sad. well the catholics had some sort of huge gathering for the virgin mary, and a lot of the man go on horses wearing the Huaso(cowboy type)suits. and so while we were walking around trhat day we saw some of them coming back from it, and almost all of them were super drunk, and one of them was behind the rest and was sooo drunk that he was like falling off of his horse and swerving everywhere, and was backing up`traffic cuz none of the cars wanted to pass cuz he was everywhere in the road on this poor horse. it was really sad. 

other than that not much happened. i sang in a mission choir at a big long christmas devocional. that was pretty fun. but life is still good. 

Love and miss you all,
Elder Jared Philpott

12.15.11

HAPPY ONE YEAR JARED!!!!!

We miss and love you but we are so pleased at where you are and what you are doing.  Keep up the good work and we will see you in a year.

Love,
Your family and friends

12.12.11

CHile is chile. The work is progressing. slowly. but progressing. we
have one thats for sure getting baptised on the 23. she was a hard one
to get, but shes finally coming around. she chose the 23 cuz thats her
moms birthday, but its also the day that she got baptised in the
seventh day adventist church. so that will be really special :) not
much else happened this week. i watched a movie called 17 Miracles
that a sister in the ward let us borrow. it was really good. have you
ever seen it? its about the Donner party that went to utah. i showed
it to elder Turnner and he cried haha i didnt tho... i wonder if i
have a heart lol
The Talent show went well. we played and danced to feliz navidad, and
everyone loved it lol i got it on my camera , but itll probly be a
while before you can see it :P So they just told us cambios, and im
training :) ill probly be getting a latin comp, cuz we have 8 latins
and only 1 gringo coming this cambio so this should be fun, i love
having latin comps lol theyre just more fun haha and get along with
the people so much easier. So my comp Elder Abrego is getting
transferred to Talca, but not my old sector. i told him its gonna be
super hot there compared to penco.
but yeah thats about all the news from here :)
Sorry i havent sent you pix, the last time i did internet, the stupid
computer didnt have a USB port, and this time my camera is dead... :/
sooooo ill try to send them next week i guess. sorry.. :(
but i miss andlove you all. thanks for keeping me in mind and keeping
me updated on everything :)

Love
Jared(Elder Philpott)

12.5.11

Chiles good. getting pretty hot lately. but still getting some rainny days. living by the ocean does that i guess haha. And its officially almost christmas time, so now everyone is getting out their lights and trees n stuff, which is SOOO wierd to see when its like 80 degrees out. And this saturday the ward is having a talent show night, so me n my comp are gonna sing Feliz Navidad haha i have to look up the music today and somehow get my hands on a guitar haha so we ll see what happens there..and im also singing with a bunch of missionaries for a christmas stake activity. so thet will be fun too haha other than that things are kinda slow. but theres still a bunch of drama in this ward, and it really ticks me off sometimes :P but were workin on that too haha we only have one ptoential person for baptism this week, thats been to church 4 times and has read up to 1 nephi 21 in the BOM, but still says shes not sure if she wants to do it :P so if you could throw a few prayers my way for that it would be nice :) other than that nothing much has happened... lame

Thats about all for today :) sorry it was so short.

TTYL,
Elder Philpott (Jared)

11.28.11

Well, Chile´s still good. getting hotter now. we just got back from a trip to the beach thats right next to us now :)we played some frisbee, and resisted the urge to jump in the water haha but it was fun. a random dog came up and stole the frisbee, so we all went chasing after it and caught it just before he got to the road lol then we threw rocks at it whenever it tried to come back lol not much happened this week, this are going pretty slow work-wise too :P but slowly getting better. the only interesting thing this week was Ramon. We were doing contacts and found this place with a bunch of little houses in it, so we went in and saw a guy just standing in the back, so we went up to talk to him, and he started talking to us and then went inside and got some chairs and had us teach him out front of his house, and then he goes on to tell us that 21 days ago he was sitting outside and heard a voice that he thought was Jesus that told him that "the angels are on the earth again and that the lord is preparing for the second coming, and that if 2 guys come up to you to talk about the gospel, listen to them, but only if they come up to you."

So we then tried teaching him about the restoration, but5 he wouldnt let us talk and just kept rambling on and on until we finally just had to go, but we cam back later and then he told us about another "revelation" were Jesus told him about 49 companys that were ion the united states that he needed to talk to cuz God was mad at them, so he asked me if i could get the list to the President of the United States...  then we tried teaching him again, but he didnt listen, so we might try going by again, but he´s very... interesting.. haha so we´ll see what happens there. but other than that not much has happened. We´ve found a lot of people that play the guitar lately, and its been fun to jam a little bit with them, and then after they see that we´re real people that do real people things they really start to open up and really listen to the message. So i have no doubt thats one of the reason Iwas givin the talent i have, so im using it to its fullest. Thats about all thats happened out of the ordinary. 

Love,

Elder Philpott

11.21.11

Chile is still Chile. Theres still a lot of dirt and little houses and dogs and uncooked food. but its all part of the experience :) I got some good laughs out of some contacts this week tho haha one thing thats funny is when we go up to knock a house and then we see people coming up the street and we can tell that they live there, but they dont come up cuz they dont want to talk to us, so we just stay outside their house saying "HALO" for like 20 minutes until they finally just give it up and come talk to us lol the other funny thing that happened was just doing regular door contacts and having people come out and say they´re busy washing the dishes or some other lame excuss, so we ask if we can help, but they´re just like "oh no, no. some other day please" and then the other day i was with this one elder that just recently got here, and we were contacting a neighborhood that had call boxes on the gate we had to talk thru, and we went up and pressed the button and a guy answered, "hi we´re missionaries from the church of Jesus Christ and we´d like to share a message with you"
"no sorry, im busy making love"
and so of course the poor newbee didnt quite catch what he said and was just like
"oh well can we come in and help?" lol :D
i busted up laughing and he just got really red after i told him what he said hahaha the guy that answered didnt say answer haha
This week we also had mini-missionaries live with us these last 3 days. mine was from Dichato and was a recent convert of only 8 months that wants to go on a mission. he was pretty cool. i felt a little bad that we could get mattresses for them so that had to sleep on blankets on the floor lol but its all part of the experience i guess lol it was wierd too, cuz i remember when i went on my mini mission and thot the missionaries were soo cool and i wanted to be just like them, i hope these guys had the same feelings too. cuz i know they would make great missionarys too. but thats about allthe interesting things that happened this week ha. pretty boring lol but the works going good. we have one investigator thats come to church 3 times straight, but she a member of the seventh day adventist church and she studied with them for 2 years before she finally decided to get baptised and tells us that she doesnt think she can just give that up and join us that fast, but i thnik she can haha we´re going to teach her the word of wisdom and the law of chastity this week, so we´ll see how this goes :] be prayin for us.
Love and miss you all,
Elder Jared Philpott

Penco, Chile

11.14.11

The week was good, yesterday we went to like the highest hill in the sector and we could see everything. it was prett cool, and we found a new investigator there who says he wants to join a church so he can be an example for his new baby boy that he named Aaron cuz its a biblical name. so we´re gonna see if we can help him with that ;) My week was pretty good. wednesday night presiding Bishop counselor McMullin came and talked in the penco stake about preparing urself and keeping yourself worthy to enter ito the temple, and he tlked a lot about temples and eternal marriage. it was a really great talk. he spoke in english and had a translater that did a really great job. and then the next morning ALL the missionaries in the mission went to concepcion to hear from Elder Quentin L. Cook... the Apostol. it was awsome. he gave us some great advice. And we got to shake his hand :) So that was way cool. and really crazy to think that i shook hands with someone who has probly felt the nail prints in Christs hands... yeah. The rest of the week went good. nothing much happened.. theres a lot of snails here. lol like a TON. and when it rains its like a game to try not to squish too many lol its pretty sick sometimes lol, cuz they get pretty big.. lol

So thats about it for now, ill try get a pic of my comp for yall

 

i gotta go now, but i miss and love you all

Love Elder Philpott :)

11.7.11

okay well this will probly be shorter than urs, cuz i gotta go like right now to get my hair cut. cuz i guess theres an apostol cpmong to our mission to talk to us this thursday, so we gotta look our best haha
but things are good here. first off. my comps name is Elder Rafael Abrego. his fam is from El Salvador, so he speaks spanish mire than english. butwhere he's really from is Canada. :) and guess what part?? Toronto!! :D i was like hey!! ive been there! lol o guess he live near the toronto temple. so that was pretty cool. he's just barely starting his mission. so im what they call his step daddy lol but the sector is great. its really pretty with all the hills and the ocean right there. ive always wondered what it would be like to live near the ocean, and turns out i like it a lot actually. but the funny thing about this place is that they stuff houses in every single corner possible! so its kind of wierd doing contacts sometimes, cuz you like walk thru peoples gates and go behind their houses to contact the people behind them lol but its a ward here of like 90 people. so we get some good help from the members. Its wierd being senior comp and district leader. cuz before this i was just like following along, but now im incharge of a lot of things. but it makes success feel so much more rewarding too. the only real bad thing about here is that my comp says there pulgas in this house. which are fleas. :P so far so good tho... lol
Love, Elder Philpott

Halloween in Chile

A Baptism

Zone Conference on the Beach

10.31.11

as for chile... things are good. we had 2 baptisms sunday. and they werent easy! we had to fight to get them there cuz they wanted their dad to be there who works out of town, so when he finally got there he told them that he didnt even want to go to the baptism :P so they didnt really wanna come if he wasnt there, but they came at the very end of church just in time for their baptism and had us nervous the whole time, cuz we announced it in sac. mtg and had already filled the font, so it would have been real embarrassing if they decided not to show up :P but they made it, and are now a part of the lords covenant people and have been cleaned from their sins, so i feel like they got a good deal ;)
And yes they do celebrate halloween here. but thats something recent that started. it kind of came from seeing it on the tv here lol so chile just kind of adopted that holiday lol and our ward hed a halloween activity that went pretty good. we had 2 investigators come, and i had to dress up... ill send pix... lol but it was good.
So this cambio is over and i just heard cambios today. my comp E Call is going to be a daddy and be a district leader. E Raley is gonna be a Zone Leader, and Me. Im gonna be a district leader too. And i getting sent to a place called Penco (pane-co) near the beach :) so im pretty excited to see how that will look. but its wierd thinking that im gonna be a district leader now :P hope the Lord knows what hes doin lol so things are about to get a little bit more crazy here... :P but its all good. hard to believe that at the end of this cambio ill have a year in the mission.
Love,
Elder Philpott

10.24.11

Chiles still good. going to the beach today was probly the highlight of my week. we went there and played frisbee and football and ate some good food. the water was freezing, so i didnt have to many desires to go swimming anyways.
the investgators are good. Daniella is still crazy. jackson is still coming to church and says he wants to go on a mission actually, so needless to say, that would be sweet :) the work is going good. were getting some good numbers, but cambios are this monday, so well prbly get changed anyways now that we figured out how to work together :P who knows, i might be training a newbe. its called having a kid here, cuz yoiuy have to teach them how to do everything lol but think would be fun. id show him all the tricks haha but yeah not much different. im still pressing on.
Sorry this was short this week, but we just got back from our Zone Conference on the beach, 2 hours from her and I don't have much time.
Love,
Elder Jared Philpott

10.17.11

so baisically not much has been different here. this week was a lot better for us than the last 2 have been. we found a total of 13 new people to teach this week, and 4 of them are this really cool family we found. and 1 of them is one we found last night, her name is Daniella. We started out doing contacts sunday evening cuz we needed like 30 more to hit our weekly goal of 140, so we came to an intersection, flipped a coin to decide where to go and got to work, a lot of people saying they were busy, or that they were jehovas wittnesses and didnt want to start a fight or just old catholic poeple that shut the door in our face lol then we heard this sound that we thot sounded like a dinosaur so we went down that street top see if we could find out what it was, but we didnt have any luck. and next door to the place where heard the noises was a church building for the jehovas wittnesses so just out of spite i went and knocked the house right next to it and this girl around 25 yrs old came out and let us in. so we found out that she was catholic by tradition, but never went. and she lived there with her grandparents and her parents and that their house collapsed in the earthquake and that tis girl really likes cats. lol i guess she had like 11 and all but 3 died in the earthquake. and she really loves doing paintings and is studying art in college lol so baisically she was a hippy lol but she was funny. so we taught the restoration and told her about the Book of Mormon and when we pulled it out to and started talking about it we were like "this book can help you get an answer to any question in ur life" and she was like "ANYYYY question???"
"ummm yeah...?"
"Gimme that!" and she grabbed it out of my comps hands and started like petting it lol :D
so then she asked if there were martians and how she could be more awake and recieve more inspirations for her paintings, so i told her that if she stopped drinking tea and coffee or alchohol she would be more awake, and she was like "hey that makes sense! im gonna try it!" lol so she has a head start on the word of wisdom lesson now lol but she said she would read the chapter we left her so we´ll see how that went tuesday night. and then at the end, we were doing a closing prayer with her, and my comp started to pray, and one of her cats started rubbing up against his leg, so she grabbed it and chucked it accross the room in the middle of the prayer lol :D it was really hard to keep from busting out laughing lol but other than that this week was kinda boring. we took all the tea from one of our investigators so she could stop drinking. so last night we burnt it on the little ledge out back of our house lol so were pretty sure she´ll be off the stuff for good now haha the only major bummer is that she didnt come to church yesterday :P and she said she would n everything. but im pretty used to that now.

I love and miss you all and will see you in about 14 months!

Love,

Elder Philpott

10.10.11

The weather here is getting hotter slowly, but its still freezing every night. but yeah chile is still good,the zone just got back from a good game of soccer. we had a baptism the other week, but we didnt get any of the people we wanted in church today :( so thats always a bummer, but the work goes on... ugh and one of the days this week it just randomly started POURING rain. like gigantic drops. and it was all coming from this big grey cloud above our city and all the way around it, it was a sunny nice day. it was wierd. and we just so happened to have door contacts planned for that hour. so we went out with our little umbrellas and knocked doors in the pouring rain. most of the people that came out just said we were nuts and that we should go home lol cuz by that time it started to actually thunder and lightning here! witch is SUPER rare here. and everytime you heard thunder all girls near by would jump and scream lol it was really funnny :D but no one let us in, and our feet got soaked. cuz there were rivers in like every street, cuz chile doesnt have the best drainage systems :P so that was dumb, but our shoes are dry now at least :P lol i have a new nickname here too, no one can pronounce Philpott, so they started calling me Elder Pitbull, like the rapper. lol but theres also a player on the chillean soccer team called that too. so now they all remember who i am at least lol but yeah thats about all thats been going on this week for me lol So thanks for the letter :) i miss you all so much and cant wait to see you all when i get back :) until then...

 

Love

Elder Philpott

10.3.11

This week was good. we had conference, it wasnt in spanish, cuz we set up a room for the gringos to watch it in english, which always fun, we buy a bunch snacks before hand and then just pig out lol but i was listening at the same time too lol investigators... just one, but we were expecting 2 whole families that we´re working with, and they seemed really good, but it looks like we got some more work to do :P but on the bright side, the investigator that came (Jackson) was baptised after the evening session of conference :) so i guess you could say it was a good conference :) pix to come.... he even went to the preiesthood session that starts at 9 here and goes to 11 :P but he said he loved it, and the Profet was really funny. then later a bunch of missionaries stayed in our appartment cuz they didnt want to go all the way back to their sectors and then go back to the church, so we played a bunch of card games, and some people had to sleep on the floor lol then the next day at conference while we were watching it, one of the elders thot it was hot, so he opened a window and then hear a cat screaming as it fell past the window lol then we heard it hit the ground from 2 stories up lol i guess it was walking on top of the building and when he opened the window he scared it and it fell lol it was pretty funny :D well at least for me it was... haha the only real big thing that happened this week besides the bqaptism, was that we heard that one of the sisters in the ward that we recently re-activated had a panick attack, so we went over to see how their family was doing, cuz we know that she is a little emotionally unstable, so we went over and found out thatshe had actually tried to kill herself :( she was feeling overwhelmed with work and being a mother, so she wrote a suicide note and took some pills and then layed down on the couch, then her husband came in, read the note, went into shock and just sat down on the couch next to her. then in an inspired visit, her father in law came over to drop some empanadas off, and saw what was happening and then called the ambulance and saved her. so we just talked with them for a little bit sharred a scripture gave them a blessing and told them to go talk to the bishop cuz they were having some matrimonial problems too i guess. it was scary, but they seem good now. this is a very important job we have as missionaries, taking care of people souls.  it feels like a ton of responsability sometimes, im only glad i have the spirit to rely on, and its nothing that im really doing at all.

So yup. life is going on. the world is still turning. i still miss yall and love ya. stay safe please.

Love elder philpott

Jackson's Baptism

In the words of Jared: "He was way ready haha he even studied for like 2 hours for his baptismal interview haha he´s 18 yrs old, so ya never know, he might just end up goin on the mission haha :) but he still hasnt told either of his parents that he got baptised. they live in santiago, but he doesnt think they´ll care that much. but his extended family that lives here was really happy that he got baptised :) "

9.26.11

So 2 more missionaries moved into our tiny appartment, they´re not in our sector, but theirs is right next to ours, and their hous was pretty crappy, so they moved in with us haha and every other morning we started doing the P90X Ab ripper workout video haha it intense, but it really wkaes ya up haha so its prettyt fun having 4 in the appartment now. This week was pretty good for us. not a lot of new people to teach, but we´ve got some good ones. we had this one 18 yr old named jackson in church and Eduardo that got baptised last week got confirmed, and was wearing a suit and everything, he looked like a completely different person! but it was way cool. and jackson said he´s going to be baptised on conference sunday at the stake building, he´s already inviting a bunch of his friends to his baptism. and we also had a mom and her 2 kids come too, this is the lady that studied with the jehovas wittnesses for 3 years. but she´s really cool, and is loving the church, so i think we´ll be seeing that baptism soon too. :) and when we were teaching Jackson at a members house all of a sudden the lights just randomly went out, and it was perfectly nice weather, and they were just like oh yeah that happens sometimes, the electricity here in chile isnt the most reliable thing ever. Turns out that most of the country´s elctricity goes out at the same time every once in awhile lol their all used to it haha it only took a few hours to fix, so we taught the lesson using candle light haha it was actually pretty cool haha other than that not too much has been happing here in my part of the world. oh i did meet a kid named Elder. and the reason that thats his name is pretty sad lol so i guess some missionary wasnt as obedient as he should have been and ended up leaving a girl pregnant, and the girl named the kid Elder cuz she thot that was his name... so yeah i dont know if i should laugh or just do a face palm... haha but yeah im still alive, still working and missin you all.
Love,
Elder Philpott

9.19.11

lets see how was my week... welll not much has changed here. we figured out that the unofficial sport of chile that all the kids play here is kite flying, but its not the putting up in the air part that makes it fun, its when the little string they use breaks, and the kite goes flying. THEN all the kids go running full speed thru the streets chasing it down lol and thats why they like it i think. funny stories.. not too many, but i did have a laughing attack one day, cuz we were in the street walking and a member was out in front of her house with some of her college age kids, so we stopped in the sidewalk there to talk to them for a little bit, and then this girl walked over to one of the kids named coty and started talking to him next to us, i guess she was an old school mate of his, and then for some reason or other she started crying, and my comp saw it, and being the sensitive girl-boy he is instinctivly ran over and started talking to her and was like "umm are you alright? cuz were missionaries, and we help people n stuff" and then there was just an awkward pause and she didnt really say anything, and then the mom that i was talking to was like "you wanna come in for a drink?" and my comp heard that and then pulled a napoleon dinamite and ran into the house awkwardly.  i started dying laughing, but i dont think he thot it was too funny lol The only other big events this week were the Diez y Ocho celebration, and Eduardos baptism :) the ward had an activity the 17th, and we played a bunch of trditional chilean games and they danced the Cueca, the national dance. and it turns out that tug of war is a traditional chilean game too haha so we played that with them and my team always won of course, but on the game of guys vs. girls we were pretty much tied, and then all of a sudden the rope broke, and all of us went flying in opposite directions and then crashing to the ground lol i tore some little holes in my pants cuz i landed on the keys that were in my pocket, and one of the sisters hurt her arm landing on it lol so that wasnt the best idea in the planet, but it wwas fun for the most part. Then on Sunday, we had Eduardos baptism. which was kind of a surprise for us. we went over to his house friday with the district leader to give him an interview, cuz we thot it would help him progress, and we told him at the end to pray and ask he should get baptised, cuz he was lacking a lot of self confidince, and then we left the house, and like 10 minutes later he called us and was like "Hey i got an answer, im going to get baptised tommorrow." so we got all the stuff together and had a great baptism. he was one of the most ready people i think ive ever taught, he accepted everything we taught him and tried soo hard to live it, and 3 weeks later he was baptised. the lord really is preparing people for us to teach, its just us that have to be obidient enough so that the lord can trust us with them. and now he´s talking to his mom about it and she wants to read the Book of Mormon, so we´ll see what happens there now :) so yeah i guess you could say it was a pretty good week :)
i really wish you could see some of the stuff i see. my whole view of the gospel has changed, i thot i had a testimony before the mish, but it turns out i only new the dictionary answers to all the questions, there is soo much more to discover when you actually apply what you learn and actually appriciate everythying the atonement means and use in your life daily. and read the scriptures and listen to the spirits testimony of them and get answers to questions you have. it really makes me feel like 10x the person i was before the mission. ok i´ll end my talk there lol but this work really is marvelous.

 

I miss and love you all and will see you in a little over a year :)

 

Until then, Love

Elder Philpott

Chilean Independence Day and a Baptism



Tug o War - a national game in Chile



Red, white and blue are also Chile's national colors

Ahh - Too cute Elder Philpott

Eduardo's baptism

9.12.11

Things are good for me still. the suns comeing out a lot lately, which is a good and a bad thing.. lol good cuz its so nice outside, but bad because.. well lets just say chilean girls arent quite too modest lol and theres quite a few good looking ones, but after being in the mission for 9 months everything up to your comp looks attractive lol anyways,  we had a pretty good week this week. we ahd 2 really good investigators in church. So that was exciting. But not much has happened this week out of the ordinary. we did get a message from the appartment place saying that they were going to cut our electricity on the 10th cuz we havent paid yet. and im not sure if thats our fault or not, cuz we kept forgetting to turn in the recipt, but i thot that it was paid automatically, but we called the mission accountant and i guess he fixed it cuz when we came back that night it was still on haha so that was a relief lol my comp had the runs on wednesday, so we had to run from members house to members house so he could use the bathroom :P stupid uncooked chilean food :P but we´re both good now for the most part haha ya never truly get used to the food here :P lol but life goes on. all the little chilean kids playin with there kites, we sent off Rafa on his mission, he always went to appointments with us, i gave him a tie as a leaving present. but yeah.. not much happening lately.. lol maybe next week will be more eventfull.. :P

but i miss and love you all and will talk to you next week, but until then,

Love Elder Philpott

9.5.11

Hola,

its starting to get hotter. but the weather here is also being really dumb some days, like it´ll be cold in the morning and then the sun comes out and then it starts raining really hard for like 5 minutes, and then stops, the sun comes out again, and then it starts hailing! like what the heck is wrong with this place?? lol but not much has happened this week. we got the numbers from the mission president, and last week was a bad week for everyone i guess.. cuz the whole mission only got 99 baptisms, which is pretty darn low.. we usually get like 130 at least haha so its good to know it wasnt just us. Oh and after we got done with email last sunday, we were walking back to our house, and then all of a sudden we see all these police officers and big truck of them goes by, and as we walked a little further we saw a bunch of college students in the middle of the street infront of the college doing a march on the school, just like all the other schoiols around here, they think that education should be free, so they´re all on strike. but nothing happened there. but all the riot officers were alll in lines with shields and ready to march if anything happened. but nothing ever did. all the big riots are up in santiago. The other big "national tragedy" was that a famous morning news reporter died in a plane crash the other day no his way to an island off the coast, and almost everyone we talk to is all broken up about it and has cried over him, and our bishop was even talking about it on the pulpit sunday morning. i guess chileans really love their news casters.. they were even putting candels in their catholic virgin boxes at night. its a little extreme i think.. lol but thats chile haha church was alright. we were expecting like 7 good investigators to come that had family that are members, but they didnt. we ended up only having 2. and one of them was this guy that we met just that week. we were doing door contacts and he came out and talked to us a little bit, he´s kind of socially awkward, but he let us in and we talked with him for awhile and found out that he lives there alone and is out of work right now. so we sharred the message of the restoration with him and left him a Book of Mormon and came back saturday, and he lets us in, and the BOM was out on the table open, along with the pamphlet we left him, so we talked some more, and put a baptismal date with him for the 25th of this month and he´s really excited for it, and says he´s really wanting to change his life. so he´s probly one of our best investigators right now, and he had a great time at church. so i think we might be seeing that baptism :) but other than that not much out of the ordinary has happened.. hopefully i´ll have more to talk about next week, But until then, i love and miss you all and will be seeing you in a little over a year from now, so be safe and have fun :)

 

Love Elder Philpott

8.29.11

ok so i dont have much time.. actually, we´re leaving right now :P sorry thyis is soo short... But yeah the elder did have to go home, cuz i guess he fractured his Fibia too :( so that was sad..

Thats crazy that you guys felt a temblora! i mean tremor haha 5.8 is nuthin lol but now you know what a night feels like here lol glad it wasnt too devastating tho, cuz we only heard about it from members and didnt really have many details :P

but things in Chile are still good. not much happened this week.. it rained a ton. and they changed the hour here ahead 1 hour, so im ahead of you guys an hour now. and when you guys go back i´ll be up 2 haha so idk why its like that, but it is haha :P this sectors good though the appartments im in are right down the road from the mall, so i can always see all the movies im missiing on the big billboard haha :P Theres a lot of street performers here too trying to make their way thru college. they usually juggle in the street at the red lights and go collect tips before it turns green, some of tghem are actually really good. theres one that does it with flaming sticks haha but if you dont have that talent, you just go to any big grocery store and bag peoples food for tips, cuz the stores here dont have paid baggers. Every once in awhile you see random horses walking around town, and it seems like the people dont even notice that they´re there lol just like all the nasty dogs that poop everywhere here :P as for work, its going alright. not amazing. the only real investigator with potencial is the 23 year old named Anita that works delivering babies. she´s been bringing the Book of Mormon to the hospital to read it in her down time. so im thinkin thats gonna be opur baptism for september. other than that we´ve just been doing a bunch of door contacts, and having fun listening to all the people making up excuses as to why we cant come in. most of them are pretty funny. like yesterday we called on an intercom, and the lady answered and was like "Hola, who am i talking with?"
 "The LDS missionaries"
 "Ohhhh... umm this is a recording.. theres no one here right now." *CLICK* lol we got a good laugh out of that one. other people think were from the CIA and that our badges have cameras in them ahah and then you always get the kid sent out to lie for their parents that says stuff like "oh my moms not here right now"
"oh ok so can you ask her when we can come by then?"
"yeah sure" and then they walk back in ask when we can come back lol its pretty sad..
But thats how it goes here haha but we did find a less active that day that said she wanted to come back to church but didnt know where it was, and that she had been waiting for us to find her, so that was a cool one :) and the rest of her family arent members, so looks like some baptisms too ;) haha So yeah thats whats up this week.. not too much craziness.
Anyways, thanks for the email :) i miss and love you guys soo much and cant wait to see you all :) but until then

Love and remember,

Elder Philpott

8.22.11

Chile is good :) its a lot better place when the sun comes out haha. but its actually kinda ugly here when i think about it haha i cant wait till i get transferred to a beach sector haha the people also make it a little ugly lol not that they´re ugly, its just the stuff they do.. like it seems like the latest accessory in teen fasion here is having a baby :P cuz its seems like EVERY girl that is from the ages of 13 and up has a kid if they´re not members(and even some members too:P) and theres TONS of drunk people here. actually funny story, the other night, me n my comp were waiting on a bus, and we saw this drunk guy in the middle of the street with cars going past him, and then he walks up to us and starts saying what little english he knows and asked us for money, but the this police officer came over and stepped between us, and then a patrol car pulled up next to us and the officer handcuffed him and put him in the back lol right in front of us haha so that was pretty funny lol Other than that, not too much has happened, OH except for this morning. so we all got together this morning to play soccer at the church, and it was going well for a little bit, but then Elder Scott got the ball and started going for the goal, but then he tried turning and fell on top of the ball and his leg was under him. and then when he layed on his back and put his leg up, we could see that he had dislocated it badly. like his foot was turned sideways.(picture to come) so we called the ambulance and they took him away. we havent heard how hes doin yet, but no one felt like playing anymore after that, so we went to McDonalds (yes there is one in this sector:) Im not so sure i trust the hospital here tho, cuz right across from the hospital building on the other side of the street there´s like 5 different funeral homes hahah The work is going good. we had a baptism yesterday. it went great. She was a golden investigator. she always was just hungry to hear everything and understood it all, and is just the sweetest person. the only really bumer is that her husband is a jerk about it all. he actually slammed the door in ou8r face one time when he answered the door. so we always have to go earlier in the evening when he´s not there. but now we are also teacher her daughter that works delivering babies and preparing them for their baptism in the catholic church haha so this will be cool if we can get her baptised :) but yeah other than that, we´ve got a few other reakl good investigators that really have desires to change their lives. so thats always a nice relief from all the hard people :P haha but the hunt goes on. And im doin good. being fed good. this sector is huge tho. so a ton of walking. but its all good.
Love, Elder Philpott

Pictures from Cambio