November 29, 2009

Time continues to go quickly for Jeff in Chile. He always seems to rushed when he writes us, but we are grateful to hear from him. This letter talks about our Thanksgiving, and his lack of it:

It was weird not really doing anything for Thanksgiving, I missed moms turkey
and mashed potatoes and stuffing and gravy and cranberry sauce...and pie! Mmm,
food in the states is soooo much better than food here. Im pretty sick of the
food here.

Its already been 5 weeks since the last change, this change is over on the 8th. Its crazy how fast time flies. E Salinas is really great, he is a good guy. He leaves to go home on the 29th of Dec. So we´ll see if I stay here another change or move to a different sector. I hope I stay through Christmas just because I know the people here so well, but after Christmas I want to change. I feel like its time to move on from here. And yea, Elder Mckay and I are really good friends, we´ll hangout after our missions I hope.
I think we baptize like, idk, 40 a month or something. In the 80s and 90s
they baptized people like crazy here, but did nothing for retention. So, now we
try to find all the members and reactivate them. So..it is important to have
baptisms, thats why we are here, but they need to be truly converted otherwise
it does them no good.

The new people we found to teach..well, a lot of them never answered the
door again when we went back for our return appointment. Thats usually the way
things go. We like to go out with pictures of Christ and give them to people and
explain the picture, then we ask if we can come by and share with them about
Christ some more. People are always more willing to talk to us if we give them a
gift ;) But its just people in the street or peoples doors that we knock.

I feel pretty comfortable now, but still have a long way to go with the
language.

We got to go to the temple Sat. My first time here in Chile! It was great and I
got some cool pics of the temple.

One of the long-time couples in our ward here in Anoka have left to serve a mission in Ireland.

Thats so cool that the Holts are going to be in Ireland. I love the couple
missionaries here, they are really great. And do so much for the mission,
without them the mission wouldnt function.

Jeff had asked for some recipes, easy yummy things:

Oh, and thanks for the recipes. I have a question, what is the equivalent
of shortening? And for the caramel corn, she couldn´t find and corn syrup
here. The only syrup thing she found was like a maple syrup type of
thing. Will that still work to make the caramel corn?? I dont
know. Ok thanks for the recipes!

I love you and am always praying for you!!

Love,Elder DeLong