20 September 2011 - Nueva Aurora, Viña del Mar Oeste

¡Hola mi familia y mis amigos!

Surprise! This letter is a day late! I hope you didn´t get too concerned when you didn´t receive an email yesterday, but with it being the weekend of the 18, literally everything shuts down. Today is our Pday for this week, and we tried proselyting yesterday, but that had few fruits. Basically, the 17 to the 19 is a 3 day off from work celebration for the nation of Chile so they can have barbeques, fly kites, and drink themselves away. Yesterday, we tried finding people to teach while we knew they´d be home, but everyone was too drunk. It was an interesting weekend, to say the least.

On Sunday, the actual 18, every single house everywhere had a barbeque, Chilean style. I´ll attach a picture to show you how much meat we´re talking about here, because Chilean style borders on insanity. We were invited to a handful of these barbeques and accepted 2 of those, and I wish we could have accepted half of one, haha. For the barbeque, they had about 5 pounds of shishkabobs with sausage, steak, onions, hot dogs, and carrots, and then another 6 pounds of steak and chicken to throw on the grill, on top of having pots full of rice, potatoes, carrots, celery, empanadas, bread, and mayonaise (they put mayonaise on everything here.) So we cooked all of that up and then they forcefed us half of it. By the way, there were 5 of us at this barbeque. We left that house having eaten 3 pounds of meat each with all sorts of other sides along with that. Fortunately, I can´t eat bread. We then made our way to a Gringo´s house, a man whose Chilean wife is a member. He´s actually really cool and I like him a lot, especially because I can understand everything he says (English). Even his Spanish is easy to understand because it is with a Gringo accent. That family is so awesome, though, the 2 kids, 13 and 15, are completely fluent in English, Spanish, and German, and do all their studies in German at a private school. He served us up a plate chock full of steak and sausage and rice and American style baked beans and grilled green onions from his garden. We just about cried. After eating all that, he gave us 2 huge bowls of homemade ice cream, which was ok with me, because it was unutterably delicious and ice cream is one thing that I could eat under any circumstance. But yeah, that was basically our 18th celebration.

Then there was yesterday. Seeing as every family has about 5 pounds of meat leftover from their outrageous barbeques, they each feed us a plate of meat when we go visit them. One investigator, whose invitation for Sunday we delayed to yesterday, tried to kill us by feeding us just as much meat as the day before, but we had to make a stand. Basically, I think the whole week is going to be us eating everyone´s leftover meat. I can´t even describe to you how repulsed I am by the smell and taste and thought of meat at this moment. In the last 3 days, I estimate, and being serious, that I have eaten 6 pounds of meat alone, along with assorted other potatoes and rice and fruits and vegetables. It´s a good thing I take laxatives every night because of the gluten sensitivity anyways, haha.

Ok, to answer some questions from your last letter: no, I have not received any letters from anyone else yet, but that´s ok, I don´t get homesick or anything like that. I would be delighted to hear from people though!! In accordance with that, Marta, you can send packages to that same address, 4 Norte 1112, Viña del Mar, CHILE, and it will come through just fine. By the way, I cracked up at that story of Rydin! That kid is such a stud!! I´m glad to hear he´s still playing soccer even with his broken arm, too! Also, I am able to access Chris´s and Daniel´s blogs, so I can happily hear of their grand adventures in Russia and Germany! Which reminds me, if Daniel reads this, I´m sure he´d be just tickled to hear that in Chile, the crosswalk lights that tell you when to cross the street as a pedestrian really are a GREEN MAN! Haha, I would always say "wait for the green man," but in ´Merica, it kind of is a white man, so he´d always contradict. It was exciting for me when I saw that the man here really is green. The little things in life...

For groceries here, we just go to the Lider in central Viña. It is the Walmart of Chile, literally. It looks like a regular supermarket and is ownded by Walmart. They even have a section of American delicacies, which are the Walmart brands of peanut butter and maple syrup and some cookies and other American snacks, it´s pretty cool. I just buy rice, raisins, these enormous bags of clementines, bananas, milk (in boxes), eggs, and this delicious caramely spread stuff called manjar, which I put on bananas or just eat straight. I just make rice and raisins in the mornings for breakfast or maybe eggs if I want something different, and then I can snack on the clementines throughout the day and when I get back at night. I won't be wanting to eat breakfast for a while though, on account of the 18.

For laundry, we drop off our bag of clothes with our mamita on Pday and then pick it up a couple days later all folded and ironed and clean. She is one of the members and we pay her monthly, and she is so cool! She is completely deaf, but she reads lips perfectly. Not only that, but she can read gringo lips!! We communicate with her easily, and she talks more clearly than a lot of Chileans who have a sense of hearing. You can´t even tell that she´s deaf most of the time.

I´m so sorry to hear about Grandma Kimball, you are in my prayers. I hope you get better soon! Also, Happy Birthday to Kylie, coming up this Sunday! I forgot to submit my Felicidades to McKenzie in the big letter last week, but I included it in the subletter right after that. Have fun this week! I love you all so much!

Love, Elder Kimball