¡Hola mi familia y mis amigos!
Olmué is GORGEOUS! I am absolutely stoked to be here and I love my new companion! His name is Elder Rojas and is from Ghuatamala City, Ghuatamala, and has been in the mission for about 9 months. We live in a pension all to ourselves and we both are full of energy and ready to go go go! One of the first things he told me was he doesn´t like lazy people, so I said we were going to get along just fine.
It sounds like you had everything pretty much located well, Dad, because Olmué is waaay the heck out there, all the way out there. We took the metro out of Viña and rode it to the very end of it´s route, past Quilpué, El Belloto, Villa Alemana, until we got to Limache, where we had to take a bus another 30 minutes to get to Olmué. San Francisco, Limache, Peñablanca, and Villa Alemana are all part of our zone, Villa Alemana, and Quillota is another zone north of us. There is also the zone Villa Alemana Oeste. The road entering Olmué is lined by trees and there are hedges around everyone´s yards, and everything is just so tranquil and peaceful. The sun can be pretty strong out here, but about half the time we can find shade as we walk. It´s also a lot hotter being in the interior than right there on the coast where the ocean could cool the air down, so enjoy the snow that you have out there in Russia, Elder Chris Bowler!
Everyone is pretty rich out here, and during the summer (now) there are plenty of visitors from Santiago who like to vacation here. Almost every house has a swimming pool, but the people are really nice and humble. It´s not very much like my first area at all, and there aren´t people on the streets at all times to talk to like in Nueva Aurora. Olmué is just a nice, country feeling, and there are small mountains that line our horizon, not quite like Colorado, but still pretty. La Campana, one of the more famous mountains in this region, is right in our backyard, and we might go hike it sometime as a zone. Olmué also happens to be absolutely enormous. Because it is country, it is spacious. You can take a bus from one end of our area to the other in an hour and a half. We used to have bicycles, but some foolish missionaries a few months ago gave them to the sister missionaries in Limache for whatever reason, which is silly because Limache is about a tenth of the size of our area, and I don´t understand how the sisters use the bicycles with skirts, anyways.
My mailing address is still the same, and will always be the mission office, even if they move me up to La Serena. I hope my letter arrives soon for Mrs. Del Valle, let me know when you get it.
Elder Rojas and I already have big, big plans for Olmué, and we want to do little projects around the pension, too, so that we can live clean and orderly. The missionaries that have been here before aren´t always the best at keeping things organized, and there is a lot of junk in our small space that we have. Also, there is a bunch of overgrown scrub brush in our yard, and we want to fix it all up. We basically have all of our P-days planned already with projects that we want to get done. Today, however, we haven´t had much time because right now we are back in Viña for a visit to the doctor. Elder Rojas messed up his knee pretty bad at some point in his mission, and last week he had a CAT scan on it, and today we´re going to get the results and see what else we have to do. Hopefully, we don´t have to come to the doctor too much, because it is expensive, both money and time, to come to Viña. Something is wrong with his miniscus, and it pops every time he takes a step, but it has been like that for months now. We walk a lot, and he says it hurts a little all the time, but not enough to stop him.
Last Monday, my last night in Nueva Aurora, my companion said we needed to go the bishop´s house to say goodbye, so we went there to find that the ward had planned a surprise farewell party for me! They let Elder Diaz know to guide me to the bishop´s house without me knowing, and I was completely surprised! We had a giant family home evening together, and after the song and prayer, everyone who wanted to expressed their feelings and gratitude for me, and I was really touched. It was especially nice to hear from those who got baptized while I was there, and I wish I could have written down all that they said. At the end, I was able to express my feelings for them, and told them that none of the credit belonged to me. Everything that changed in their lives was due to their own faithfulness to trust in their Heavenly Father enough to do as he says. The grand feelings of love, peace, and joy and the stability and unity in the home springs simply from trusting in what our loving Father guides us to do rather than trusting in our own strengths or the counsels of the world. I´m so happy I had the chance to say goodbye to so many in the ward, and I know that there is so much more that can be done and so much more growing to be had in that ward.
I´m so grateful for my own family. Mom and Dad, I love you both so much and I´m so grateful for the great examples you have been for me and the other kids and for all the patience you´ve had to raise us. I love you all!
Love, Elder Kimball
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