April 23, 2012

I am getting really tired of the weather here. You look at the temperature thing and see 20 degrees everyday and think that this is the greatest place in the world. I walk outside in 20 degrees in the place with the strongest sun in all the world and 20 degrees feels like 30 degrees and there is nothing but dirt. I need change...its always the same.

I don't really know what to say, so I´ll just start talking with my fingers and see what falls out. We are going to have three baptisms this week. One of them is the boyfriend of the daughter of the bishop. He's the one who has basically been in a holding pattern until he gets married on Friday and then baptized on Saturday. That is pretty much a guaranteed baptism in my opinion.

The other two are a girl and her brother. The biggest problem for the girl at this point is that she doesn't want to wear a skirt to church, but we are feeling pretty good about that. I think her brother  is a hundred percent onboard and loves the missionaries (me), so he is pretty good too. Their parents would probably be good to go as well, but they are living together and are not married, so they cant get baptized right now. However, the dad was at church this last week. These two are not actually from our sector. They're from the sector above us which also go to our capilla (chapel) and are without missionaries so we are working there because our sector is the smallest in the mission and we can get there really easy.

We are going to have a wedding in the sector this week which should be pretty interesting. I think that we are going that this week, at least for part of the time, to support him since he is the one getting baptized. I don't think this is a common thing here in the mission.

Oh... we get to talk on Mother's Day. You should get a webcam because we can use Skype and I think that would be better than talking by phone (personally). I think I am also going to try and send some photos using the Skydrive method. Tell me how that works in the next letter.

Love, 

Me

April 16, 2012

That is good to hear that the missionaries are having success on the homefront and that they are getting good help from the ward. You would think that we would be able to get a lot of help here because people don't really have schedules, but it goes the other way. People are never in there house when you make plans to arrive at a specific time. That being said, it is looking like we are going to have either 3 or 5 baptisms on the 28th which is cool. You mentioned that the missionaries there are teaching only the mom in one family, but that is super common. It is good when they get baptized if they can stay strong, but we are really making a push on teaching families in the mission because they stay stronger most of the time.

That's good to hear that Spencer's going away stuff went well. It sucks that he is still having some issues with his visa and stuff. I know the song you referred to that Savannah and Carissa sang at Spence's farewell (In the Hollow of thy Hand). There is a CD called The Return Missionary Soundtrack and it is on there, but in rock form. Elder Lopez played it in Tocopilla all the time. That being said, I had never really listened closely to the lyrics, but they are super good.

The visa paperwork here for us is as follows: You get a visitor's permit to the country for 3 months when you arrive. Within that time you have to get your solicitud de residencia (application for residence) which lasts for 4 months. This paper is the middle step while they process your visa, which usually takes 3 months. They send your visa which gets stamped in your passport and you have 30 days to register your visa, because the Centre of Investigation and the government aren't joint. Then you go back to the government where they take pictures and send for your carnet (book) which comes about three weeks later and is like a drivers license that you must carry all the time. Right  now I am waiting on my visa and it should be ready by the end of the month.

I am going to be honest when I say that the P-days are kind of lame. All we do is play soccer and there are really no sightseeing opportunities except the Portada, which is a big rock in the sea with a hole through it.

I went for interviews with the President this week and asked him about using sky drive to upload photos and he said it was good, so once I figure it out (it is in Spanish), I will send you a load of pictures.

My current challenge in this sector is not that I don't meet people but that Elder Valle doesn't really tell me much about the people that we visit. So, I often have to figure out if the people are members, less active or investigators by what is being said, so I'm not contributing as much to the conversations. Also, the Latinos are super good at talking about anything for long periods. This is good if they are talking to you, but if they are talking to your Latino companion, then you pretty much can't say anything cause they dominate the conversation. However, I heard from a couple people that President Bruce is looking to transfer the mantel to the younger missionaries - it is sounding like most of my district, if not all, may become senior cmpanions. I feel really good about that because I feel like I need a challenge. As you know, I pretty much do just what I need to in order to succeed and I feel like I need some pressure to get me working harder.

Until next week, 

Brother Jordan

April 9, 2012

The Chileans are pretty hardcore about their Semana Santa (Holy Week). They all got Friday off and we had an activity in the church to celebrate it. People kept asking if the Semana Santa was a big deal back home, but I really think most consider it an opportunity to have a day off and look for chocolate eggs (which I still want to do when I get back BTW). It does seem like most of the holidays here are either Catholic (not surprising because everyone is catholic here) or related to the family.

I have to say that I don't think I am going to be eating turkey for 2 years. We eat a lot of chicken here, but it is not the same. Also fish. I have had quite a bit of fish. It is really fresh and the people here generally cook really well, so right now I am really just maintaining my don't ask what it is policy and eating whatever they put in front of me. Except olives... the olives here are the most disgusting thing that I have ever tasted.

When they look at my pictures and see Austin (Jordan's cousin's 4 year old son) everyone asks if it is me and I tell them no, but that he is my little buddy and I miss him so much, so the feeling goes both ways.

I don't think I told you but our mamita here in Gabriela Mistral is the best in the whole mission. She cooks lunch for us and does our laundry like all the other mamitas, but she also gives us breakfast and once (like a small supper) of bread and Ecco which is like the fake coffee stuff you can buy in Canada, but its super popular here. I don't really like Ecco, but I found out that if you put some milk and enough sugar it starts to taste like hot chocolate so I'm really enjoying it now. Plus, I have my whole amount of money to basically buy junk food which is making me really happy.

The Earthquake a few weeks ago was in Conception which is way south and I didn't really hear much about it. I heard from Elder Revi told that it was an earthquake, but it was pretty small and one person died, but it was because he freaked out and crashed his car. But when I was in Tocopilla I felt a tremor and it was pretty cool and really weird. It was kind of like a train passing really close to your house and making everything shake a little.

That is interesting about the dump of snow you got. The weather here has been the same for 3 months...everyday...I miss seasons. All they have is summer which is hot and then winter which is like a cool summer. It's not the same.

Honestly, I am finding this sector kind of boring. This could be because the sector is small and all the places we go seem to be the same, but I think it might be a little bit of the fact that Elder Valle works pretty different than Elder Revi and I don't really like it as much, but we will see. The amount of people we are teaching is really small and I don't really feel like we have anyone solidly progressing, except for the boyfriend of the daughter of the bishop, Ishmael. He isn't really progressing, he is moreso just in a holding pattern. He gets married on the 28th, then baptized on the 29th and confirmed on the 30th.

The place where we live now is the upstairs floor of our momitas house and it is super good. It is smaller, but for 2 people we have plenty of space.

You can tell people that I am doing good. la idioma esta progressando y yo siento mucho mas mejor ahora. Tambien yo estoy trabajando mas ahora que antes para mejorar mi español. Antes yo no hice casi nada para aumentar mi habilidad de hablar pero ahora yo estudio como 1 hora el mejor parte de las dias y yo puedo ver la diferencia en mi habilidad de hablar. Pero es interesante que las cosas que estan mejorando no son las cosas que yo estoy estudiando. Tambien ésta semana dos personas me dijo que you estoy hablando muy bien si yo solamente tengo tres meses en Chile, pero you creo que eso es mas porque you practico mi pronunciacion cada dia para que las personas puedan entender las cosas que yo le digo. (Approximate translation: The language is progressing and I feel much better now. Also, I'm working more now than before to improve my Spanish. Before I didn't do much to improve my ability to speak, but now I study 1 hour a day. It's the best part of the day and I can see the difference in my ability to speak. It's interesting that the things that are improving are not the things I'm studying. This week two people told me that I am speaking very well for only being in Chile for 3 months. They think it's been longer because I practice my pronunciation every day so that people can understand the things I say.)

I have been really pitiful in taking pictures here, but will try and take more on my  next P-day so that you can have them. You should tell me any pictures that you want me to take so that I have an idea and maybe sort of a goal when I take them.

Oh I don't know if I told you this either, but Elder Wells and Elder Parker from the MTC are in my zone and Elder Parker is in my district, so P-days and zone meetings are super fun.

That's all I have for now, so till next week.

Love 

Jord

April 2, 2012

This is a really interesting experience being here in a new place again. I am not really that surprised that I cried when I left Tocopilla because I am usually pretty emotional in things like that. The difference between leaving there and leaving home is that there is a good chance I may never see some of those people ever again. I should be able to talk with some of them again, but I may never meet them again.

I wouldn't say that I wasn't expecting the transfer, I just really wasn't all that worried about it. I am pretty much just going with the flow of all the changes and differences now. So far every change has been doable and I have not yet felt really overwhelmed. I am hoping that I can start understanding people better - it is really annoying hearing every word perfectly, understanding every word, and still not know what they are saying because the grammar doesn´t make sense. However, Elder Valle doesn't really speak much English so we will talk in Spanish most of the time.

It was confirmed to me that Gabriela Mistral is the smallest in the mission. If you want to look at the sector online here are the boundaries. Just find all these streets and they will make a long box at some point.

east-Huamachuco

west- Heroes de la Concepcion

north- Juan Orione

south-Nicolas Tirado

There's a couple differences between Elder Revi and Elder Valle I've noticed so far. Elder Revi was almost fluent in English and Elder Valle isn't - that's OK. Elder Valle is really, really obedient in the morning and with the schedule so that is good for me. I will definitely learn a whole new set of things from Elder Valle.

Tell Spencer (reporting in April to the MTC and then to the Sophia Bulgaria mission) to speak his language even if he feels like an idiot doing it (like me). I didn't as much as I should have, and I wish I had.

Antofagasta supposedly has the best weather in the mission, so that is nice. There have been some days where the people here were really cold... so perfect shorts and T-shirt weather.

Here is my view on Conference. Before my mission, conference was something I watched on Sunday to get it out of the way so that I could do something else. I now view it as the missionary Super Bowl. It was really awesome. We are forced (light usage) to watch all 4 sessions and the priesthood session and I took like 13 pages of notes - stuff that was said and stuff that came to mind while watching it. I wish Conference was a week long so that I could just keep going. There was a room for us Gringos to watch in English. We just disfrutando (enjoyed) our little room with a big table and comfy chairs. It was probably a highlight of my mission so far. One unfortunate thing was that we thought they were going to announce the building of a Chile Antofagasta temple, but they didn't announce any temples.

I don't really need anymore pins or CTR rings because I am pretty lame at handing them out. I am also really lame at taking pictures so I don't have any new ones for you. Sorry.

Love

Jord

March 27, 2012

Mis Padres,

I am definitely learning to have more patience here in the mission. I was a little (lot) impatient before my mission with children in...well really any situation where they weren't peaceful. But that is why I am here; to teach and learn, and I feel obligated to say baptize.

It is kind of amazing to me that I have been in Chile for almost 3 months and that before the end of this transfer I will have been in the mission for 6 months. Almost 1 quarter of my mission already. I feel like I have only been here for like, a week and a half, when I look back on it. 

We had 93 people in Tocopilla this Sunday at church, but February is the big vacation month in Chile. Our attendance in February was a lot like yours was over Spring Break. Vacations and pretty much the whole branch went to Santiago to the temple.

I was trying to hold off saying this in my e-mail for as long as a could, but I have so much to say about it and I'm losing time. We had the baptism for Brunilda (age 92) this week and she was pretty much a champion. Also, we had transfers this week and... I am no longer in Tocopilla. I was transfered to the zone La Portada in Antofagasta, into the sector Gabriela Minstral. Elder Revi is still in Tocopilla and should be getting his new trainee today from Antofagasta. I am now with my new companion Elder Valle from  Lima Peru. He is super good so far as I can tell.

The sector is really small compared to Tocopilla. Elder Revi said that Gabriela Minstral is one of the smallest in the mission, if not the smallest, and Tocopilla is one of the biggest, so... big change.

I cried like a little baby when I gave my going away testimony at church on Sunday and it was super hard to say goodbye to the people there. But, I am excited to be serving in a new area and with a new companion to learn more from here. 

We went to visit some of the people who were really good to me during my time in Tocopilla. Well, everyone was really to me, but I didn't have time for that. We visited May-ling (she gave me a towel that I really don't have room for), Rafa and Brunilda (my converts) and one family that is particularly awesome.

I am running out of time here and I want to send some pictures so I'm going to cut this off here. I'm sure you will have questions that I can't think of, so fire away.

love,

Jord

Tocopilla, Chile

Elder McCaskill's first baptism - Rafa

Visit before leaving Tocopilla for his new assignment - Rafa, his mother & grandma

Jordan and Brunilda (92 yrs old) - a champion

March 19, 2012

I'm glad that you got home safely and that the trip was considered a success for you guys. I can imagine what you are talking about with the little kids in your Sunday School class having lots of energy. Being a missionary here, all the little kids love you, and I some of them are really...excited. I really enjoy the kids, but sometimes they scream a lot and that tries my patience a little bit - I'm not perfect. That being said though, they are usually really good and I think that I am a lot more mellow than Elder Revi about it.

It doesn't really surprise me that Chile produces more copper than Arizona because that is pretty much all there is in the North of Chile. Everyone here is a miner or works in the mine doing something. It can actually make it annoying because the usual turn in the mines is seven for seven or fourteen for seven and the people are really hard to plan lessons for. One of the guys that we have taught a couple lessons to works 14 for 7 driving those huge trucks in the mines. He gave us an example of how big the tires were width wise and they are really impressive.

That is really interesting about Maxine (Shelley's sister, Jordan's aunt) needing a hearing aid, and not really surprising. Perhaps she will stop yelling into the phone now.

My foot feels fine now. I have no idea what happened to it, but my tactic of ignore it and hope it goes away worked. Another interesting note - the shoes that I brought that I was wearing before my mission are garbage now. I have pretty much destroyed them. These other ones should last a lot longer though. I may not need another pair of shoes, or if I do, it should only be one. We'll see.

Transfers aren't this week, they're next Tuesday so I will probably find out if anything is changing in Tocopilla sometime this week and be able to let you know on the next P-day.

The thing with Tocopilla and going to Antofagasta a lot is that we are part of the zone Calama, which is another city. Tocopilla, Antofagasta and Calama make a triangle of cities that are all about 3 hours apart. When we have meetings the President just sends everybody to Antofa instead of using his time getting to Calama cause he is super busy. And it is also a nice break to go to Antofa for the missionaries here because Tocopilla is really small.

The Spanish is coming along good and Elder Revi is starting to point out the small things that I am doing wrong because I am not making that many big errors, and when I do I ususally know why. I just have to get used to when the Spanish grammar doesn't line up with the English grammar. For instance, there are times when English makes a verb into a noun by adding "ing", but Spanish never uses the equivalent that way. Sometimes I get errors like that, but I'm learning and I'm really glad that Elder Revi is pointing these out.

About my investigators then:

May-ling and her husband Carlos are the couple that I talked about last week with the two sons and they are doing really good. We have shared a lot of lessons and messages with her and she is super excited about the church. We are having trouble getting her to go to church, but I think she wants to go with her family. He is a little more hesitant to accept the gospel because I don't think that he necessarily thinks he needs to have an organized religion, but just a good religious environment for his kids.

Brunilda is a 92 year old lady that has a baptismal date for this Saturday. She is progressing pretty much without issues. The only thing we have with her is that she kind of forgets stuff until you remind her, but she really enjoys the church and the people there, so we are pretty confident. We are also a little worried that the baptism might be a little much, so we are making plans to have a super controlled situation. We'll get some help so that it all goes well instead of just the usual cold water baptism.

Dorys is an older lady that has a lot of problems in her life, but she knows one of the youth here and we are working with him in order to solidify her resolve. She is coming along and has a baptismal date for the first Friday in April.

Suyen is our last really solid investigator at the moment and she has a baptismal date for the first Friday in April too. She was an interesting girl that we have been working with for a long time. She is 20 years old with a child (this is really common in Chile) and she was living with the father and not married, so she couldn't be baptized. She is really awesome and really understands that everything is true. She was even asking us to baptize her for a long time but we couldn't unless the boyfriend moved or they got married. We have been visiting her since my 3rd week here and she has been super receptive. Well... last week she broke up with her boyfriend and is now going to get baptized. I think that this is good because that relationship wasn't healthy.

We will be needing to push for finding more people to teach in the coming weeks cause we don't really have anyone else.

We are also working with a couple less active members. 

The family Vasart Sanz, which is the picture I sent of all the missionaries at the table with the family. The husband Luis is a less active member and the wife is super active. His brother Hermano Yerko is also a really strong member and part of the Branch Presidency. Our goal is for Luis to baptize his daughter who is 8 and not baptized but has going to church with her mom. Luis is making huge progress to get to that point.

We are also working with the family Morales. The wife is active now after working with her for a while and the husband is looking pretty good for getting back to activity too. This family is super awesome and I really want them to keep going because they have been sealed in the temple and then went less active.

The last family is the family Nievas who are sealed in the temple and are inactive, but we may stopping going for now because they never commit to anything and are starting to be a time sink.

Love,

Jord

March 12, 2012

We are definitely having super relaxing P days now and it is awesome for us. My foot is feeling better - not perfect, but better and I am planning on giving it all the rest that I can today in the hopes that it gets better still. Mostly I am following the ignore it and hope that it goes away philosophy which seems to be working. I have no clue why it was hurting though.

I am so jealous of you going skiing. That is something that I am going to miss. I haven't even seen rain for 2 months and believe it or not, I really want it to snow. We will definitely need to go skiing when I get home.

That is pretty cool that you got to see the hockey game in Phoenix. I'm sure that you enjoyed that. That's pretty awesome that Mandy and Jacek came down for the weekend. I'm sure that was...interesting. Interesting and fun, I imagine. I have really no idea when you left because time doesn't really exist in the mission - everything that you do is based on a weekly schedule that all points towards Sunday and getting people to church.

I think that the next transfer date is on March 26th. I have actually already been through one transfer but I didn't move. I don't know if I will actually go anywhere soon because it really all depends on what President Bruce wants. I know there are missionaries who have served for more than a year in one sector, so there is really no way to tell.

As far as our investigators go we are having really good luck lately finding people. We think we might be able to baptize 3 people on the 24th with some work, but we have at least one that is a sure thing. We are also working really hard with a family of 4 that we think is basically perfect for the church. We have been working with the mom and her 2 kids - one is 8 and one is 6, but we have yet to meet the dad. She is probably the most interesting for me because she has a really rigid definition of what she thinks a church should be and we are pretty much what she is describing. We have had trouble getting her to church, but she was there yesterday and said that she really enjoyed it. We have an appointment to meet the father this week and if everything goes well with him we will probably be able to memberize the family.

My reading of the BoM (LdM) in Spanish is going really good. I am actually undertstanding a lot more of it than I thought I would. The Spanish was weird this week because I just started understanding most of what everybody was saying. I really hope that doesn't stop because it is really nice. Last week you asked about singing in Spanish and I forgot to answer, but singing in Spanich is basically the same as in English except that I need to go a teeny bit slower. It's just a pronunciation thing and I think that my pronunciation is pretty good.

The meeting in Antofa was awesome. It was really awesome to be able to talk to everyone and see how they were doing. President Bruce did a presentation and let us ask some questions which was super good and really changed my mentality on some stuff. It was really nice to hear the experiences of some people and how they had compared to mine. As much as we aren't supposed to compare ourselves to other missionaries, it is nice to know whether or not you are way behind everyone or not. I think I´m right on track, so that is good. Interesting though, Elder Weeter (Jordan's companion from the MTC who has lost 60 lbs since arriving in Chile) didn't look a lot different, just his suit didn't really fit at all.

If you want to send me something to test the mail system, you could send candy from Canada that I would recognize, such as a bag of that Lindt dark chocolate or Wonderbars. 

I think I have some time before Elder Revi finishes so I´ll share some of the experiences I've had with the missionary work here.

The people here are really nice and most of them really don't like to insult you, so instead of just telling you that they are not interested, they just set up an appointment and don't show up or they make up some lame excuse about why you can't pass by. It is kind of like a token nice act, but is a bit annoying to walk 20 mins across Tocopilla to knock on the door of an empty house. That being said, I think the people here are a lot nicer generally than the people in Canada or the States from my experience.

 

On a more comical note, the Sister that we live beside has a dog named Andrew and he really likes to follow the missionaries around for parts of the day. This might seem a bit random, but at this moment he is sleeping underneath my chair at the Ciber.

Well, that is really all that I have to say for now... so until next week...

Love,

Jord