It's a whole new culture shock!

There has to be a way a mother can shield her children from the hardness and desperation of life. But I would never do it because of the little bits of hope and humanity and love from people in those situations. I have a few more pictures from Alex that show the 2nd-3rd worldness of where he is now. It really is very humbling. Yay for Elder Silva as well. Alex really liked and now likes him again. As the pictures show, he looks happy and good and truly like a missionary! Ok just to explain the photos. First is a picture of the front room in Milipellia. 2. Alex and Hna Campino's kitty 3. Hills in town of Milipellia 4. Studying scriptures with Pablo from Mirador 5. Flaites 6. Members house!?


I got sent to the campo. A one-hour bus ride out of Santiago later, I´m in a town called Melipilla. It reminds me of Moab, kind of. There are 90,000 people in the town and the surrounding farm/vineyard/minery type areas. There´s a middle of the city, like where I am. But if you walk a few minutes in whichever direction, you are getting into the fields and farms again. In stark, ridiculous contrast to the place I was in before, I am now responsible for 1/4 of the mission Santiago Chile West in area. That is not a joke. Our sector, Silva Chavez, is half the city, all the way out to rural communities up to a half our´s bus ride away.

All that crazyness is dampened by one thing only - Elder Silva is my companion. You may or may not remember him, but he was in my pension when I got to Chile. I know him pretty well already. But he knows no English, so if I speak English, I´m talking to myself here in Melipilla. Even so, it´s been fine, actually. My only problem these days is when I teach, I sum up things too fast and can´t think of more to say. I don´t know what the deal with that is. I don´t know if you´d know anything about that.

The work here is not as hard as it was in a perservering-through-tedium way, but it is much more demanding physically. It´s a very good thing (probably planned by the Lord) that I walked a lot in Mirador. Now we walk a lot farther, especially when the buses don´t arrive for no reason. This is a very second-to-third world area. Most people have cell phones with 20 or 30 minutes every two weeks, and have never heard of text messaging. A lot of them do not have running water, especially outside the city. It´s a whole new culture shock.

However, the people here are nicer. Way nicer. You know how those stereotypical country people are. They really are like that. They absolutely will not allow you to leave their houses hungry or tired. The food is very calorie dense because people here - including us - have a lot of physical work to do - which means it tastes better. They do a lot of homemade french fries, eggs, and rice. Also, toasted barley coffee-substitute (which we can drink, and I really like). And the biggest grapes I´ve ever seen... green ones like baby carrots and purple ones that would barely fit through your fingers if you made a hole with the thumb and forefinger.

Part of people being nicer is that we get people to teach more. We actually have four or five baptisms coming down the line within this next six weeks already. It´s pretty crazy, really. It´s so much easier here. Our leadership is all new, all newly trained, and they´re all ready to work.

I didn´t count myself as a Spanish speaker until a few days ago. If someone asked me, I´d now say yes. The higher level stuff is the most interesting. Joking is a totally new game in a different language. But now I can actually get to know people, and get into their problems. Elder Silva said the other day that we´re really not just missionaries. We´re also psychologists. That´s absolutely true. I can figure most people out pretty fast now, just because I´ve had so many tries. It helps you see how custom-made every person´s life is better them. I can testify to that, usually. When I´m not getting smashed. (Ether 12:7) But the ´smashed´ is something that helps too. (Ether 12:27)

Hopefully the pictures explain it too.

I´ll work on the shirt. There´s some pretty cool stuff in this town.

Cuídense,
Elder Alex C Crist