cuidado

my beloved blessed family,
probablemente este email va a hacerles super aburrido...
yesterday was my cumplemes. i have now officially been on a mission for 4 months.
A couple of Sundays ago we were walking to lunch after church and we decided to contact on the way. we were walking in gran avenida and there were lots of people walking towards us so we started asking people if we could talk to them and everyone was saying no. what the heck? finally one lady stopped and talked to us and it was then we discovered all of those people were leaving mass....oops.
we have these inactive members, silveria and maria- sisters of 74 and 62. they´re crazy. i love them. anyway, whenever we go to their store silveria is sitting outside with a different dog in her lap...and this week i found out she has 12 dogs. she showed me her photo albums and she has way more photos of her old dogs than her late husband. and she started crying when talking about a lost dog. but at the thought of her late husband, nothing.
There is this little kid named Nacho. it reminded me of scott..haha, nachoooooooooooo. anyway, he punched me. i think it´s cause i´m gringa.
There are lots of hobos who ride their bicycles going around gathering garbage or hauling cardboard boxes. the other day i saw one with a cigarrette in his mouth.
this is terrible, i´m seriously picking my brain for things to write. not that this was a bad week. yesterday we had literally no appointments set so we made some up and almost no one was home. but we did find bernarda. her husband is crazy. he answered the door and denied that bernarda was his wife. then he was telling us that the mormon´s are mistaken. then he and bernarda started yelling at each other about heaven and hell. i was having difficulties following the conversation as was my comp who has spoken spanish her whole life. i just started laughing uncontrolably (wow, i have no idea how to spell in english anymore). i don´t know if that offended them, but we set an appointment to go back on saturday.
yesterday we had stake conference and it was a broadcast from salt lake. elder christofferson spoke and he speaks amazing spanish. the talk was good too. and elder packer spoke. i feel pretty re-motivated now after the conference. basically the whole thing was about missionary work. afterward we were at a baptism in our stake and we were sitting next to marco, our convert in january, and he told us he and his wife are planning on serving a mission in 30 some odd years. that made me happy to see some fruits of our work. but really i don´t do anything. i just say what i know. the spirit does all the work. that was my spiritual thought for the day.
i love you all and miss you. but right now chile needs me. plus i´m pretty sure you´re receiving more blessings than you would if i were there.
peace in the middle east
la gringita



peace+love