Well, another week has flown by. It´s amazing how fast the time goes. It seems like a month ago I got here to Chile and a couple days ago I completed a year. Now I lack a week to have 13 months. Crazy! But it´s been a great experience, and I keep learning more and more each day. Oh, and Adela got confirmed yesterday. Yeah!!! She´s great, and is really excited. We´ve taught everything, even the after baptism lessons already. She´s thought of going to the temple to get a tour around the gardens with a Sister missionary that works there. She´s going to progress quickly.

We had an interesting experience this past week. First off, our house is really horrible. We have no idea how sister missionaries used to live there. We live in a little shack above the garage. Below us is nothing, and the boards actually have little slits so we can see the light from below when it´s on. It had a balcony which they kinda boarded over with walls and a window. But it still has the slits between the little poles on the railing, so the cold air comes in really easily. It gets freezing, especially in the morning. But last Wednesday the owner, who lives in the house below--well, the house to the garage below--decided to fix our bathroom. He said that when we shower and get water on the floor (because the shower is small and the curtain´s horrible) it drips down into the garage. So he hired some guy to come in and fix it. Really all he did was put linoleum on the floor and wall with a bunch of strong rubber cement stuff. It looks a lot better now; but the rubber cement stuff he used smells really strong, and he was using a whole bucket. The smell got so strong that he almost passed out and had to leave halfway through the job.

Meanwhile, we´re out walking in the street, knocking doors, and Juana, the owner´s wife, calls us. She said that the smell was so strong the worker had to leave and she didn´t want us to sleep there cause she thought we´d die. Apparently it´s also really toxic. So we arranged to sleep with Elder King and Elder Mangels from Dorsal 1because they live close. (They´re the other Elders from our ward.) So we planned to go home about 9:30 to gather together stuff to go over there. But during one of our lessons with a recent convert it started to rain. Luckily he had two umbrellas that he let us use. So when we got to the house we threw some blankets and pillows in a suitcase and called Radiotaxi to send a taxi to pick us up at the corner. He told us someone would be there in 20 minutes. So 15 minutes later we showed up. We then waited about 15 minutes. When he didn´t show up we called again. They told us they´d send someone. After about 10 more minutes we got frustrated and decided to walk. So there we were, two gringos in our pj´s, walking down the street with a suitcase and umbrellas, drenched from the rain cause it was coming down HARD!! We arrived at the other Elders´ house about 15 minutes later, deciding we should have walked in the first place. But by the time we got there we were both drenched, despite rain coats and umbrellas. Then we opened the suitcase. My pillow, which was on top, was drenched, and the blankets were damp on the edges. It was pretty bad. Oh, and we had to sleep on the wood floor. Let´s just say that I did not sleep much that night. The next morning we showered at the house of a member, and also did our weekly planning there. The guy finished the bathroom during the day and we were fortunately able to sleep at home that night. It was quite an experience.

Friday we had a Zone Conference. It was really great, and I learned a lot from it. Afterwards they gave us injections to protect against N1H1, aka Swine Flu. I´ve already had it here, but I got the shot anyway just to make sure. You never know. While there I was able to see a lot of people that I´ve met on the mission, including a companion from the MTC. I also saw an Elder that is in my previous sector right now so I was able to talk to him. Sadly, I found out that most of my converts there are inactive. One visits somewhere else on weekends; another doesn´t go ever; another is inactive with her husband, who is a member and got active when she got baptized but now they´re both inactive; and the Elder doesn´t even know the other one. All the inactives are the females. The two men, Nicolas and Tomás are active. Tomás has the Aaronic Priesthood and has been blessing the sacrament. That´s good. But I´m really bummed that the others are inactive. I´m going to write to them and try to help them.

Well, that´s about it for this week. My mom sent me a message in today´s email that was really interesting. It talked about how mission preparation starts early. Every lesson in Primary, Sunday School, Seminary, etc. is preparing one for the mission. It is really true. And yet one arrives on the mission, completes a year, and keeps learning. It is an eternal proccess.

Ciao!

Elder Murdoch