Arriving in Chile - The Beginning of My Mission

Here is part of a hand written letter that Nate sent to us after arriving in Chile:

February 22, 2011
"Bienvenidos from Chile!! I'm here and doing awesome! Sister and President Lovell are so welcoming and loving! The flights over here were not bad at all! I talked to quite a few people already (in the airports & plane) and I don't understand them very well, but they could understand me!
I am SO happy to be here! It is awesome! All the elders are so nice and love this mission! I've talked with Elder Coles as well, and he is doing great too! There are 12 different zones, so I'm probably going to be all over the place!"






Arrival at the airport - Nate's waving to everyone

Nate traveled with 3 other elders and 1 other sister missionary. Back row, left
to right: Elder Coles (friend from high school, he's an assistant), Nate,
Elder Smith, Elder Winsor, Elder Williams, and ??. The sister missionary
is in front with President and Sister Lovell.

Nate and Elder Justin Coles - they played soccer together at East

President and Sister Lovell are from Heber City, Utah

In Nate's first area, he is assigned to serve in Valdivia,
which is just north of Osorno. His companion is Elder
Paris, from Puente Alto, Chile. On a p-day the missionaries
went to the beach, which isn't too far from Valdivia.

The crab here is tasty!









February 25, 2011
"Wow! I cannot even begin to tell you how much my life has changed in the last week! Life is CRAZY!!! I had no idea what to expect arriving here in Chile! It is awesome! But so hard too! So hard! My companion Elder Paris speaks zero English! Zero! So...I am trying my best to hang in there and communicate with the Spanish I know! I don't have anyone to speak English to, it is frustrating at times, but I'm trying my best! The first day I was out teaching lessons! It is crazy! But I don't speak much at all. Haha pretty much just bear my testimony and pray! Because THEY DON'T SPEAK SPANISH HERE!!! I don't know WHAT it is!! But its NOT what I learned int the MTC! I understand NOTHING what they are saying !! And they don't understand me!







My first empanada! These are awesome!

















This is a fort we were visiting, but it was closed. I'm not really that short - it's a huge door!












Elder Helgesen (zone leader) and I were on an intercambio. (exchange) We were eating Salchipap, which is very delicious! (Salchipap has hot dogs, french fries, peppers, and sauce.)







March 27, 2011
"I'm doing SO good right now! Minus the language, and not being able to speak and understand as much as I would like...things are good! (Doesn't Nate have a great attitude?) We had 17 lessons with members present this week, which is a huge step from before! We now have 4 investigators with baptism dates. So things are going pretty well! Time has FLOWN though! I can't believe I am already emailing again! I finally started to get really involved and so excited for our next lesson, so we were just going going going this week, and the time flew!"

April 4, 2011
"This week pretty much all we did was we tried to get the word out about General Conference and how anyone can listen to the living prophet of God here on earth today! We made some little notes/flyers to give to all the less actives and investigators. And we gave a lot of lessons on prophets and the importance of them.
Yesterday, my district leader and companion stayed over at our house because they live a few hours away from the Stake Center...so since I had already been on a few intercambios with my District Leader, I went with his companion who is from Utah and he arrived 6 weeks before I did! Haha so our Spanish isn't the best, is what I am saying. So for the first time I was FORCED to speak all that I could to communicate with the people we came into contact with. I was SO amazed at my Spanish! Haha it was a lot better than I thought it was, and for the first time I understood a lot more than normal! It was good not having someone I could turn to when I didn't know exactly what to say. So...the Spanish is improving."