1/18/2010 Latest Letter and pictures/videos!

Hello family! Im doing good. We have quite a few new investigators, i will tell you next week the ones who are progressing. Its been pretty rough work lately. a lot of people go on vacation this time of the year, mainly to the beach here. but it makes for long days of knocking doors (screaming Älo!) but its all good, we always have one good lesson a day which lifts us up. spanish is still coming. i can understand a lot better though. im starting to speak a bit more. but still a long way to go. ha. we have had an interesting week, lots of crazy people, and then some really great people. it is really great to see the contrast of the spirit, and attitude. its easy to get down after a long day of dead ends, but when we get into that one house and teach, it feels amazing, and makes it all worth it. still learning how to be more reliant of our savior. when our focus is not on him, everything only gets harder. its been great.

Living off cereal, bread and manjar. delicious. i had my first fried empenada today. had some other ones this week. they are awesome. thanks for sending a package, im excited for it. Please wish ryan a happy birthday for me. im glad it went well. oh man tacos would be so good. that is awesome grammy is doing better. that is crazy that dustin is back. dont worry about sending me physical letters, it really doesnt make sense. but possibly some point in my mission i will be near the rancagua post office and i can check it whenever. right now we cant even send mail without driving a ways let alone recieve it. we have a post office but its right across the street from out of our mission bounderies, ha, no permission to go. the best way to do physical letters is towards the end of each change, every 6 weeks, i will always send physical letters home like 18 days before a change, it takes about 8 days to get there and 8 days back. so if you send one towards the end of every change it works out. the problem is our zone conference changes each change, so confusing. i will try to let you know when we have them. next wednesday is zone conference. for this change. here is my adress by the way. Elder Chase Kyle Roosendaal - Misión Chile Rancagua - German Riesco 230 Ste. 703 - Clasificador 2-C Rancagua - Chile. The city im in is La pintana, just south of santiago, el sembrador.

thank you for the encouragement and testimony and prayers! they are always needed. i will continue to pray for all of you. I love you all very much. talk to you later. (crappy comp, i will try to send some pictures and a short vid in another email

1/4/2010 New Years in Chile!

Hello everybody. all is well. Weve been working hard this week. it has felt like a month, but its good. had the two baptisms this sunday. they were awesome. Maritza and macarana. maritza is 35 and lives alone, she has a son but social services took him away, she has been through a lot of trauma in her life. but she was glad to be baptized. macarana is 16 and she is way cool. she and her brother christopher are close, we hope he is on his way also. she was so happy to be baptized. both of their testimonies were amazing. its funny how i only knew them for a few days, but it was still cool to teach them and see how happy they were. i got a nice taste of the fruits of the labor. now i need to see how to get there. everything went well, had a few issues with the font but it worked out. it is crazy how much harder it is to solve problems down here. there are limited resources and time to boot. We need to be creative. ha.

new years was awesome, we had 2 elders from the sector next to us come spend the night. we had a way good time. we bought a bunch of food and made some sweet shiska bobs. roasted some crappy chilean marshmallows and played and sang with guitar, pots and pans. We played some card games and then watched the restauration, in spanish. it was fun to bring in the new year here, very interesting. i have got to teach quite a few times, we have met a lot of new investigators. our sector is packed with people. we have appointments all the time.

Elder canaan is awesome. we are really getting along. we have a lot in common. he loves the same music and movies, plays guitar. it is fun. he has taught me a lot about teaching and contacting the people here, and of course spanish. it is so awesome to teach people, becuase its the only time i can really converse with them. Spanish is still well, people can understand me, i can understand part of what they are saying. they really speak so fast and broken up with the vos. its hard to seperate. im slowly building my ears up for it. it gets pretty hot but its not unbarable. the bebida expresses are life savers. so good. so is the bread. they eat so many tomatos! guacamole is fine. the chorizo is really good. all the lunches we have had so far have been really good, very simple, but very good. monday is our p day by the way. We finally bought some food for our house today. its a beautiful thing. raggae tone is everywhere and totally ridiculous. concrete/dirt soccer fields are everywhere, its painful, it would be fun to play. i believe we will for our next zone activity. our zone is really great. they are all way nice and good missionaries. we are keeping it real and working hard. i love you all, i miss you, its alot different being halfway across the world from you instead of an hours drive. ha. well. we shall continue working, dealing with drunk people, trying to stay safe. i could use a transformer or whatever to plug in american plugs, they are hard to find here. and any american food is welcome ha.

im taping some things and taking pictures. i will try to send some today. i dont know my mailing address right now, but we only get letters every 6 weeks anyways. yeah lame. so email is sweet. thank you for taking care of everything, im glad everyone is doing good. thats it for this week. the usb ports on this comp dont work. i might be able to send pictures on another one. well okay, talk to you next week. cuidase, chao

12/30/2009 Estoy en Chile!!!

cannot even explain how crazy this is. The flight was decent, got some sleep. it is much more overwhelming then i thought, but all is WEll! my companions name is Elder Canaan. he is great, been here 20 months. he is from draper. small world as always. the mission has finally hit me. the mtc has nothing on this. quick note, my facebook needs to be closed down, our mission president demanded it. kara should know what to do, yeah even though that im not using, he still does not want us to have one. but yeah. we have a house to ourselve. pretty small. i live in one of the ghettoist parts of santiago for my first area Sembrador.

We met at the presidents house today, had chilean lunch chorizos avocado tomatos, got a nap, had interviews, took it easy, and found out our trainers. WE had to go to rancagua to get to his house, then we had to travel back up to santiago to get to our area. i love you all, im doing fine, just need to wake up and get settled. i cant believe im really here. dogs everywhere. i understand little spanish. we met with one of Elder Canaans investigators tonight, she is planning to be baptized on sunday. Should be neat, the chapel is one of the nicest buildings around here. still small. but yeah, i dont even know what to say right now, my district got split up all over rancagua. im just stoked to get going on the work. its going to be weird getting used to eating one big meal a day at lunch. it was huge at the prez house. i will send pictures next time, i forgot to bring my cable. it is beautiful here. i seriously cant even think right now. but i love you all, all is well, no worries, i will talk to you next week, when im not freaking out ha. love you, bye