A New Sector

Things here in Los Presidentes are quite different from how things were back in El Castillo. Half of our sector is pretty rich and the other half is just normal. Elder Walters (the elder who has been here for over 4 months) was always telling us to be careful in the bottom half of the sector. We went down there and it is tranquilito or super chill. I feel like some missionaries have been kinda sheltered from the real ghetto areas. Ironically the other night we were knocking doors in the rich sector and we saw three punk kids hop a fence into a park and a minute later a Carabinero van (police van) pulls up and asks if we had seen some teenagers around here. We told them yeah and that they had just hopped the fence. Instantly the officers hit the gas and zoomed over to the park, two of them ran and hopped the fence and one called in for back up. We saw two motorcycle cops and another van zoom by to cut them off on the other side of the park. It was pretty intense. So we have decided that the rich sector is more dangerous then the poor sector.

We have found some really cool people in our ward. The bishop is a young guy in his 30s with big side burns and glasses. He speaks some english so we practice with him. The bishop's mother recently got married in the United States to a really tight black man from Tucson Arizona. They now are living here in Chile and are looking for an apartment. The funniest part about this guy is that he has a low raspy voice, he has a lot of attitude, and doesn't speak a lick of spanish. In church he doesn't understand hardly anything, but my companion translated a lot for him and when he liked something he would always be like "mmmhhhhmmm.." or "alright alright yeah." We love this guy though. He and I spent a while talking about Joe´s BBQ and other places in Gilbert. The ward is really nice though and it has been fun getting to know the members.

Sacrament meeting went pretty well yesterday. There were 83 people in church, but we have a small cozy chapel so it felt really filled. Between the four of us missionaries we managed to have 6 investigators in church. Two of them were baptized by Elder Erickson and Elder Walters yesterday as well. A little old lady named Ester and her grandson Matías. Her sister and the family of Matías were all there and it was really spiritual. Ester gave the sweetest little testimony afterward and Matías mom was tearing up the whole time. Hopefully the whole family will start listening now.

The mission has been a little different being with Elder Page, an elder that has the same amount of time as I do. We are both used to leading and directing the lessons and everything in the sector. We haven´t been fighting at all, we both just have the habit of starting the lesson and of starting contacts so we are trying to adjust to that. We live with Elder Walters who has 6 weeks less then us in the mission. He is now training Elder Erickson from Boyce Idaho. Elder Erickson and I discovered that we are somehow related?! We are both descendents of Parley P. Pratt and we both come from the Grigg family. His mom's name is Sheri Grigg, his grandpa is Joe Grigg, and his great grandpa is Anthony Wells Grigg. So mom, you have a little homework to do. Can you please look back a little in the family tree and see where our familiar ties are? I think it's kinda crazy that we are living together. From some reason Elder Erickson reminds me of my cuz Taylor McBride a little bit. There are definitely some family ties there.

Things are going alright here though. Please pray for us. We need your help because we are still just looking for people to teach and knocking doors a lot. Thank you so much for everything you do. I love you all.

-Elder Matt Mooney