Arica: First Letter From Chile

Arica: Elder Walker's First Area
12 hours by bus from the mission home in Antofagasta

Hey, well this is just a quick update for everyone back home wondering how things are going, nothing formal or anything.

After a 9 hour flight, a few hours delay and another 2 hour flight, we were in Antofagasta. We spent the first day in the mission home meeting the president, the office staff, and the AP`s. (for dad)---> The very first missionary I met when I got off the plane was an Elder Mangus. He and Elder Oribe de Argentina are the AP`s. We spent the night in a nice hotel. We woke up the next morning at seven thirty (This is typical), ate breakfast and went to more meetings. This meeting was an orientation meeting with the new trainers. The entire meeting we had no idea who our trainers were going to be. We all sat in a circle then one by one opened an envelope (while sitting in the middle of the circle) that said which sector and who our companion was going to be. It felt kind of like the sorting hat from Harry Potter.

I opened my call and read that I would be in the Arica sector, Arica centro district (Arica is a 12 hour bus ride from Antofagasta). I then read that my companion would be Elder Aleluya! Elder Aleluya is from Columbia and doesn`t speak a lick of English. We`re supposed to be teaching lessons today so we`ll see how that goes! 

Our apartment is pretty small. We have a mamita that does our laundry but we cook for ourselves. We only have two meals in the day, breakfast and lunch. Today we ate our lunch on a door supported by empty juggs of water as a room. It was pretty interesting. It`s super dusty here ALL the time and we wear glasses all the time, I might buy a better pair of sunglasses than the $10 ones I have now.

Since we cook for ourselves I do have one request, could you send me a recipe for the key lime pie that I cooked, and maybe the banana cream pie I made with will and also any other recipes that you can think of that are super simple in ingredients?

I love everyone and will write you guys more on p-day (which is every Monday). Supposedly we have lots of time to write e-mails on p-day, I'll try to send some pictures as well. I wish that I had spent more time studying the language before I came, I can barely understand anything here, and yet I keep recieving compliments from missionaries that I speak well and don`t have an accent, so I have no idea what to think. Elder Joos is also serving in Arica but we are in different zones. If you guys have any questions just e-mail me and I`ll be sure to e-mail you right back! On a monday!

Love,

Elder Walker