Arica: Life in Arica (Continually wiping dust off my shoes)

This week was another week in the life!

I feel like I haven't done a real good job describing Arica, so I'm going to just talk about Arica for a bit. The houses all run into each other and are made out of concrete, the architecture is super "squarish", if that's a word. In our sector we have a lot of "flaites". Flaites are kind of like gangsters in the way that they walk and talk. When we're walking around on the streets people will yell "Hello, my friend, how are you?" In English. I'll usually say something back to them in English, they'll look confused for a second and then smile and continue waving. I'm writing from an internet cafe, which down here are called "cibers". Their is way more energy in the streets here, probably because it's the middle of summer and no one has AC. It's good for us though, because we can always find people to talk to. 

Our city, Arica, is right on the border of Peru and Bolivia, as well as being the entry point to Chile for many other countries. We have a ton of different accents here and have taught Chileans, Argentines, Bolivians, Dominicans, Columbians and Flaites. Flaites are by far the hardest to understand. The "s" sound is completely omitted and I'm just barely starting to be able to understand it. The Spanish here is alot faster than the Spanish in Mexico, but it's basically the same.

So, we have to cook our own food. Most of the mission has "mamitas" but we are one of the few groups that don't. It isn't that bad because one of the elders in our pension, Elder Swett, likes to cook (Elder Swett is from Wyoming and a straight up cowboy; lasso, hat, boots and all). 

Some stuff that happened this week:

• I've been learning magic tricks from one of the priests from our ward that we take with us to teach. His name is Alan and he is the same age as Spencer, so when we're with I think of my lil bro alot.
• We had an amazing Family Home evening in the house of the Second Counselor/Ward Mission Leader. We talked about the Word of wisdom and then had a surprise party for one of our investigators. She was super happy and this was a blessing for us because right now we're trying to help her develop friendships in the ward.
• We learned how to make empanadas in the house of one of the members. They were super delicious, even if I bawled my eyes out while cutting onions. The sister missionaries thought this was hilarious.
• One of our investigators got married! This is pretty miraculous because he was ex-communicated because he wasn't married. He's served a mission and everything and is super excited to return to the church. We're working with the bishop right now to get him and son baptized!

I'm learning to love the mission and am learning the language super fast!

Continually wiping the dust of my shoes,

Elder Walker