June 29 update

Ah, happy Monday! We sure love these missionary updates! It sounds like things are going well. They have a new missionary in their apartment, Elder Rawlins from Texas. Matt likes him a lot. He and Elder Mecham are working hard in trying to help their investigators and strengthen the members. Matt commented, "We mostly work with inactives because we don't want to bring people into a ward where there is barely any support." Good point; missionaries do a lot of good in strengthening and helping existing members.

Here's a fun story from today's letter, written in Matt's unique style:

one quick story haha elder mecham and i were walking down the street and there was a drunk guy. he was a big guy and he was wearing an army uniform thing haha. so we tried to avoid him. but he started yelling "elders! elders!" and then he said something in spanish. we kept walking. he said it again "elders! elders!" but this time he sounded mad. so i stopped. i turned around. then i did what i usually do. i reached in my pocket and gave him a picture of Jesus Christ. and he kissed it then put it in his pocket. i then asked him "¿cree en Dios?" (do you believe in christ) he said "yeah". he then stuck out his hand so shake mine. instead of shaking I said "uno mas" then i reached in my bag. And then he jumped up and did a karate stance and said "karate!" i was hoping that he wouldn't hit me. Luckily he didn't. then i handed him one more thing. a 'palabra de sabiduria' pamphlet. (the word of wisdom) he said gracias and then shoved it in his pocket. then... he tried to shake my hand again. So i did. One thing you need to know is in chile when to guys greet eachother you shake hands then give a short hug. (about 90% of the time there are two pats on the back haha) and then you shake hands again. So he gave me a hug. But this time he tried to kiss me on the cheek. Awkward. Lukily he got my head because i sharted to push him away. So.. yeah i got my first kiss in chile. by a drunk man. sad. So... yeah kinda crazy. Haha

I teased Matt a little today. I usually tell him each week about people he knows who just received their calls, who is just leaving, and who is just coming home. I think he knew from previous weeks that his friend Sam Poulsen had completed his mission application. In my first email to Matt today, I wrote:

Can you believe Sam got his call in the mail on Wednesday, but waited to open it until Friday when his Mom and sisters came home from girls' camp? That must have killed him to wait that long!! But we understand it was worth the wait.

Then I went on to talk about other missionaries. He responded:

so did sam get his mission call. you never told me where he's going. wait is this Sam Poulsen I'm so confused haha

Then in a second email, I wrote:

What do you think of this: "Elder Sam Poulsen - you have been called to serve in the Chile Santiago West mission. You should report to the MTC on October 7, 2009."

Matt responded:

WHAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THAT IS AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

He wrote a special message just for Sam which we will pass on to him. It will be pretty exciting to have these two guys in the same mission. I hope they serve in the same area or district at some point; it would be really wild if they were actually companions! Matt will be 7 months ahead of Sam.