All sorts of things have happened this week!‏

It was definitely not a normal week! But it turned out pretty good still! To start off, last P-day we went to Llay-Llay to chill with the other Elders there. We decided to buy hamburgers and a bunch of food and because my mom had sent me the recipe for homemade spud-nuts I decided I wanted to try to make them because I had never tried to before! So I didn´t know that the recipe was going to make like 200 spud-nuts, but it did! Maybe not 200 but pretty close. So all we did all day was eat and eat and eat. Definitely too much. Haha but then we had to sleep there because Elder Cruz and I had to go to Santiago at six in the morning (on Tuesday) to finish our visa papers. Well I woke up not feeling too good and same with him, actually I ended up throwing up(sorry for saying that haha) and so we definitely did not go to Santiago and we had to go Thursday. It is soo cool to be in the city, I love it! Especially right there in the center, not the poor part. It´s super pretty and it makes me want to live in a city for awhile one day.

So Thursday when we got back from Santiago Elder Bennett and I had to go to mutual with our Branch because the young women´s president asked if I could teach the YM and YW how to cook a couple of things! So that was an absolute blast!! We made brownies and strawberry muffins. It was really fun because I didn´t do any of the baking! I would answer their questions when they had them but I wouldn´t help them cause I wanted them to do it on their own! And everything turned out delicious, nothing flopped haha! I went and made the copies of the recipes beforehand so that everyone could have one of each too. Also Paticio(who we are teaching) came and loved it! He came to church this Sunday and is making friends already! He is going to mutual this week and the week after all the YW and YM from the stake are going to the beach which he already plans on!

I´m way excited for him and his family. Because his parents aren´t married(yet!) we have been talking to them about the commandments and the requirements of baptism. The Law of Chastity is both. So we have talked a lot about that which lead us into marriage. It´s really funny to see the family when this gets brought up because Patricio, Cecilia, and Cecilia´s mom want them to get married and Patricio always tells us that Cecilia will end up asking him to marry her. They have been talking about it a lot I guess (from what Patricio told us yesterday after church). We will see what they have to say today at 7:30 when we have an appointment with them!

So Saturday we went to Adela´s house and she had tons of coins spilled out on the table and was counting them all, without asking why, we just started counting the coins with her. We were conversing and talking when she was like, ¨I´m counting all these coins so that I can pay my tithing tomorrow!¨ This was the first time that she was going to pay her tithing and we hadn´t even reminded her about paying! She was just doing it all on her own! She was all excited about it too so basically way to go Adela! She´s fantastic.

Last night we were in a neighborhood and basically all of our plans had failed and we didn´t really know what to do. So we were slowly riding around on our bikes looking for someone to talk to or just something and there were two 11 year olds outside on their BMX bikes and one asked if we could do tricks and I just said, ¨Nah, we are boring, haha.¨ But then I did a little wheely and they were both like, ¨Hey you can to do tricks!¨ and chased after us on their bikes. Then one of them wanted to have a wheely contest with me so we started a little competition and then after they were doin all sorts of tricks and seeing if I could copy them or not haha which was really funny. Then they wanted to ride our bikes so we traded! We were riding on their sweet BMX bikes and them on our girl bikes. But after like 20 minutes of playing around we started talking and one of the kids said, ¨A long time ago missionaries came to my house.¨ We asked if his dad was home and if we could talk to him and he was like yep let´s go! So we got to his house and his dad came out and invited us in as soon as he saw us. Turns out he is a member and wants to get back into the church and he wants his son to be baptized and has just kind of been waiting around for a sign or some motivation to start coming back and then we showed up! It was funny how riding around on bikes with two kids lead us to finding a less active member who wants to get back into the Church. But we were pretty happy about it! We are going back to talk with them tomorrow! We are blessed here in Catemu. I am so grateful to be able to have gotten to know this little city and the people here.

That´s about it for this week! Thank you for everything! Just want you to know that God really does have a plan for each one of us. He wants us to be happy and so why wouldn´t he give us the things we need if we do what is right? He´s watching and He truly does know us.

Love,

Elder Gunnell

P.S. Kunane I got your package and have been sharing with all the niños here! They are loving the treats, thank you!