Changes-po

Hola Familia and people who read this blog:

Aquí estamos en Canihuante. I really like Chile. And Ovalle is pretty cool...actually I´m sure if I was a teenager growing up here I would hate it...there is not much to do in that sense. I mean down in Centro they have like a street with stores and a stuff (kind if like a Chilean Version of the Shops at Highland Village or the Gateway). Anyway this week...

On tuesday we had Conference of the North in La Serena. Holy cow, I would love to serve in La Serena or Coquimbo at some point in my mission, I mean I´d been to La Serena like four or five times before for conferences and stuff I guess I had just never really thought about it much before. Anyway we learned about some pretty big changes that happening to the missionary work. So the Quorum of the 12 and the First Presidency have decided that everything we need to know as missionaries is in Preach My Gospel, but that right now we´re not necessarily applying everything the way we should. So, starting in May 2011, they´re changing the curriculum (Sp?) in the MTC. So obviously all the missions in the world have to start changing things and implementing things now so that when those missionaries start arriving...everyone is on the same page. Those of you who know about the District Videos...they have a new one "The District 2". Except this time its in the San Diego mission and not the San Antonio (there´s these Preach My Gospel DVD´s called the District and what the church did was pick a random mission and then a random district (six missionaries) who were then hard-core trained in Preach My Gospel and then followed around by cameras. The first one was the San Antonio Mission...and now its the San Diego Mission...as president said "Tenemos estrellas nuevas"). Anyway we´re not exactly sure what all the changes will be...I think it´ll be slowly over the next year. But what is changing immediately is that we´re only going to have conferences once every 3 months (instead of every month) and we´re only going to have interviews with president once every 3 months (instead of once every six weeks). But for the next year, we´ll be having special training sessions for all the Zone Leaders, District Leaders, and Trainers in Viña and La Serena. I´m not exactly sure what is all going to happen, so we will see. I´m excited though, the reasons for the changes are good ones. And I think the MTC as already begun to change because in talking to elders who were in the MTC like a year ago...we focused on different things. So that was conference on Tuesday.

On Wednesday we had intercambios and I stayed in Canihuante with Elder Shillingburg and Elder Machado went to Monte Patria with Elder Villanes. It was a really good day! And we ended the day by committing Felisa to baptism. She´s getting baptized on August 8! The lesson went super well and the spirit was really strong. We also did intercambios again on Saturday, we had another really good day. I stayed in Canihuante with Elder Robinson and Elder Machado went to Limari with Elder Briones (Elder Machado is a district leader and Elder Birchall was too, that´s why I´ve gone on so many intercambios).

What else happened this last that´s exciting. We found some new investigators. And this week we want to put a fecha with Christian, hopefully tonight. Time has starting going by fast. I´m not sure if that's just because we had a weird week last week with conference and intercambios or what, but we´re already into the second half of the cambio. CRAZY! I could be leaving Ovalle soon. But I think I´ll be staying for a fourth change here. Actually that´s in the future. I don´t want to think about that.

Some of you have asked about the spanish here in Chile. Well, Chileans speak really....distinctly. for example the tack on "po" to end of lots of stuff...its kinda a way to emphasize things. Instead of saying "Sí" people say "Sípo". And people tack po on to almost any word. Chileans are known for being difficult to understand, because they sometimes they congugate verbs weirdly, we call it Flaite talk. But I´m getting to the point where I can understand a lot...so its all good.

I think I got a letter a Conference...but I can´t think of who it was from. AH! This week has been so weird . Anyway I probably should go soon. I hope all is well where ever you all are. When are Alisa and Greg officially moving? Sounds like mom is having a relaxing time in Utah. And Dad, sounds like Texas is still hot. Whoa. The Ormes are like home their missions now huh. WEIRD. Have they visited Flower Mound yet? What the family plans for the fall? Anything exciting going to happen. Can you believe that is practically August. WHAT!? Well know that I´m doing good. But if you could please keep praying for the people and the investigators....and not just the investigators, the converts as well. I think about you guys a lot, but not in a distracting kind of way. Hope all is well! Love you all!

Elder Hyer

PS- Mom, when I logged on, I hadn´t gotten your email, but by the time I was done emailing President it had gotten through...I was worried, that´s weird that aol wasn´t working!