8 months

Looking studious.

Dear family and friends,

Where has the time gone! Okay, so I understood when everyone was telling me before I left that the mission would pass by super fast, faster than any other time in my life. But I wasn't expecting like this. Like in my mind we are still in March or April, but in reality I am about a month away from turning 20.

This week for us has been very uneventful. We had to stay in the house for two days because my companion got super sick, like he couldn't walk without feeling like his head was going to explode. The poor guy was in bed the entire time, but then he started to get better towards the end of the week and at the very end of the week we worked and worked and worked and ended up making some good up and finding some really promising families. And this week we are looking forward to playing catch up and getting the ball rolling again!! 

{This is in response to questions about the living conditions in his city:}

 

So the part of Arica that I live in is like basically government homes. Like the government hires a big company to build just a TON of cookie cutter homes and then after the people get their homes assigned by the government. I still haven't seen a normal home like there are in the states. Even for the upper middle class air conditioning just doesn't exist. Hot water heaters are pretty rare too. I have never seen a cloths dryer here yet. They just don't exist here, everyone just air dries.

 

 Right now I have hot water but tanks of gas are expensive and if we run out during the month we have to wait until we get more money at the first of the month to buy more. Yes we have someone to do our laundry here. We live with members in the upstairs and it is so small. The bedroom and room we have to study in and the bathroom all together are about the size of the dinning room in our house, its very different and I would like to change. And for most of the other missionaries in the mission, basically all of them live in a house or apartment but hot water is hit and miss everywhere

Love to All!!

Elder Brayton

 

Study and eating area in Arica