Time and Attendance

Hello!

So this area that I am in, Tierra Amarilla, is huge, and a lot of the times we are really pressed for time because the area just follows a long road headed to Argentina. This last week, more than any other time in my mission, possibly in my life have I ever thought of time as such a precious resource to me. I have come to realize that the only limiting factor that stops us during the day is the amount of hours that we have. Sort of some general information about missionaries, and this applies to all missionaries in the world: We have a very specific scheduled that we follow to the point every day. But we only have 16 hours to get stuff done. For whatever reason, for me, it just ends up being way too small amount of time. If somehow I could make the days more time effective I would be one of the happiest people ever. But with the time that we do have here me and Elder Gali have been able to do some amazing things in this ward. 

The one that I am most exited about is the church attendance. The first Sunday I was here there were only 20 people and that, to me, was just terrifying. Like it was normal for this branch, but I was just in full on panic!. We turned almost all of our energy and time to growing the branch as much and as fast as we could. So long story short the attendance was huge! Like 75% increase from the past week and now we are halfway to our goal of 50.

Also I am super exited for the General Conference this next week and the opportunity to listen in English, even though I feel like the last conference was just 2 months ago. I heard that some of my friends in the MTC are going to be singing in the choir for one of sessions. So check that out!!!!   

Have a great week!

Love,

Elder Brayton

Here is an excerpt from the email he sent to us answering the list of "Mom" questions:

We do our own laundry and we hang up clothes to dry outside. It is super fun because I like living out in the country and it is a lot more noticeable that I am living in South America. We don't have to cook, we eat with our neighbor. We have a big water cooler but the house is so much bigger that we can put it off in the corner. Food and water are good and I think next week we are going to fumigate the house we are in because there are a lot of creepy crawlies. 

Spider on the bedroom wall

Tierra Amarilla is just a really green valley, further out there are vineyards that are really cool. The church building is right next to us and we us it every now and then for Internet, but it is super slow. Today we came into Copiapo to do some shopping and write. It is like a 30 min bus ride each way and only cost 1,800 pesos for the both of us. There is not good seafood here, everyone just sticks to chicken and rice, and sometimes potatoes.