Hey guys!

So it seems like yesterday I was getting here to valpo, but the time is really flying by. So I am going to do my best to give you a summary of the city and the people as well as the people we are teaching and some of the cool events that are going to happen here soon.

So Valparaíso is a huge port city. Every day when we are climbing up the hills we can turn around and see the ocean, just huge and close, and lots of times there are fishing boats and large ships. I will try and take a picture so you guys can get a good idea, but really google earth has the best pictures. In my area we have a lot of flat places where we live and shop and stuff, but we also have five hills that we work on. The two biggest are Merced and Las Cañas. It can be really tricky because when we are looking for a house number it can take like twenty minutes to find it. There is absolutely no order in the house numbers. For example, yesterday we were looking for the number 1 in los canelos. We found 5,7,10,389,123, and 6 all together. But, we never could find number 1. It is hard because these houses are really really old. And many are just thrown on the side of the hill where there was room. The people are also very different, and from my perspective, very receptive to hear our message. We have been working hard to find people to teach this week, and we found lots of really awesome people. Hopefully we will be able to help them all get to church this weekend.

We are teaching Gabriel Rivera right now, and he is doing awesome. We set his baptism for the 18th of this month, and he is progressing really well for that date. His biggest problem is that he always gets to church at like 10:40, and he always misses the sacrament. But, we are working hard with him so he will be ready for his baptismal interview this weekend. He should be good to go! We also have found a few families who might be ready to hear about the Gospel, and so this week we will be praying for them.

Our ward is really awesome. I really really enjoyed the class for the new members and investigators during the second hour. Hermano Ramirez teaches the class and is just a fantastic teacher. Everybody wants to go to his class instead of the regular one! haha

Okay so here are the cool news for the week. So we found out that Elder Viñas will be coming to our mission in two weeks. He is the guy in charge of Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Chile for the church. Well, the zone leaders are going to have another meeting with him in Viña, so I will be able to meet him personally, it should be super fun. We also found out that Elder Oaks will be visiting our mission in October. He is one of the 12 living apostles of Jesus Christ. We are SO excited to meet him. Also, my companion and I will be having a full-day interchange with our mission president on Wednesday. I think it will be a blast!

Well that is whats going on in my life, I hope you guys are doing great!

Un abrazo,

Helder Hai-les (as they say in chile)