My Birthday!

Today Nicole and I walked our 8 min walk to church at 9:52 thinking 'oh! we're going to be late'. Not so. Church in Chile doesn't never starts on time... I think we start at least 15 min after the hour. Then we take our seats (the same seats we sit in every Sunday for the last three weeks) next to the window and in the sun. Then people proceed to stop by and speak some very rapid spanish, and kiss us. At least we understand the kissing part. Everyone kisses each other on one cheek when they met- "Hola:: KISS-KISS." That's how it goes. By observation I have noticed that guys don't greet guys this way. Girls greet girls and guys with kisses, but guys only kiss girls. Nicole and I have hypothesized that a man who really wanted to kiss a lot of girls must have started this tradition and the female population went wild with it. Then we sit and try and sing along with the spanish songs. Sometimes when we don't have a hymn book we try to sing them in english but sometimes we can't even remember the words in english... the spanish words over power them in our minds it seems. I like it the best when we sing though. You can really feel the spirit. Plus when everyone sings they speak slower and I can understand more. Then Sacrament meeting ends and we get another rush of people saying hi and kissing us. During Sunday school I try to work on the D&C with the english study guide that I have.

Today since it was my birthday everyone sang to me! They made me stand up in the front and they all sang in Spanish to me! It was really great! I loved it. Seeing everyone singing really made me feel cared about by these people, or at least feel their kindness. Then we have RS, where we don't understand much but the crying. After wards we usually have a YSA meeting, were we don't get much either besides the fact that they want the kids getting married here too. Well that's an international problem....