Elder Pierce McMullan : Service with a big sweaty smile! Pierce was in heaven.

Elder McMullan sounded great in his email today. If anything, he is missing physical labor more than anything. Nothing new.

Here are some excerpts from today's email:

"Some missionaries want to play Playstation, some would like to watch movies, others would enjoy having a girlfriend in the mission, MANY would love to sleep in the pension all day…, but then there’s me. I just want to do farm work man! CURSES. I guess everyone has that one weakness. I just want to go to the campo. (no idea how to say that in English… the field?) Doesn’t make sense,. not the same thing, forget it."

"This past week we got asked to do some service in Freirina. It’s a little pueblo in between Vallenar and Huasco. The Hermanas actually go over there, but the hermano wanted our service and help. We got to Freirina then drove like 20 min out of town towards.... GREEN! SO GREEN.   I’m so happy I came back to Vallenar. Anyhow, we went there and the hermano has a farm. If you know me, you know I would love to live on a farm. Being self sufficient like that is my dream. They have chickens, beehives, vegetables, olives, (which I actually ENJOY eating now… I know it’s weird) potatoes, carrots, zapallo, (squash/pumpkin thing) corn, basically everything! Grapes too.  They buy rice and sugar, but the rest of the stuff is all theirs! I was converted. We ended up tilling an acre and a half. It took like 2 days in the mornings. They gave us amazing lunches too. Really, we are supposed to find someone to teach every time we do service, so we talked to the family and they were like “oh yea we'll invite our neighbors over!"  It was THAT EASY. Never happens like that.

"We also helped an investigator (actually it was the sisters’ investigators) who is building their house in the Thomas. ( like the house I built in Vallenar) They really don’t have any money at all, but they got enough money to rent a jackhammer on the man’s day off. Then they called him into work, so he couldn't do it…., so basically wasted his money. So last Pday we came to do cyber (email) early, so we could go do it for him while he worked. We were there for 5 hours hammering through pure rock. Jackhammers are cool though! Eventually he came home and was SO grateful that we came to help. So much service this week! Made me.. T..Tt.....TRUNKIE. "

"I don’t know how other missionaries get pumped, but doing service really makes me pumped. I told the Hermano Osorio (the guy with the farm) that I'd work for food. Then I had to remember I was a missionary and I need to do other stuff. Dang it.... Curse my love of the outdoors and green! (And being dirty and sweaty and having calluses on my hands!)"

"Yes we have a mamita. Cool story actually…., so her husband abused her and her daughter.   Chile divorce laws are really hard, and the husband ran away. The only thing she needs to get divorced is his address, but he puts fake addresses on everything.   On Friday, (we use this program to find members and less actives on the computer) we found her name on there and she was sealed to so and so.   So we clicked on him and found an address. We gave it to her and she didn't have that one, and said "last night I prayed about my situation with him that I might find help!" Mish.....prayers work!!

"Teaching English is usually really ineffective with people, but Elder P and I were determined to give it a last try. All of a sudden, people are interested. Now we say "we'll teach you in your home if you can’t do it on Saturday.” They ALWAYS let us in. Like last night, a really nice Bolivian lady told us to come in and teach her English. We explained that we'll wait for her husband as respect.   Later, we went back in and I think he was mad at first…, but we broke the ice really easy and he was interested. As always, God gets brought up in the end. We didn’t "teach a lesson" really, but they want to know more about us.   So 2 new people to teach which is cool!!