Ode to Elder Marko

My younger brother Mark has just over six months completed as he serves in the Chile Antofagasta Mission. It's been a blast to receive his emails and partake of his unique brand of humor. Every week I am reminded of a tidbit or anecdote from my own mission by his experiences. In the years since I returned from my own mission, my kid brother became one of my best friends. I would like to therefore present a kaleidoscope of photos and quotes from Mark as a tribute to his hard work and always cheery temperament.

Well, vocab word for the week is pulgas, which means fleas, another vocab word is picadas, which means bites. And the final Vocab word for the week is sesenta siete, which means 67 (I counted in the shower).

A bum tried to hit me with a window washing squeegee... that was interesting. I didn´t understand the word he said before mormones though.

PS while we´re on the subject of hobos. I´ve been keeping a small notebook that I write chistozo poems in usually a couplet at a time. I wrote one called ´hobo coughin´and also one called ´peter´ because that´s what i named the hobo who lives in my front yard. Because he moves rocks from one side of his little spot on the beach to the other side all day every day (Except for when he crosses the street to sift through our garbage looking for food) And anyone who knows the scriptures knows that peter was named after greek i believe for petros or petra or petro.

And I keep a song in my heart. If there´s one thing that keeps you in good spirits. It´s hymns and other stuff. I´d be lying if I said ALL the songs I sang were hymns. But Dave told me that Queen was pretty spiritual so i guess Bohemian Rhapsody is OK. Speaking of Queen, We took a collectivo (Taxi) to a district meeting and heard 3 songs from Night at the Opera... Made my day...

There´s alot of Japanese slash chinese import fakes here. The current fad is toys from the movie cars. One of them had an ad on the hood for ´Leak Less, Adult drip pans´ as well as this wonderful Engrish phrase on it ´This is the lovely automobile word, Welcome you with our automobile general mobilization, spend the fine childhood, Good toys!´

The thought came to mind that I must be bringing in fleas from the street because they were on my legs. So, for this, I started to microwave my pants for a minute and a half before each use and I haven´t had a problem since... Brilliant!!!

The joys of teaching a comp English. Having to explain to him the different pronunciation when he tells you he needs to buy two bottles of jews.

A less active member showed me pictures of his foot he took DURING a surgery to get one of his toes cut off. He got an infection because he´s a diabetic... Pretty Wicked.

We went to a member´s house for pizza (Because I´m an American and we all love pizza) But it was creamed corn asparagus pizza!!! Qué provecho!!! I ate some slices but declined more...

I´m going to buy A bunch of Matches (They´re dirt cheap down here) and built my own little house of parliament and then take it outside on the fifth of November and light it on fire. Why? So I can say I was the Only one in Chile to Celebrate Guy Fawkes day of course.

And then they gave us a bag of Government Powdered milk and I felt like I was in 1984....

Also yesterday we were walking from our papito´s restaurant and there was a protest and I saw some disgruntled workers get blown away by a Water Tank and a bunch of Carabineros in Riot Gear and an armored Riot Bus. I started writing a poem entitled [Order and Homeland], the motto of the Carabineros. Pretty sweet if you ask me, the Tank chased them around a plaza and they were trying to disrupt traffic and whatnot.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. I saw a Zombie. I´m not even Joking, it was by far the craziest thing I´ve ever seen in my life. My comp and I were walking down Vivar street in el Centro of Iquique, We turned a corner and there he was. A guy without a shirt on walking down the street very calmly with a baseball sized whole in the side of his belly. It was more than a stab wound, it was a serious hole--you could see what was inside and bleeding and everything! Calm as a [cucumber], very strange I suspect he was so drunk he couldn´t feel it, I didn´t take time to contact him though and find out....

Yesterday [my companion and I] had a civil discussion and he said I was like clint Eastwood ¨The Good Guy¨ coming in with guns a blazing and he doesn´t like that. I thought that was silly. But we´ve been able to come to agreement. That´s Ok, he has a strange obsession with Mickey Mouse...

Last night I saw a dog get run over by a BMW, I´ll spare you all from any details of what I saw, but the sound was pretty nuts. The Dogs chase everything that moves quick. Especially Telepizza. It´s a business down here that delivers pizza´s on bikes and it´s hilarious because the Dog´s can smell the pizza so there´ll be a guy on the bike and 10 dogs chasing him. pretty cool.

I don´t know if you remember Brenda from my Junior High Days, but we started teaching a woman named Brenda (Whose door I knocked because i heard Hey Joe by Jimi coming from her House and I had to knock it. And i thought of... Crazy.

¿You feeling lucky? ¿Well, Do ya?
Elder Eastwood in ¨For a fistful of [Pamphlets]¨ (Cue Ennio Marconnie theme) PS. I was bored and had an Idea for a movie, i wrote an outline for a screenplay.

The earthquake was pretty crazy though, My comp had just arrived and we dropped his suitcases off at the pension and we were walking to lunch when it happened. We heard a shaking, we looked around and then a woman on the 5th floor of her apartment building yelled ¨Terremoto!!! ¡¡Terremoto!!!¨ So we moved Hawai from all the high buildings. While we were walking it felt like Jell o but it was concrete and all the cars were wobbling back and forth. It knocked the power out for almost the rest of the day down here. So all the stores were closed and all the people in the streets. After lunch when we got back to the pension some concrete above our doorway had fallen down and we had a nice little pile of Concrete. My comp wanted to go in right away, I told him we should wait, and then 10 seconds later where we Would have been if we were unlocking the door and chunk of concrete the size of my head fell down.

We had a fun time burning a huge cockroach in our apartment with matches and bug repellent. We then named him Buzz and mounted the Charred little Critter on our Wall as a warning to All the other Cockroaches.

The quake was strong enough to break open some of the tombs and they had dead body germs going around in the air in Tocapilla so everyone had to get vaccinated against whatever disease it is that dead body germs give to you.

we just started a kid who was born with a tail (The thing where your spine forms wierd and outside of your body. He´s an awesome kid though.

Well my comp just received the Christmas card of the girl that Dear John´d him... complete with pictures of her kissing her Hubby... Ouch...

The new Mamita is a character. We had spaghetti two days ago... But instead of tomato sauce it was just ketchup... and my comp just had to add mayo too.

the first Counselor in the obispado is a Heavy Metallero. First Counselor in an Iron Maiden T-shirt---hilarious.

The Enya Came out this week, it´s not against the rules... but if I hear Orinoco flow one more time... Heads are gonna roll.

We had another woman named Esther who's 60 and ready to be baptized but she went to a baptism and Elder Cañellas almost bonked the guy's head in the font and she said, ["later on..."] That was disappointing.

This weeks story was when I was knocking a street full of really hard hearted evangelicals. We were leaving when I heard some SKA music coming from the House. Of course I had to stop and knock it. And we´ve got a promising new Investigator named Alberto. Of course he´s a happy guy. Awesome.

They call all the Emo kids (17 year old Seth Dunshee) here Pokemones. It´s pretty funny, the other day during a lesson the investigator asked me what I thought about Pokemones, it´s not just a slang term either, Everyone uses it. We even have a few pokemones who come to church in our ward.

A large woman (neighbor of the people we were teaching) walked into a house with her large child. Her large (Translation: fat) child had butter on her forehead. I didn´t ask, I only laughed...

Last Sunday we had an invasion of another ward and a member gave us a ride home in his meat truck. Without Oxygen... The last thing he told us was that there should be enough oxygen for the trip we were making. It was wierd... but I´m still alive, I smelled like pork for a day.

Miss ya, bro!