Shortly after arriv­ing in the Chile Osorno mis­sion and spend­ing my first night in the mis­sion home I was told I would be trav­el­ing by bus to a remote moun­tain town called Cura­cautin. The assis­tants to the mis­sion pres­i­dent drove me and sev­eral other new mis­sion­ar­ies to the Osorno bus sta­tion where they bought me a ticket and ush­ered me aboard the bus. I had a small wad of Chilean cash in my pocket, but I was com­pletely unfa­mil­iar with the cur­rency and had no idea how much money I was holding.

About 30 min­utes into the bus ride, just as we were get­ting out of the city, a bus atten­dant walked down the isle and col­lected bus fair from the pas­sen­gers, swap­ping money for bus tick­ets. As he walked down the isle he would ask peo­ple where they were going, and then he would tell them the appro­pri­ate fair for trav­el­ing that dis­tance. As he grew closer to where I was sit­ting, it dawned on me that I couldn’t remem­ber the name of the town I was sup­posed to go to. After all, Cura­cautin wasn’t a name I was famil­iar with. In fact, the bus didn’t go to Cura­cautin at all, but to another larger city where I was expected to trans­fer to another bus (a detail I had failed to pick up dur­ing my con­ver­sa­tion with the assistants).

When the atten­dant finally arrived at my seat he asked me what my des­ti­na­tion was. At least that’s what I assume he asked, because after only 1 day in Chile my Span­ish was very weak. I shook my head and said in a weak voice, “yo no se” (I don’t know). To that he responded with some­thing along the lines of, “you must be going some­where”. When noth­ing else came to mind I told him, “voy al fin” (I’m going to the end, or the last stop). The atten­dant told me the fair amount, but since I didn’t yet com­pre­hend Chilean cur­rency I sim­ply held out my wad of cash. He took some bills, gave me some change and a ticket and then walked to the next passenger.

Hours later, as lunch came around and I was get­ting very hun­gry, I began to get very ner­vous. We passed town after town and I had no idea where I would end up. That bus could have been going to Anto­fo­gasta for all I knew! Finally, over 8 hours into the bus ride, we drove into a rather large city and pulled into a bus garage. As they threw my bags off the roof the atten­dant walked back to my seat and told me to get off, we were at the end of the line. I grabbed my suit­case and bag, saw no other mis­sion­ar­ies around and started walking.

I was absolutely ter­ri­fied! I was thou­sands of miles from home, in a name­less for­eign city and I could barely ask where the bath­room was in Span­ish. With my head hung low and hunger in my belly after not hav­ing eaten all day, I walked down the street in a mis­cel­la­neous direc­tion and said a hum­ble prayer. Shortly after I fin­ished my prayer I faintly heard some­body yell,  Elder! I turned around and at the end of the block I saw two mis­sion­ar­ies run­ning towards me from where the bus sta­tion had been. By some stroke of luck (or a bless­ing from on high) I had mis­tak­enly trav­eled to the right town. The mis­sion­ar­ies were two zone lead­ers from the city of Temuco, and they were very apolo­getic for being a few min­utes late to pick me up. The bus atten­dant appar­ently had told them which way I had gone walking.

They fed me, intro­duced me to my new com­pan­ion, and sent me on my way (via another bus) towards the town of Curacautin.

This was a heck of an intro­duc­tion for me to a new coun­try, and an expe­ri­ence I will never forget.