Mission Advice for Rancagua!

• Sister #1---

  
  

  -Best mission in the WORLD!
  
  **CLOTHING:

  --Winters are cold and rainy and summers are hot. Soooo, summers are light skirts and dressy, but 1-2 layer shirts and comfortable walking shoes...
  --Winters: take warm tights and/or leggings with good warm/waterproof boots and wool socks. Merrells were my favs.
  --Take layers for shirts in the winter....underarmour, long john tops etc...to wear under your dress shirts.
  --I would try to get a warm and waterproof jacket. I just took a wool coat, but I often had to wear a rain coat over it. If I were to do it again, I would buy just one good, warm, waterproof coat.
  --Anything you don't get here, you should be able to find there. Before I left, I felt that if I didn't get it all, I would die there in a third world country....but it is not like that at all...it is a well developed country that has what you need.
  --I took warm, waterproof boots and loved them....found a pair of rain boots though in one of the houses there and wore those sometimes too...I don't know of any sister that flew down with rain boots though...
  --Comfort is most important...I took a pair of heavy, cute leather shoes that gave me blisters and I wore them like twice while I was there...just make sure you can walk a while in whatever you take....
  
  

   **WEATHER/GETTING PACKAGES:

  --It's not abnormally windy...doesn't feel humid....rainy and cold in the winter...hot and dry summers...

  --My mom sent me some stuff I needed...never had trouble getting a package from home...came in about 2 weeks most times.
  
  
    ·Sister #2---
  
  -I will do my best to answer any and all of your questions! Some of it might depend on the mission president and certain logistical things of the mission but I will do all I can to help you out. They are changing the mission boundaries so two of my areas which amounts to 15 months of my mission, will now be in Rancangua so hopefully I can give you some good and realistic information!
  
  **CLOTHING:
  --So as for clothing, I remember that was hard to plan for because you really have to bring enough for winter and summer. It gets really hot in the summer, like 90s consistently and you’re out in it all day. And then the winter would get really cold, like in the 30-40s consistently too. But if you’re by the ocean it doesn’t get as hot or as cold. One nice thing is that Chile is quite developed and the cities have department stores and there are grocery stores everywhere. You can definitely get pretty much anything you need unless it’s a specific brand or something. So for the most part if you don’t have room or don’t think of something you need to bring, you can probably get it there or find a good equivalent.
  --One thing about buying stuff there, so, in most of south America, they don’t really use tampons. So, different sisters would do different things, some would just use what they had in chile, others would bring enough to last for the whole time and others would have their family send them some. But just a heads up on that one.
  
  **MAIL:
  --Mail is great and there were not really any problems with mail so getting packages should be totally fine.
  
  **BUGS:
  --Okay, the bugs…I do not like bugs at all! Ha but, it really wasn’t bad. I was like seriously arachnophobic before my mission and I definitely survived. Did I see lots of spiders, yes, but it was totally fine. They don’t have too many other bugs, no mosquitos. My main advice, okay it might sound silly, but just remember that you’re serving the Lord and He doesn’t want you to be miserable so if you don’t like bugs or the food, just do all that you can and it will all work out because you’re serving Him.
  --As for fleas, it depends on the area. But they’re not that bad. You can get sprays that make it go away if you do get them. Just don’t touch the dogs and you should be fine. The fleas really aren’t too bad though.
  
  **FOOD:
  --As for food and the likelihood of gaining weight…so a lot of sisters gain weight and lot of sisters lose weight. Do what you can, the thing is they eat a lot of fried food and a lot of bread and they serve huge portions. But, I would do my best to show the people how much I cared about them because they show love through food and giving you food…all the time! So for the most part I would just eat it. Most of my mission I lost weight cuz we were walking so much, there was a little part when I started to gain weight but I would just be more careful. It’s hard cuz you can’t really control what you eat for lunch, so in the evenings I just wouldn’t eat too much or just fruit or something. I’m guessing you know that lunch is the big meal of the day so we would eat lunch with the members instead of dinner. But, if you limit the bread intake that will make a huge difference in not gaining weight and it’s easy to turn down the bread without offending them.
  
  **GLOVES/COATS:
  --You asked about gloves, you’ll want some for the winter definitely, it gets cold. If possible, get a kind where you can write with them. I had knit gloves and then I couldn’t hold my pen so it made it difficult to write down contacts and information but just a suggestion.
  --You will want a jacket, a coat, and something for the rain. If your coat is waterproof that works but you will want something warm and something for the rain.
  --Then in spring/fall you’ll want a jacket of some kind, probably waterproof just to be safe. It gets cold and rains a lot. So I would sometimes where my coat or jacket with my rain coat over it, that way I was warm but also not wet.
  --My rain coat was kind of like a trench coat and it worked amazing!!!! But in our mission office they also had rain skirts that the sisters would use so that might be an option as well. It’s like a rain coat and you just put it on over your skirt and keeps out the rain. So either that or a long rain coat. I thought I would never want to wear my rain coat cuz it looked kind of ridiculous but it literally saved me and I don’t know what I would have done without it!
  --As for skirts, I had a few longer ones, but I would just wear mostly the same ones and just wear tights/leggings underneath. I would also sometimes put socks on under my tights, then you couldn’t really tell I was wearing them and it helped keep my feet warmer.
  --But if you have boots, or even buy some there, then you don’t really need long skirts cuz you just layer under your skirt.
  -- My coat went to like mid shin and i'm also 5'10 so i thought it was great!! it really was nice because when it rained i didn't get wet. but, you will want to wear your coat by itself at times too. The farther north you go, the less it rains. But it's still pretty cold. Most of the time I would just wear my winter coat and then for a few days when it rained i would wear that, and then back to the winter coat. So it's nice to have both.
  --Under my rain coat i would wear a sweater and undershirt and sometimes a jacket and then my rain coat. Sometimes i would also wear extra layers or leggings under my skirt or two pairs of tights.
  
  **BOOTS:
  --So, for boots, our mission office had rain boots for us to use but now with so many missionaries I’m not sure that’s still happening. But boots can be really heavy so if I were you, I would just plan of buying some there. I had companions who had their rain boots as well as just winter boots. But I would just use my rain boots. As for galoshes or just rain boots, the thing is that when it rains, it rains. There were times when we would just have to walk through puddles up to our shins. So if your boots are good and waterproof, that’s what you’ll be up against! As for umbrellas, umbrellas from the states usually didn’t last too long. But you can buy really durable ones there that handle rain and wind and don’t flip around so I would just plan on buying that there.
  
  **BAGS/BACKPACK:
  --My mission, they did not give us a bag so I would bring one just in case. Oh and bring Ziploc bags…it comes in handy in the winter to put your stuff in it so your scriptures don’t get rain damaged.
  
  **SHOES:
  --Okay, shoes…I had some danskos that I got from the sister missionary mall, they are durable and good for walking in. Shoes are hard because you want to look nice, but you walk a lot. I had a bunch of flats that got holes in them but it wasn’t hard finding shoes there. But I would recommend danskos definitely, or whatever is comfortable to you. But if they work for summer and winter, I know when it was really hot some of my shoes would give me blisters. And you’ll definitely want two good pairs of walking shoes and then maybe some other cute, nicer flats to wear to church or conferences and then when you go out to work you can just change your shoes to your walking ones after. We would lots of times do that and it worked great.
  
  **HOUSING:
  --We never lived with the members, but they would give us lunches. And the members are really great about helping and if you ever need anything, they love their missionaries!!! We would usually live in small houses that the church rented and lots of times we lived with four or six hermanas in one house. But in Santiago and really big cities they live in apartments mainly.[She wasn't in the big city]
  
  **WEATHER/KEEPING WARM:
  --Winter nights are really cold. We had tiny little space heaters, one space heater per companionship but we couldn’t use it all night long cuz it would use up too much electricity. So we would turn it on and heat up our bedroom while we planned each night and then we’d bundle up. The best way to keep warm at night…one, a sleeping pad, or two, I would just take my blanket and when I would get in bed I would just tuck it all in around me and body heat would just get trapped in like a little bubble and I would stay warm pretty much all night. It would only be in the morning getting up or if my blanket came off that I would get cold. But wool socks are amazing!!!! That I definitely recommend and anything fleece. It is definitely the warmest. Even a thin fleece jacket can keep you surprisingly warm or fleece pajamas or even a small fleece blanket.
  --As for the weather, it gets really windy in the springtime, so in august, September it is pretty windy but the rest of the year it’s not too bad. As for humidity, so it seemed a little more humid than Utah but I’m from Chicago and it definitely wasn’t nearly as humid as it is there.