October 2012

Estoy por el mar‏

October 1, 2012   Estoy muy feliz! I´ve been sent to Paita, a cool city on the coast - just a straight shot west of Piura about an hours drive. My companion is Elder Peralta from Bolivia. He speaks quite a bit of English so that makes things interesting and has just about 8 months in the mission. His last companion was Elder Sims (who I lived with in Lopez Albujar for 3 months) so we hit it off great from the start. The work here is going really well. There are several investigators progressing and that are interested in getting baptized. As far as being district leader goes, all is well. There are 4 elders and 4 sisters in the district (the only sisters in the zone) and we all go to church in the same building - 4 missionaries in each branch. Oh, that{s another thing. Paita hasn´t been organized into a stake yet. It’s almost there, but not quite ready. So there are only branches here. Paita has 3 churches in total and 20 missionaries, more or less. My area is called Pescador 1 (Fisherman). The branch is awesome though and very willing to help out - go with us on visits, introduce us to neighbors, etc. There is a family of 4 that has been listening to missionaries for 4 months now and our main goal is to get them baptized.

It was tough to say goodbye to Ramon Castilla but I feel like the mission has started up again. I´m back in the same zone as a bunch of people that were in the MTC with me and we were together when we got trained so it´s great. Also a bunch of other people that were in Castilla are here. There is a great energy here between friendships and the desire to get to work. Today we went down to what is known as Bajo Paita where downtown is. It´s like the Peru version of Hollywood... the beach, a cool little city, surrounded by hills that have houses on them... just a lot poorer and a lot more of reality.

My soccer skills have improved quite a bit, or should i say, fulbito skills (soccer but on a little court).

Oct. 8, 2012

What a great weekend. General conference was a great experience I and loved the talks on Saturday. In 40 years I´ll tell my grandkids about where i was when the historic age change was announced. ´´ Gather round kids.... gather round... Now, when President Monson announced the new age limits, I was in the mission field in a city called Paita. The two district counselors that were in charge of setting up the satellite went to Piura for the day and abandoned their responsibility, so at the last minute we had to call some others and they got it set up just in time to hear the announcement, but they forgot to tell us it was up and running until AFTER it was announced and about 10 of us were sitting in another room twiddling our thumbs when they came in and told us the news.  I thought it was a big lie and didn’t believe it until Elder nelson mentioned it again in his talk.´´ Haha. I would have liked to hear it live – I’m sure we all would have gone nuts - but it was still big news. So what does this mean for BYU schools now?  It´ll be interesting to see the impact this will have on the studies of many LDS kids.

Anywho.... We watched all the sessions on Saturday. My favorite was by Elder Uchtdorf in the morning and made me realize how much I love the mission and how I need to enjoy every moment of it. We went to the pensionista and all she had to fry up was calimary. Mmmmmm. I think that’s squid right? Anyways, it wasnt bad. Just very rubbery.  In other news, last Monday we went down to Bajo Paita again to take advantage of a festival that was going on. Dozens of venders from Cusco came up to sell their beanies, gloves and cool traditional jackets with the soft fuzzy fabric. I bought a cool jacket and a hat.

October 15, 2012

This was a very successful week. We were able to find many people this week and had several lessons. We are improving a lot and really focusing on the purpose of missionary work which is to BAPTIZE CONVERTS. Sometimes as missioneries we lose sight of that and get too caught up in other numbers and make other numbers the main priority. But we are sure to teach simply and directly to the people that we meet that the church is true and they should be a part of it. We should be having a baptism this coming Sunday of a 17 year old kid who is super prepared and has been progressing great. There is a special feeling about this area and this transfer. Maybe it is the new assignment, the time and experience I now have, or the people around me but I am very happy to be here.

Bautizo (como dicen los catolicos)

October 22

This week was very slow but ended well, with a baptism! Woo. After a month and a half we got another one. Edgar was a reference from a young man in the ward and we started teaching him right when i got here. He had a few challenges but quickly found an answer to his prayers and progressed very fast. No one knew that he was an investigator because he went to church in a white shirt and tie already. He was already to go and on Wednesday we went to his house to get him ready for his interview. He told us that he had an argument with his Dad when he told him he was going to get baptized and preferred to just wait until he turned 18 to not cause problems. His mom was okay with it but his dad no. After about 10 minutes, his Dad got home from work early and we asked him if we could talk. We just asked him to sit down to be able to explain and were able to clear up his doubts to the point where he was actually willing to pray and ask if it was true. It was a great experience to see how God provided the way for us to be instruments in his hands and when we were talking, I wasn´t even mad or annoyed, but tried to see the love that this man has for his son and how he only wanted to protect him. We spoke directly but with the spirit and all went well. We asked him if he would support his son in this decision and he said yes it was fine. It was just like Alma 22, just without swords.

Espero que todo vaya bien con todos.

October 31, 2012     Happy Halloween

This week went alright. We still haven’t been able to find Edgar´s dad for a second time, but Edgar was confirmed and ordained a priest yesterday. We have plans to talk to his younger sister when we go by on Wednesday and so we´ll see if we can get another family member to accept the gospel. I’m sure the opportunity will come soon enough. The other investigators are progressing but all with require time. Time. Time. Which is not always the easiest thing to give as a missionary because we just want them to convert and be baptized before we leave the area, but that´s not what it´s about anymore. This is the last week of the transfer and we´ll see what can happen in November and December. Time is going by fast.

We had a district service project on Wednesday and had to strip all the paint off of 4 walls and then paint it. As you can probably tell by now, practically every service project has to do with painting a house.

Life out here is rough. They don’t have running water but instead have to fill buckets of water and carry them a block or two to their house. They only receive 28 20-liter buckets per week and we always see 8 months pregnant women carrying two buckets of water and just dying.

Oh and on Friday I officially completed one year in the mission field.