El Terremoto

Hey everyone!!

This week passed by super fast. Monday and Tuesday we were in a trio as the district leader had to travel to a meeting in Huancayo. It's always fun to be in a trio because the lessons always seem to go really well. Also it's a party.

This week a couple interesting things happened. First we started English classes and one of the members is an English professor at one of the schools here. So this week we got to enter into the school and announce our classes to his class. Then they got to ask me questions in English for extra credit. Also he is giving extra credit to the students who go to our classes, so that will help improve our attendance numbers.

Also this week we built a chicken/guinea pig cage for one of our investigators. Our pension showed us how to build it. It was fun to learn carpentry skills, since we are made it out of scrap wood.

Then Sunday at about 2:40 in the morning, there was an 8.0 earthquake in Peru. Luckily for us, it was about a 2 hour plane flight away so we still felt it, but it wasn't strong enough to do any damage. It was just enough to scare the people and that Sunday there were a lot more people at church haha. I just happened to have been assigned to give a talk on the sabbath day in church, so it was good timing. But yeah, it was a good week this week and we finally got a lot of sun which is good for the work but I know all of you back at home are enjoying lots of rain ;)

For a spiritual thought this week, I want to talk about fasting. Our mission decided to do a mission wide fast to help us get more baptisms. So we started the fast Saturday, to have more baptisms and Saturday night during the fast, two of our investigators committed to baptism in a couple weeks! It was crazy to me how quickly we saw results from the fast. I know fasting really does work, because giving up food and drink for 24 hours shows to God that we actually really do want His help. So if you need help in life, try fasting!

Dog Count: 554 for past two weeks, 9650 total

Sorry the photos arent uploading but ill try to get them sent next week!

Ups and Downs

Hey everyone!

I heard you guys have received a lot of rain in Logan. I guess we are in the same weather pattern haha. Monday a cloud dropped on us and we received rain the whole week. The first time I saw the sun was Friday.

Anyway this week was full of a lot of ups and down and I think the weather had something to do with it. Here when it rains the people usually stay in their houses and don't go out. They also seem less friendly. But when the sun is out people are out in the street and are a lot nicer.

This week a school called Leopoldo Krause ruined everything. So 90 percent of all of our investigators are either parents or kids that go to this particular school (there are 4 different schools here). Anyway this week we put our focus on helping people come to church, and had the goal of 15 people coming to church. So this whole week we worked hard on stressing to our investigators that they need to come to church and everything. And then Friday I found out that Leopoldo Krause was holding a mandatory parade Sunday morning for their anniversary. And it had to be Sunday morning haha. So 17 of our investigators that promised to come to church had to go to this parade. I felt really frustrated. Sunday we didn't have any investigators at church, but right when it was starting one of our investigators named Franklin showed up and at that moment I felt that God had given me a humbling miracle to help me out.

Franklin is a really cool guy who studies Hebrew and can read the Bible in Hebrew. We talked with him later and he expressed to us that he is grateful for us because we are like psychologists who are here to listen to him. The only problem is that he has a big cigarette problem and doesn't believe in Jesus Christ. He believes that he is more Jewish than Peruvian and wants to move to Israel haha, but this week we are going to try to help him out.

Throughout this week there were some hard days, but I realized that on each of those days, there was someone or something that made my day better. God knows us and loves us and so he is going to put little blessings in our lives to help us out. We just need to look for these blessing and thank Him for them.

The work is coming along well and at our district meeting this week we made the phrase, Make Villa Rica Great Again as our moto haha. And sorry I forgot my journal so the dog count will have to wait for next week.

Back to the Grind

Hey everyone!

This week was a good one. It was a little tiring, but I'm glad that I won't be traveling again for a while, and that we will be able to get back into the work.

So as you know Monday I was in Huancayo and there are 4 elders who work as office missionaries for the mission. Where they live there are about 20 beds for people who are traveling. So Monday night I slept there. There were also some elders who slept there, that had finished their mission and would be flying out the next day. So that was a blessing to see some of my missionary pals who I had become good friends with.

Then Tuesday in the morning all the elders who were training received a training haha, and then at lunch the new elders arrived. Later we all gathered into a room and they announced who everyone would be companions with. My companion is Elder Caldas from Peru. He served for about 2 months in my mission about two-and-a-half years ago, but broke his arm. And now he has decided to come back out. This time they didn't have him go back to the MTC, so Monday he was in his house, and Tuesday we were out proselyting.

Then Tuesday night we got to eat Pizza Hut since we were in Huancayo, aka Huancayork City. That was good since I hadn't had pizza in about 6 months. Wednesday morning we took a 7 hour bus ride to our area and it has been full work ever since.

A spiritual thought I have for this week is that there is opposition in all things. Yesterday was Mother's Day and that for some reason made it so the attendance in church was down. Also a lot of stores were closed. Anyway yesterday, we had church in the morning and then some investigators invited us to eat lunch with them (look for photo later). But in the afternoon we went back to the room and both of us were really tired. We had been working a lot and also in the morning we woke up super early to be able to cook breakfast for some investigators before church. So we were tired and I was trying to think of what we should do in the day. We got to talk with our families in the night and the thought came to me that we should go out and contact until we talked with our families. I was feeling tired haha, and didn't want to, but decided it was probably something we should do. Talking with my companion we decided to send it. During that time we came across a couple different investigators we hadn't seen in weeks and also found some super dope families to teach this week. So yeah, just remember there is opposition in everything and maybe when we feel tired it's because the devil doesn't want us to be doing something we should like reading our scriptures or saying a prayer at night. But just push through and you will be blessed with the energy needed! Love y'all!!!

Dog Count: 282 for past two weeks and 9096 total🐕

photo 1 (if in right order): Morning jog to the laguna

photo 2: Choose your preference. Im more of a mini kraps guy

photo 3: Moment of silence for my man the gringo turkey who was killed Sunday morning and then made into a soup and entree

Traveling is NOT fun

Hey everyone!

This one will be real short since the week got dominated by traveling and transfers.

Anyway Monday through Friday were normal and then Saturday we had to travel to La Merced which is a windy one-and-a-half-ish road just to get a flu-shot and then return. So that took up our whole afternoon and left us a little nauseous haha.

Saturday night the 4 of us elders went with our pension to a restaurant here which is built for tourists. I got cordon bleu which I didn't know existed here and it was actually pretty good haha.

Then Sunday we had to wake up early to make that same drive to La Merced for stake conference. Later in the day my companion went around saying goodbye to people. We received transfers and found out he was leaving. I also found out that I am going to train. I'm super excited, but also nervous. But I guess God likes to make weak things strong (Ether 12:27) as long as we are humble and put our trust in Him and not in ourselves.

So yeah, since I am training, this morning I was lucky and got to wake up early to travel to La Merced again haha. Then from there it was about 5 more hours to Huancayo taking that same crazy mountain road, that I took to come into the jungle at the start of the transfer.

And so tomorrow I will receive my kid. Which means that I'm receiving a new elder. And because I'm at about nine-and-a-half months in the mission, I guess that a kid was due. ;) haha

Tomorrow night we will be lucky and get to travel back to La Merced and then Wednesday make the final trek back to Villa Rica. So I will enjoy being back in my area and hopefully won't have to travel for a really long time!

Anyways sorry for the lame email but I will have a good one next week with pictures of my new born kid!