(What did Bruce Lee say while he was playing soccer? Wacha! Hahaha) I laughed really good when I made that one up.
I want to take this opportunity to tell you all about a woman named Olga. We had just come back from a 7 am cita a couple days ago and were about to start our studies when we got a call from Doris, who is an old investigator that couldn't get baptized because she isn't married and her husband isn't interested in doing so. She told us that her mom was super sick and needed a blessing. I was like, well we're pretty busy today, but we can pass by around 6. Is that ok? She was like, no. I need you guys right now. We had to find a varon (male) to go with us though because there was only women there. When we arrived at their house though, they weren't there. So I called her and it turns out that they went to the hospital. I was like shoot. It's actually serious. We went to the hospital, but couldn't really do much because she was in the ER. So we left and went back later in the day. When we got there, we discovered that she was in a coma. Olga is kinda older for a Peruvian, about 75. I had the opportunity to give her a blessing of health. I was talking to the family after and asked when she went into the coma. When they told us, it occurred to me: They didn't call an family first. Or their neighbors. Or even an ambulance. They called us. Is your guys' faith strong like that where you would call us first? It was a really humbling experience for me. The next day while I was on intercambios (exchanges), I called my area to see how Olga was doing. They told me that she had passed away that morning. I felt pretty sad about it, but not guilty. I know that I am a worthy priesthood holder and that I gave the blessing according to promptings from the Holy Ghost. Looking back, judging from what I said in the blessing, I knew that she was going to pass away. I'm glad that I am living worthily, other wise I might be feeling really guilty right now. What if I was unworthy and the spirit had wanted her to live? I'd have to live with that weighing on me for the rest of my life. But fortunately, that's not what happened. I didn't know when I got up that morning that these things would happen. We never do. So I would ask of you that if there's something in your life that needs to be changed, do it. Because you never know when God is going to call on you to do something and you must be worthy to respond to his call when it comes. Please do all you can to be worthy of the priesthood and to live your life in manner that is pleasing to God. With that, have a good week!
-Elder White
Monday
My day started out as a list of inconveniences. I tried changing bills into monedas but the guy gave me 100 de un sol and 500 de 50 centimos. I have no use for those. They just made my bag weigh a whole lot. After internet, we went to Chaclacayo to pick up a movie. Except the zone leaders forgot to bring it to the capilla with them. So we had to go with them back to their house, which is almost in Chosica, to go and get the movie. All in all, I think it took more time to get the movie then it took to watch it.. Almost the entire zone came to watch it with us. We had a key break and get stuck in the clerk's door. Long story short, we got the broken key out eventually, but we watched it on the TV instead of the projector. We watched Brave (o Valiente, se Pongo). Spanish with an Scottish accent sounds funny, just FYI. After the movie, I was like, "Anyone need change?" Hermana Evans and Hermana Houghton were like, "Yeah, we do, why not?" So I gave them 200 soles worth of 20 centimos. It was a win-win situation. It turned into a good day for coin collecting. I had to buy that gross McDonald's cheese for my grilled cheese because they were out of the good kind. We went way up into la 1 tonight and visited Jordy, Dina's son. Elder Gonzalez was telling me that he almost cast out a devil once. Like, an actual demon that was inside a woman. But when the bishop and stake president asked her if she wanted it cast out, she said no and then turned around to look at the missionaries. She gave them what can only be described as a demonic smile and said, "I like him." Crazy stuff man.
Tuesday
I had a dream last night. We were in a crazy gym class. We were outside with yarn tied around our waists and the teacher was on a balcony thingy. He was shouting commands at us such as where to sprint or what exercise to do. When it was over, he came down and asked us, "Do you guys know how to knit?" I looked behind me and we had knit a giant quilt. Shoot man, that was kinda cool. We had a cita with Ruth this morning. We got Jhon Diego to come along too. It was a 7 AM cita. We were about to leave the church, but then she showed up 45 minutes late. The lesson went really well. She's progressing really fast. We got back were about to do our studies when Doris Salinas, and old investigator, called us. She told us that her mom was super sick and needed a blessing or something ASAP. I told her we were busy today, but could stop by at 6:00. She told me it couldn't wait and needed us right then and there. So I called Jhon Diego and got him to go with us. He's a good sport. When we got there, no one was home. So I called and she told me that they were in the hospital now. I was like, "Oh shoot. It's serious." So we went to the hospital. We hung out a bit there, but we couldn't really do much so we left. But we went back later. She was in a coma and had been since about 10 AM. I was listening to the story when I realized something: we were the first people they called. That made me get thinking real good. They didn't call the ambulance or their relatives. They called us. They didn't get baptized because their husbands didn't want to get married. But look at how strong their faith is! This whole thing was really humbling for me. I had the opportunity to give this frail 75 year old woman a blessing. It was hard because I didn't know what to say. I felt like I possibly held her life in my hands. In the morning we went to got visit Jordy. He had to go, but we talked his dad and his family into a a cita en la capilla that night with Jaime. When we showed up for the cita that night with Jaime, he wasn't there but the family was. They had walked all the way there from their house, which is super far from there. They don't have money for a a combi. Dina and Anibal have already been baptized, but we put a date on 3 of their 6 kids: Mitchell, Josue y Julio. Jordy wasn't 100% positive and their other 2 are too young. To finish the night off, we went and visited the son of a contact I made named Owaldo. He's going through some serious crap. He's been having problems with Seizures for the last 15 years and a lot of his family doesn't talk to him. He wanted to kill himself. We talked to him and put a date on him as well. 4 new investigators today after having none for a while. ¡Milagros!
Wednesday
Olga, the old lady from yesterday, passed away today. I'm not quite sure what to think about it. Something told me that she was going to die. Looking back at a lot of the wording from the blessing makes more sense now. I'm not going to let myself feel like I did something wrong because I was worthy and did what I could. It was never in my hands; it was in God's. Elder Gonzalez and Elder Silva went to go share a message with the family because I'm on intercambios right now with Elder Vilca in Chacoacayo. We had a district counsel this morning. I'm always talking about my sandwiches and how awesome it is, so the Hermanas had me bring it so they could make grilled cheese. Hermana Evans told me, "I thought you were exaggerating about it, but now I'm gonna have to seriously consider buying one." We're going to make it a tradition for the rest of the one more meeting we'll have. I was in charge of the capacitacion hoy (training today), so I decided to have the parable of the bulldozer. It went well, but was kinda short. I went with Elder Gonzalez to finish taking out money and then we did the intercambios. Elder Vilca works with a lot of energy. He's really animated when he contacts. That's not really my style, but it works for him. We contacted almost the whole day. The mosquitoes here will eat you alive if you're not careful. I didn't have too much success contacting, probably because no one wanted to talk to the Gringo fighting an invisible ninja. The worst was when I went up to try and contact someone and a bug would fly in my ear or up my nose. That's probably Satan's best tactic to hinder missionary work. We were contacting in the park at night and stumbled upon a group of gringas. I was kinda reluctant to contact them, but Elder Vilca made me. Turns out that they're down here for Peace Corps training. It was kind of an awkward contact. Mostly because I had never contacted in English and because you can't talk to Americans like you do Peruvians. But honestly because it was a group of women about my age. They weren't interested in coming to church. We did a pre entrevista (pre interview) for a family that is going to get baptized on Saturday. They're pretty cool. On the way home, we were about to take a combi, but then saw a police check point checking everyone's ID. So we had to walk around that since I still don't have mine. It's fun being (almost) a fugitive.
Thursday
I took a hot shower this morning. Nothing else that happened today matters. Hey, Bromita bromita. But seriously though, it was really nice. I haven't had a hot shower since July. Usually I take a while because it takes me a couple minutes to build up the courage to take a cold shower. Then I take a quick one. that wasn't why I took a while today though. We were going to go do a service, but then Ñaña called and told us it was canceled. Then right after that Elder Silva called and told us that we were going to end intercambios at 4:30 instead of tomorrow. No one knows why we did, only him. He's kinda hard to work with sometimes because he doesn't communicate well. I enjoyed the intercambio though. I'm gonna be honest. It was a nice break from Elder Caro. Before we ended intercambios, we worked a bit of course. It was mainly just walking. Their area is huge. Even without hills, it was exhausting. We couldn't really teach the first cita because we didn't have a varón (male) and she didn't want to come outside to talk to us. The next guy that we walked all the way to wasn't even home, so that was frustrating. After that, we met at the capilla for his baptismal interviews. I met up with my companion and we came back to our area. That was the most crowded combi I've ever been on, and I was in the back with 2 big bags too when I had to get off. So that was a party. We had to wait a bit to get back into our room because Elder Gonzalez forgot the keys. Then we had to go back to la entrada (entry) to pick up my agenda. From there, we went to go visit the Salinas family. We found Nicol outside. She told us that the adults were inside having a family meeting. From what I heard, it was a pretty contentious family meeting. But we talked to Nicol for a while. Apparently Olga seemed fine the day before, so it was kind of a shocker when it all went down. But hopefully this will help reactivate Nicol and encourage the rest of the family to grow closer to Christ. On a side note, I'm probably gonna get hit by a car here eventually. I've grown reckless when crossing the street. The other pedestrians and their style of traffic here are bad influences on me. Sometimes I don't even look both ways until I'm already in the street. It's like playing Frogger, but in person. I wonder if this habit will stick when I get back home. I laugh some times when I think about what a stereotypical American would think if he was here and had to use the transportation and stuff.
Friday
Good night, sleep tight, don't let the bed bugs bite. Because Pariachi had a huge infestation of bed bugs in the mattresses. The pictures are nasty. I check my mattress though and I'm ok. On a similar but slightly unrelated note, I've had a bug bite in the arch of my right foot for the last couple of days that's been driving me crazy. We went to the capilla in Chaclauayo this morning. It was us, Elders Yañez and Hyde, the zone leaders and the Hermanas. They told us there was an activity at the church put on by a local school and it would be a great opportunity to contact. Turns out that it was a school talent show/dance thingy. It's kinda hard to contact that. So we decided to just set a table up at the entrance and hand out fliers like the testigos (witnesses) do. Pariachi left early to go and get new mattresses. I would have been pretty bored if I didn't have the Hermanas to talk to. Their cultural dances here actually look pretty cool most of the time. But the cultural music here is strait AIDS. It has the strangest ladies yelping/yelling/fake laughing in it sometimes. And sometimes the dancers do the same thing while they're dancing. The first time I heard it I was super confused. But now I laugh most of the time when I hear it. But yeah, we came back and worked like normal after that. We spent the majority of the day contacting. We didn't really have any planned citas that worked out. We did have a cita while we were contacting thought with a woman we found named Estefani. Everything went really well with it until the very end. She didn't want to pray. We don't know why and she didn't know why either. We spent like 15 minutes trying to convince her to do it until she compromised to repeat the words of my companion while he prayed. Her grandma only spoke broken Spanish because she speaks Quechua. You've heard Spanish with a gringo accent, now get ready for Castellano with a Quechua accent. The biggest thing I noticed was the "i" has the "ee" sound. We went to la capilla for a cita with Owaldo, but he didn't come. So instead we explored Huaycan 1's area while contacting. We had another ward movie night tonight. We didn't have a movie with us, so we sent the other Elders to la quince to buy Incredibles 2. The ward movie night started slow, but ended in success. A quick update on the toilet paper situation: I am now half way through my roll. Elder Caro on the other hand, has already gone through 6 or 7 rolls since the last time I updated you.
Saturday
Every morning when he showers, Elder Gonzalez listens to 1 or 2 covers of Be Still My Soul and 3 covers of Be Thou My Vision, but one of them twice. So it's the same 5 songs everyday. And he turns it up super loud, so I'm obliged to listen. What's with Latinos and listening to the same songs over and over? No tengo ninguna ( I have no) idea. We had a cita with Ruth today. She is definitely an escagido (scared). We had the lesson on the Word of Wisdom, which is a lesson that applies to her. She took it well though. She always reads what we give her, so that's awesome. I love to teach her. You can see a literal change in her countenance now. When we met her, she was pretty closed off and unhappy. But now she's a happier person in general and is a lot more open with us. It's amazing for me to see how the gospel is blessing her life. After that cita, we decided to go and stop by la familia Salinas. That lesson got real awkward real fast. We were teaching the Plan of Salvation and that was going well, but Nicol was there and I somehow didn't recognize her. I don't know how. But yeah, that was awkward. We tried stopping by a couple of contacts later, but they either weren't home or weren't interested in talking to us. While I was gone on intercambios, Elder Gonzalez and Elder Silva made a contact, taught her a lesson and put a feacha on her. We brought Cristopher with us on the cita. Rosalinda is 17 years old and is pretty open to the gospel, so that's pretty cool. Cristopher made sure not to fall asleep for this one. I've never seen him participate in a lesson that much before, including when we teach him. After that, we went and stopped by Owaldo's house. There's nothing much really that's new with him. It really is sad to see a man in a circumstance like that. It's kinda funny that all the milagros have happened at the end of this transfer. I mean, it's nice they're happening, but I won't be in the area for any of the baptisms, which is kinda sad. Oh well though I guess. The summer here is really brutal sometimes. It wasn't too bad today though. There's days though where after I climb a hill I could shake my head and have sweat fly everywhere like I had just gotten out of a pool. My right foot sweats a lot. Sometimes I can fell the soggy squish when I step. When I take my shoe off at night, the bottom of my foot is all wrinkled like fingers are when you've been in the pool for a while.
My foot on a slow day without a whole lot of walking.
Sunday
I had a dream last night that we went to the moon for our district meeting. We got up there and I was like, "How in the world did the church build a capilla up here? Why did they send us here for the meeting? Wow, their budget must have really increased." There were a couple of houses up there somehow too. If you think about it, the moon looks a lot like Huaycán, but the rocks are different colors. At the end of the dream, there was a big earthquake that broke part of the capilla. Most of the dream though, I was concerned a lot with taking a good picture of myself with the Earth in the background. Anyways, we tried going out again this morning to get people to bring them to church with us. It didn't work out though. It never does for some reason. But Ruth came again! She's super cool. We had 10 conersos recientes (recent converts) come to church too! Good stuff. Jimmy came again too. We tried passing by his house during the week, but was drunk/hungover when we did. I'd call it a successful Sunday. In 3rd hour, the main thing the Elders did was plan out their activity of cooking arroz con pollo (chicken rice). That was mildly torturous to listen to since my companion and I were fasting. I don't know why, but I feel like it's almost easier to fast in the mission field than at home. Granted that the thirst does get ya sometimes. But I guess that that just shows you the hand of the Lord in our work. Jesus is a great friend to have, in case you didn't know. There were English songs on in all the combis today. Not gonna lie, I kinda enjoyed it. Another One Bites the Dust might be one of the greatest songs of all time. But I'm probably biased, considering my area. We ate lunch with a member family, just like we do every Sunday. After that though, we had another lesson on with Ruth on the Law of Chasity. She brought her sister named Ninosaka with her too, who's a recent convert. It was kinda weird to teach that lesson to two girls my age, but they handled it well. We had a meeting with the bishop today too to discuss the needs of the ward with him a bit. Then at night we had to go to Chaclacayo to meet with the zone leaders about the borders of the areas. There are two things of mine that I get very defensive of if you try to take: my tequeños (Peruvian cheese sticks) and my area. Nothing changed too much though. They did, however, make us go track down an internet that was 15 minutes away so that we could print maps of the areas off. That was mildly inconvenient.
Us bored waiting for lunch yesterday when I realized I hadn't taken any pictures this week:
Elder Lainez and I kept taking pictures of each
other.
No comments:
Post a Comment