This week was pretty incredible. I don't even know where to start. In the Month of March, we shattered the mission record of baptisms for a month with 301. Before the record was 215. That's super amazing to be a part of! Conference was amazing. I loved the chance to be able to hear from the prophet and apostles. They have such amazing counsels for us that we can follow and find more happiness and peace. There were a lot of things that stood out to me. But one of the things that stood out to me was the word "covenant." I just feel like I heard that word in specific like 2 dozen times. It really made me reflect on the covenants that I've made with God and what I can to do better to understand and live by them. This week I had 2 experiences with the Book of Mormon that were super cool. Earlier in the week, we had discovered that our pension's (our cook's) 14 year old grandson hadn't been baptized because his parents were inactive. So we had a cita with him and he was super awesome and super desirous to get baptized. So we gave him the permission paper and explained that we needed his parents to sign it. We returned a day later to talk to him and his parents about it. His parents didn't give him the permission. The live in the 3rd floor of my pensions house and we were there on the first floor, so we asked him to see if his parents could come down and talk to us for 10 minutes. They refused to come down though. I was left really frustrated after it was all said and done. I was eating dinner and I felt like it was one of those times where if I opened the Book of Mormon to a random page, the first verse I saw would be a message from God to me that would help comfort me or improve the situation or something. So I opened my book and saw Alma 41:6, which says "And so it is on the other hand. If he hath repented of his sins, and desired righteousness until the end of his days, even so he shall be rewarded unto righteousness." Even though his parents won't let him, I know that if he does his best to live righteously, God will still reward him until the day he can finally get baptized. Back in December, I baptized an hermana (sister) named Olga. She and her husband, Dante, were super Catholic. But then their son left on a mission. Olga started going to church and I baptized her. Her husband was still catholic though. I've visited him periodically during my 4 cambios aqui (transfers here). He had some health problems and had to go to the hospital about a month ago. After a while there and avoiding a potentially serious health problem, he came home. We went to go visit and he said he'd get baptized, but in July or something. So he started coming to church and stuff. A couple of weeks later he went to the ER after sacrament meeting. He was there in the hospital for like 2 and a half weeks in critical condition. We couldn't go there though because it was in 2 de Mayo out of the mission. But we sent a couple of dudes from the ward there to give him a blessing. He got back home a couple of days ago. Last night we had a cita fall, so Elder Cabral suggested that we pass by to see how he was doing. We passed by just to chat for a minute to make sure he was ok and to see if we could help them at all. He was telling us all about how he had these stones in his gall bladder and showed us the huge and nasty incision that the doctors made in his stomach. He was doing better, but has to go back today for a check up. It was the most friendly and open I had ever seen him. I felt prompted to share a scripture with him. I thought "baptism" so I went to go open up 2 Nephi 31, but the spirit told me to go to Mosiah 24 instead. That talks about God supporting us in trials, so I was like "ok" and opened it up. I started reading in verse 12, but stopped when I finished verse 13, which reads "And it came to pass that the voice of the Lord came to them in their afflictions, saying: Lift up your heads and be of good comfort, for I know of the covenant which ye have made unto me; and I will covenant with my people and deliver them out of bondage." There was that word again, covenant. I didn't remember that being there. So I explained to him how he needed to not only continue praying to God, but if he really wanted to fully receive the help of God he needed to make the covenant of baptism. He agreed to be baptized the 4th of Mayo. Olga's eyes got kind of teary when we talked about it. The spirit was super strong. That was 100% the spirit teaching, not me. I had no idea what was going to happen or what we were going to share when we walked in. It really strengthened my testimony of how the Spirit really will guide us when we are continually virtuous and do our best to live by His spirit. I know that this church is true and that the Book of Mormon is what is helps us stay on the covenant path to return to live with Christ. I love having my testimony grow like this every week. I share these things with you in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
Monday
This morning we went early to get haircuts from Hermana Mari Curi, the relief society president, who apparently gives Elders free haircuts. Good stuff. It looks good too. We didn't have a lot of time after that, so we only did internet for an hour. I just remembered that on Saturday in Lucero's baptism, I chose to sing the hymn Creo en Cristo (I Believe in Christ). It was another one of those cases where we have a hymn in English that's super popular, but that no one down here really knows. I had flash backs to the Tilda baptism. Let's just say that those were some really awkward and painfully long 5 minutes. But any who, from there we went out to take out money. We met at Plaza Vea, which is a super market. I decided to duck inside real quick. It was magical to be able to see a super market again. We all took a surprisingly concerning amount of interest in looking at the pens isle. A year ago I was trying to decide whether to play Pub G or Battlefront. Now I'm examining and comparing pens at a super market in a 3rd world country. What has my life come to? For lunch we met up as a zone and went to a convert's chicken restaurant where they gave us a lot of really good food for cheap. Then we went to the stake center and watched Coco. That had some pretty good Spanish translations. Afterwards we went and did 30 more minutes of internet. We had a cita with a recent convert named Monica when we got back. She got baptized a couple of months before Elder Mayta and I got here, but the 2 of us where never able to meet with her. She was pretty cool though. We went and visited Gabriel, Alfredo's grandson. He was pretty cool and excepted a fecha readily, but apparently his inactive parents are pretty stubborn. We have hope though.
Tuesday
A lot happened today. We were just kinda in our room finishing up getting read for the day when we got a call from Jean Franco. He informed us that the abuelita (grandma) had passed away. We went to their house in a hurry. We sat down with all of them, including an aunt and Elva's parents. Elva was crying a lot. But her mom was super normal about everything. She was like, "I'm just gonna sit by my mom," and plopped herself down on the bed where the body was laid. She would pat her occasionally too. We had a good talk about the plan of salvation and baptisms for the dead. Our talk went well. How much more will it take for Mario and Elva to get baptized? From there we went to a district meeting. On the way there we picked up an electric stove for Elder Cabral. The meeting was pretty normal though. I went on an intercambio today to LA with Elder Shupe. I've never had a gringo companion and before had only done like 6 intercambios with a gringo, so it was an incredibly treasured time for me. They don't have a pension, so he made us lunch. Good stuff. The one and only things that will get me feeling trunky is talking about American food. I mean, family's cool, but have you ever tried going 9 months without an American hamburger, pizza or milkshake? It's rough sometimes. We were walking along and saw this huge traffic jam in the highway intersection. We were talking to a Venezuelan moto dude and he said that another dude (like him) got hit by a combi. It wasn't anything overly serious, but the cobrador (debt collector) and moto driver got into an argument. The cobrador, a Peruvian, grabbed a rod and beat the driver in front of his 5 year old daughter, who was in the moto. The other Venezuelans obviously got mad and the police came and there were some very racist things said to the Venezuelans. They suffer so much discrimination. It's so sad. We had 2 citas today. One of them was this super escogido contact that they had made. His family had basically fallen apart and was seeking divine help. He accepted baptism super readily. The other one was with the 17 year old investigator Harley. We were reviewing the 10 Commandments and Elder Shupe asked if he remembered some of them. Harley was like, "Yeah, no mataras, no hurtaras, santificaras las fiestas (you will not kill, you will not steal, you will sanctify the holidays)." He was serious about it too. Elder Shupe and I just looked at each other then got a good laugh.
Wednesday
Before I forget to say this again, my parents sent me a package on Saturday. Good stuff. We were going to have a multizone this morning, but it got canceled, so that was disappointing. But instead, the whole mission will get together on Friday. I'm super excited, mostly because now I'm going to be able to hear Elder Yañez and Elder Gonzalez's final testimonies before they go home. We went to go finish taking out money this morning because we only took out part of it out last time. We switched back from intercambios last night. Elder Shupe told us this morning about how last night that President Nelson came and whispered in his ear, "You're going to Lima Tambo." So basically his destiny is sealed now. For lunch we had ceviche do pota, so that was pretty dang good. SF got booted out of their pension, so they'll be eating with us now. I'm the only one that eats dinner with them now though. Everyone else decided that they aren't hungry at that time or something. We contacted most of the day today. Jordy's dad suffered an accident last week. He literally got hit by a truck. So we went to go see how he was doing. He was distracted by the TV, so we basically just invited him to church and left. We went out front of the house and saw Colegio (School) "Mi Peru". Elder Cabral pointed to an open window and was like, "I bet you can't get a card in there." There was a wall and tree in the way, not to mention it was the 3rd story window too. I waited for the street to empty and then launched a card. It had a few crazy twists and turns, and it somehow snuck through the window. We heard one of the kids say "Ow. ¿Que?" followed by some confused chatter. So if there's a young teen that walks into church on Sunday that wants to get baptized because an angel threw a card at him, you'll know who to call. That was pretty legendary, not gonna lie. We had a cita with Arian, Angi and Camila tonight. They had a lot of energy when we went to start the lesson, but they calmed down when it was time and the lesson went super well. I felt the spirit super strong when talking about repentance. They all accepted a fecha, but Arian was a bit more hesitant. They all need their permission forms signed anyways. We're hopeful. We went to go talk to Gabriel again. His parents don't want to sign the permission form. They refused to come down and talk to us too. That made me really frustrated since they're less active and Gabriel is super cool. While I was eating dinner, I got the feeling that if I just opened by Book of Mormon to a random page, the first verse I saw would help me. And so it was. Alma 41:6. That really comforted me about Gabriel.
Thursday
I'm super excited for conference this weekend. I tell all the people in the street that I can about Conference. Yesterday I decided to start a count down. When I finished the math, I realized that there were 66 hours and 6 minutes left. That was weird. After 5 months of asking, we finally were able to get Alfredo and Celia to let us come and do a service for them. The 4 of us went and cleaned their house for 2 hours for them. Celia has had diabetes her whole life and, up until a couple of days ago, had refused to take medicine. For the last 2 or 3 weeks she's been in really bad health due to that. So that's why we went and cleaned with her. They have us some pineapple juice after, so that was great. After lunch we came back and did a bit of weekly planning. From there we went to contact for a while. No overly exciting contacts today. Alameda is a bit too tranquil sometimes. It's good, that's for sure, but it lacks some excitement sometimes. We had a cita today with a contact that Elder Cabral made named Laura. She's a 30 year old with 2 kids and has been living with her parents. Her husband was working, so we took her and her kids to the park to teach them since they're 2 years old and 8 months old. I asked her how she was and she said, "mas o menos (more or less)." When I asked her what was going on, she told me that her husband was cheating on her. I was kinda just like, "Well, do you want to leave or fix it?" She said that she'd like to fix it if possible. I thought that that was pretty good. Come to find out a couple of minutes later though, the other lady is pregnant. Oh....they didn't teach us this in the CCM. She was just like, "I didn't do anything wrong. Why is this happening? Why is there so much bad in the world why?" What do I say to that? I just told her, "Do you think that you'd be here with us right now if this hadn't happened? God sometimes gives us trials to humble us," and then we taught part of the Plan of Salvation. Why is a 19 year old that's never even had a girlfriend talking about this? "#dificil (#hard)" -Elder Cabral. We went to al capilla for a bit. We were waiting for a couple of people to come, so we snuck into the JAS activity. Lucero got there super late though, so we weren't able to really talk to her. We talked to them about inviting people on social media to come to church. Then we met with Nimrod for a minute to cover a couple of things.
Friday
We had multizone as a mission this morning. #Lit. The first thing we did was take a picture.
While I was walking around, I saw Elder Simonasi. He just pointed at me and held up 4 fingers. If there's one thing that this has taught me, it'd be that if you make fun of someone for staying 4 transfers, then you should also plan on staying a 4th. Karma's real. Turns out that he's in Huaycan 2 now. Apparently that area blew up after I left because Elder McKinney, my replacement, told me that he got 10 baptisms while he was there. That's good to hear. They wouldn't tell anyone how many baptisms the mission achieved in March. We all figured that we broke the mission's record of 215. We all went into the gym and watched a video about it. As a mission, we got 301 baptisms! How awesome is that? They had a bunch of confetti cannons; I was still washing bits of it out of my hair when I went to shower later. That was pretty exciting. However, we're gonna have a bit of a relapse in April, so we talked a lot about how we can maintain this high standard of excellence. For lunch, they bought us all Domino's. It was 1 large pizza for each companionship. That was dang good stuff.
All of Elder Gonzalez's companions and friends.
Saturday
We did an intercambio today. Elder Cabral went with Elder Pereia to watch conference in Portuguese and I went with Elder Shupe to watch it in English. The two of us went to Vitarte to watch it since that was where all the other gringos where watching it. Conference is basically the best thing ever to a missionary. I really enjoyed it. There were 5 other Elders and the 4 hermanas that were there watching it in that room. That was pretty fun. We all broke out big bags of American candy to share while we were watching. Good stuff. There were two talks that I think stood out to me during the morning session. There was one by Becky Craven about being on the right path, and the other was Henry B Eyring talking about pride and the family. After the first session, Elder Shupe and I went to a restaurant to eat and then went back. To start the second session, there was an amazing rendition of I Stand All Amazed. It left us all speechless. In the afternoon session, there were two more talks that I really liked. One of them was by David P Homer when he talked about having the Holy Ghost. I'm pretty sure that Jeffrey R Holland went into that building tonight with the goal of roasting all of Peru. He talked about a lot of things we need to do for church on the Sabbath. Good stuff. After that session ended, Elder Shupe and I were kind of in an awkward situation because if we had wanted to go back to one of our areas, we would have only been there for like 20 minutes before having to go back to the stake center to watch the priesthood session. So we just stayed there in Vitarte and wandered around a bit trying to keep ourselves busy. Priesthood was pretty cool. Gary E Stevenson talked about a couple of pro athletes that are members. I had no idea that Bryce Harper was a member, but all that was super cool though. Dallin H Oaks had a super savage story about a dog that killed a squirrel. Don't let the dog kill the squirrel in your life. Russell M Nelson ended the night with a bang by calling the entire priesthood body to repentance. We all need to repent daily. At the end of the night, we ended intercambios and we had about 6 of the JAS come and contact with us in Kiosto Azul for an hour. That was pretty cool.
Sunday
Today is conference part 2. I was more excited for this conference weekend than a Brazilian is for Carnival. However, I had to watch it in Spanish this morning because the only computer Alameda had was being used to broadcast the transmission. It's just not the same in Spanish. To be quite frank, I didn't get a whole lot of it due to that. Russell M Nelson's talk seemed good though from what I got out of it. It's just kinda hard to get stuff out of it after listening so close so long. It's just not the same. We didn't get Arian, Angi and Camila to church because they all left with family, so that was frustrating. Oh well though. For lunch we went to Carlos Alvearado's home. I thought that he and Charo were having serious marital problems because she kind of just disappeared and the family didn't really want to talk about it. Turn out that she's in Rome actually, not in Trujillo. That is why it was secret. They made us some super good bistek and churasco for lunch. We tried picking up the 3 kids again, but Angi was still gone, and Camila and Arian played the homework excuse. We decided to go to Tilda so that I could watch the afternoon session in English. On the way there, we stopped by our capilla to see if there was anyone inside and we found Norma. We sat her down with Zorayma and marked a cita and then were on our way. I feel like I heard the word "covenant" 3 dozen times during conference. We all got trolled though. They didn't announce a single change. There were a bunch of Elders expecting a change in the time they serve. Joke's on all us though. We were going to go visit Marcelo tonight, but it didn't work out. Elder Cabral suggested that we go visit Dante since he got home from the hospital a couple of days ago. It was the most social and open I've seen him. He had this huge nasty cut all along his rib cage and he had a tube dripping his urine into a bag, all because he had a few pebbles in his gallbladder. I felt prompted to share a scripture and I thought "baptism", so I went to go open 2 Nephi 31, but the spirit told me Mosiah 24. I started at verse 12, but stopped when I finished 13. There was that word again, "covenant". So I explained how if he wanted to Lord's blessings, he would need to enter into the covenant of baptism. He agreed to get baptized on May 4th. Olga's eyes got kinda watery. Dante is going back to the hospital tomorrow so we gave him a blessing. Then we went to visit Mario and Elva. We did a perfect job of combining the Plan of Salvation with the Gospel of Jesus Christ and relating it to their situation. The spirit was super strong. I know we all felt it. But he still said no. I think he's scared of the commandment/responsibility but I also think its just still not his time.
Extreme Peruvian sanding and painting.
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