Hi guys nothing new much this week. We just had a little man named Elder David A Bednar come stop by real quick. I loved the chance we had to hear from Elder Bednar this Friday. I was really touched many times by the things he said. The way he taught us was the way we need to be able to teach our investigators, so I loved that. More than anything, what stood out to me from him was how I really need to use the spirit more as a missionary, especially when it comes to teaching the investigators. I loved a lot of the things he told us about teaching them and hope to help them and the converts to have a more profound conversion.
This week was pretty cool though. We got a handful of new investigators, 5 that is. So that's pretty awesome. We were also able to have the baptism for Angela this week. She was pretty nervous, but we had a real nice service for her. We've got another baptism planned for this Saturday. While we definitely had a few challenges this week, we had even more milagros (miracles). Have a good week president!
-Elder White
Monday
There were some testigos (Jehovah Witnesses) knocking on our gate this morning. Hat's off to them for being persistent, because they were there for a couple of minutes. I really wanted to go out to talk to them. Then Elder Clark asked if I'd buy him some milk so I was like, "Heck yeah I will!" I opened the door and was like, "Hi guys! Good morning!" The look on their faces said it all: "Oh fetch. This is where you guys live?" I walked past them cheerfully and confidently and they shyly said good morning and walked away, ditching the street entirely. Darn right, this is my town fellas. Poor dudes had no idea what was gonna go down when they came down this street. What a way to start off my cumple meses (birthday months)! Today marks 11 months in the mission. We went and did internet like normal this morning. Elder Cabral let me know that Michael got baptized on Saturday. Everyone in the ward there was confused as to why I wasn't there. So I was I really. The work is going well there though. They've got 3 with fecha and 2 families they're gonna work with. I guess the school year is ending here in 3 days. Weird stuff. It was P-day de distrito today and since they didn't have anything planned, I threw out the idea of going to Papa Johns. So we went. While we were waiting, Elder Lainez and I went to Totu's, which is a rich people grocery store with American products right in the middle of rich people Lima. That was the trunkiest grocery shopping trip of my life; I heard songs and saw products and cleaning machines I haven't seen in almost a year. I bought a root beer, Cherry Dr. Pepper, and a chocolate cake, and a box of Kraft Mac 'n Cheese. That was some good pizza. Elder Lainez and I each ate a full family sized pizza. YOLO. Then we came back to our room and the 4 of us watched Wall-E. Elder Lainez insisted that we put on Spanish subtitles, but after a while we were like, "Well, it's a good thing we threw on those subtitles..." Then Elder Kimball was just like, "Dude. The climax of the movie is people taking steps." He's not wrong. We went to go visit Jose Luis tonight. He isn't committed to coming to church so we're gonna have to drop him. We also went to go visit Andree and Angela. Their mom, Elena, reminds me of an older version of Mafer. She looks and talks like her and acts like her. It's pretty interesting. The more I think about it, the more I realize how much of a miracle it is that Andree got baptized that day and that Angela will get baptized Saturday. There was another earthquake tonight at 10:15. It kinda felt and sounded like a big truck was passing by. It wasn't super big, but just enough to notice it.
Tuesday
So last night the zone leaders got a phone call from Elder Topham (the assistant) saying that he was going to do an intercombio with them, but in a trio. That stressed me out because I thought he was going to come and burn the whole everybody, especially since Elder Leite was just here. He didn't though. Instead he just gave us some animos (encouragement). We had a consejo de disitrito this morning. While we were getting ready to leave, we got a call from Yasmin's dad. He told us we couldn't baptized her. He was in Manchay and agreed to meet with us in the capilla. So we snuck outta consejo to talk to him. So we talked to this 'Mauel' figure for an hour trying to get him to sign the permiso, but we didn't wind up getting the ink in our desired formation on our paper. "She needs to be a member before she gets baptized." "Other Christians tell me baptism isn't necessary." Yeah, well, I don't think those dudes have ever read the bible son. "She needs more time to prepare." Ok there Catholic boy, how old were you when you got baptized? Sheesh. Lunch was solid at least. Turns out that Elder Topham studied Aerospace Engineering at Utah State a year before the mission, so that's cool. We were out contacting and Elder Lainez knocked a door. A dog started going crazy on us and poked his head out from under the wooden door to snarl at us. I don't know what he was thinking, but he stuck his book at the dog, who snatched it and went back. When I peeked over, all the contents in his case were all over the place. Luckily the owner was home though. From 5 until 9:30 we were full with citas. We had one with a contact, but that didn't go anywhere. We met with that Venezuelan family, but they didn't understand the necessity of having authority to baptize since they were Adventists before. Then we went to go visit Yasmin. She told us that she didn't actually have interest in the church and was only going because Sandra did. And also that she was only going to get baptized because we told her it was important and she didn't want to offend us. Then she told us all the same things her dad told us. For that reason I'm not super sure what she's thinking. We'll see what she winds up doing thought I guess. The day up until that point was kinda sad and frustrating. The day improved after that though. We went to go visit Luz Torres (a CR) and her son, Fabio, who just turned 9. When there's a problem child, in Peru they call him a "chookie". But take away that Latino accent and you'll find they're saying Chucky, after the infamous doll. It isn't really rude to say though, so you can joke around with it. Fabio is a Chucky. But he behaved the whole time we were there and wants to be baptized. After, we went and taught the commandments to Nataniel and her family. Francisco accompanied us the whole day, even when I bought groceries at the end. What a guy.
Wednesday
Last night while we were walking on an empty street by our house, we had someone sneeze from inside their house. Elder Lainez randomly called out, "¡Salud!" Then we heard someone shout back from inside "¡Gracias!" That was pretty funny. I've been doing a lot of pondering recently about humility. It's something I've really had to learn here since at home pride was kind of a weakness of mine. I've got a bit of it still, but it's small and easily contained and I joke about it. For example, our pension brought us soup with slices of lemon to squeeze into. Elder Vilca was like, "Don't worry about them. Gringos don't like lemon in soup." So I said, "We do too like lemons!" and grabbed a slice and squeezed the whole thing into my mouth, even though I'm indifferent on the subject. But more than anything, I was reflecting on the transfer from January 1-February 12. The trait of the cambio was Humility. So I took it seriously and did everything possible to make myself humble. One of my goals was to pray nightly for God to humble me. And thus started the hardest six weeks of my life. My companion, who was my best friend leading up to that point, went crazy on me, and Señorita Taylor passed away, just to name a few of the things that went down. But even though those were the 6 saddest/most frustrating weeks ever, they were also the 6 happiest weeks of my life as well. Those were times, especially in the 2nd and 3rd weeks, that I learned I had to put my trust and thoughts and deeds 100% in the Lord if I was going to make it through my problems, because I realized if I didn't, I would be straight up miserable. We see the same thing in the Book of Mormon many times. I went to go pray recently to be humbled again so that I could be as happy as I was before, but I hesitated at first. There's a price that must be paid because there are very few men that can humble themselves and establish such an intimate relationship with him without being given an incentive. But the price is worth it. It's always worth it for God. We had a cita with Juana today. We worked on establishing her relationship with Heavenly Father since before she didn't understand the whole Jesus is Jehovah thing. The way she puts it, it's like being told you're adopted after 30 years of thinking someone else is your dad. We took the Bishop to go and visit Jose Manuel with us. The bishop here is super awesome. He has a great testimony and is always in action in the church. I wouldn't mind having him as my bishop. Angela got her interview done alright tonight. So we're all good to go for Saturday.
Thursday
Tomorrow's the big day. Everyone is pretty hyped for Elder Bednar to come. I'm kinda stressed at the idea of possibly having to pee during the talk. But anxiety makes you supposedly need to pee more. Which makes me more stressed. See the cycle there? Yesterday morning, we decided to contact hiking up to Quinuapata, which is almost the highest association that's in our area. Above that, there's only pre-made houses that are far apart. It was almost a nonstop hike, at a steep angle usually, that lasted about 80 minutes.
My legs were pretty sore today. But my legs are getting yoked. My calves are so swole that that part of my pants are snug now. This morning we visited a couple named Roly and Kirstia, their 7 year old Neli Smith (turns 8 June 18 or something) who wasn't there. They're pretty cool story. When Roly was a kid, terrorists went to his house and yelled for them to come out or they'd throw a bomb in. His dad walked out and they shot him dead on the spot in front of the entire family. In December, Katina had her appendix burst. Those are both unfortunate circumstances. They're a humble family, so they decided they'd have to go into debt to pay for the 3,000 sol surgery. When they went to pay though, someone had payed for all but 326 soles of it. So that was amazing for them. Back when the CCM was installing the synthetic courts, he was helping with that. A coworker, who was a member, gifted him a Book of Mormon. That coworker left and he stored the book. Then around the time his son was born, he found the book and saw a picture of Jose Smith. He thought that that was a cool name, thence his son's name. They both accepted a fecha for the 29th of June. They gave us a small lunch of Peruvian turkey after. Cool beans. We went to go visit la familia Quispitupa. Everything is pretty normal there. We also went and visited Fabio. For how much I hear about him being a Chucky, he's remarkably well behaved when it comes time to teach. He's pretty excited to get baptized. There's nothing like strengthening the primary. hahah. When it came time to start, I asked him and his mom if they had anything they'd like that I'd include in the prayer. They both told me one thing. The uncle had arrived meanwhile and had retreated immediately to the back room. Fabio told us, "One sec," and then went into the backroom and came back and said, "My uncle wants good luck at work." It was pretty funny that he went and asked his uncle that. It was like they were ordering off of a menu. haha. We were told to be home at 9:30 tonight since tomorrow is an early day.
Friday
I got up at 4:20 this morning. You know why. We were told that we had to be in Lima Tambo at 7:00 AM, which is kinda far from here. We found an empty combi for the 18 of us though and used that boy like a taxi and got there at 6:30.
There were already a ton of guys there though. But it didn't really matter because they had assigned seating. I wound up sitting right behind the last row of benches, which was a pretty good seat. From the time we entered at 7:20 to the time Elder David A Bednar walked into the room at 9:55, I used the bathroom 4 or 5 times to make sure that I truly was empty and wouldn't have to get up. That's just how General Authorities work. Listening to him was pretty cool. He pointed out how fast the work is moving now. From 1952-1970 the church population grew 3 fold under President David O McKay, but there still wasn't a million members. Now there are 1.5 million members in both Mexico and Brazil. It's crazy stuff. Elder Bednar is a funny dude. He used a Spanish word here and there while he was talking. He told us that it was going to be interactive and explained how it was going to work. That made us all kinda nervous, but he reassured us and told us not to worry about it. In his thick gringo accent, he said, "¿Por que terror? (Why terror?)" and then looked at his translator and was like "¿Esta bien? (It is good?)" His translator nodded, and so Elder Bednar said, "Pretty good, eh?" and stuck his fist out for a fist bump. But the other dude didn't see it at first and almost left him hanging. I felt like the main theme of his thing (and the other dudes as well) was following the spirit and letting him guide us. It was a great discourse and I learned a lot. The spirit was strong and now I have an even stronger testimony that he truly is an apostle called of God. The meeting ended at 1:00. In summary, do everything you can but don't get in the way of the spirit. Good stuff. The 5 Lima missions were there, but I only saw one of my friends from the CCM, Elder Vazquez. I did see two guys I knew from AF/Mountain Ridge though. I also saw a lot of missionaries from past CCM attacks. Then it hit me. I have more time as a missionary than half those guys there. That was weird. We had a cita with Nataniel when we got back. Everything's smooth sailing with her still. We also went to go stop by Angela's house real quick, just to make sure that everything's good to go for her baptism tomorrow night. Her religion teacher in school told her not to get baptized because, "The Mormons are a false church." Bruh. I miss American schools. It didn't really bother her though. We're all good to go for tomorrow.
Saturday
I tried eating a plastic bag this morning. It didn't really work out. What happened was that we went to go take money out this morning and Totus was just right there, so we stopped by real quick. They charged me an extra 10¢ for an organic grocery bag. On the side it said that it was made from corn and would decompose in a week. It even smelled like corn bread too. Seems pretty edible to me. It isn't unfortunately. I chewed on a piece for 5 minutes. It tastes like a regular Walmart grocery bag. Otherwise I might have gotten a few extra. We lunched like usual. This pension probably only cooks something really tasty. She might be better than the other two. For that reason, I was surprised my suit pants fit when I put them on yesterday. We didn't have anyone to visit today because our cita with Roly and Katia got canceled. So we did contacts all the day long. All the day long until it came time for Angela's baptism, that is. Angela had already been in the capilla all day for young women's activities and English Connect. She got really nervous as it came to be time for her baptism. But fortunately for everyone, her friend was super awesome. She was with her every minute to encourage her. It was a nice service. Her dad was there too, so that was pretty great. A lot of the young women came to support Angela.
Elena brought refreshments, but it was fast Sunday of course, so we couldn't eat any of it. She was kinda sad when we told her last night that we'd be fasting today because she wanted to take us to a polleria (poultry shop) after the baptism to celebrate. I would have loved that, but we were able to talk her into taking up Monday instead. Andree wasn't able to come because he had to watch the Chuckies back home, but he was always super supportive of Angela getting baptized. He'd always pray for her baptism and asked us to do so too. What a brother. Speaking of fasting a bit, that t'was a tad bit more difficult that normal. We were walking and I said, "Elder, siento una dulce tenacion." (The really awesome candy shop in our area is called dulce tenacion (Sweet Maintenance).) We walked in and I dropped a solid 6 sols on candy. Elder Lainez ate a chip and then was like, "Eh, fetch. We're fasting dude." Well, fetch indeed. While that was literally a dulce tenacion it was more a tentacion cruel. Low blow by him-who-shall-not-be-named-in-this-sentence-but-you-know-who-I'm-talking-about. It's funny because my first 1 1/2 weeks were still pretty hot here. But now I find myself wearing a sweater in the night and sometimes in the morning/late afternoon. That fog I knew in Huaycan at night is in Manchay now at night too.
Sunday
We went to church today. Surprised? I would be surprised if you were. Nothing really exciting or interesting happened there today apart from that we confirmed Angela, which was awesome. We didn't have a whole lot of people come to church today. Right now we have 6 investigators; Nataniel, Fabio, Roly, Katia, Isabel and Milagros. Nataniel, Roly and Katia didn't come. You see, there's this evil device created by Satan called a "Fallena". It's basically a mandatory (monthly?) community meeting everyone has to attend with out exceptions. If you don't go, you get fined 50 or more soles, depending on their mood. And they're always on Sundays, I'm pretty sure, and always in the morning too, I think. So that's why Katia didn't come. It's as if they Hollow decided to meet from 8-2 and talk about everything from the problem neighbor to how the plan for creating a new speed bump is coming along to how they're gonna feed the 17 1/2 stray dogs that hang out in that part. They're long and stupid and pointless and prevent people from coming to church. But Isabel (40) and her daughter, Milagros (13), are pretty cool. They're old contacts from Elder Lainez. They called us during the week and asked when church was. We went to visit them and then they went to Angela's baptism and came to church today too. That's pretty cool. I've been looking into improving my sacrament meeting experience. Before, I wasn't really feeling what I felt I should be feeling when I partake of the sacrament, especially when I was back home. So I started to pray about it and started really trying to focus in on what I was doing and thinking as I sit there to prepare myself for it and to take it. I feel the spirit a lot more because of this now and I feel better about myself because of it. You can only feel the spirit if you prepare yourself for it and have a desire to feel it. I feel like very rarely the spirit is able to have a powerful effect on someone if they don't do that. We went and ate lunch with the old pension and Elder Lainez and Elder Jensen had a while back. It was pretty good stuff. Some of my favorite Peruvian foods are Lomo saltado, arroz topado, tequeños and ceviche de pota. That's some good stuff. We didn't have any citas today unfortunately. But fortunately, we had a handful of really cool guys we took citas down with. It was a really clear night today; I saw more stars than I had seen in the last 11 months.
The Mountain Man breakfast I cooked up.
A cool sunset.
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