Not gonna lie, this was kinda a rough week. We were really set on finding 8 new investigators, but instead we found and dropped one and then two more of our investigators, Luis and Wily, that had progressed a lot, but then dropped off. It was really hard for me to see them gradually stop completing commitments and coming to church. I guess we've gotta have our faith tried every once in a while. Here's a couple of the milagros (miracles) from the week: We were out contacting during the Peru vs Chile game, and as normal, there were only 2 and a half people in the street. The game was almost over when we walked past a botica. The lady called us over. Turns out that she's a member from Chiclayo that just moved here. We told her where the church was at and at what time and she said she'd see if she couldn't bring her nonmember cousin with her. For the 4th of July, we had a big "USA Day" celebration at the church. We had been expecting about 60 people to come, but instead we had more than double that. There were a lot of members that brought a lot of less actives or nonmember friends with them, so that was super cool. It gave us some solid stuff to work off of. For the last milagro of the week, we were coming home last night when we realized there was a super big party with super loud music at a park near our house. It wasn't too fun trying to do stuff at night with loud music in the background. We said a prayer when we planned that the music would stop, but it didn't. Then it turned 11:30 and we climbed into bed and right then it stopped. That was a tender mercy of the Lord because I was looking at a real struggle to fall asleep. So yeah, that was my week. We were all sad last night to hear last night that Elder Kimball is leaving on an emergency transfer to Las Flores, but I trust in the wisdom of the Lord. He and Elder Clark were iconic here in Manchay. Elder Cordova was trying to learn some English slang, so I taught him "dang." When he said it though, he had more of a k than a g though and he was worried it sounded too much like the curse word still. So I corrected him into saying dank so that he would feel more comfortable. He doesn't know the difference, but now every time that something happens he says dank instead of dang. "Dank man, our cita fell so now we have to contact" or "Dank man, that hurt" jajaja. I love this area, I love my comp and I love my ward! Have a great week!
-Elder White
Monday
Happy Canadian Independence Day! Today was a warm up for American Independence day. To celebrate, I made a whole bunch of pancakes and Elder Clark made a fresh batch of maple syrup. Last night, I had a Root Beer for the first time in over a year. I can see now why some people think that it tastes like medicine. It does kinda have that syrupy taste to it. But hot dang. Root Beer is some good stuff. Basically the nectar of the dog. I meant to say Gods, but that's a funny typo so I'll leave it. haha We have a picture of Kobe Bryant on our wall. Our goal for the month of July is 8 baptisms. Right now we have 5 with fecha with 2 maybes for July, so we've gotta get locked in. I taught Elder Cordova the idea of Mamba Mentality. We're going to use that to work hard in July and hopefully find 8 new investigators this week too. Hence, Kobe. I've been harnessing my chancla (flip flops) abilities by practicing on the flies. Before, I was just throwing them, but now that's too easy. Now I get them into the air before whacking them with my chancla just to make it more sporty. Next phase? Throwing chanclas at moving targets, flying targets. After internet today, we went and got some chaufa and watched Walle with the district. We visited Monica tonight and it went well.
Tuesday
Zumilda Quilca. I'm telling you man, she's a saint. Last night, I was kinda just craving avocado. We were walking past her store and were at the end of the street when she called for us. She gave us juice, nik crackers, bananas and a fre shavoc ado (fresh avocado). Cool beans. This morning we decided to bless the area. So we hiked up the infamous Los Angeles staircase so that we would be in a spot where we could see almost our whole area and be in the middle of it too. We knelt down in the dust and I offered the prayer. I had taken my sweater off to hike up. Before we knelt down, we had been talking for a few minutes, so I was starting to get cold, but was too lazy to throw my sweater back on just to pray and take it back off again to go back down. As I was praying, I remember using the Melchizedek priesthood and asking that Satan would have less influence over the people in Manchay, particularly our investigators. When I said that, I felt an immediate change in my body temperature despite it being cloudy and cold with a good wind chill too. I felt normal even a little warm maybe, despite being decently cold just a moment before. Before, I had usually felt the spirit almost as chills, but it's more than just chills. There are feelings that come with it too. But this might be the first time I've felt it as described in the Doctrine and Covenants. That was a powerful spiritual experience for me. We went to go visit Luis and Wily today. Neither of them read and Luis went to go smoke marijuana with his friends yesterday, so those two are starting to really concern me. That made me pretty frustrated. Then we went to visit Anabel. Bruce couldn't make it unfortunately. But we did the pre interview and she passed that alright. We went to go visit 2 contacts: One wasn't home and the other wasn't an escogido. Then we visited the Quispitupa's. Nora was going through a hard time, but we talked her through it. We ended the night with Lourdes. That was cool in the way that her neighbor was walking by and she invited her over to listen and participate as we taught the commandments. She wasn't an escogido, but it was cool still.
Wednesday
If I had a nickel for every time I've had a dream about going back to work at Jiffy Lube, I'd have enough money to match my starting wage. Other people dream about forgetting their locker combo or something in high school, but I'm stick creaming about being late or getting rehired at Jiffy Lube. Weird beans. I'm in the middle of a glorious 4 day stretch of time: two days ago was Canada day, yesterday was post Canada day, today is 4th of July eve and tomorrow is the 4th of July. Life's a riot. To celebrate, I suggested that we sing The Star Spangled Banner as the opening hymn. They actually took me up on it. So Elder Rushforth, Elder Woolf, Hermana Lester and I all sang our hearts out while our Latino companions just kinda looked at us. That alone made consejo legendary, but wait, there's more. We were finishing up and the zone leaders were just going over a few house keeping items, mainly just rules that we need to be better with. Then they were just like, "One more thing. Elder White, come up here. He's a good missionary. There is something in the zone however, that needs to be fixed immediately." At this point, I was just thinking to myself, "Ah crap. What are they going to roast me for?" "The hashtags on your milagros texts stink guys! As a quota, you all need at least 4 hashtags on each milagro text. Elder White understands hashtags best, so he's going to train us on how to use them. Elder, you have a minute and a half." I had just joked with the zone leaders about something like this, but I didn't think they'd actually take me up on it. haha We played a quick games of signs after. We went directly to go visit Soledad and Consuelo, but they hadn't read their folletos so we didn't teach. They only cita we had today was with Monica. She's doing super well. I kinda just want to fast forward to Sunday to see if she's going to come to church. She says she will and I believe her, but I want it to happen already so that I can work with more confidence. Peru played against Chile tonight in La Copa America. That was pretty crazy. The streets were even more vacant than they usually are. And the cheers were even louder anytime something happened. I'd say 98% of the people watched the game. Peru won 3-0, so they'll move on to play in the championship game Sunday against Brazil. I wish I could participate in watching and cheering. It looks like so much fun. Milagro of the day: At the end of the game, we were walking around and ran into Loet, an inactive-ish member who moved here 3 months ago and says will take her non member cousin to church.
Thursday
Today is a good day. "Why?" you ask? It's a little somethin' called..."Murica! It's kinda hard to be patriotic when you've been a missionary in Peru for a year, but I did the best I could. We went out and contacted like normal this morning. Wily left to work, so we only met with Luis today. You would think that teaching the 10 Commandments would be a rather simple lesson. I mean, there's teaching Juan who asks a million questions about everything, but then there's teaching someone who has a few big problems with the 10 Commandments. He read what we left him though, so that was a relief. We got to "No matorás (Thou shalt not kill)" and I figured that then would be a good time to expand on that. He said that he's been in a lot of fights to say the least, so I was like, "Well you can't do that anymore." He was concerned about if someone else started it and went on to explain people on both sides jump other people on the opposite side and beat them, sometimes with knives and even machetes. One time Luis was going to walk up the staircase to his house when he got attacked by some other dudes that recognized him and even got stabbed in his lower back. But after, all he did was walk up to Wily's and have them look at it, then he walked home and let his wound heal itself. But he's also beat a lot of people and has stabbed at least 1 person before. But he's never killed anyone before from what he tells us. But he's also participated in an armed robbery. Dude's been getting into fights since he was 13, and he's 18 now and is recognized all over Manchay. Things just got a tad bit more interesting with him. We tried to meet with Soledad and Consuelo today, but it didn't really work out. Since today was the 4th of July, we threw an activity in the capilla and called it USA Day. We actually had a super big turn out with over 120 people there. We had 3 stations, Elder Kimball was in charge us US Trivia, Elder Clark borrowed an American football from Elder Peterson and played games with that, and Elder Cordova and I were in charge of teaching American slang. I thought that I'd have more help from the ward so I was a little unprepared. But after an awkward first class, we got it down. We had Fanta Floats and Dominos, but we initially only planned for 60 people, so we had to cut it all in half. But we had a lot of nonmembers come and took down some good references.
Friday
Teaching a bunch of Peruvians English last night was definitely a highlight of the week. There is an indescribable satisfaction of getting a group of 40+ Latinos to say, "What's cooking good looking?" in addition to other slang. I wish I had taken a video. Elder Cordova asked me today the best translation for "pucha", so I told him "dang". He was concerned that it sounded a little too much like the actually swear word, so I corrected him into saying "dank". So now anytime he wants to say "dang" he'll say "dank" instead. We did weekly planning this morning. We had some good ideas and did some good talking. We had a lot of good time to contact today. I noticed that Elder Cordova's elbow was really dark for some reason. He was like, "Yeah, I know. I noticed it in my last area. Do you think it'd be easier to use a file (un lima), or should I bleach it?" He was totally serious about it too. He had already bought a bottle of bleach to do it and has it sitting on his shelf. So we'll see how that turns out. We went to go visit the familia Tate for a bit. Emma's. Excuses. Never. End. It drives me crazy. I don't understand how she was baptized. There's people like her, then there's people like the bishop. He pays the 100 sol fee every time there's a fallena (neighborhood meeting) because he never goes (they're weekly or biweekly for them over there). I hope to one day be so converted to the Lord to have the same faith as him just to go to church each week. The bishop here is such an amazing man. We had a cita with Monica tonight. Every time we meet with her, she's more and more excited about going to church and baptism and all that cool stuff. She's doing well despite some initial doubts of mine. We also went to go visit Lourdes tonight. Everything's all good over there. I think I've got an ingrown toenail, so that's dope beans. President Amato's birthday was on June 30, just FYI. Elder Kimball has a knack that for when he pulls the lever to flush the toilet, he almost always gets it stuck. I'm not sure whether to call it a talent or disability.
Saturday
Remember that one time that Elder Cordova said that he was wanting to use that Clorox to bleach his elbow? He did that today. But much to his surprise and disappointment, his elbows didn't change colors at least not that we can see. He says that he'll try it again later, but for a longer time and more concentrated solution. hahaha This dude. If it really does work to bleach your skin, the number of Gringos in this world would increase and be immensely high. But best of luck to him. We got up early this morning to go and play soccer as a zone (Huertos 2 was a no show). We played on a synthetic court, so that was super cool. I started out kinda slow, but was doing a good job as goalie. But the Elder Vilca crossed me up and I was on my stomach and he scored. I just laid there for a minute on the turf and was too lazy to wipe the pellets off my face when I got up.
I soon discovered that this gave me super powers, so I reapplied more pellets to the left side of my face every time I scored.
After soccer, we had all the Elders go down to the stake center because the assistants told us that a member in their ward was in need of service. We moved around a lot of stuff and sanded the walls and his garage door and painted too. As for me though, I was scraping all the old plaster/paint stuff of his house the whole time. Yeah, well, all of our citas fell today and contacts weren't overly popping. So today was kinda rough. I have been on my feet walking around doing stuff, so now my legs are sore for the fist time since we did that Capayera Brazilian Dance fighting stuff. But that just means that my legs are going to be even more jacked than they already are. We were wanting to go visit Luis and Wily for the cita we had with them, but it didn't quite work out. We ran into Wily with another one of their friends hanging out. Based on what we saw, they were about to start drinking. Nothing much you can do though other than politely remind them not to do it. It was incredibly hard for me to continue walking along knowing what he was probably doing. We thought we saw Luis with them and then run when he saw us, but he said he was in Molicentro. He might have been lying, but I don't know. They both said they were ready for them to be picked up at 9:40 AM for church though.
Sunday
Yeah, so we all just finished getting blindsided. Five minutes ago Elder Kimball received a call from the assistants to let him know that he was being emergency transferred. He's going to Las Flores, the new zone from Lima Central that we just got. Elder Pedroza, a Brazilian, will be here as zone leader with Elder Clark. I can see the reason why the emergency cambio happened though. Central, from what I understand, isn't a super high baptizing mission. Las Flores had 2 baptisms as a zone last month with 12 missionaries. The zones with that many missionaries here will baptize as a very minimum 12 in a month, but usually a lot more. So they just need a super bomb zone leader like Elder Kimball to get them moving over there. It's kinda sad he's leaving though because things were lit here in Manchay with him. He and Elder Clark were super good friends too. Oh well though. When we got home tonight, we quickly noticed that there was a huge party in the park or something near our house. They had super loud music. I hate overly loud music. And having their music so loud so late too is kind of just a blatant lack of respect for everyone that's trying to sleep. The music was horrible too. Not vulgar, but just that that person had no talent for singing. As soon as 11:30 hit and we climbed into bed, it suddenly stopped. That was probably the biggest miracle of the day. #Blessings. It would have been very difficult to fall asleep with how loud that music was. Today was kinda rough. This whole week, really. Lourdes was our only investigator that came to church. Annabel didn't come because Illary was super sick and had to go on an emergency trip to the hospital yesterday. Monica went into work today. Luis and Wily were MIA when we went to go pick them up today. Neither answered their phone. That was super frustrating for us. Despite how much it hurts me, we're going to have to take Wily, Luis and Monica off the ovejas (sheep) list. At least Anabel will get baptized on Saturday though. My legs were even more sore today, which was kind of unfortunate because we spent the whole day walking and contacting. Not gonna lie, I'm discouraged right now. We were planning on having 8 new investigators, but instead lost 3. Our phone didn't work the whole day. The girl we ate lunch with today was a chatter box. She never stopped talking. I zoned out for half an hour and I don't think I even missed anything, not did anyone notice I did, including me.
Dinner at a member's house Sunday:
No comments:
Post a Comment