Last week ended pretty well. We had two of our investigators,
Marleni and Ciara, get baptized. It was a really nice service and the
spirit was strong there. Marleni was super excited and was texting us
all day before and even showed up half an hour earlier
than what time we told her to get there. This week was super busy for
us, but it was also lleno de milagros and now we have a ton of potential
investigators in Covima. One of the miracles we were able to see this
week was from a dude named Mario. For his entire
life, 65 years, he had been unbelieving in God. He's had a difficult
life as of late. He's a native of Peru, but then 30 years ago moved to
the states and it was there that he made his family. Things were going
well and then 3 years ago, his mom got sick.
He came back to visit her, but then she unexpectedly died. He then got
an infection of some sort and has to have treatment, and he also never
felt the urgency to file for US citizenship. So for those 2 reasons, he
hasn't been able to return to be with his
family. He was stuck here in a country that he wasn't accustomed to and
went a year and a half without a job. Then recently a month ago he
miraculously got a job working in accounting at the Universitario soccer
club. He also found an incredibly merciful landlord
that has let him rent a room for about three months for the equivalent
of about a half months rent. Due to these miracles and the incredibly
difficult times before, he's started to believe in a God. Then one night
he said he was aimlessly wandering the streets
when out of nowhere we gave him a contact card. He kinda took it and
kept walking, but then saw the steps of how to say a prayer. So he
prayed and he felt good, so he gave us a call and that's how we wound up
in his house with him. After 65 years of unbelief,
he's ready to accept Christ as his Savior and is willing to do what it
takes to come unto him. It was a really powerful lesson and he was
crying for most of it. I know that as we trust in God's grace to help
us, we will improve through his atonement. I know
that if we can be like Mario and recognize the Lord's hand in our
lives, then we too will find lasting happiness like him. I know that God
is good. He loves us and hears and answers our prayers! Take care!
-Elder White
Saturday
I know that going to church is a critical part of our Sunday. We go there not only to take the sacrament, but also to be spiritually nourished, to learn and to establish/fortify friendships so that we may help one another. You know, the church is perfect. The members are human and will, for that reason, still be imperfect, though we strive for it. But when looking at the structure, organization, and programs of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, it's perfect. I know that this is truly is God's church and that He is the one running it. The Heavens aren't closed. He continues to guide us with divine revelation. I testify in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen. This morning we went to go play soccer against La Molina. We won by a good amount. It was fun. From there, we went to the office for our P-day. We played 2 good games of Risk today. I went 1-1. For lunch we decided to go and get all you can eat sushi at Roll Star. Super good stuff. Tonight we had the baptismal services of Marleni and Ciara. Marleni was super excited. She texted me throughout the day and was there 1/2 hour early, which was kinda unfortunate because we started 1 1/2 hours late. Ya know, Peru. Hermana Lester (she found Marleni) and Elder Tenney were both there. Gustavo performed the service. The spirit was really strong and I really liked it. They did too.
Sunday
I know that we are to endure to the end if we want to receive all of God's blessings for ourselves; to faithfully live the gospel and keep our covenants to the end. It sounds simple in theory, but here's the catch: crap happens. Everyone that will live upon the Earth will have trials. Life here wasn't meant to be easy. If it wasn't like that, then it'd be arguably impossible to learn and to progress, which would frustrate the plan of God. I know that despite how hard the times may be, Jesus is right there with us the entire time bearing us up. We just need to press forward and know that he is there. Just follow the gospel. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen. So yesterday when we went to Roll Star, the other Elders told me that we'd had our server before and that he didn't like us, so that it'd be good to leave a tip. I never really got a good look at our waiter though, which was a problem because he had the same hat as and similar features as his friend. When it was time to go, one of them was smiling by our table waiting to clean up. My thought process was, "I don't remember. I don't think it's this guy because he's smiling too much for someone that doesn't like us." So I went and gave the tip to the other dude (since he seemed more of the grumpy type) and thanked him for his service. He looked very surprised. As told by the other Elders, when I walked away, our real waiter looked super surprised with a hint of being offended. The guy I tipped went over to him, shrugged while smiling, and gave his friend a pat on the back. We had to hurry and get another tip ready. He seemed mad when I gave it to him. They all thought it was super funny. When I went to pay the taxi later, Elder Pardo said, "Wait." "Why?" "You've gotta wait until the next taxi comes and then pay him." Oh gosh. Well today we got Ciara and Marleni both confirmed as members of the church. And Renzo came by himself too. So that was all pretty cool beans. We had some good fried chicken for lunch. Weekly planning went well enough. Then we contacted. Bishop taught me how to do this thing called sacar un conejo (take out a rabbit). Basically you just massage their hair and then pull on it in a special way and it'll make a pupping noise like when you crack your knuckles. I did it to Huakim, his 9 year old son, and the pop was super loud. He said, "Asu! Un conejaso! (It's a bunny!)" That was funny. Today was judgement day. Elder Wilcox just left (11:10 PM) to go pick up missionaries from the Provo MTC from the airport. There's never been guys from Provo here before.
Monday
I listened to a talk from Elder Bednar. I think it was called "In the Strength of the Lord" or something like that from BYU speeches. It was talking a lot about how we can use the atonement to strengthen and enable ourselves, not only using it exclusively for repentance. Christ suffered for all of our pains too, so we can find strength and comfort in him. One of the major points in his discourse was that we, like the prophets in the Book of Mormon, should pray in faith for the power we require to change our circumstances instead of asking the Lord to change our circumstances for us, because that's how grace truly works. We do our best and then the Lord will do the rest. That could mean that he takes over, or that he gives us the help needed to finish the task required of us. I know that as we look to the Lord in faith in every thought of every task, he will give us the things we need. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen. This is the 3rd week in a row that the chiropractor hasn't come. I'm kinda mad about that, especially since missionaries come from far areas on their P-day to do it. This morning we did the first part of the first day training for the new missionaries. They didn't eat very much of all the food that we bought for them. We had our weekly office meeting via Skype with President Amato. The main thing I did today was start the process to reimburse caja chica (the box of money). It was kinda stressful because I started the day with more than 2500 PEN, but then some expensive stuff like a guarantee and 13 emergency bills happened, and all of the sudden we had less than 700 soles left, which is pretty low. It's kind of a lengthy process to do all the paperwork for it. After a long day's work, I finally got to the point where I just need to submit it to a dozen people for verification. I found myself reading the red book and checking past secretaries' work the whole time because I was kinda lost. They're putting Hermanas in Ñaña, so the zone leaders had to look for a new room. They were right about to move in when I called the owner and wound up having to throw off the deal because he wanted double the guarantee as normal, which is totally unnecessary unless he was planning on stealing it. So that stinks for Ñaña. I took 3 of the new missionaries with me proselyting tonight. Nice guys.
Tuesday
I know that this is the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I know that Russell M Nelson is a prophet called of God and that Jesus Christ leads the church. Recently I've looked a lot into the Restoration of of the church. I had know that Joseph Smith was a prophet and restored God's church, that's never been too much of a doubt for me before. But what I wasn't sure about was the transition between Joseph's martyrdom and Brigham Young becoming the next prophet of God. There were a decent amount of small groups that split off from the church at that same time like the RLDS, Rigdonites, etc. So I made it a matter of study and prayer. Now I can say, based off of conceptual knowledge and spiritual witness, that this is the true and living church of Jesus Christ with his proper priesthood authority. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen. Today was a crazy day. A lot of the morning was us doing a bunch of stuff for the 2nd part of the 1st day training. It's funny; this group is like 9/13 gringos, which is the most we've seen in a long time. After that, Elder Wilcox and I ran to the area office to drop something off for someone, and it turned into us having to do things with an extra half dozen people.
Wednesday
I know that there is peace in the atonement of Christ. He loves us so much. God wants more than anything for us to do our best to obey the commandments to be able to return to him some day. He wants this so bad that He sent his only-begotten son, Jesus Christ, to suffer for our sins in order to make that possible. This makes the atonement the greatest act of love in the entire universe. For that reason, the heavens rejoice every time the atonement is applied. There is 0% guilt/shame/embarrassment involved. As we apply the atonement, I know that we will feel ourselves change and become more Christ-like: we'll find true happiness. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen. So apparently crap is going down in Chile right now. Long story short, their government was super socialist for a bit and made studying at college basically free. Now they're gradually making it more capitalist again in the way that it's not free anymore. Then last week they raised train passage the equivalent of less that a sol city wide in Santiago (there's still student discount though). The students started protesting super violently. We're talking destroying trains, burning 3/4 of the stations, and in the first weekend there were 56 police officers injured. But now it's progressed to straight up terrorism. They're burning schools, ransacking cars/stores, and yesterday they burned down a huge super famous hotel. I don't know why anyone would ever do that. They burned the school of Elder Pardo's brother, so now he has no where to study. Sad situation. This morning Elder Wilcox and I went to a lesson with Renzo. We spent almost the entire lesson talking exclusively about the Word of Wisdom. That might be a struggle for him, but I know that he can do it. We went to do a district counsel after that. Nothing too exciting happened there. I spent my night with Elder Peterson tonight. It was his last night working as a missionary; he's got a flight at 6:00 AM tomorrow morning, so he's gonna have to leave here at 3:00 AM. We had a nice talk. We've spent a lot of time together, so it was hard seeing him go. I had fun sacaring conejos (taking out rabbits) from all the office Elders tonight.
Thursday
I know that Russell M Nelson is a prophet called of God. I know that he is the only man on Earth that has the authority to guide the church. I know that he and the other members of the 1st presidency and quorum of the 12 are all prophets, seers and revelators and are here to help us and guide us so that we may return to live with God some day. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen. I had to spend my first half of the day with Elder Pardo at the new leaders training. I gotta say, hanging out in other people's meetings all day without doing anything is probably one of my least favorite parts of the job. It's right up there with being audited (RIP Elder White 30-October-2019) and talking to angry dueños (landlords). After getting back, I was a busy bee hehe. It's my favorite time of the month: first week of transfers, caja chica (money box) stuff, and starting to file the end of month expense report. You know what they say: turn up your hymns a little louder than nornal so that they can't hear you snoring/dry heaving/cursing in the background. Haha, just kidding. I haven't done any of that, yet. So I did some research on this bump that's on my wrist. It's not harmful at all, but easy to remove. After a bit of reading, I found that there's 2 ways to get rid of it--an expensive operation, or hitting it really hard with a big book (nicknamed bible smash). Some of the websites were like, "My doctor literally told me to do that and it worked great." So Elder Wilcox was there in a baptismal interview and I was thinking, "Well, I don't have a bible right now, but his Nokia should do the trick." So I took it out and "Whoop!" I missed. But the 2nd time I got it. Instant results: it is now a third the size it was before. Cool beans. Tonight we went to visit a 65 year old named Mario. he's been really humbled recently. He's lived in the states for 30 years, but 3 years ago, came back because his mom was sick. Then she unexpectedly died. Then he got an infection and had to get treatment, which prevented him from returning to be with his wife and daughters in the states. He didn't have a job for a year and 1/2, but just recently got one working at el estadio de la U. And the dueña of the room where he lives has been letting him live there free. He was depressed in the street one night and someone out of nowhere handed him a card with Jesus on it. He followed the steps to pray, felt good, then called us. It was a powerful lesson. After a lifetime of unbelief he's ready to accept Christ as his Savior.
Friday
I know that the Lord's grace is sufficient. Through his atonement we can overcome any difficulty that life may throw at us. I know that He is there watching over us. All we need to do is surrender ourselves entirely to him and do whatever it is that he may ask of us. I know that as we do this and follow His gospel, we will truly see him come into our lives and work miracles. I love how spiritually nourished I feel. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen. Yesterday, Elder Pardo said to me, "Ya know, people really do mature a lot here in the mission. But at the same time we kinda get more crazy as time goes on." It's true. Later that night, he, Elder Armstrong and Elder Wilcox all got into an extreme game of monkey in the middle with Elder Pardo's stuffed Elmo toy. That's the mission for ya I guess. I listened to a super cool talk that had a lot to do with the restoration. It was called "Missionary Experiences" by LeGrand Richards. I've never heard the restoration taught so well out of the Bible before. It was a very entertaining talk. Elder Wilcox told me a cool story tonight. He said that Elder Carrasco once told him of how his dad served in Paraguay. He said that he once was assigned to this jungle area. He was out there once cutting his path with a machete in the jungle and ran into some natives. They took them captive and took them to their tribal chief. They had a translator member of the tribe there. The chief commanded them to state their purpose, so they started preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. They had obviously never heard of Jesus before, so they started preaching about the Book of Mormon. The chief was moved to tears and commanded everyone in the tribe to listen to the missionaries. They all did and all got very emotional as well. Then the translator explained how they had a legend of a white God. Then they all sang a traditional song, which the translator said coincided perfectly with the events they had explained from the Book of Mormon. In the end, the entire tribe got baptized. I thought that it was a pretty cool story. Isn't it a coincidence how literally every Native American culture has a white God in it? I mean, if only we had a book or something that would explain this to us. And wouldn't it be cool if the natives wrote the book too? Hahaha
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