This was a crazy week! It started with a family of 4 that got baptized last week. We worked really hard and were able to see the fruits of our labor as the week came to a close. We had a lot of miracles happen too along the way. One example of a milagro Elder Pardo and I saw was one night when we were looking to visit some converts. To do so, we needed an accompaniment, but we had called everyone we could think of and had had no luck. We were walking by a park and Elder Pardo said, "Hmm, I think that there's a member that lives around here somewhere. Maybe he can accompany us. Right as he said that, his wife walked past and said, "Hey Elders, my husband has the week off of work. You should take him out to visit some people with you guys." That was a pretty convenient miracle. It's funny how the Lord blessed us with something as simple as finding someone to go with us. We were also able to take our convert Renzo to the temple with us before he left to go back to Huancayo for the summer, so that was good for everyone. Last night, Elder Pardo and I decided to contact with the red Santa hats. It was something small just to change things up a bit and it worked incredibly well. It gave us a lot more animos (encouragement) to be contacting. I think that it also made us more approachable for the people in the street because we didn't get rejected very much at all. While that helped, I think God did the rest. We had more success than we had had in the whole past 2 weeks combined. We were able to meet a lot of cool people from the which we were able to write down a few numbers and take out a couple of appointments. We even got the number from the waitress at the restaurant we decided to eat at! All in all, it was a solid week. The Christmas spirit is getting strong. I love this time of year to be able to remember the Savior's birth. I know that Christ is my Savior and He loves each and everyone of us and will bless us according to our obedience to the commandments. Take care y'all!
-Elder White
Saturday
I know that my patriarchal blessing is revelation give to me straight from Heavenly Father. I treasure it. I firmly believe in those counsels and promises give to me. I know that if I faithfully keep the commandments, then I will receive all the blessings that God has waiting for me. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen. Not too much happened today to be honest. It was a pretty boring p-day. I'm starting to stress about home life a little bit. I don't know what to do about housing at USU. I don't know hardly anyone that's going there, and the few people I do know seem to have all their stuff figured out already. It's starting to look like I might just need to room with some random other people in my same situation. In my online gaming experience, I've learned that teaming up with rando's in generally a bad idea. But on the other hand, Elder Wilcox said that his sister found her 6 best friends doing that. In conclusion??? It'll work itself out I guess. But then I realized: What about transportation? Elder Armstrong and Elder Pardo baptized the Iqueda family (a mom and 3 daughters) tonight, so that was neat.
Sunday
I know that we must do the will of the Lord. I mean, it sounds pretty obvious when you put it like that, but it goes more in depth than just that. It means doing his will first, not ours. There are several examples of this in the scriptures of people saying they want one thing, but then they acknowledge that God's will is above their own: Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego; Jesus with the bitter cup; and a leprous man asking Jesus to heal him. "Señor, si tú quieras, puedas sanarme. (Lord, if you want you can heal me.)" That's a good little verse. Even if we want something good, we've still got to acknowledge that His will comes first because he knows best. Humility. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen. Church was interesting today. There were a lot of people there, so they had to open up the overflow, which has only happened once before, and it was for the primary program. Diego, our 9 year old investigator wasn't able to come because his mom was having this super weird problem where she had a bloody urinary tract. That's a decent excuse I guess. There was this guy named Cristobal that randomly walked into church. No one invited him. He just kinda showed up. He seemed to really like church too. So afterwards we pulled him into a classroom to teach him LO. He was a really cool dude. He likes music and sports and is also 26 and single. That's what I call a power combo. We were at the most spiritual part when a bunch of toddlers burst in, screamed and ran around, then left. Kinda weird, but it didn't chase away the spirit too much. I went to resume teaching when a primary worker burst in and said we had to leave because it was primary time for the other ward. So I said, "Can we have 30 more seconds to end this lesson real quick?" As she left, she counted "30, 29, 28..." Less than a minute later the bishopric came barging in. Then less than a minute later the same lady did it again and tried to burn us saying that junior primary was the most important thing in the church (only 5 kids). Never mind the fact that the room next to us was empty. But by that point Cristobal didn't accept baptism. We both felt that he was going to accept it if that hadn't of happened. Oh well. He still seems open to that though. Later, I taught Elder Pardo what it meant to TP someone and the first thing he said was, "We should TP that primary lady's house." That was funny.
Monday
I know that forgiveness is a celestial commandment. God gave us the miracle of the atonement so that we can repent of our sins. And when we repent, He forgives us of our trespass and remembers it no more. Sometimes in life, people commit wrongs against us and it hurts us. But we must forgive them, especially if they try to do their best to follow the repentance process. If they've repented and received forgiveness from God, who are you to hold a grudge? Is your judgement more righteous than His? We've been commanded to forgive all men, despite whether they seek forgiveness or not. I know that if we can do so, we will find more peace and happiness in our own lives. The spirit of contention is of the Devil, and grudges are a form of contention. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen. Yesterday we went to eat lunch with la familia Belaunde. Let's just ssay that he has a lot of spiritual knowledge. I never thought I'd run into anyone here who knows what the Apocrypha is down here in IPeru. How in the world that lead him into talking to us about how Jesus greeted people with kisses, I'm not sure. We had our office meeting this morning. I brought up how the budget is doing a lot better. Everyone clapped and I felt good. Then President added, "That's great, but now we need to make sure that we actualy use it all so that we don't get our budget reduced for the next year. I need you to make me a report to show how much money we need to spend to end the year on budget." That's a pretty hefty task, but I took it to heart. Stay tuned until tomorrow to catch all the details of the spreadsheet to end all spreadsheets. Tonight we went to a NDH (FHE) hosted by the bishop. They invited William and Rosa who're some old investigators recently dropped by Elder Pardo and Elder Armstrong. It's kind of a complicated situation. They're both basically members, just not baptized. They are in their late 60s and living together. Basically 25+ years ago, William cheated on Rosa, and she refuses to get married for that reason, even though he really wants to get baptized. But church has changed them little by little. Bishop gave a great lesson on forgiveness. We were walking out and William called out to us, "Hermanos! Para el 11 Enero. (Brothers! For the 11th of January." He set his own baptismal date! Milagro! I guess they'll be sleeping in different beds now. William also has cancer and is probably going to die soon.
Tuesday
I know that trials are necessary part of life. I read through Helaman chapter 12 the other day and for me that made it super clear as to why God has to humble us. Basically what happens is that when we're having it good in life (which is always a direct blessing from God), we tend to forget about him and are super prideful. God gives us challenges in order so that we can learn to turn unto Him and let him be our strength so that we can have a better relationship with Him. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen. We had cansejo this morning; nothing new there. So let me tell ya about this super dope spread sheet that I made to tract the budget. Basically I have it so that every time we spend money all I have to do is type it in on one page. Then that expenditure is automatically added into the account and sub account that it belongs too, which subtracts from the budget. Then it automatically finds the percent of the budget spent in that account/sub account. Basically it shows everything you'd ever need to know about the budget. The coolest part is that at the top of the page, I got it to show live percentage of what percent of the year has passed by. It's accurate down to the second. That took a lot of headache to figure out all of those equations but it was totally worth it. We're ending this year on budget. I'm pretty proud. Tonight, Elder Pardo and I were out contacting and began to look for an accompaniment for our cita with la familia Iqueda (Sonia, Chazel, Hade and Kiara, who were baptized Saturday). We tried everyone we could think of and found no one. Then Elder Pardo was like, "I think a member lives on this street. Maybe he can come with us." Right them his wife passed by and said, "Hey Elders, my husband's free all week. You should take him to citas with you." That was a very random, but convenient, miracle that we were thankful to see. Shout out to the man upstairs for that one. Our cita with la familia Iqueda went well. From there we went to the church for our correlation meeting. We starting planning our skits for the ward's Christmas party.
Wednesday
RIP Elder White's hair gel. Sometime in and around August 1, 2018-December 6, 2019. You served me well Suave. You done good. Now I'm stuck using this low quality super oily Peruvian hair gel. Anyways, I know that Jesus Christ is the Son of the living God. I know that He is my Savior and Redeemer. I love Him and I know that He loves me too. I know that He gave His life to take away my sins. I know that when I exercise faith in Him, I will see miracles in my own life. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen. This morning Elder Wilcox and I went to the temple with Renzo.
He's going back to Huancayo until March, so it was basically an effort to get him a solid spiritual experience so that he doesn't got inactive. Renzo really enjoyed being able to go there with us, and we enjoyed it too. Ya know, I think that all of this weight lifting is finally starting to work; while I was out contacting today, there were like 3 or 4 girls at different points in the night that stopped to talk to me only because they wanted to flirt. Gosh darnit, if ya want to flirt with me, then we'll talk about Jesus and nothing else. We went to go visit William tonight. Rosa was there too. Elder Pardo forgot to warn me that they talk a lot. Long story short, they talked a lot. William is super pretty solid for the 11th of January for his baptism, but Rosa still isn't quite as down yet. Long story short, she thinks that she's perfect and doesn't need to be baptized. I would've dropped that 2 Nephi 31 doctrine on her, but she never stopped talking. Besides, Elder Pardo came in with the hammer and started roasting her "bautizo (christening)", saying she needs a real "bautismo (baptism)". That man held nothing back hehe. Well, Carmen finally moved back here today; we saw her at the chapel doing her zumba class or whatever it is. It's good to see them back together again. Tonight Elder Pardo and I wanted to scare the assistants. So we hid in their tiny closet for 20 minutes and almost died from heat stroke. We stealthily snuck up on them while they were planning. We were going to jump out and scare them, but we were having trouble counting to 3 to coordinate and Elder Pardo starting laughing. Why???
Thursday
I know that Jesus will return to Earth someday. I just finished reading the book of Revelations today and understood almost nothing, but I did catch a few things, like about the second coming. I'm personally very excited for it. I find it to be a topic of great interest. I know that His coming will be great and marvelous. The righteous need not fear. I know that as time gets closer to the second coming of Christ, the World will become more and more perilous. But if we build our house on the rock of Christ, we will not fall. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen. President did a lot of interviews in the office today. He had a minute at one point so I showed him the budget. We met with Elder Pardo and made a big list of all the stuff that we need to buy to end the year on point. Two days ago, I was out making a contact on a Flora Tristan when Elder Pardo started saying, "Bishop! Elder White, it's the bishop." I was kinda confused, so I hurried and finished the contact and turned around to find the bishop pushing his car (bad alternator) across the street. So we ran over and helped him push it back to his house. That was a cool bit of service that we got to do for him. I don't believe it was a coincidence that we happened to be on that street when that happened. There's a self-sufficiency training tomorrow so we had to go buy food for it. There's an entire isle of paneton! (Peruvian fruitcake)
If you were to tell a gringo Walmart had a fruitcake isle, he'd call you crazy.
Friday
I know that the priesthood is a sacred gift given to worthy and righteous members of the church. With it, we have the same power as God to bless His children here upon the Earth. I know that we can heal the sick, comfort the comfortless, and guide the lost. One of the best examples I have of priesthood blessings for the sick is Mario. He was super sick, but then we taught him the Word of Wisdom and gave him a blessing and he healed immediately. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen. By the way, Mario is a spiritual power house. He reads the scriptures an hour a day and is even on chapter 7 of the Saints. We visited him in the clinic last night (he had the flu). There was another self-sufficiency training this morning that Elder Pardo and I had to set up. After setting it up, we left to go straight to Gumarra. We were going to meet up with the stake president from Las Flores so that he could show us a good store that he knew about to mass produce shirts for the mission, but we got there 30 minutes early and he was an hour late. And he showed us a store we already knew about. We were there at the tienda (store) for like an hour and a half. Being there so long really wiped me out. Since that's a sketchier part of town, you kinda have to walk like a thug/tough guy. It because you are one, but because that's what makes people respect you and not rob you. There were a few payments the area called me about that I need to fix because they weren't done right. After 17 months, the zipper on my book broke. Sad stuff. We wore Christmas hats out proselyting today. Ya know, just to mix things up a bit. I'd say that it gave us a lot more motivation to work. I don't know if the hats had anything to do with it, but we saw a lot of miracles tonight. We took down a lot of good numbers and took out a cita or two as well. I think the hats made us a lot more approachable too. God is good. Tonight Elder Pardo and I went to go eat at Subs where we ordered Schawarma. It's basically a chicken soft taco. Good stuff. The waitress was cool. She might come to church on Sunday.
Christmas photo with the Amato kids. The tall guy with curly hair is actually Giovanna's boyfriend hehe.
Elder White standing next to the average height Peruvians (line added to show the height difference).
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