Aug 31, 2015

This week I had changes

I hope you are doing well. This week I had changes. I went from an area that is really hot that rains a lot but is beautiful to an area that is of in the dirt again. My area is in the zone Pomalca it is called La Cria because the people raise so many animals here. The area is the smallest of tied for the smallest area in the mission. This will be challenge , there are no names for the streets so directions are lijke this 3 houses down to the left of Paul something like this. I was made senior companion and I am training a missionary named elder Torrez. I am finishing his training because his companion Elder Anderson had transfers. Elder Anderson is the boyfriend of Whitney Bitner dad´s cousin. The thing that is interesting is my companion came to the mission with knowing only a little spanish, he is from Cochabomba bolivia. He grew up in a city where they only spoke quechaua. 

Oh ya we had a baptism- Jorge Torres

 The area, I am getting to know the cria little by little.  One thing that shocked me was that there are not streets or numbers, so learning and putting directions down will be a whole new experience. This ward is the first ward I have been in where the ward counsel has a every organization present and the counselors too.  It is a loving ward.  The next goal we have is to establish more of a friendship and a schedule so that the members can leave with us. There are some members that will leave with us like the ward mission leader and a guy named Guillemermo but besides them there is a lack of support in this aspect.  The thing I love though is the first day here the ward mission leader handed us a stack of references both investigators and less actives.   It is amazing how a ward with a small boundary can have so many less actives.  This week my companion had the pleasure of baptizing hno. Jorge Torres.  Elder Torrez baptized hermano Torres it just seemed sight.  It was my first baptism as a senior companion and I made the mistake of not telling Jorge Torrs to bring a towel and a change of underwear.  Well its is a learning process.

My old campanion (Elder Flores) and I at the meeting with President Bednar

Saying goodbye hermana or Sister Deydi, my old penscionista.  I am leaving Jaen.  I was in tears when I left and so was she. She really has a sincere love for the missionaries

Elder Bednar

IT was amazing to have the opportunity to have elder Bednar come and speak to the mission. He came with his wife. the presiding bishop with his wife, an area president and his wife, and the 1st counselor of the north east south america area and his wife came. Elder Bednar promised us that we never have a opportunity to have basically a general conference like this again.

I learned so much and wow the spirit in the room was so strong. 

The most important things that I learned

1.   I have been taking notes wrong my whole life. Elder Bednar stood up an said this. People in the church have a horrible tradition of writing down everything the speaker says... He told us that we would probably never use or look at the notes we take again. He also said that it cuts us off from hearing the things which are not spoken which are the things that of most value. He encouraged us the listen carefully to the things that the speaker did not say, the holy ghost, and write on small plates. Like in the Book of Mormon is divided in to the large set of plates and the small set which has all the things that pertain to spiritually important aspects. It was a more spiritually fulfilling experience when I focused on my impression. It is hard but the things that did come really were of great value. It will take a lot of work to develop the gift of always having and ear for the things that are not said. It is a gift that is only given from god. The important part from this Is l need to learn how to teach the people I am teaching to listen to the things I don´t say. This means as missionaries teaching in a way where we are only the connection for the true teacher to teach. Sometimes this would be talking less and allowing pauses to let the spirit take his role in the teaching. The is a power in pauses and silence that i am learning. I am also learned that we have no reason to fear that we have all the answers when the third member of the companion ship is present.

2.  We talked a lot about learning in faith like the Savior. Faith is not a muscle that we can wor kand gain more but doing certain numbers of things or reading for a certain amount of time but a god given characteristic that comes only to us in gods time when he has trust with us to bless another one of his children. God will not just bless us with spiritual gifts especially if we wont them he will bless according to his will and after are trial of faith. The thing is a trial of faith is not a giant trial like contracting a terrible disease or a death it a just seeing if we are willing to put off are desires that natural man and obey and work and do the thing s that we know we should. It is also being diligent. This gifts all come through the atonement.

3.  Our prayers start when we stay amen. Going along with faith as a principle of power and of action. The whole process begins with our agency or the opportunity to act and not be acted upon. Ya There is a need to learn the language, or there aren't investigators, what are you going to do about it. God will work though us and bless us as we work. It is the whole 17 But it came to pass that I prayed unto the Lord, saying: O Lord, according to my faith which is in thee, wilt thou deliver me from the hands of my brethren; yea, even give me strength that I may burst these bands with which I am bound.

i LEARNED SO MUCH i PUT MORE IN MY NEXT LETTER

 

 

 

Aug 24, 2015

Well the biggest news of this week is that I have changes. I am really sad to leave this area. I have made a lot of new friends. I people I will miss the most are my companion elder flores, my penscionista hna. Deydi and Hno antonio and their family. They have been a family away from home. I have had two changes here which is actually a pretty short period of time. Elder Flores and I did not think that either of us were going to have changes so will just continued on working hard. Then saturday we were in a lesson teaching the family Arnao Aguilar about the book of mormon and we were watching the video the testaments when we got the call to know the changes of our district. Elder flores took the phone call in the hallway outside of the apartment of the family. I heard him say things like no your joking, no really, then he came in and told me that I had changes too. We then called hna deydi and hno antonio to tell them the sad news. They did not believe us either. To clarify the truth they then called the zone leaders.

It is really hard to leave the beautiful zone of Jaen Peru.

But most this family. I will miss them so much. I want to return and see them some day.

They tradition of this family when one of the missionaries has changes or is going to end their mission is to throw a lot of eggs on the heads of the missionaries. This Sunday it was my turn to go through this tradition. I sat there helplessly as the smashed 8 eggs on my head. The worst part is some of the eggs ran in to my mouth. That is a horrible taste. We had a little part and drank the tradition Inka cola. 

Besides this Joel is progressing really well. He attended church for his third time. I will not have tthe chance to see his baptism in september but I am more then content with the work I have done in Jaen in the ward of Morro Solar.

Oh yah I gave my second talk in spanish. My companion told me that it was really good and he learned a lot from it. 

I leave today at 1 pm Peru time to take a 6 to 7 hour bus ride to Chiclayo. Then tomorrow I will find out my new area and companion.

WOw... 

Another great work week down and almost another change gone from the mission. 

The multizone was very enjoyable. It was nice to come to Chiclayo again and see everyone and participate as a real multizone with more than 1 zone. I really enjoyed the lesson Hna Williams gave a pride. That talk is amazing and can be applied in any teaching situation. It is very clear that pride is one of the biggest sins we have as human beings. The thing is most people do not recognize that there is pride in there life because they define the word according to the worldly definition. Never would I have thought of the definition of enmity. Basically it is the opposition of the will of god in favor with the will of oneself or of man. Basically pride is the essense of the natural man, the trust in the arm of flesh. We have taught many investigators about pride this past 2 weeks. I really enjoy teaching about pride when we introduce the book of mormon because it is one of the underlying themes of the book of mormon.

My companion: He is constantly reminding me how many days he has left. It is kind of funny. The thing is that I admire about him is despite only having one more change in the mission he is working as hard as he can. He motivates the district to always improve and with him we are setting the example for the district of a great area. He always has a great work attitude to complete and pass the goals. The other thing amazing about him is his knowledge of the scripures. I want to become like a missionary like him. A strong leader, hard worker, who knows how to enjoy the mission while having success at the same time.

IT was sad to see him fall sick this week. He was not able to leave and preach. SO we did splits so I could continue working while he rested. The thing that was very honorable about him was that he told to work hard so that we could acheive our goals. I will be glad to have another change with him here in Jaen.

The area; Joel is doing great. He received the first lesson well and we even put a baptismal date on him for the 12 of september. It is a date of faith but I feel he will be able to complete it. He has his cousin in the ward who is helping him out a lot. We finished lesson one and before we taught the restoration, he already knew about Jose Smith because his cousin showed him the restoration video. He came to church again for the second time in a row. We are trying hard to complete the goal of having investigators with dates assisting. We visited Charles and Mari again. We are focusing on the book of mormon and the importance of reading and gaining a testimony. We read about Nephi in chapter 3, and the other time we read 3 nephi 11. The worked a lot of things out between the two but there is still a way to go. Hna paty finally returned. Sadly though she did not make it to church. We are going to visit her tomorrow!!

Aug 10

Another week has flown by in the mission, I cannot believe sometimes how fast the mission goes. My companion and I are doing well. One thing I still do not understand is why Peruvians think drinking cold drinks and water with ice makes you sick, It just does not have any logic.

This week Elder Flores told me that now that I have 9 monthes I need to be putting in more effort in contacting and improving my lessons. Since that day I have been doing to majority of the contacting and invitations to baptism. I am glad he was frank with me because it is helping me improve a lot. I have set goals to have more personal iniative so that I willl improve as a missionary and with my spanish. I am glad he is my companion. He has so much energy and drive to fulfill the work and accomplish high goals. He really is very inspiring. One question he had and I too was why he never had the opportunity to be zone leader. He would have had the best zone in the mission. But I can see that he does really well to strengthen and improve the district with his lessons and his personality.

This week our investigators Charles and Mari are not doing very well. After we visited hna mari with you we returned and talked about the gospel and repentace with Charles. Sadly they ended up fighting during the lesson. Elder Flores tried to have a Companionship inventory with them, like he had each of them say strengths about the other. Hno Charles could come up with strengths for mari, but Mari said that there are zero things she likes about Charles. They are really struggling with their relationship. Then we decided to have a family home evening with them to help them out. It started off nice and neat, but after the lesson the two had a huge fight. We were with members who tried to help them and calm them down but the two just kept insulting eachother. There is a lot of pride between the two of them. The fight was very ugly and very sad. We are going to leave them for awhile so that they can resolve some of their problems. We will be praying for them. What else can we do for them? Paty still is away for work so we visited Jose. We shared about the book of mormon and the importance to prayer and read. We are trying to do are best to share the WHY of all the lessons with him, so that he will see the importance of our lessons. We found a new investigator named Joel this week. He was a reference from the Hnas. He is divorced and living single, so we will not have to worry about getting him married. He is the cousion of one of the members in the ward, so this should really help with having a friend in the ward. We shared about prophets and then invited him to church. The next day he came to church with us the whole 3 hours. I am excited to start teaching him. He seems like the chosen investigator we have been searching for. This next week we will use the ward directory to find less actives that can progress. During the process we are going to search for pfs and new people to teach.

The area is improving with the help of the members. Yet we still lack a lot of investigators. 

August 3

This was another great work week. Elder Flores and I are trying to change the low numbers of the zone with lessons with members. For this reason we are working hard to leave with members and find more people to teach. 

This week I did I work visit with the zone leaders. It was nice to get to know the other zone leader named elder Otivo. He will end his mission in 2 weeks and he is excited to start life again. He is very wise though when it came to the scriptures. The thing I liked about the visit with him is we talked about the importance of teaching well and teaching to have conversos and not less actives. The cool thing is he could take any scripture from the book of mormon and apply it in a profound way in any lesson. He is a really great example of a great leader and an obedient missionary. The next week we will do any work visit with the elders of miraflores.

Also Elder Bednar is going to come and visit the mission. Now we have 3 talks that we need to study in depth before he comes. They all are about faith and conversion. Some of them are really cool. The cool part is we will get to travel to Chiclayo to see him. Also for the next multi zone next week we will also get to come down from Jaen to Chiclayo. It is a 6 hour and half drive but is really enjoyable to travel. Plus, usually the zone Jaen does not get to come down, but this time we get to see all the other zones and our friends.

President Williams and Hna Williams came and visited and interviewed all the missionaries. It was nice to talk with presidente again, and the best part is his wife always gives us cookies. The best part of his visit is that he came out with us on one of our appointments. The funny part is we had planned a certain lesson, but presidente likes to told so he changed the whole thing. Basically it was 40 mins of presidente and 2 minutes my companion 2 minutes me, but it was a really cool lesson. As almost every couple here in peru is not married, presidente talked about the importance of marriage, repentence, and forgiveness. He burned them harshly but in a lovingly way. It was really amazing.

This p day we saw a museum. Ate at a restaurant and chilled. It is sad there are so many cool nature places to visit, but we cannot because some other missionaries before did stupid things.... Well it is still nice to just relax though.

HOpe all is well at home

 

 Also this is what president wrote me after the lesson apart from his regular letters:

Just a quick note.. It was great to have an interview with you today. You are doing great and I appreciate your sincere work ethic and steadiness! I know I talked a lot in the discussion on Saturday.. but what you said was great and powerful and connected everything I was trying to say. thank you for your testimony and courage to bear witness of true principles... You are a great missionary. Thank you.