October 19, 2015

What a Crazy week

WOw,,,, all I can say a lot has happened this last week.

So first to start off the Peru, Chiclayo mission has a saying or slogan that goes Estudiamos por las mañanas, trabajamos por las tardes, y vemos Milagros por la Noche. 

Or if I can get it right. We study in the morning, we work in the afternon, and then we see miracles in the night.

I can really say that this is true. Right now I am doing my hardest to be the most obedient that I can. I have always been trying, I am just putting a stronger emphasis now... Especially since I am training again.

The first miracle I saw.....

Well, right before the change, two weeks ago, we had the pleasing surprise of the landlord telling us that we needed to move. Not, because we were dumb and broke anything, never would missionaries do things like that, but because the landlord s son was coming back from Lima. The land lord was sad to have us move because, one he is a member, and two he developed a great relationship. Anyway, that stressed me out a lot... Then I had the pleasure to train Elder Darrington... I say pleasure because really he is the only thing that is keeping me sane. The guy is chill. The funny thing is he went to my rival High School Lone Peak. Really to me, that does not matter at all. We have worked super hard together. I have learned a little more how to manage my stress in some unpleasant situations. Well now on to the point, our ward mission leader found us a house that was really nice. We went and saw it and they wanted to charge 400 soles for the month. That is a lot for here... haha... I do not think is dollars anymore it is quite sad. We sent the pictures to president Williams, and he called and told us to negociate with the guy... He said to get the guy to at least 300 soles a month. This is not an easy task... Especically since my companion is recently learning spanish,,, so we tried our best... then we got back up... Hno Guillermo Mejia really helped us out a lot. All in all we got them down to 250 soles a month rent then 20 soles for light and water. and then 3 soles for the trash guys to come. I felt accomplished and protected. The lord prepared a house for us. This guy told us after the he used to rent this house to his brother, but his brother was basically a bum and trashed the house. Afterwards, he swore that he would never rent the house out again... Well the Lord had other plans... I know he is protecting us... 

Second Miracle....

This sunday we went to church like normal... haha... And after the meeting Guillermo present us to a family of members from a city called Chongoyape. The thing about Chongoyape is that there used to be a branch there but it got closed down because it just did not work out. Chongoyape is 30 minutes from where we are which would be for the less 2 hours from Chiclayo. The thing is the family was of faithful members a mom, and 2 of her kids. One of her sons were not members yet. His name is Joel Guillermo Huaman.. Pray for him.. And the family Huaman... They will be our next baptisms.. I have faith that they will.

Well besides that we are doing fine... WOrking like crazy... I soo Tired..

Elder Joshua Leo Mecham,

Love you all.... See you all in about a year

Oct 12, 2015

This week is was a new experience and a lot of hard work. Elder Darrington is really willing to work so that is an amazing thing. Every since he came it is like my spanish just clicked in. I mean ya I still have to study my brain out, but It is good to see the progress. So far it has been me sharing most of the lesson and elder darrington testifying, but it has been an amazing combination. I have had scriptures just come to mind and questions too. I taught Elder Darrington to ask for references so that every person we speak with we can ask. Let´s just say references are more efficient than contacting. We were finding people like crazy. Thanks to the help of the members and the willingness to give us people. On the other hand we found a family THAT IS ACTUALLY MARRIED... what a blessing. They are farmers being in the Cria and sadly they do not know how to read. The thing is that they can still pray and attend church. Their names our Pedro pablo and Maria Luisa. Pedro shared a really good story about how god provided cows for him. I then shared malaquias 3. They will be good people. This next week we are going to try and put a baptismal date. They other great thing is this sunday a lady named Angela Marisol just came to church. We had a really good lesson about the word of wisdom in gospel principles, It all ended up with her having a really spiritual experience and wanting us to visit her. The funny thing is that I did not even know she was an investigator until she told us to come visit her.
We are close to have three rescues in the next coming weeks too. We are working hard and I can see the blessings. Now it will be contiuning on.
ohh... The other cool investigator we found this was a couple Named alejandro and elena. they are also married!!! A member gave us the reference and we made sure we visited the couple with the member. The dad is a really great guy that just had a tragic accident where he lost he leg in a car crash. It is really cool how God will put these people in our path.

The most spiritual experience though this week was that we went with a member named Guillermo to visit a list of windows and sick people. We visit a widow that was blind and almost deaf. In the end she asked for a blessing to comfort her. When I started the blessed words just filled my mouth... I could feel how much heavenly father loved this daughter of his. My eyes were not dry at the end of the blessing... I know that God will work through us if we work as hard as we can... That blessing was not my words or any thing of mine. I love this people.

Elder Darrington will do well, it is taking a bit of adjustment to change for clean states to here but he has an amazing attitude and is not afraid. It is a pleasure to work with him.

We are doing well out here, I was so tired this last week, but we worked like crazy. The other fun not really thing that we have to do is move... Lets just say looking for houses in spanish is not as easy as it seems. Bartering is really fun too.

I saw and killed my first scorpion, I guess those are common here... It kinda of scared me.. I was reaching for some of my books and I picked a a book and bam there was a scorpion. I was like oh snap kill it. But i decided to take a picture first. haha

This picture is of me and my step son Elder Torrez and my son Elder Darrington.

October 5, 2015

            11 MONTHS IN THE MISSION!!

This was the last week of this change but it was a week of surprises, adventures,good byes, and conference that was a great conference. As for my area the Cria, it is hard right now to find more families. So now what we are doing is looking like crazy for more opportunities of service. I am looking for the small things like carrying the bags of the cute little old ladys or anything to help out the people. My district leader taught of the preaching and service go hand and hand. Jesus Christ was the perfect example of this. He would be on his way to go help a friend or heal someone and he would stop and heal someone, but at the same time he would teach. He showed  this perfect love for them, and then he inspired his disciples to improve and live the gospel. 

With the current El Niño coming there is a lot of preparation and service to be done to help the people whose houses are not ready for the rain. And there are countless other ways we can help out even if it is really simple. Felix Castillo one of the less actives in the ward is getting closer to being rescued which is being reactivated. We are teaching him all the lessons and he has come to church. He even went to both sessions of Conference on Saturday and on Sunday which is rare for peruvians. It is really funny because many of the members here think that conference is just one session that they just play over and over so that everyone can come and see it at the time most convient.

For conference we were able to go to Chiclayo and I was blessed with the opportunity to see it in English. The funny thing is because my area is so far away there are not combis that come back later in the night, so we went to Chiclayo to the mission office and stayed with the office missionaries and the assistants in there really nice house. The best thing was my companion Elder Flores was ending his mission and he was there because he had to travel from Jaen to end his mission. We had a great time talking, telling stories, and visiting a few places in Chiclayo between the sessions. Elder Flores was in the office before so he knew the area of Chiclayo like the back of his hand. We went and saw some cool things like the picture of this scary loooking statue. It was so cool there was just a park where artists made sculptures about the history and folklore of peru. It was huge. We only had 20 minutes but it was so worth it.

Conference was great... What was cool is they called elder Stevenson, he gave us a visit with elder benson. The best thing was the spirit that was present. I cannot believe how fast it went by. Like I  said before it is like Christmas for missionaries. I felt that these 3 men were called by God. Now it is time to put all the we heard and felt into action.

The cool thing is my old pensionista hna. Deydi send me a package. SHe really was like having another mom in peru. She gave me a whole bunch of chocolate and a picture of her family.

I hope you guys are doing well. Ponderize haha, and learn to understand the promptings of the spirit. Also happy birthday Siena,

 keep you light shining

September 28

This week was fun, but it was another just good work week. Besides a little cold everything was normal this week. It is hard in this area right now because we have a limited pool of people we are teaching. I should not be complaining because I received an email from my friend about her mission in europe and they have absolutely nothing. The most important thing right now for us is that we must find more people to start teaching. So we are talking with everyone in the streets. knocking doors (I have knocked every door in my area) the thing is every time we knock the door it will be someone else that opens. One day we left with a member named Guillermo, a really cool member in  the ward that called and asked us if he could leave with us to visit. It is such a blessing to have him in the ward, most the times we have to beg some people to come with us, but he called us. Anyway we were with and we went to the first appointment, but it fell through... then we heard some loud music in a house with someone singing karoke. Normally we would have just passed by the house because many of times there are people having parties in their houses getting drunk, but Guillermo stopped and told us that it was his friend. We knocked on the door, and a man named Santos camed out to greet us. After some talking, we were able to explain a bit about the book of mormon. And we were able to set up another appointment for this next friday. I hope that we can do our best to help hno Santos progress and build him up so that he will choose to come join the fold. THe funny thing is that he only accepted the next visit him if Guillermo and maybe us too sang karoke with him after the lesson. We will see what will happen...

I am super excited for this next general conference. We will see who will be called as the next apostles. I just hope I will be able to see it again in english because one I can understand it better and two I will actually here their voices. Once you know their voices it is just frustating to listen to translater. How can they match the voice of the prophet or the strong call to repentence from Elder Holland, or the wisdom and hilarilousness of Dieter F Uchtdorf. If not the meaning our still the same. I am just excited. Really excited.

This week the ward had a Luau which was really funny. The only sad thing was peruvians always start really late so an 8 o clock activity starts at 9 or 10. We took some pictures and had fun while we could before we returned to the room before the party actually started. But all in all it was fun.

For the Bitner family, Elder Anderson sends his love, Especially for Whitney. haha.

Love you all

Another week has flown by in the mission, it is amazing how fast it passes. This week we worked hard but right now we do not have a lot of members leaving with us to visit. The thing is that we just kept working and had a lot of lessons with members, and our contacts have not dropped under 120 since Elder Cusihuaman set the goal-punishment of the push ups. It really takes an effort to contact that many people when the area is a little bit smaller. I have contacted the same people twice or threes times on accident. A question, is it okay if we contact the same people over and over not every day but giving it a break. It gives them another opportunity to accept our message or have the chance to be served.

When it comes to investigators Lucio seems to be the next baptism because the other few are not completing with their committments that we have left them. Lucio has 16 years, and he is working on reading the book of mormon. He is reading the book of mormon for the first time. We will keep working on his parents they have not attended once, but I feel that he is mature enough to be baptized and continue in the church. The leaders and the young men support him well in the ward. Would it be okay to put a baptismal date on him but in a month or 2 so that he can advance more in the book of mormon. A baptismal date would raise his animo because he really wants to progress.

Elder Torrez is progressing well, he has a strong desire to learn english too. He always is asking me how to pronounce names in the book of mormon. He will learn english for sure if he continues with these same desires to learn.

Right now I have the goal to right all of the Old Testament, but in english. so far I in 1 samuel. It is really interesting how many times they fall into worshiping other gods than Jehovah. A talk I listened to recently said that the question is not why did they struggle with these things, but how do we struggle in our own life. Also it was not that they stopped worshipping Jehovah to worship the gods of the Philistines or the Moabites but the changed their customs to worship both at the same time. Maybe we do not worship Baal or Asheroth, but we worship other things like football or facebook. (NOt in the mission) but at home. But more that Zion struggles with is that we worship the world and try to worship the Lord at the same time. The talk gave an amazing example about water skiing. This person has skiied utahs lakes many times, but one year him and his brother decided to ski utah lake every month of the year. Even when it was really cold in the winter he took the chance to glide on the water. He joked that water skiing is basically that closest sport that we have to a celestial sport if we look and the experience of Peter and Jesus. The thing is over the many trips he was able to teach many people how to ski. He found the the most common errors that prevented a learner from experiencing the auxilarating thrill of gliding on water was that they would try to pull themselves up or they would try to stand up against the pull of the boat. Though these actions appear to help they end up doing the contrary and they pull their legs from out from under them. He assured the learners that the boat is strong enough to pull them up the just need to depend on the boat and be patient. The thing is at times the learners would not even notice that they were trying to pull on the the rope. How does this apply? He said at times when we try to worship God and the world we pull our spiritual legs right out from under us, and it leaves us there wondering why we have not progressed. We must not allow the world to set our standards or slowly but surely change our views of what God has made very clear what is right and wrong. I am enjoying the old testament..

This sunday I gave another talk. It was supposed to be ten minutes but I did not watch the time well so I spoke 15. It was on charity. I really enjoy 1 Corinthians 13. It explains the importance of Charity and how with out it

TOday we went hiking to what they call the white rock. It was a great little hike that left me burnt. It is nice to do more on P days to make them more enjoyable.

I am doing well, I hope all is well there

Elder mecham

September 14, 2015

I will do my best to write more this week because the s key is broken and I have to put in the s with the little poput keyboard. It is really annoying....

Today we did something actually really fun and enjoyable. Most p days we do not do to much the mete would be play eoccere and eat food and relax, but today we asked permission to  go a musuem called Señor de Sipan which is about thirty minutes away from my area. To get there we borrowed the moto taxi of our penscionista. Then we asked a member to help of out by coming with us and driving the moto. The member that came with us is named Guillermo. He is really cool. At first the moto taxi seems a little sketchy because it would not start and then it would die really fast. So we bought some gas and we were off. The funny thing was that every time that we drove over a speed bump the moto taxi would die. I was actually afraid that the moto would die half way to the museum and we would have to walk the whole way back. But we made it safe and sound. It was a really cool place. Senor de Sipan was a royal ancient ruler that they found buried in a pyramid like structure. It was really cool to see all the things that they found in these tombs that are basically in the middle of no where. The sad part is that the had some objects of pure gold that were stolen and later they were found in the customs of Miami. They are now posessions of the FBI, but still some pieces are missing.

This was the highlight of my week. Besides this we had a zone conference where They challenged us to learn all 100 of the scripture masteries and strive to use all of them in our teachings because they were inspired by the 12 apostles as the scpriptures of most importance of that are the clearest.

 

I want to send pictures but the computer is not reconizing my usb.

Dont you just love the computers here

Elder Mecham

My Companion

September 7

Another week down and i am just learning this new area and trying to do my best to set a good example for my companion. Really right now we do not have a lot of progressing investigators which is hard, but as always we will keep looking. The one that seemed to have a chance to progress named Jose Saavedra kind of annoyed me a lot this week. Why? Well during this week we set up an appointment to visit him and teach him more with his family. He is the only member in his family that is not a member. As usual he was late, but this is normal for the peruvians always be ontime and expect them to be late so that is not what annoyed me. We came in and started talking with him and about his life. He told us he had a cold but all would be fine. Sadly, he did not read the chapter in the book of mormon we left him, so we started to read the chapter with him. The thing is about after 5 verses and some explications he started getting sleepy. Then the lesson kept going on and the member with us shared his baptismal experience and then my companion felt that he needed to share a different scripture that was way off topic. He is new so I just wanted to see where he took the lesson because he is entitled to inspiration too. It was a really nice scripture about putting the lord first and putting things like work, school, and other aspects of life. It was a great scripture but my companion likes to talk a lot, a little too much during the lessons, so Jose Saavedra fell asleep. My companion is not boring in his talk and lessons it was really interesting what he said, but Jose did not pay attention to any of it...  It was just plain sad. I talked to my companion about focusing more on the investigator and asking questions after. The thing is that we did ask questions... I felt like I was talking to a wall... Maybe it just is not the time for Jose  or he was super tired and sick. I am just hoping other lessons like this dont happen.

Besides this we are doing well. Our district leader challenged us to do 120 contacts for the week.And to give a a little incentive he said if we did not hit 120 the companionships would have to do 200 push ups during the next district meeting. It is not a very good reward to do 200 in a white shirt and tie. So this week we made sure every day we did at least 20 contacts. Which is kind of hard in a small area like the Cria. We ended up talking to some of the same people more than once. the only thing is they got angry at us and told us to go away. The typical life as a missionary. At the end of the week we had 122 contacts. Just enough. It was nice to be able to say we accomplished the goal, now the hard part is maintaining 120 every week.

Life is okay here. I feel like this town is like a mini Aurora Utah. The only thing is here they hard "stores" in the homes and there are of course bars... But they are a lot of animals here. Many people have pigs. I know now why we can not eat pig. They feed them whatever they can find. I saw one guy feeding his pigs dead cats. The other thing that is common is that almost every house has cuys or guiena pigs. They raise a whole bunch of them just inside of their houses. All they eat is corn and other leaves. So basically they have two types of animals pigs and guinea pigs. The other thing is everyone knows each other.. And that is how their addresses our. Like in a contact, so do you live here close ? Ya for the house of Jose Hernadez. And what street. Ahh, there aren't any streets or house numbers... And the majority of the time we don´t know the person... it is a little difficult.

I am doing well. Solamente hay que trabajar.

Elder Mecham