March 30, 2015

Good morning campers! It's 10 am time to start the day!

Hey mom, so I sent a recording but I thought I'd type some stuff up too. 

First of all, what day is Easter? I don't remember haha. Here they have what's called semana santa, or holy week. Everyone eats fish which I'm not super stoked for. Other than that I don't know really what they do. Someone told me the Catholics do a little march type-thing with a cross so that'll be interesting to see.

I didn't even realize that I'm 1/3 of the way done with my mission. Pretty nuts. After I hit six months I pretty much just stopped counting. Tell Joel congrats on the mission call! I was wondering if he'd been working on papers or anything. That's super cool. Tell him to feel free to email me for any advice or good pranks to pull. When he leaves I'll have a year! Pretty crazy. 

I'm really looking forward to General Conference. They're going to be broadcasting it in the Stake Center and they'll have a room where I can watch it in English. Conference as a missionary is the coolest thing ever.

We're still working really hard with these families. Only one week left of the transfer so we'll see how changes go next week. My companion and I are doing fine. My stomach is holding up well too.

Thanks for finding the Quechua book. I'm doing my best to learn with the limited materials that I have. It's a lot harder when I'm not in an area like Andahuaylas where EVERYONE speaks Quechua. There's another language they speak in the South called Aymara. It's just as ridiculous, but more people speak Quechua so I'm gonna worry about that language first.

Love you! Talk to you later!

Love,

Elder Tate

 This is a transcript of his recording. They are long -- but it is so wonderful to hear his voice. 

Today is Monday, March 30, 2015 about 10:15 in the morning on p-day. First of all I want to give a great big ol’ birthday shout out to my big ol’ papa bear. I hope it was a good one. Mom said you probably wouldn’t be celebrating it until this week, so hopefully you do something fun like go eat a banana cream pie or a coconut cream pie, whatever it is that you like more.  Hope it’s a good one!

So it was a pretty great week this week, lots of pretty sweet things. First of all, we visited with Mariella and Luis a couple of times this week. I told you about them in my last recording. They are super awesome. They are the couple that was actually a reference. The husband is a less active and the wife isn’t a member and neither are the kids, and they have gone to church twice now, and they are just awesome.

On Wednesday we went on exchanges so my companion and another elder went and Visited Mariella and Luis.  I was sad I had to miss them.  Anyways, they went and visited and they asked Mariella if she had prayed to receive an answer about the Book of Mormon and about the things that we had taught her.  And she said, “yes.”  She ended up telling them this really cool experience that she had had. She prayed about it one night, then went to bed, and had a dream.  In her dream she saw the Savior standing by a door saying, “Come to me.”  And then later that night she had another dream that the Pope had died and then she, again, saw the Savior standing by a door saying, “Come to me.”  Pretty neat, I would say. It is kind of twisted, but I think it is pretty funny that for her answer she had a dream that the Pope died.  It’s probably kind of messed up that I think that is funny.  God works in mysterious ways . . . and we all know he has a sense of humor.  In the same lesson that day, they taught their niece and she accepted them with a plum. 

We visited them again on Saturday and it was a really awesome lesson. We talked with the niece and she told us some really cool stuff.  They had taught the 3^rd lesson which is the gospel of Jesus Christ, which consists of five steps that God wants us to do while we are here on the earth so that later we can receive exaltation. These steps include faith, repentance, baptism, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end.  On Wednesday they had taught the first four. On Saturday we went and we were just going to teach them for about 30 minutes and then take them to an activity at the church. We were going to finish up with enduring to the end, which is probably my favorite part to teach of the lesson.  It talks about obedience and that we make these covenants for a life time and not just for Sundays or for Christmas or Easter or whatever. It was really cool and talked about some other stuff. The niece told us that in her life she felt that she had not been diligent in doing the things that God expected of her, that she had been kind of weak. She told us that she was ready to start doing what God wanted. She said she liked receiving our lessons. It was really neat. Mariella had told us some things as well.  

Every time I am in their house it almost just cry because the spirit is so strong. I just love this family so much and I love how they are so willing to act and to just trust God. I just love it. Every time I am there I just feel that one day they will be an eternal family and it is just so cool. Their 11-year-old daughter is always there and she is always so attentive. She is adorable. She always participates and loves the lessons as well, and I just love this family so much. They are awesome. 

We also worked with one of the other families, Julian and Joanie.  They are progressing well. They didn’t come to church this Sunday and we’re not sure why, kind of a bummer. We talked with them a couple of times this week. They always have questions about the Plan of Salvation; life before this life, life after death, and life here. We have been explaining this to them, but we told them that their ultimate goal is to obtain exaltation and live with God forever. We asked them if they have ever talked about getting married. They said they were going to have a long chat about it. We asked if they wanted to be baptized and they said yes, but they knew they had to get married first. So, we will work on that for awhile. They are willing to talk about now where in the past they didn’t even want to talk about it, so they are progressing. 

It has been kind of a slow week, but still lots of good things. I also went on exchanges with the Zone leaders. It was supposed to be with just one zone leader because the other one was going to Cusco to get some papers, but they realized that their travel plans were for the next day. So I ended up hanging out with both zone leaders on Wednesday and it was fun.  They are cool guys – Elder Saunders from Utah and Elder Sanchez from Mexico.  We were running around it started getting kind of stormy looking, so we ran back to their apartment real quick so we can grab coats and stuff.  As we got there we could hear this crazy sound and we knew there was a storm coming. We were looking around the house and we hear this big “thud.” A piece of hail had hit the metal awning that was about the size of a quarter! We look out and we can see this huge hailstorms coming toward us so we ran inside. The hailstones were seriously like the size of dimes. We couldn’t go outside because it hurt and they were so big they would have just torn right through an umbrella. I took some pictures. It hailed so much that after the hailstorm we could make snowballs out of the hail. 

After the storm we went outside in the pouring rain and went to an appointment. We got soaked and after our appointment it had rained so hard that the streets were flooded and we could hardly get around the city. The water was about a foot deep. It was really fun. 

We are in week six of the transfer, which means we have changes next Monday. My companion has been here about six months, so I am expecting to have a new companion, but we will see how it goes. 

Love you all! I will “talk” to you next week.  

This is D.J. Pearce, signing out.