May 25, 2015
First of
all, I would like to start off my weekly recording by saying whoever came up
with the idea of electric powered showers should be drug out into the street
and shot – twice. I get electrocuted by
my shower just about every single day and it still just amazes me that someone
thought, “Hey, why don’t we just stand in a stream of water and we will heat it
up with electricity while we are standing in the water.” It just doesn’t make
any sense to me, but at least it is warm water even though I shock my fingers
every time I try to wash my hair in the morning.
Today is May
25, 2015. We are walking down the streets of Juliaca. We are running down to
the Sorrita family’s house. They have been letting us use their washing
machine. They are a blessing.
This week
was awesome. We freaking did work is what we did. One of the cool things that
happened was the couple that we have been teaching. They have been taught by lots of different
missionaries before and this week we have been really trying to get married.
They keep saying that they want to get married but they have lots of debt, so
we made a container for them, a little piggy bank, and wrote 30 days on it. We
said that we found a place where they can sign the papers to get married that
will only charge 60 soles to get married, which is the equivalent of about
$20. We told them that if they each put
in 2 soles every day they will have enough in 15 days, so the goal we presented
to them was to have enough money to get the papers in 15 days and to be married
in 30 days. They don’t want a party or anything crazy; they just want to sign
the papers and be done. They accepted the plan and they have been doing it. We
double checked with them a couple of days later and they have been putting the
money in, so we are super happy for them. Now they just have to work with their
family. They have to talk with their family members who are probably going to
tell them not to do it and stuff like that, but we are going to keep working
with them and try to get them baptized right after they are married here pretty
soon.
Another cool
thing this week is that we have been teaching and working with before. His name
is “C.” He is a super stud. When I first got here in Juliaca I thought that C
was a member because he attends church more than a lot of the members do, and
he comes to all of the activities and everything. We have been working hard
with him, and we finally got him a baptismal date this week. He had been just
kind of scared for awhile, I think, because he wasn’t sure it was something he
wanted to do. He was worried he was going to get baptized and then be a bad
member. The counselor in the bishopric told us that he has some siblings who
are members but aren’t really living their lives like they should as a member
of the church and he sees that. So he doesn’t want to be baptized and then be a
bad member of the church. We had a really good talk with him one day and
basically told him that nothing is going to change after your baptism; you are
going to be the same person, and it is your decision if you are going to remain
faithful or not. We kind of helped him see and we were also with another member
who helped us out a lot. He accepted to be baptized on June 13th. He is amazing. He studies his Gospel
Principles book every Saturday or Sunday morning before church so that he knows
about the lesson before we teach it. He also right now, actually, has an
assignment to visit less active members and he isn’t even a member, and he is
visiting less actives. It is pretty incredible. He is a stud muffin. We are
really excited for him and we are working really hard with him. We are working
with his little brother as well, and his parents. They are the only ones left
in their family that aren’t baptized.
This week we
were also very successful in finding lots of new investigators. We had found
lots of new investigators before through an activity that we did and we are
finally getting to the point where we are finding them, contacting them, and
meeting with them. On Saturday we extended three baptismal challenges and every
single person we extended it to accepted. We didn’t set dates for them yet, but
they accepted the challenges. We have been teaching this new family, but we
haven’t taught them all at the same time. We have seen the wife and then we saw
the husband after. The husband accepted our baptismal challenge for him and so
did his family.
We just got
a new Standard of Excellence today that we received in our Zone meeting. We are
supposed to find seven new investigators every single week. That will be
challenging but we will do it! – or at least we will do our best and try really
hard.
Those are
the coolest stories for the week. Not much really super exciting but just lots
of good things happening.
Elder Wimmer
got his first package today, so that was fun --- he’s so happy.
By the way,
I totally had a conversation with someone in Quechua the other day. It was the
coolest thing ever. We had changes last week and one of the elders in our zone
got called as a District Leader so he had to go to Cusco for training so his
companion stayed with us for a day. He is from Bolivia and they actually speak
Quechua in parts of Bolivia. Anyway, he speaks Quechua! The day he stayed with
us during our language study I had him teach me some stuff. We live on the 6th
floor of our apartment building (with no elevator) – it’s awesome, especially
at the end of a long day when you’re sick! A couple of floors below us live the
landlords and the parents of the landlady lives with them. They are super old
and they only speak Quechua. The mother of the landlady is a little bit crazy.
The other day when we were getting ready to leave our house and the door was
kind of cracked open (we can’t lock our door so at night we put a chair in
front of it then if anyone tries to open it, the door hits the chair and wakes
us up) and we were getting ready to leave and the old lady walks in and just
starts yelling stuff at us in Quechua and starts going through our stuff and we
had no idea what to do! So I just told her, “Hey, we’re leaving.” And she said
something else to us, but I had no idea what she said, so I just said, “No, we’re
leaving.” And then she said “Okay” and left. It was awesome. I totally talked
to her in Quechua and got her out of our room! I totally had a breakthrough
this week. Haha!
That’s about
all I have this week. We are really, really excited for what is to come. A lot
is happening this week. I hope all is well with everyone at home. Love you all!
Talk to you
later!
Tate
