No longer alone!!!!

What does a duck and  bike have in common? They both have handle bars... except for the duck.

On Thursday my companion FINALLY got here from Cusco with the two new elders that will be living in our house. Elder Pavon (my companion) is from Paraguay. He has one change less than me in the mission field. He started in Andahuaylas when I was with Elder Johanson and we lived in the same house for two changes. He's really cool. I think it'll take a while to get used to each other's personalities but we get along just fine and our styles of doing missionary work and teaching mesh quite nicely. From day one he's been bringing up lots of really good ideas and suggestions. I think he's exactly the companion that I've been praying for. This is going to be a good change for sure.

The other two elders in our house are Elder Zerillo and Elder Reyes. They're both from Lima and they're both really cool. All the new guys are very polite to the pensionistas which I love about them. One of the other missionaries from before was kind of obnoxious and it frustrated me a little bit.

As far as my zone leader job goes, I'm basically a nanny for 18 other missionaries. Whenever someone has a question they ask us, whenever someone gets sick they come to us, whenever someone misbehaves we have to take care of it. Sometimes it gets really stressful and frustrating, but other times it's chill and I actually forget that I'm a zone leader. I think I'm going to be bald by the time I get home though. Oh well.

This week (once Elder Pavon got here. The other days I was staying with elders in another sector) we worked a lot with J, our golden investigator. One day we gave him all of the pamphlets and told him he could read if he felt like it, and left him a reading assignment in the BOM. The next day we had an appointment with him and he had read all six AND written little summaries of each pamphlet AND had read the BOM from the beginning until first Nefi. Pretty darn cool. He has a baptismal date for the fifth of September. Things are great with him. The members are also doing a great job at fellowshipping him.

That's the only news I have for this week. Feel free to take out whatever you want from my package so it's cheaper and I'll just buy what I can here. I found a blender for like 60 soles that's really nice that I'm considering buying to make fruit smoothies and stuff to maybe help with my hunger and just to have a healthier diet in general. I don't want you to feel like you have to spend tons of money on me or send lots of things. Just the things I can't find here. The rest I can just buy so it's cheaper and easier. For real though, don't send tons of food. Just treats and snacks and I'll figure out the rest. If worse comes to worst, I'll just walk it off and be a man.

I love you all and pray for you every day! Don't sweat about school, mom. You'll be great!  No worries! I love you tons! Tell Dad and Trevor and Hilary good luck with starting school too. Love you all tons!

Love,

Elder Tate

Traveling . . . again!

Tate sends us a weekly recording. I have tried to transcribe it each week, but it doesn't always happen. If you are interested in hearing any of his recordings, just email me at scottara@comcast.net and I will send you the link. 

Tate is currently serving in Puno. He was transferred there 5 weeks ago and is now a Zone Leader. He has had to spend a lot of time traveling during this transfer - hence the subject of this week's email!  He said on his recording that he has logged about 50 hours in travel over the past 4-5 weeks.

He just passed his ONE YEAR MARK!  Yippee!!  He is doing great!
 
-Tara 

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What did George Washington say to his men before they got on their horses?

"Men, get on your horses."

I figured since I hit a year I would start doing lame jokes instead of movie quotes.

I sent a recording with pretty much everything on it from the week. We had to travel to Cusco again. Elder Cando was supposed to go to Machu Picchu tomorrow but the company they work with has completely changed everything so they had to do it all different. Now he's going to go on Saturday. Woot! That means he'll leave on Friday and never come back because he'll go home right after that. Crazy stuff. I'm going to stay with the other two elders in my house to do the last week of the change and then figure the rest out from there. There's a guy in my ward named Harold who's getting ready to turn in his mission papers and he wants to be my companion for a few days, so I think I'll jhave Harold come get me and work with me for as long as he can during the day and then just stay with some other companionship until dinner time. We'll see how it goes. Harold is a super stud so I'm kind of excited to work with him and teach him a little bit about missionary work. He's like 22 years old, and he just recently hit his one year mark of being a convert to the church. 

I love you all. Hope this week is the best week of your lives. Keep strong, study the scriptures. We never know the affect we can have on other peoples' lives if we just put in a little effort and study. We shouldn't read the BOM to just read, we should read it to learn and be spiritually edified every single time.

 

Our stake president, Pres. Soto talked a lot yesterday (talking to the stake leaders) about teaching DOCTRINE, not just our own opinions or experiences. We need to teach people the DOCTRINE of the gospel, which means we teach them eternal truths. If we study the scriptures, we will learn the eternal truths that will impact the hearts of other people. I've also been trying to get better at asking "inspired questions." Questions that come from heaven rather than from me. I truly feel that asking inspired questions is the only way to get to some people's hearts and allow them to have and feel a true conversion.  Peace and blessings.

Loves,

Elder Tate