La Cuarentena

Even though this past week we have been locked in, we have still been able to see some amazing miracles. We have been working hard core with calling every single number of every contact or old investigator that has been taught, and the Lord has prepared people to be taught during this time. 

The first miracle was a family of 5 that my old companion, Elder Garcia and I had been teaching but they had some excuses that they had made about not wanting to get married. We called them and we talked with them and they said how they felt like it is time for their family  to get baptized now. They were super happy to talk to us and all. They accepted the date for the 2 of May or until things calm down enough so that we can start to baptize people. 

Jackson cut up a pepper for an omelet, and he didn't realize he had bought a very HOT pepper which ended up burning his hand.

Also we called an old investigator se llama Nicanor. He is a 60 year old man and he is blind and he lives with all of his kids. He has one daughter that is a member and she is on a mission. He said that he wanted to get baptized but after she got back. She gets back May 13 so he put his date for the 16 of May. 

It has been going really good with the other people that we are teaching as well. The family Rivas, the family Castro, Victoria, Zabdi, and Gloria are all progressing very well and are reading the Book of Mormon every day because they have nothing else to do. 

To teach our people, we get on a conference call because we have two phones and we just teach the lessons over the phones. Because we have brick Nokia phones, we send links from YouTube videos to help us teach the lessons that the assistants send to us, so we are still finding effective ways to teach people. 

We have been surviving here; it just has been a little crazy and you feel cramped up after awhile. But the only thing that we can do is trust in the Lord. Sometimes we don't understand why the Lord lets really, really, really difficult and challenging things happen in our lives but something I have learned in the mission is to thank God for those difficult moments. Thanking God for hard things that happen to us is tough but it is just the refiner's fire helping us become people more like Christ which is one of the most important things in life.  

 

 8 Behold, great and marvelous are the ^aworks of the Lord. How ^bunsearchable are the depths of the ^cmysteries of him; and it is impossible that man should find out all his ways. And no man ^dknoweth of his ^eways save it be revealed unto him; wherefore, brethren, despise not the ^frevelations of God.

Corona Virus

Well, the Corona Virus has spread pretty fast here, haha, because no one has been taking it seriously. 

So yesterday the president of Peru talked, and we are all quarantined as missionaries. We have permission to leave our houses to go eat lunch with our pensionistas and if we need to go buy something, but besides that we have to stay in our rooms. We are 4 gringos all from Utah that are in the same room, haha. All of the other elders are great. They all did choir before the mission and sang so its a little bit of a change for me but it's good. My musical skills have increased to another level so that's good. 

The baptisms for Victoria and for the Castro kids, Danitza, Denis and Cristofer were going to be on Saturday, and the baptism for the family of Yesenia was going to be next Saturday with their wedding but it looks like we will have to change things up a bit. But the work of the Lord will not be frustrated! This will be an interesting 2 weeks but I know that the Lord will still provide people to find and teach! I love being a missionary and I love serving Jesus Christ! My relationship with him has grown amazingly and there is nothing greater that I would rather be doing with my life. ¡HURRA POR ISRAEL!

The Joy of Getting People to go to Church

¡Si puedes entender esto, eres lo maximo! So this week went zooming by again! Last Wednesday we had interviews with President Amato and it was pretty good to talk with president. He has helped me a lot in my mission and I am very happy that I have been able to serve in this mission with him. 

Also last Thursday we had leadership counsel and we did things a little bit differently. We went on a hike in these cool mountains. We got to the top and we could see the whole mission and president talked about a few things and we sang a song and then he blessed the mission. It was a really neat experience. 

Last week we were visiting Franyer and he was doing good. One lesson we were teaching the plan of salvation and we were verifying that he understood everything and at the end of the lesson he said that he didn't understand anything that we had just taught him and he looked kind of weird like he had a glazed look on his face. He told us that he didn't feel like himself and then goes on to tell us how in Venezuela he had got caught up in some witch stuff that his girlfriend's aunt did on him and that spirits had followed him ever since Venezuela and he could always hear them at night in his room. So we blessed his little room and everything felt better after the lesson. 

Then we took out a lesson for the next days. We came back the next lesson but he wasn't there and the thing is, he doesn't have a cell phone. We passed by on Sunday to see if he was there to take him to church but he still hadn't come back from the last time that we had visited his house. Later on the other elders in our district told us that they found him in their area and that he had gotten a new job but that he was working on Sundays :( So this week we are going to pass by him and talk with him and work with him to get a new job but everyone please pray really hard for Franyer Garcia because he really wants to get baptized a lot! 

So the daughter of Victoria that I mentioned last time, Yesenia and her husband Angelo accepted a date for the 28 of march and have 3 kids and we went and visited them. They have 3 kids, Alessandra 21, Brian 11, and Valery 7. And Brian and Alessandra accepted to be baptized with their parents! Brian is a little beast because right when we gave him a Book of Mormon he started reading the chapters and had almost finished before we left. Alessandra mostly lives with her Grandma Victoria and helps her out but she is living with her right now while she is on vacation. We had all made plans for them to come to church on Sunday but they didn't come. It was a little frustrating but it will just help me work on my Christlike attribute of having patience. So everyone please pray for Yesenia, Angelo, Alessandra and Brian that they can all be baptized the 28 of March! 

Victoria is doing great as well. She is on time to church and reading everything. Her baptism will be next Saturday. Finally the Family Castro came to church but only the mom Delsi with Denis and Danitsa. Cristofer didn't come because they said his clothes were wet and Julio the dad didn't come because at the last moment some family came over and he left with them, but right now we are focused on helping the kids get baptized and then hopefully it will give Julio a little bit more of some motivation. 


We had the baptism of Erika yesterday and it went super great. Elder Garcia was able to come and it was right after church so a lot of members came. It was great. I am so very grateful that the Lord is blessing us with such great people to find. Well hope everyone's week goes great!

Lifting Weights at a Temple

Well this past week went pretty good. Last P-Day we made tacos as a zone; they were pretty good. All of the elders ate 20 tacos each. We made A TON haha. 

Last week we had zone conference and we talked about the consecration. Elder Larson and I gave a training about using our time wisely and consecrated as missionaries. 

A miracle that we saw last week was that we were contacting and we contacted a Venezuelan man, and he told us that he had talked to missionaries like us before but he said he wanted to change his life and hear our message so we took out an appointment with him. He doesn't have a phone, so he showed us where he lives. His name is Franyer Garcia. We had a lesson with him and he's 21 and he lives here by himself. Pretty much he committed a lot of sins in his past as a teenager and he feels really, really guilty and bad for doing that, so he wants to be baptized to be clean of his sins. He accepted to be baptized the 28 of March. He lives in a small, concrete brick room with just a mattress on the floor. He is super humble and willing to do anything to draw closer to God. His rent for his room is 50 soles (US $14.55) and yesterday he needed to pay the rent but he didn't have any money. He chose to come to church with us instead, trusting that the Lord would help him find a job to pay for his rent. We had a lesson with him right before church and he told us that he didn't have any money to buy food last night or he didn't have any money at all so he decided that he would fast. I realized that's a different type of fasting where you literally don't have anything to eat and so you might as well fast compared to where we were all fasting and we knew that there was a nice big meal waiting for us from the members. We helped him out after he came to church. At the bakery, they have rolls that are super cheap so we bought him a ton of rolls and some ham to eat. Everyone, please pray for Franyer that the Lord can help him find a job. 

Victoria is doing really good and progressing as well. She always cooks us food when we go over to teach her, haha. She's like a little old Peruvian grandma. 

Last week we weren't able to have a lesson with Zabdi and her husband because all last week she was studying from super early in the morning to late at night every day for a test that she was going to take. She doesn't live in our area yet but this week her studies won't be as intense, so we'll be able to teach her just fine. 

The family Castro didn't go to church on Sunday, sadly. They said that they were getting ready to go in the morning but then the boss of the dad, Julio, called and told him that he needed to work. Usually he doesn't even work on Sundays; it's just Satan being a pain. So we decided to move the date for the kids, Denis, Danitza and Cristoffer to the 21 of March because the family is a little bit slower and they still need to talk to Santa Cena and everything. 

Erika is doing good. Her baptism is this Saturday and she's pretty excited. So pray for her that everything goes well for her baptism this week. Also, the daughter of Victoria, she had been listening to the lessons with her mom and we had invited her to be baptized but she wasn't married. We finally had a lesson with her and her husband Angelo this last Saturday and they both accepted to be baptized and married the 28 of March so everyone please pray that the Lord can help them get their papers for the marriage and that they can continue being prepared. 

Today for P-Day we woke up earlier and we hiked as a district to a mountain that has a temple of an Evangelist church on the top. It was pretty amazing... the view at least. There was this Peruvian pastor there, and he like wanted to preach to us but we just kept walking around the temple. There was a little exercise area and we went and we pumped some iron on the edge of a Peruvian mountain in a temple. It was a pretty legit P-Day. 

Hope everyone has a great week!