I hope you’re all doing great.We had a really good week here in Sullana! Really eventful, too. We knocked a lot of doors and found a lot of cool new people this week which was a nice breath of fresh air.
On Tuesday, we had another appointment with the son of our bishop, named Jefry. He’s 22 and not a member of the church. We’ve been teaching him for basically all the time we’ve been here in Sullana, and trying to get him to progress towards baptism. He has been progressing really really well, and totally has a testimony of everything we have taught him. We were pretty dang confident that he would be baptized on his scheduled date for Saturday. We even went through all the baptismal interview questions with him and he had no problems. Everything was going great until we asked about his baptism on Saturday. He then proceeded to tell us that he wants to get baptized, but that he has his own date in mind for the 1st of February. We were really bummed, but I reminded Elder Bayona that we have done everything we could, and have done our part. Everyone has their agency. That’s one thing you have to know as a missionary, you can’t measure your success off of numbers and baptisms alone. If you are obedient and doing all that you can to fulfill your objective as a missionary and to bring the gospel to others, you are a successful missionary in the eyes of the Lord. Everyone has their own choice as to what they do. All we can do is invite. But yeah, kind of a bummer with Jefry. We are going to keep working with him.
On Wednesday we had another lesson with Juan on the commandments. He is a super humble guy, and really accepting of everything. Every time we come to see him he gets excited and says,”My brothers! Gracias a Dios!” and gives us a hug. He’s awesome and he’s progressing towards his baptismal date for next Saturday. He does need to attend Church more, so we will see about him.
In the afternoon we had a lesson with Karla. She’s 18, and is like the perfect member. She has continued to progress and learn a lot about the gospel after her baptism, and she wants to serve a mission next year. She also knows English pretty well so it’s fun to talk to her. Anyways, when we got into her house and started asking how she was and then started the lesson, I realized that Elder Bayona wasn’t saying anything. Even when I would finish saying a thought or something and look at him, he just smiled and said nothing. I then realized what he was trying to do, and so I gave the whole lesson on service solo. He chimed in at the end to bear testimony on what I had taught, but other then that, I gave the entire lesson. When we left, he looked at me, smiled and said, “You passed.” It was a nice confidence booster to see that I can give any lesson on my own. I’ve really seen my progress with my Spanish improve over the last few weeks. It’s sweet.
Wednesday night we had a short lesson with Sonya, the mom of Lander. Their whole family is really cool. What was really awesome was her littlest son, Stalyn, made us a little card about Jesus and gave it to us. He is the cutest little kid ever. It was great.
On Thursday most of our appointments fell through, so we knocked a lot of doors. We didn’t have very much success in getting into people’s houses to teach, but we gave out a ton of pass along cards. Anyway we can get the word out about the church, we’re gonna do it. One really cool thing that happened though was we went to have a return visit with a man named Segundo, who had let us in the last time and we were able to teach him about the restoration of Christ’s church and also the Book of Mormon. He expressed to us that he has his own church, but that he does like to read, an said that he would read the Book of Mormon and think about it. So when we got to his house he wasn’t there, but he had someone else that he lives with give us a note from him. The note basically said that he was working that day and couldn’t meet with us, but that he wanted our number and wants to meet on Monday. This was super awesome, especially for me personally. I’ve had a little bit of a hard time so far in my mission with the reliability of people here, and trying to set appointments and get people excited about our message. Usually it’s a little bit of a struggle to find people that really want us to return to teach them more. A lot of times people listen to our message but aren’t fully engaged in our lessons or simply aren’t interested in what we have to say. Segundo however, is on the ball. He ended up calling us the day after on Friday to schedule a specific time for us to come. It seems like he is genuinely interested and I hope that he’s been able to read his Book of Mormon, I’m really excited to teach him again. He seems like he could be a really good investigator. We will see.
Friday was quite the interesting day. We woke up early to go play soccer with our zone. I was pretty tired and didn’t feel like going, but Elder Bayona really wanted to go. We got up and ended up going, but I kind of had a bad attitude and was a little grumpy. I think that it was for this reason that God reprimanded me a little. ;) When we were playing, I jumped near the sideline of the court to head the ball and hit my head pretty hard on one of the poles of a volleyball net that was next to the court. I immediately started bleeding pretty bad so I went into the church to take a look. I had split open my head just a little above my eye. It wasn’t too big or serious but from the look of it, I knew I would probably need stitches. I called Hermana Rasmussen and she thought I should probably go get it looked at as well. So we went to the clinic here in Sullana and I ended up getting two stitches to fix it up. So yeah, interesting way to start the day, lol. Lesson learned: Always have a good attitude about going to play soccer. ;) Now people stare at me even more then normal in the streets with the stitches and the black eye, hehe.
Later that day we had another interesting experience. We had been knocking a lot of doors and we were heading to an appointment when we passed by one specific house. For some reason I stopped and looked at it. Elder Bayona asked if I wanted to knock it and I said, “Why not?”. We knocked and a 15 year old kid named Javier opened and he was super awesome. He really likes basketball and I was able to talk about the NBA and stuff with him. I told him that I played on a team before my mission and he thought that was super cool. We then started to teach him about the restoration and what we believe in and our purpose as missionaries. He was really receptive and super attentive during the lesson. He told us he would read the Book of Mormon, pray, and come to Church. He seems really, really awesome. One of the best people I’ve taught so far on my mission. And to think we almost passed by his house…crazy.
Not much happened on Saturday. We did some servicer for Karla and her family in a garden area of their house that had a lot of debris in it. It was pretty fun. Service is the best. Every time we do service for someone I always think of the words of King Benjamin in Mosiah 2:17, “And behold, I tell you these things that ye may learn wisdom; that ye may learn that when ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God.” How awesome is it that through our service to others around us, we can literally serve God. I challenge you all to look for specific instances where you can serve or help someone this week, big or small. There is so much happiness and joy that can be found in the service of others. It’s the best.
Well, that was my week! I hope you are all doing well back home. I love and appreciate all the support! You are all amazing.
Hasta la próxima semana,
Elder Bailey
“”When you are faithful on average days, then you will see exceptional days.” (Quote I really like that I heard this week.)
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