Another great week here in the land of Peru. I can’t believe I’m on my last week of training! We have cambios next week and I’m nervous/excited to see what happens. I’m really starting to like my area here in the Obrero ward. We have been finding a lot of new awesome people to teach in these past few weeks. If I say here for another 6 weeks I think there is a lot of success to be had. If I end up going somewhere else, great. I’ll go wherever the Lord calls me. :)
Monday was a great day. For P-day, we played soccer in the morning (like normal) and then spent the afternoon with Elders Hurtado and Thompson from Bellavista ward watching Shrek movies at a member’s house. I believe we watched Shrek 3 and 4, which is crazy because I didn’t even know that there was 4 Shrek movies, lol. It was fun, though, and felt good to relax a little. In the evening, our only appointment that we had scheduled fell through, se we went looking for new investigators to teach the old-fashioned way: knocking doors. The very first door we knocked, we found an awesome family. Their names are Narcissa and her son Carlos, and her brother Edwin and his little kids. They have a solid Christian background so we taught them all about the Restoration. They had so many questions and are super interested. As I was teaching them, I just felt so much love for them and desired to help them in any way possible to receive our message. I feel really good about them. We’ll see what happens.
Tuesday was a super busy day. First thing in the morning we had a lesson with the 15 year old son of the lady that does our laundry. his name is Richard, and he’s a less-active member. I shared Helaman 5:12 with him and told him how our lives will always be better with Christ as our rock and foundation. It was a really spiritual lesson, and Richard told us he would come to Church on Sunday. I’m grateful for the power of the Spirit and the ability it has to change people’s hearts. It really does work miracles here in the mission. In the afternoon we started teaching an 11 year old kid named Dieros. He’s part of a part member family, and seems like a really cool guy. We also had another lesson with my guy Segundo! This time we taught him all about the plan of salvation. We talked about the fall of Adam and Eve and Christ’s role as Savior and Redeemer. He had a ton of great questions and it was fun to help him learn. During the lesson I kept thinking, “Wow, this guy gets it.” He is just super smart and always wants to read and learn more. We proposed a date for baptism on the 9th of December. He said that it would be cool if we baptized him, but wants to read and learn more. We’re going to keep working with him. Man, he is the best. I definitely feel like he has been prepare by the Lord to hear us.
Wednesday was the big World Cup qualifying game here in Peru. Let’s just say that in America there isn’t anything that unites us the way soccer unites this country. It is incredible. I think we may have been the only two people in the city who weren’t closely watching this game. From when the game started to when it ended, there wasn’t a single car or moto-taxi in the street. Now obviously we weren’t watching the game, but we definitely knew everything that was going on from people’s reactions on the street. It was super funny. After it was over and they won, there was a huge caravan of people, moto-taxis, and cars outside our apartment. I had never seen anything like it. I guess that’s how celebrate when your team goes to the World Cup for the first time in almost 40 years. It was nuts, I’m telling you, nuts.
Thursday I had companion exchanges with Elder Westergard. He’s from South Carolina, and he’s super cool. He only has one transfer of experience more than me so I was a little nervous to go about leading my area with someone who knew the language only about as good as me. It went well, though, and we are able to teach a lot of good lessons. The highlight of the day was when we taught a family that we had found a few days back. Their names are Juan and Sujey, and their kids Juan and Ariana. They are definitely some of my favorite people I have found on my mission. They just have a light about them and are so open to hearing our message. It seems to me like they are already god strong members of the church even though they have never heard from the missionaries before. I see so much potential in them. While me and Elder Westergard were teaching them about the Book of Mormon, the mom Sjey quietly asked, “How much of this book do we need to read before our baptism?” Me and Elder Westergard just looked at each other and smiled. It was awesome. I explained that we still have a lot to teach them, but that they can be baptized whenever they feel that they are ready. We will probably put a date for them to be baptized in the next lesson.
Saturday we had a baptism! Well, we didn’t baptize, but we were able to witness the baptism of a kid that we have been teaching. His name is Darlin, and he is 11. He is an interesting little guy, and we had to have a lot of patience with teaching him. He can’t read, and I think has a little bit of a learning disability, but he is awesome. We had to teach him the word of wisdom, tithing, and the law of chastity probably 20 times each so he could remember, but he finally got it down. and was able to be baptized by his uncle. It was kind of sad to see that only about 4 members showed up at his baptism, but it was still a great experience. There is always something special about baptisms. The spirit is always present. Darlin was so excited to be baptized by his uncle, and was smiling super big before, during, and after his baptism. It was awesome to see how happy he was. Darlin is a great example of someone who doesn’t know everything about the gospel, but still has the faith to move forward and follow the example of Christ. Sometimes we don’t have all the answers to our questions, or maybe we have some doubts, but if we move forward with faith and act, we will always be blessed by our Heavenly Father. Learning in the Gospel is a process. We aren’t going to have all the doctrine and mysteries of God revealed to us in one day. We learn little by little, precept upon precept. We have to continually try to learn a little each day. My goal is always to know more today than I did yesterday. That is how we grow our testimonies and knowledge.
I’m so grateful for this opportunity that I have to be a missionary. Everyday I see miracles and can see myself growing. I have decided that I am going to use this mission to change who I am, and to become a completely different person than who I was when I left home. I want to overcome my weaknesses and make them strengths. I’m grateful for the atonement of Jesus Christ which makes that possible. Through the atonement we can continually become better each day.
I hope you are all doing great back home! I love and miss you all so much. Have a good week!! (Also, sorry for the lack of pictures. My companion accidentally deleted all of my pictures from my camera, lol)
Les amo,
Elder Bailey
No comments:
Post a Comment