The highlight of the week was finding a 19 year-old kid named Juan. After knocking on his door and explaining that we had a message about Christ, he quickly let us in to listen. Anyone who has ever been a missionary or has done any kind of missionary work will tell you that it’s not very often that you find someone that understands the message of the restoration with perfect clarity in the first lesson. However, this was 100% the case with Juan. He listened carefully to everything we taught about Christs restored Church on the Earth, and by the end of the lesson he seemed to be deeply impacted by our message. When we asked him if he had any questions about what we had taught, he said no, but quietly thanked us and said, “Wow. To be honest I didn’t know about any of this…” We explained to him that there are lots of people that haven’t heard of it, and for that reason we have left our homes and families for two years to tell everyone all about it. It’s such a special opportunity to be a missionary and to be able to bring this great news to people for the first time. I have a good feeling about Juan and hope to see him progress. He seems to me like someone special.
On Wednesday we did some service by helping our pensionista, Hermana Jenny, hand-make a dessert called “Natillas de arroz,” which is basically a type of caramel that you eat with bread or cookies. It took quite a bit of time and hard work to hand-grind rice and sugar and then melt it all together in a pot over an open fire, but it was pretty fun to make. The caramel didn’t turn out too pretty, but Jenny seemed to be grateful for our help.
On Saturday we went on visits with our ward leaders to an area called “La Eantera”, a place where literally hundreds of inactive members live. We thought it would be good to help out the ward recover some strength considering the declining number of church attendance here. One of the visits we made was to an old farmer named “Juan el Bautista” (In english his name would literally be “John the Baptist”). Juan was baptized in the Tumbes river in the year 1984, and was one of the first members in all of Tumbes, Peru. He and his family were the pioneers in creating a small branch here in La Cruz, which would later be what is now our ward. It was really cool to hear his story and to learn a little more about the history of the church In this area. Hopefully we can help him and his big family of about 40-80 members out to church again.
Saturday night while contacting in a little park we got a call from our ward mission leader, Luis Tito, saying he had cornered a big rat in his house and needed some help to kill it. considering the rat problems we had in the past, we were happy to help him out. When we got over to his house he had the guy cornered under his fridge. We couldn’t get him to come out so we decided to heat up some water to throw under the fridge to force him out. It worked, and the rat shot out like a rocket from under the fridge and then for about 15 seconds we were all scrambling around like a bunch of fools trying to stomp on him. It was hilarious. Unfortunately the little bugger won the battle and got away buy hiding inside one of the couches. After shaking the couches for a good 10 minutes he wasn’t coming out. Finally we gave up and resulted to putting out some rat poison to finish the job. One of these days I’ll finally get ahold of one of those sneaky little guys…
Well thats it for this week. The work is moving along little by little here in La Cruz. But its by those little steps of progress we’re hoping to see miracles. We’ve just got to keep working hard and trusting in the Lord!
Avanza Su Verdad!
Elder Bailey
2 Nephi 25:26 "And we talk of Christ, we rejoice in Christ, we preach of Christ, we prophesy of Christ, and we write according to our prophecies, that our children may know to what source they may look for a remission of their sins.”
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