Well to give a little follow-up info on the hermanas that left for Piura due to medical issues, it looks like they are going to be staying down there for good. Hermana Ruano finally left the hospital and is doing better, but they are going to have her and her companion, Hermana Coca, stay down in the area in the mission closest to the hospital in case of any more problems. The good news is after almost 3 weeks with a hole in the zone we finally got some reinforcements! This week Hermana Valencia and Hermana Wilkey packed up their bags and took the trip up here to take over the old Hermana’s area. Upon arriving they were super excited to be here in Tumbes and had a great attitude about getting the emergency transfer and having to leave their old area, including all their investigators. We’ll miss the old hermanas but we are pumped to finally have a full zone again in a time that we desperately need it.
This week was multi-zone conference and interview week for la Zone Tumbes! On Tuesday we all had our interviews with President Vega, and us zone leaders revised each companionship’s area book. Everything went well, but we got done with everything super late and missed our lunch, so President offered to take us and the AP’s out to lunch. We hit up a place called “Norley’s” (a Peruvian classic) and Pres let us get whatever we wanted. It was super fun to sit and chat with President a little in a less formal setting and get to know him a little more. (Also fun to not have to pay for your meal.)
On Tuesday night me and Elder Thompson went with President Vega to have a meeting with one of the counselors in the Stake Presidency here in Tumbes. We talked a lot about the trends in the numbers of new investigators, church attendance, and baptisms in the past few months and also about our goals for the future. Towards the end, it got a little uncomfortable because it was super obvious that the stake has made little to no progress on the goals that they set in their last meeting together with Pres. Vega, and that us as missionaries haven’t really had a ton of support from them. You could say that President did a little constructive “chastening” on this poor stake counselor, haha. Our meeting pretty much ended when he admitted that they hadn’t met together as a stake presidency in over 5 months. Imagine that. He then promised us that they would be better in supporting the missionary work from now on. As uncomfortable as it was, I think that meeting is what we needed to finally get a little more help from the members.
Wednesday was the multi-zone conference! I was really nervous leading up to the conference because we were in charge of getting almost everything prepared like cleaning the church, setting up tables and chairs, getting the program ready, and teaching a class to our zone. I agreed to conduct the meeting which I was also a little nervous about. Luckily everything went well, and it was a super awesome multi-zone. President talked to us about the Book of Mormon and its role in our conversion. As much as I love multi-zone conferences, I’m glad we made it through this one. A little bit of the stress is gone now, haha.
Despite all the time it took getting ready for interviews and the multi-zone, we had a GREAT week of progress in our area. We were able to find a lot of cool new people who look like they really have some promise. We taught a guy named Francisco and his wife Erica, who have 3 small kids and really loved our message. We taught them about following Christ and showed them how he was baptized. They all agreed that their baptism in the Catholic church wasn’t the same, and that to truly follow Jesus they needed to be baptized in the way that he did. Francisco, Erica, and their oldest son Frank (age 8) all accepted dates for December 1st. I felt the spirit super strongly in that lesson and feel really good about them. The only problem is they aren’t actually married (like most people here) so we’re going to work with them on that.
Also, this Saturday was Olivia’s baptism! We planned to start at 4:30 in the afternoon, and thought we’d start on time if we told everyone that it started at 3:30, but we were wrong again, haha. We started at about 5, but the important thing is that Olivia was finally baptized! As I say every time, it doesn’t matter who gets baptized or when, there is always such a special spirit present. This was once again true as we saw Olivia be baptized by her son, Josue. It was SO awesome. Olivia is really a special convert for me, and I will never forget the amazing change that I was able to see in her. I can honestly say that she has been “born again”. We are now working with her to prepare to be sealed as a family in a year.
As some of you may have heard, President Nelson is visiting countries in South America right now. On Saturday he was here in Peru! In the afternoon we all went to the stake center to see two special broadcasts from him: one specifically to the missionaries, and the other to all the members in Peru. The first broadcast to us missionaries was super cool. President Nelson got up and told us that we are completing prophecy by doing the work here in this part of the world by taking the fulness of the gospel as Gentiles to the Jews, or the remnants of the Lamanites. (3 Nephi 16:4-5) He also told us that as missionaries obviously we are what the Savior called “fishers of men”, and that we (the missionaries serving here in South America) are where the fish are, haha. It was so cool to hear a message from the living prophet directed specifically to us. After the broadcast, we had the second one that was directed to all members in Peru. After all the speakers had gotten up before him with all their respective translators, President Nelson got up with his translator to give his closing remarks. After greeting the crowd for a minute or two, President Nelson did something I will never forget. After pausing for a minute he looked up into the big crowd in Lima and said: “ I now wish to speak to you in a language that is not mine.” He then told his translator to go sit down and he gave his entire talk in Spanish!! It was honestly unbelievable and indescribable the spirit that you could feel as he gave that message. I can truly say that I received another witness that he is a prophet of God. I’m sure that has to be the first time in this dispensation that a prophet has delivered a message to such a large crowd in a different tongue. So cool.
Well, that’s all for this week folks. I wanna give my sister Erin a quick shout out for making it to and playing in the state championship for LHS soccer as a freshman! You’re a stud. Also want to wish her a feliz cumpleaños this Saturday. Love you, Erin :)
(And yes, that really is Angelina Jolie in my pictures. Tried to give her a Book of Mormon but there was just too many people…)
Avanza Su Verdad!
Elder Bailey
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