I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving! This week we had our own little Thanksgiving celebration with the Tumbes zone. Knowing it to be a special day for all the gringos in the mission, President Vega gave us permission to do a special Thanksgiving lunch. To take advantage of the day and to make the meal special, we went and got one of the only know gringos that live up here in Northern Peru. His name is Jeff, and he owns a small little hamburger place up in a small city called Zarumilla. Jeff’s from California, but his wife’s from Piura, Peru. They have lived in Cali for most of their married life but recently decided to come down here for some time to live near their grandkids, and open up a little restaurant that sells real American food. Anyway, we went and searched this guy out and asked him to come make us some genuine food from the States for Thanksgiving. He made us some AWESOME barbecue grilled chicken and REAL mashed potatoes and gravy, something I’ve not tasted in almost a year and a half. He then grilled us up some real American burgers that were actual real meat! It was all so good and really made me miss the food from home. It was nice also to finally have a meal without rice. It wasn’t a bad thanksgiving at all even though I’m happy I’ll be with the fam for the next one! (Also, super weird to see and talk with an American dude that’s not a missionary, lol.)
This week we hit the streets as usual to find some new peeps. We were able to find a few really cool people but also saw a lot of funny excuses as to why people couldn’t listen to us. The excuse that we’re hearing a lot lately is that there is “no possible way" that they can listen to the word of God because they are “currently working 14 hours a day, during all 7 days of the week”. We literally talked to one lady that told us that her husband gets up and gets to work by 6am and leaves work at 10pm, and that he works that schedule ALL seven days of the week. Now I found it a little hard to believe that it’s humanly possible to work that much, but if it’s true that guy must be superman. But if there’s one thing I really admire about the Peruvian people, it’s their ability to make up creative and funny excuses to get us off their porch. At the beginning of my mission it used to make me pretty mad to know they were lying to us, but now I’ve learned to love it and just laugh at it. Gotta love it.
One of the cool people we were able to work with this week was our man Jefferson. I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned him before, but Jefferson is a 17 year-old kid that we found a few weeks ago who is such a stud. The first time we knocked on his door he let us in right away, sat us down, and then went to grab his copy of the Book of Mormon as if he was already expecting us to visit him. He said the missionaries had visited him before, but for some reason stopped passing by his house. Jefferson has been super receptive to what we have been teaching him and is just what you call a good kid. He really has desires to follow Christ and to do what’s right. On Sunday we were able to take him to church with us and he seemed to really like it. Right now Jefferson has a goal to be baptized for the 8th of December. Let’s just hope his parents give him permission! It’s really amazing how the Lord just seems to put these prepared people into our hands when we are doing what we should.
On Friday I was able to interview one of our District Leader’s investigator’s for baptism. I interviewed an older guy named Leo, and it was so cool to hear his story and to see the change in his eyes and the excitement he has to follow the Savior and be baptized in his name. While interviewing Leo, the words of King Benjamin (best name in the BoM) that I had read just a few days ago came into my mind:
“And now, because of the covenant which ye have made ye shall be called the children of Christ, his sons, and his daughters; for behold, this day he hath spiritually begotten you; for ye shall say that your hearts are changed through faith on his name; therefore, ye are born of him and have become his sons and his daughters.” (Mosiah 5:7)
Probably the best thing about serving a mission is seeing this type of “change” in the hearts of so many people, including my own. I just love how Christ and His gospel grants us the power to change, and become new people.
During this week we also made quite a few visits to find some inactive members, just to help out our ward a little. Now to say it straight-up, our ward is extremely weak right now. Out of the near 600 members that we have on our ward directory, only about 50 of them are attending church right now. It’s honestly super sad. It seems like just about everyday we find in the street or knock on the door of someone who says, “Hey I used to belong to your church!” And when we ask them why they “used to" be a part of the church, that just shrug their shoulders and say, “Hmmm. I don’t know”. I just really don’t get why people fall away. I guess Satan is pretty good at doing his job here. We’re going to do everything we can to bring back some of the members to make the ward how it used to be. There’s rumors of our ward combining with another stronger ward here in Tumbes, and our goal is to not let that happen. We just gotta keep working.
To finish, I just want to point out two separate people that we found this week who had two very different ways of thinking. The first, was a 19 year-old girl who was living with her boyfriend. She seemed to be living the “eat, drink, and be merry” type of lifestyle, doing really whatever she wanted. As we started to ask her some questions, she told us that she was Catholic, but it was obvious that she didn’t really believe in her religion or wasn’t attending any of her church meetings. I then asked her if she felt like she was following Christ in her life, and then she smiled condescendingly, and gave us quite the memorable response: “Oh, I follow Christ. But in MY way.” Her ignorant response sparked the question in my own mind: How many of us are proclaiming to follow the Savior in our lives but doing it our way, and not His? I feel like so many times we pick and choose which commandments and guidelines we want to follow instead of submitting our will to His, and doing what He wants for us. Now I want to compare the first example of believe with another individual that we found: An older man named Marcelino. As we knocked on his door, he quickly let us in and sat us down to hear our message. As we taught him about the prophet Joseph Smith and the Restoration, Marcelino listened quietly and intently to what we had to share with him. At the end of the lesson, we invited Marcelino to ponder and pray about what we had shared with him, to know if it was true. Now, despite the fact that he belonged to another religion with completely different beliefs from what we had talked about, Marcelino gave us a response that is a true example of meekness and humility. He said, “Brothers, even though I have my own church and my beliefs, I will pray to see if this is what God wants for me.” It was amazing to me to see the stark contrast in Marcelino’s response from that of the 19 year-old girl. He was completely willing to do whatever the Lord wanted for him even if it wasn’t what he wanted or what he was comfortable with. Our goal should be to be willing to accept the Lord’s will for us in whatever it may be, whenever it may be. If we do that, we will show the Lord that we are humble and meek enough for him to trust us, and bless us with miracles.
I love doing the Lord’s work! Los amo.
Avanza Su Verdad!
Elder Bailey
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