Training Arc

We made it another week in Peru! I've been trying to grind hard in Spanish and in my studies so that I can feel more useful in the work. Sometimes I just feel like a bag of potatoes that my comp is carrying around, and that's something I'm waiting for to change. I dedicated these 2 years to change lives and not to take an 8-hour walk every day in Peru, so there are a lot of things I'm trying to improve. Anyways, let's get to the week!

Monday

It was honestly a pretty slow P-day. Usually, we'd play soccer, but we realized that nobody was going to come, so we canceled. We went to Plazavea, which is the store we shop at, and it also had food courts above. We got shopping done, then celebrated with ice cream. For lunch, we went to Ricardo's house, who’s a member we just reactivated, and he's pretty awesome. He made Chilean soup, and it was bussin. His mom is so sweet and gave us bread and told us stories as we were eating. After that, it was just naps and calling family before calling it a day. When we got back to proselyting, we just had a family home evening with some members, but it ended up just being them talking to us about their lives.

Tuesday

Pretty boring day. Still just trying to grind during my studies and do some helpful practices. We had district council; it wasn’t anything special (we didn’t even get ice cream after 😥). When we got to work, we actually had hermano Ricardo come with us for some lessons, which is awesome that he's willing to come out with us already after only coming to church again one time. As awesome as it was, I’m pretty sure he scared some of the people we were teaching haha. He's very outward and outgoing, with all of his mannerisms being like a cartoon character. One of the people we taught was just this shy 18-year-old who took a break from his online classes to talk with us, and he looked pretty uncomfortable. Shoot.

Wednesday

Another pretty bland day. All I remember is that the first thing we did in the morning was actually have a lesson with this bro named Bruno. He's dating this inactive member named Kinnerith. They're pretty busy, so we were happy we could finally meet with them, and the lesson went pretty well. He was asking us a lot of questions, which I take as a good sign, and then they fed us breakfast before we left. Well, when we left, their dog followed us about for a couple of blocks until Bruno came back to take her back haha.

Thursday

During weekly planning, we had this inactive member start bawling to us over the phone. I had no idea what she was saying, but by the reaction on Elder Baldeon's face, it was something crazy. Later, we went to visit her, and I still had no idea what was going on, but she just kept crying to us. Well, come to find out, her ex just barely returned and used to not be a great guy but is now trying to change his ways and wanted to talk to us in order to do so. We got informed of some crazy family drama, and then we taught a lesson on repentance. It's frustrating that I can't say a lot of things that make sense, but I hope what we said helped him. We also had hermano Ricardo come with us again, and we visited him and his mom again after we were done with the day. Pretty lit.

Friday

Good day. We picked up the son of our pensionista to come with us for lessons. His name is David, and he's planning on serving a mission. We have this lady we want to put on date named Araceli, but there are some obstacles we have to face first. We asked what things she's willing to sacrifice to be baptized, and she started tearing up. It's so hard because she has such a strong testimony and wants to be baptized, but we just need to help her get through what she needs. We also had our first lesson with this girl named Veronica, and I thought it went really well until we asked when we could come back, and she told us December 15! Bruh, I know you can squeeze 15 minutes within the next month. The mission do be like that though. We hiked up to the top of our area and had a lesson with this 16-year-old kid named Luis. He showed us this rest he recently had to take, and the lesson honestly just turned into us trying to remember how to do math. I forgot literally everything I've ever learned in the past, so I just showed off the digits of pi that I know haha.

Saturday

Pretty awesome day. We ended up finding some people that already seem like they have a lot of potential, and then we also just went hard on inviting people to church. One of the people we found was when we were looking for this lady named Eva. Well, we didn’t find Eva, but this other girl named Michelle answered. She said she didn't know Eva and that she's new here. We had a good lesson with her instead, and at the end, she confessed to us that this actually wasn’t her house, but she's living there because no one else is... alright 👍. Out of my field of business, but let me know if you want to be baptized. We also had a lesson planned with some people we had on date, but they canceled! That was pretty devastating. But overall, it was a good day.

Sunday

It was pretty frustrating because we did have some people come to church, but most just canceled on us last second. We actually had 2 people go to the wrong church, and we just texted them to go inside, but they ended up just leaving instead. Nooo! Pretty normal day of lessons and finding. It seems like lately we've been finding a lot of people that have more interest, which is exciting. When we finished the day, we had someone call us as we were already inside eating dinner. She was this old lady that we tried to call earlier in the day but didn't have time until now. We asked her a question to know her background on religion, and she basically described to us the entire Gospel of Jesus Christ. Lit. So it ended up being a really good phone lesson.

Spiritual Thought: Just go and read Ether 12. Most people just know of this chapter for one verse, but honestly, the entire chapter is my favorite of all the Book of Mormon. It's a very powerful testimony on faith.

Thanks for tuning in. Hope you all have a great week! Say your scriptures, read your prayers! Until next week...

Elder Mitchell IV

Photos:

My old car

Hermano Ricardo's room

El Cielo

Me, an Asian, and a zonked Peruana