Week 14

Hey everyone! Kind of an interesting week here in Chachani. Things are FINALLY starting to pick up with the investigators here. We now have 10 progressing investigators, and 7 with a baptism date, and 6 of those are for the 29th. Of those 6, we think we can dunk 4 of them! A little run down on our investigators, Deyvis is one of our new investigators and he is a total stud. Before our first lesson with him we asked if he had questions for us and he said, yeah, what do I have to do to be baptized and go on a misison? Legit. We have a new investigator that the Hermanas were teaching but it turns out he lives in our area so they gave him to us and hes super ready to be baptized too. A little surprise, Jenny, one of our old investigators who moved away a few weeks ago showed up at church yesterday and told us she wants to be baptized and that she's moving back to our ward. The Lord really is putting people in our path to teach and baptize. 

I got to go on splits again with Elder Larsen this week, and we killed it. Placed 3 baptism dates and taught like 8 lessons. The Spanish wasnt half bad for us either. I had an interesting experience last night, we went to teach this reference from the ward and we started teaching and it was pretty obvious that this chick just wanted to Bible bash, and my companion and she were just arguing and it was kind of sad. I started to bear my testimony of how I knew Joseph Smith was a prophet and what not and she just starting laughing at me and Elder Perez, and this feeling of peace just came over me, like yeah, shes mocking us right now, but I know whats right and eventually she will too. What I'm doing is the right thing, and what other people think doesnt matter!

Well thats my week this week, hope everyone has a good one!

Much love,

Elder Matheson

Building a wall....service project

Week 13

Hey everyone! So the big news for this week was we had our first baptism!!! Nelson finally decided to get dunked. His mom never showed up, and told him that she wouldnt be able to come until January, but we convinced him the best gift he could give his mom would be to be a worthy priesthood holder and pass her the sacrament when she comes. He called his mom right then and said he was going to get baptized. And it was awesome! Feels good to have that milestone under my belt. Finally feel like a real missionary haha. 

So this Tuesday, we had more comp drama. It was worse than last monday too. I dont know exactly what happened, but my comp just got super.. weird during our district meeting, and when we were putting our weekly goals, he wouldnt talk and made me do everything. We talked to the zone leaders afterwords, and it ended with him yelling at the zone leaders, telling me he wanted a new companion, and then requesting a transfer from President Zobrist. So we went to the stake center where President was, he talked to both of us, and decided it would be best if we had an emergency transfer. I told Pres that i wanted to work things out, but after talking with everyone, he said he felt a transfer was necessary and that he would call us that night to let us know what was going to happen. About an hour before he was going to call, I talked with Elder Perez and the two of us decided to stick things out and call president. He told us that we could if we wanted too, and so Elder Perez and I are still comps! And our relationship is better than ever right now. We still have some stuff to work out, and he even told me all of our problems have been his fault and he needs to work on that. But things are going well! Still not super obedient, but we work hard when we work.

I gave a talk yesterday in sacrament meeting, and i almost felt fluent in Spanish. No doubt the gift of tongues kicked in haha. We also had that service project (see pictures) to clean out the church "parking lot." It's basically a bunch of dirt that people throw garbage in. We found all sorts of interesting things in these Peruvian garbage piles, like half decayed dogs, fully decayed dogs, dog bones, and recently deceased dogs. Completely normal, dont worry, this is just the first picture i've sent of the dead dogs here. 

Anyways, thats my week here, hope everyone had a great week too. Love you all, keep it up with the letters!

Love,

Elder Matheson

Elder Matheson - aka Elder Wreck it Ralph

ONE TRANSFER DOWN. My goodness the time flies here in the mission field. Even though I'm not to the point in the mission when times flies haha. Well, this was probably the weirdest week I've had as a missionary. It started off this P-Day with us going to the institute building and playing ping pong and soccer and what not, which I know sounds awesome but it turned out to be the worst day I've had here. My comp and his ex-comp, who are both super disobedient at times, decided to leave writing time an hour early to eat Papa Johns with a female member in the area. I knew they were going together, they've done it before with permission, but i had no idea they didn't get permission this time. Naturally, when the zone leaders found out after asking me where my comp was, they had to deal with the problem. My comp was not happy. I went and tried to talk to him, saying that I was trying to be a tattle tale or anything, but that he cant keep doing things that are against the rules that I dont know about. He handed me the keys, tolded me he was never talking to me again, and then told me I was going to have to do everything from here on out. Later in the day he told me hated me, and re-emphasized that he was never talking to me again. Long story short, president was involved, we had a whole intervention and everything. The day ended with him telling me he was angry with the zone leaders, not me, and that he was sorry and vowed to be perfectly obedient for the rest of his mission. I was so happy! And so was he for the next few days, but then friday he slept in until 11 so there's that. He's going to be my companion for the next 6 weeks too. Pray for us! 

So both of our baptisms fell through this week. Miriam doesnt want to get baptized because she doesnt have a lot of friends in the ward, but she also doesnt go to church so thats great haha. And Nelson's mom still hasnt come but promised to come friday so hopefully we'll finally get our baptism this week. It's been hard working in this area, but maybe the Lord is trying to show us that there are other ways to have success here in the mission. Maybe we need to work more with the ward or something, because these last few weeks have been a struggle. We contacted over 50 people this week and only have one or two people who want to meet with us. Frustrating, but I'm glad I'm getting all this yucky stuff out of the way at the start of my mission haha.

Yesterday we got a call to go help someone with a service project, and we thought we'd be doing something pretty mundane because it was a Sunday. WRONG. we showed up and they handed us a sledge hammer and chisel and we got to work cutting stone. We literally destroyed a house yesterday. I felt like Wreck it Ralph haha. Also, I read "the consecrated missionary" by Tad R Callister this week. Amazing, puts a whole new perspective on missionary work. 

As far as weird things I've eaten, the only thing is chuno, which is rotten potatoes. Not as bad as everyone says, put enough salt on them and they're not half bad. The mail strike has ended, and i'm hoping my stuff gets here soon! A typical PDay here goes something like this: we write from 10-12, eat lunch, and then usually do something as a zone. We havent done the same thing twice either. And the bunkbed is holding firm! 

Love you all, thanks for the letters and support. 

Elder Matheson