Sunday, May 8, 2016

4/9 Templo Peruano

Hello all! 

Another great week is in the books. I seriously cannot believe how fast time goes by here... we are so busy I dont even have time to breathe sometimes, but I wouldnt have it any other way. So conference was AMAZING and I think everyone who participated felt the spirit in abundance. I really really really loved President Monson´s talks. It´s obvious that he isnt doing too well physically, but his shortened talks force him to get straight to the point, which I liked a lot. The messages from General Conference are never anything new, but we sure do need the reminders they give us. Really, all of conference was good. They talked a lot about eternal marriage... 

Anyways, we are going to get ANOTHER temple here in Peru! Everyone here is super excited, even though they still havent even started constuction on the temple in Arequipa. The work is really progressing here in Peru. 50 years ago there was one branch in all of Arequipa, and now there are 7 stakes and a temple announced. In all of Peru there are now 12 missions, whereas 50 years ago there was one mission for all of Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia. We went to talk to our bishop here in Umacollo and talked to him about conference and he started talking about having another temple here in Peru and started to cry, expressing how grateful he was for the gospel, he talked about how his grandparents joined the church here in Arequipa almost 50 years ago, and how lucky he was to have been born into the gospel and to live in a country where the blessings of the temple are so close (right now, he needs to get on a bus for 18 hours to get to Lima to go to the temple). The work is moving forward! 

So we talked with President Zobrist, becuase we had been working in 2 wards, but really felt like we didnt have enough to dedicate to both based on the very limited time we have to work in our area. So now, we are going to work only in Umacollo. I am really excited because it is a much stronger ward and we are going to have much more time to get to know the members and work with them. We now only have half the amount of people to teach though. Honestly, we have almost nobody to teach, but we have been working with the members this last week and hopefully this coming week we can go and contact some of these referals and get some more new investigators. Honestly, without member support missionary work would be awful. I hate knocking doors and street contacting, and have learned that it is literally the least effective way to do missionary work. We can have so much more success working with members. 

This last week was super busy, with interviews and leadership conference. I love doing the interviews, but they are so tiring it´s ridiculous. On Wednesday we had interviews from 10am to 6 pm and then started the leadership conference and at the end of the day I just collapsed into my bed was gone. We are actually leaving in a few hours with President to go to Camana do continue doing interviews until tomorrow night. Tomorrow is election day in Peru... they are going to choose a new president here. That means that is illegal to have public meetings tomorrow, or in other words, no church. So we are going to take advantage and do some more interviews. 

This next week should be pretty tranquila, we only have to do interviews on Tuesday, and then it should be a pretty normal week. President's family is coming in so he is going to be busy with them. Then in two weeks we are going to be gone the whole week. 

Well, I got all signed up for my classes at the Y! Should be a whopper of a semester. I think I might minor in Spanish as well. I looked at the requirements and its a piece of cake. I want to continue perfecting my Spanish as well, maybe see if I can work as a translater of something like that. I think it would be super cool.

Thank you for all your love and support! Have a great week everyone!

Elder Matheson

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