Transfer Week

Well, this is the last week of yet another transfer. I swear this one just started, where did the time go? Elder Nelson has been here for a while (6 months) and President Zobrist told me this week during an interview that I would be getting a new companion. I guess we will see what happens this week! Another interesting tidbit of info is that there are not a whole lot of new missionaries coming to this mission right now, and because of that, President will have to close 20 areas over the next 3 transfers. He said most of the wards and brances that have 4 missionaries will only have 2 now, so we need to get really really good at working with the members to be able to mantain the same amount of baptisms and lessons that we are having right now, just with less missionaries. We have 6 missionaries in our branch, and I cant help but think that our area will be closed here in the coming transfers. I guess we will see what happens. 

So I ran into our Ward Missionary Leader from Chachani today, and he was telling me all about what is going on back home. Every single one of my converts there (except for one) is active and has callings. One of the less active young men we helped reactivate recently received his mission call and will leave in July, and the last baptism we had before I was transfered, Janet, is now attending mission prep classes with plans to leave on a mission when she can. Hearing that really helped me to solidify my testimony of the work here. I was thinking about all the doors that were slammed in my face, all the people who didnt accept the gospel, all the disappointment-- then I thought about all these people in the gospel now because of that sacrifice and it was all sooooooo worth it. 

The guy who said he wanted to get baptized last week, Jose Flores, is going to get baptized this week, the week after that Alex and Claudia will finally get married and baptized, and the week after we have another guy named Jose Abanto, an 60 year old guy who suffered a construction accident and now  cant walk without crutches, will be baptized with this 19-year-old single mother named Lizbet. That would be 5 baptisms over 3 weeks, which would be awesome! Just have to follow up a bunch with these people!

Hope everyone has a great week!

Elder Matheson

Mothers Day

Well, not much to say today. Said most of it last night talking to you all. Elder Nelson and I are working hard and working hard and working hard. The investigators dont really want to progress, but hey, we are going to continue working and hope that we see some results. We had a zone conference this week that was really good too. One of the themes was, "start with the end in mind." we need to teach with end in mind. the end is baptism and temples. if we teach like that, if we teach with the end in mind, the people we teach will feel the power of what we do. 

Hope everyone has a great week!

Elder Matheson

Peruvian b-day food fight

Hitchhiking - Round 2

Hey all, this was a pretty good week for Elder Nelson and I, though I am still getting used to being the District Leader and all the stuff I have to do. I gave my first district class this week, and i think it went really well. I talked about the purpose of missionary work and what the driving force behind it should be. I used the story of the 3 18-year old pioneers who carried the people across the frozen river to explain the Atonement and what Christ did for us, then discussed what Christ's motivating force to accomplish the Atonement was. Obviously, it was love. In Corinthians 13, we learn that if we dont have charity, no amount of good works we ever do will ever bring us personal benefit. It is the same in missionary work, and in any calling we have in the church. If we surrnender our will, desires, and dreams over to the Lord, it is then and only then that we will gain anything personally. I will send home some of the talks I used to prepare it. 

So, we are still working hard to be able to get the paperwork ready for the marriages. Their marriage is set for 2 weeks from last friday, so we are really working against the clock here. It will happen! We have faith! And if doesnt happen in that day, it will happen the next week. The most important is that they get married and baptized. 

So as the title suggests, we had to do some more hitch-hiking. We ended up getting kind of lost walking to a hospital to visit one of our investigators whos baby is sick, and what we thought would be a 20 minute walk turned into a 90 minute walk, but we found the hospital!! And by the way, the security was a complete joke. We just walked in, asked where they were, and were allowed to go wherever we wanted to in the hospital haha. We came out of the hospital and there werent any busses, so we flagged down this semi truck and they guy took us back into town. We naturally contacted the guy and it turns out he is super cool and we have an appointment to teach him later this week haha. 

Love you all, talk to you sunday!

Elder Matheson

Late changes, 4/27

Well i will start with the big news of the week! i showed up to district meeting on tuesday, and the zone leaders called me aside and said, we just got off the phone with President, you are the new district leader. So, I am now the district leader. there are 10 missionaries in my district, and my new calling is kind of stressful sometimes. but, it has been a great learning experience so far, since I think other than my companion i am the misisonary with the least amount of time in my district, and now i am expected to lead and train them. part of being the district leader is I have to give a 2 hour class every tuesday to the missionaries in my district. 

our investigators are progressing super well right now. we should be having 5 baptisms and 2 weddings in the coming month and the zone is super ready to work hard for this coming transfer. I dont really have a lot to say this week, other than the district leader thing, it has been a pretty normal week. i read an article from Tad R Callister that was talking about integrity. according to him, integrity is the foundation for all other Christlike attributes that we can develope. I started thinking about that a while, and it so true. And as leaders, we have to have integrity and develope Christlike attributes to be able to what we need to do.

Sorry this is a crappy letter, dont really have much to say today. And the internet cafe we are using today is super sketchy and the other missionaries here told us not to put our USBs in the computeres for any reason, so there will be no pictures today :(

Love,

Elder matheson

Another change down, 4/20

Well, another change down, and I am starting to lose track of the weeks. Elder Nelson and I will continue to work hard and be obedient and I know that the blessings will follow. Our investigators are progressing well, and we should have 4 more baptisms here in the following weeks. Unfortunately, Arturo and Feliza have kind of fallen off the deep end. Satan is working so hard with them, and they have kind of given in. She has a lot of land, and in peru, they have to go to these meetings every Sunday morning to be able to keep them. If they dont go, its a huge fine. They have no money, so they cant pay the fine, and she feels like she cant sell them because they belong to her children. They havent gone to church lately, and are never at home so we cant visit them. 

Adolfo and Maria are progressing so well, and I am super excited for them. They understand everything we teach and already have such a strong testimony. They just need to get married now haha. 

We had a cool experience yesterday. Elder Nelson and I were making a cake in the pension and in the middle of making the cake I had this impression that we needed to leave to go and look for someone. I didnt know who or why i felt like we should leave, and we were in the middle of making the batter, so I told myself, we´ll finish the cake and go after. The feeling didnt go away, so I told my comp, hey we need to leave. He didnt fight it, so we put a bag over our cake stuff and left, not really knowing what we were supposed to do. We decided to start with this lady we have been teaching. She was walking out the door when we got there and didnt have time, so made an appointment to come back later. I still felt like we needed to do something, and I remembered that I was on splits with our district leader, Elder Chavez, and that we had contacted someone that lives close. We went to her house and knocked on the door, convinced her to let us in for 15 minutes. 15 minutes turned into an hour, and she is awesome. We have another appointment later this week, and we both felt good for listening to the spirit!

Have a good week!

Elder Matheson

Derek the Potato Farmer

This was a pretty solid week. We continue to see challenges in the area, but i am working harder than I ever have before in the mission. The frustrating thing is, we just arent seeing the results of our labors. During GC, Elder Oaks was talking about the parable of the sower, and in this moment of frustration, i realized that the soil is not the seed's fault. We can work hard, be perfectly obedient, and not convert anyone. Just like Mormon and Moroni, prophets of God, could not save a nation that did not want to be saved. Yet, they were blessed for their faithfulness to the Lord, as will we as we continue to toil in the Lords vineyard. In the end, how we serve is the most important. 

General conference was amazing this year, and i really felt the focus was on the family. Even though I cant apply what they taught right now to my real family, my family now is my companion and the other missionaries here. It really was a good conference, and we were able to find a laptop to watch it in English. Unfortunately, Peruvian internet is terrible and so i was unable to see the last half of Elder Holland's talk, though i imagine it was quite good. Oh, and the Wi-Fi password in Peru is still Pioneer47 haha. 

So as the title says, i briefly became a potato farmer. the sister missionaries here in Pedregal have an investigator that is a potato farmer and needed help with the potato harvest, so we threw on our work pants and cowboy hats and started pulling potatos out of the ground. Not a bad service project, and we were rewarded with a sack of potatos and some Coke. 

Funny Spanish mess-up of the week: during a lesson i was teaching about repentance and tried to tell the investigator that we need to "pedir perdon" or ask for forgiveness. what i said on accident is "pedir pedon" which means to ask for a big fart. FART FOR FREEDOM.

Love,

Elder Matheson

Potato Farming

Peruvian birthday tradition of egging the birthday boy

Part of my area called Ciudad Perdida, or The Lost City

The rain is following me, 3/30/15

So, like the title says, the rain has followed me from Arequipa and drenched us. The locals have been saying that they have never seen it rain this hard in Pedregal. It rained so hard on Tuesday that we werent allowed to leave our appartment. And the rain actually caused a lot of really serious damage, so most of this week was spent literally putting peoples houses back together, so not much teaching of the Gospel was done this week. The very little time we had to work in our area this week was spent trying to get our baptisms to happen this week. The 3 kids that got baptized are the  children of a less active family that we have been working with. The mom is an RM, but was inactive. Her husband got baptized without a testimony to marry her and is now very very Catholic and doesnt listen to us. But the mom is coming back to church and wanted her kids to be baptized, so we were happy to oblidge. We just had to work really hard with the parents this week to get permission from their dad for them to get baptize. All of the leaders of the branch here, as well as all of the other missionaries in Pedregal prayed super hard for the dad, and Friday night we finally got his permission and we had 3 baptisms! It was actually Elder Nelson´s first baptisms, and he was so happy because that family was one he had been working with for the last 4 months.

So Arturo and Feliza are truly golden.. Arturo is platinum or something though. We went this week to visit them and Arturo told us, "ever since you gave me that Book of Mormon i have been reading it, and i just love it. so i went and talked to all of my neighbors and knocked on all of the doors on my block to tell them about it." ummmmm, what?! And he just enrolled in institute classes. And when we went yesterday to visit him again, we found him in the street and started walking with him back to his house and stopped this lady and started talking to her about the Book of Mormon. We started teaching in his house, and got up and left in the middle of the lesson and came back with a friend. This kid is amazing haha. 

So I got a package from the Candy Mountain Teachers Quorum this week-- awesome. The video included really made my week, especially the full length feature film from Tyler Parker. Classic. It was also nice to see Christian and see that he really hasnt changed at all. He was asked to give some important inspiring words, and he told me to remember Martin Luther King. So there we go.

Hope everyone had a great week, mine was certainly interesting!

Love,

Elder Matheson