Hello everyone,
Glad to hear everything is well at home. I know you'll be a great RS president mom! And yes, we felt the earthquake! It was actually pretty funny, I was studying on the floor of our distict room and kind of swinging my feet around and one of the Hermanas was like, "wow, it feels kind of like an earthquake!" So i stopped swinging my feet and sure enough the earth was actually quaking! This week has been full of so much new stuff, i'll try to get it all in. My email last week took like 45 minutes to write and i have like 25 emails this week so i'll try to get back to everyone! Ok so probably the coolest thing this week was proselyting. every two weeks they send everyone out into the field to be real missionaries for a few hours, teaching less active members in various stakes and contacting people on the steet. they have 4 buses that you can get assigned to and i got assigned to bus D, which meant going to the absolute ghetto of the ghetto. It was like the favelas in brazil but less colorful. theres literally crap everywhere and the people basically live in scrap metal houses. And you know what? it was awesome. we were climbing up and down mountains, talking to people the best we could, and enjoying our libredad from the walls of the CCM. My companion i was assigned to was actually pretty much fluent in spanish so it was nice to be able to double check that what i thought the people were saying was actually what they were saying. probably the coolest thing about the whole experience was just how nice and happy the people are. they literally have nothing, yet they're happy, humble, and love to hear any message about God and JesusChrist. Literally everyone will listen to you. They understand what really brings happiness. when we ask what is most important in their lives, every single answer was my family and god. we could all learn a little from them.
they switched my companion for teaching the fake investigators because Elder endicott is really stuggling with the language and i tend to dominate the lesson because i know more spanish. so my new teaching companion is elder flickinger and he and i have a pretty similar language level and we teach together really well. every time we teach we feel the spirit and know exactly what we need to say. its weird because they're literally just our teachers but if you take it seriously, it feels real and the promptings are real too. powerful stuff.
our district has gotten really into ping pong recently. they have tables to play on so we spend our physical activity time to work on our pong skills. the mtc president occasionaly comes out and challenges people to play, and i dont think he's lost a game yet. he skunked the best player in our district. its just kind of funny because hes this little old columbian man whos really strict and mean and can make you afraid for your life if he looks at you too long. i dont know if all columbians are like that but im sure travis would know haha.
so today was p-day and we got to go the temple this morning in lima, which was really awesome. the temple is gorgeous here, even though its actually really small. then they actually set us free in the city to go shopping and what not, so i picked up this sweet jersey for like 15 soles, which is basically 5 bucks. word on the street is that the trujillo temple is going to be dedicated in the next few weeks and that elders bednar, ballard, and andersen will be at the ccm while im still here, which would be absoluteley amazing. we actually had a general authority speak at our sacrament meeting this last week and he talked about how missionaries are similar to jesus chirst. he mentioned that as christ was suffering in gesthsemane that we must have been up in heaven, pleading with him to keep going, to hold on a little longer, so that we could be saved, and how god sent him an angel to strengthen him. then he mentioned that as we as missionaries go out tracting, to remember that there are more prayers being offered on our behald on the other side of the veil than on this side. people pleading with us to go on a little longer, to hold on for a little more, just so we can teach their posterity, so that their temple work could be done and they could be saved. it was a really interesting take that i had never thought of before.
so theres this kid named Elder Randall who comes into our room and plays on our nerf hoop every night while we try to write in our journals and have quiet time. so to change that, i talked to my latino friends and raised an army of about 40 Lamanites to not so peacefully remove him from our room. we had everything planned out and i even wrote an invigorating braveheart-like speech to pump them up, but presidente gonzales came walking through the hall and the next day the latinos left for their missions so my lamanite army attack will have to be implimented with the new wave of latinos coming through. they were really pumped to be in an army and kept yelling "lamanitas, lamanitas!" so now i understand why it was so easy for the lamanites to raise an army of 50000 to attack the nephites.
anyways, my time is running short, but know that i love you all and enjoy hearing from you! please keep writing, i look forward to reading them all week! the church is true and the book is blue!
love,
Elder matheson
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