6 months!!! I might need a life jacket!!!

First of all, happy 6 months to me! Cant believe that it has already been that long in the mission. I know I have a lot of time left, but it feels nice to know that I am not super super new anymore. But, as good as it feels to have 6 months under my belt, I looked at this brand new hermana missionary in my zone who has been away from her house for like 3 weeks, and realized that she would still go home before I do. And that was a depressing thought. Elder Larsen and I celebrated the 6 month mark just like all good missionaries should, by burning some ties that Elder Perez left. It was a good day!

Elder Ramirez and I continue to work hard. This transfer is half over, and I'm scrambling to try and get these people that we're working with baptized just in case I leave in 3 weeks. I'm just trying to work hard and not think about transfers! Because I know that the more I want to leave, the longer I will stay, that's just the way things work haha.

So we had stake conference this week, and an Area Seventy came to visit, and he gave some great talks in the Priesthood meeting and also the general session. The church is so weak here. We have 3000 members in the stake, and 700 are active. In our ward, there are 800 members on the records, but only about 150-200 come to church. Out of the people who are baptized, only 15-20% will stay active. It's depressing, but everyone has there own agency and we have to let them choose. 

It has been raining raining raining. Yesterday there was so much rain that a river was formed in the street. Some idiot in a taxi thought he could drive through and he and his car were swept off a cliff. My shoes are also wet and have been for like a week, and that is not so fun. 

Sorry, no crazy food stories this week. Just a lot of rice and a lot of chicken. Normal stuff. Not really a week of highs or lows either. Just a week of working haha. I got my package this week! Awesome, loved it. We had some extra time after lunch a few days ago, so I built my lego cat (finally had time), munched on some animal crackers, and played with my coloring books. Love you all, hope you all have a great week! 

Elder Matheson

Semana de Milagros

Well well well well what a week this was! We had our zone conference and our zone leaders promised us that if we devoted every ounce of energy to our work this week that we would see miracles. And oh, did we see miracles this week. Let me just start by saying that last week, our next possible baptism was for the 21st of February. We had 2 baptisms this weekend. We baptized our pensionistas niece, who has had quite a rough life up to this point. She is 20, a single mother, and is struggling financially. She had heard from the misisonaries before but it never really interested her. Most of her family are members of the Church, and this week, we got a call saying that she watned to hear from the missionaries again. We talked to her Tuesday, and she told us that she wants to get baptized as soon as possible, and that her motivation was for her 8 month old son and the fact that her cousin had returned from a mission not too long ago. She was baptized Saturday. Then the bigger miracle happened. We got a call from Rircardo, who we had lost contact with for more than a month, and he showed up at Diana's baptism. After, he told us that he received an answer to his prayers that the church is true and that he needs to go on a mission, and didnt want to wait any longer. So at 7 saturday night, we wisked him away to the zone leaders to get a baptismal interview and he was baptized early Sunday morning. Pretty awesome weekend for a missionary haha. 

Some other big events of the week, Rodolfo cut his hair! After rocking a pony tail for most of his life, he showed up at church with a solid missionary hair cut. He and Guido will be receiving the Mel priesthood this week and I guess he decided it was time to get a new haircut haha. Things continue to go well, and I will continue to work hard here in Chachani until I get shipped out of here. Although there was a missionary who was in this area for ONE YEAR in his mission, so I could be here a while haha. 

Love you all, take care!

Elder Matheson

I ate what this week?!

Well, February is here already! It seems like just yesterday I was calling home, but that was over a month ago. Time is rolling along, but I still have a lot of time left, which at first made me sad, but now i'm just grateful for the time I have to serve the Lord here in Peru. I had some doubts about staying here because the area was starting to get really slow, but this week we found a bunch of new people to teach, old investigators that werent progressing have started to progress again, and the Lord has humbled me and is showing me who is really in charge here. 

So, I ate something kind of interesting this week. My pension told me it was "mata-gringo" which means gringo killer. She says she serves it from time to time, and everytime she serves it to the gringo missionaries they get super sick for like 3 days or so. But she said, "you need to try it now so that you know if it makes you sick or not." Bring it on. Basically what it is is boiled cow stomach and potatoes served over rice. I finished the whole bowl of the nasty crap. It was like cow stomach gum, with a lovely grassy after taste. It has been 3 days and I feel great! (thank you Risenmay genes). But then the next day she served us papa rellena, which is a potato stuffed with meat and cheese, so all was well. 

So, I've been reading the New Testament this week. I dont know it that well, and with so many Catholic investigatos, it would be nice to be able to teach more with the Bible. It is so good! Literally every verse is just filled with doctrine. Tad R Callister and the Sunday school presidency recently said that if we study the New Testament this year, we will become more like Our Saviour. As someone who is trying to represent Him, that's not a bad idea right?

Love you all, have a great week!

Elder Matheson

Cold and Rainy this week in Arequipa

Transfers

Hello everyone! 

Transfer week! Elder Ramirez and I are staying put here! That means 6 more weeks here in Chachani, and I have some mixed feeling about it. I'm happy to be able to spend 6 more weeks here in this ward where I have lots of friends and converts, but I've been here for long enough that a change wouldnt be unwelcome either haha. Obviously the Lord still has things for me to do here in this area, so I'm going to work my hardest to do what He wants me to do here. 

This week was.. kind of depressing haha. We had a sure baptism that fell through and we havent been able to get in contact with her at all. Really depressing but that happens sometimes. At the start of the week, we had like 10 investigators progressing, and now we have 3. We only have 1 with a baptism date, and it was someone we contacted and placed a baptism date in the street, so we'll see how that goes. We're contacting everyone we see, but I guess we're preaching to a bunch of Amalakites because they dont want anything to do with us haha. One guy told us that the only way he would ever believe in God is if He personally came to him to tell him. Then he slammed the door in our face. The only bright spot was that we found one new family to teach. And they are awesome. We'll let you guys know how it goes this week with them, but they seem golden right now. 

So I thought my Spanish was coming along quite nicely until my pension asked me how to play baseball. I found out pretty quickly that my gospel Spanish doesnt cover how to explain baseball. I think I might have just confused them more. 

Haha so that was my week, keep praying for me cuz I'm praying for you!

Love always,

Elder Matheson

Last week of transfers

Hey everyone! This was kind of a roller coaster week. I got randomly sick again- terrible head ache and a really bad fever. but, that wasnt going to stop me, so we went and worked. and we didnt really have a whole lot of success this week. we have one investigator named Alexandra who was a sure baptism for this coming week, but we went to talk to her yesterday and now she isnt so sure if she wants to get baptized. Stupid Satan, get out of here! We're just gonna work with her and get her baptized whether she likes it or not! Haha JK. 

Ok, so that was the kind of crappy part of the week, the awesome part was that we had a baptism! A surprise baptism! We were sitting in our room at the end of the day and we got a call from the Bishop and he was like, Abel is going to get baptized this week. Abel is this kid who has gone to church forever but has never wanted to get baptized or really take the missionary discussions either, so I dont really know him that well. But his best friend Celso just got back from a mission and he finally prayed and decided that he needed to get baptized. So that was awsesome, to really have a baptism without putting in much work haha. The other awesome thing was watching Rodolfo give the priesthood to Abel, and then Guido. It was a "proud parent" moment haha. I think I kind of understand how that feels now. So all in all, not a terrible week, just one filled with highs and lows. But that's pretty normal.

Last week of the transfer! I've been here for 3 transfers now so this could be my time to leave Chachani. I honestly have no idea, but it is a possibility. I dont want to leave right now though.. 

Love you guys! Keep on writing!

Love,

Elder Matheson

Pday with Elder Larsen

Almost transfers

So, two more weeks until transfers! I have this feeling that I'm going to be leaving Chachani this transfer. I dont want to leave, because I've really grown to love the area, the people, the ward, my pension, everything. Our pension told her kids the other day that the Elders are their brothers and that we are a big family. And its kind of true, we eat 3 meals a day together and Sunday the entire family, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, the whole shabang, gets together to eat Sunday lunch, and I feel part of the family and they treat us like family too. It's interesting, our pensions parents, who we rent a room from, are not members of the church (they are VERY devout Adventists) yet they always tell us that we deserve the best they have to offer because we are sevants of the Lord. And then we have Jorge and Vanessa in the ward, we go there when we're hungry because they always feed us haha, and they are also awesome and love the missionaries and we love them. We went there this week and Jorge was super excited because his dream finally came true and he was able to buy a machine that makes plastic bags. I guess that's his job, and he says he can finally work from home and spend more time with his family and have more time to devote to his calling. Golden converts!

So this was a pretty normal week, nothing super exciting. Our investigators are progressing, but progressing pretty slowly. We are teaching this girl named Alexandra, who we contacted a few weeks ago, and she's been to church the last 2 weeks and is loving it. She's 14 and the other young women in the ward have taken her in as their own and she is loving it. As of yesterday she was going to wake up at 530 this morning to go play soccer at the chapel. She has a baptism date for the next saturday so be praying for us! 

So something super funny happened this week. This drunk guy stopped us on the street (not that unusual, the drunks love the gringos) and told us that we wanted to buy us a soda (not that unusual either), so we were like yeah, sure, no problem. So we went to the corner tienda to get our soda and lo and behold, our drunk friend had no money. He was trying to pay with his credit card, and that doesnt work here haha. The lady in the store kept telling him, look, you need money to pay. But he just kept saying, no its ok, I'm paying! Then he looked up to the sky and said, Help me God! Then looked the lady in the tienda in face and said, I'm paying now. He still had no money haha. So he told us to stay there, ran (as well as plastered Peruvian can) to his house and came back with the money and paid. He asked me if he could pay with Soles where I come from, so I told him I was from Antarctica and that we pay with snow. Should give him something to think about this week. I cant really do the story justice, but you get the point haha.

Hope everyone has a great week! Love you!

Elder Matheson

Happy 2015

Happy New Years everyone!!! Hearing from everyone, sounds like you all had a great New Years and that it was the usual crazy stuff. I spent my New Years sleeping. That's right, for the world, it was New Year's Eve. For the missionaries, it was a Wednesday, so we went to bed at 1030, woke up briefly at midnight for the sky to explode, and then went back to bed. New Years day, President wanted us to meet together as a zone to read 90 scriptures from the Book of Mormon that he selected. That took all of the morning and a good chunk of the afternoon too, and then afterwards we enjoyed a lunch together as a zone at Papa John's. Not a bad day! Elder Larsen and I planned out the entire month between when we get home and when we go back to school. Should be a pretty busy month if everything we want to do gets done haha. 

As far as the work here goes, we have so many investigators that are SO CLOSE to baptism, but just havent quite made the leap yet. We're working with a family of 4 that is unbelievably prepared. Senovia and Roberto, and their two kids Roberto and Camila. We taught them lesson 1, and had just got done explaining the first vision and how through the example of Joseph Smith, we learn how to receive answers to our prayers. Then Senovia told us that she too had the question of which church was correct. She told us that all the different people who knock on doors (there's a TON of Jehovia's Witnesses here) all tell her different things, but that one of them has to be right. So she decideded pray about it. She said that night she had a dream in which a man dressed in white told her that the next day she would get here answer. So the next day she was on a bus, and Elder Dayley and Figueroa, the other elders in our ward, got on the bus. Elder Dayley told me that as soon as he saw her, he felt like he needed to talk to her, and Senovia told us that as soon as she saw Elder Dayley she knew that he was the answer to her prayers. So they're solid--but not married. But they are willing to do it so we're working with them!

We're also working with this elderly couple, Eladio and Lucia. They've been living together for 28 years, and arent married either. Eladio is also technically married to someone else but havent seen each other for 40 years. Once again, they're willing to get married to get baptized, so we're working super hard with the ward to get things set for them.

Pray for our investigators!! They need help haha. Hope everyone has a great week, love you all!

Elder Matheson

llama!!!

with Elder Ramierz

on a bus...

Mount Misti