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

Thunderstruck

Well, another week in the books! Elder Nelson and I are working hard and getting stuff done. We now have 12 investigators with a baptism date, and we are working super hard to help them progress. One of our new families we found is a mother and her son. She is 58 and her son is 20. The mom, Feliza, used to be Catholic and worship the Saints and the Virgens and what not, until one day she was praying to the Virgen and was literally struck by lightning. So she kind of took that as a sign that God did not want her to be Catholic and she has been searching for the truth ever since. She has also had like 3 different dreams in which she has seen Jesus, and as we were teaching the 1st lesson with Joseph Smith, she told us, hey, this is exactly what Jesus told me in my dream! So she and her son have a baptism date, and they are golden haha.

President Zobrist gave a talk yesterday for District Conference, and based it on 1 Nephi 2:15 "and my father dwelt in a tent." He talked about how significant that scripture really is. We know that Lehi was a wealthy man, and that he enjoyed a life of comfort, yet as soon as he was commanded to leave Jerusulem, he did, and lived with his entire family, in a tent, in the middle of the desert, because it was God´s will. That scripture, as Pres said, is an indication that we need to be humble and live according to the will of God. It was super interesting, because I had never thought of that scripture in that way. 

Thank you for your love and support, I love and appreciate you all!

Elder Matheson

getting a ride back to town...aka..hitchhiking

deceased cow.....

there are some large spiders in Peru

Pedregal

Hey, what a week here in Pedregal! Getting used to the area is kind of interesting for sure. This area has its own unique challenges and difficulties, but i already love it here. there are 6 missionaries in this little branch (4 elders and 2 sisters) and we all share a pension and live on the same street. it really is super awesome to see the other missionaries so much, and they are all awesome. Most of the missionaries in our zone are gringos. Of the 16, only 6 are latinos. This zone is huge too. some of the missionaries have to travel like 2 and half hours to get to any zone meeting. We actually get extra money in this zone because we have so many travel expenses. 

My new comp is American, Elder Nelson, and he just finished his training. we get along just fine, no problems with that. he is kinda quiet, and super smart. we call him google because he knows just about everything haha. he knows pretty much zero spanish though. so i have teach pretty much all the lessons and contact all the people and what not. its tough at times, but i am learning so much and realizing that my spanish is actually a lot better than i thought it was. 

we are working super hard to find new people, and the people we have found are awesome. we had one guy just show up to church with a friend, and after the meetings told us, i like this church, and I havent been baptized, can i get baptized in your church? why yes, yes you can. Give us a few weeks to teach the kid and he'll get baptized haha. 

we have been waking up everyday at 545 to go to the gym, and it feels awesome. and its super hot here so i might lose a lot more weight here...

keep us in your prayers! love you all!

Elder Matheson

Transfers!

Hey everyone! So the big news of the week is that I got transfered. That´s right, after almost 6 months in one area, I am gone, out of here. And as much as I was hoping that I might get transfered, when we got the call, I was so sad to leave. I dont know if it is because I was ¨born¨ there in Chachani or not, but I have a really special connection to all the people I have been able to work with and help out. I spent most of Sunday going to say goodbye to all of the members and my converts and what not. It was seriously one of the hardest things I have ever had to do. We had a Farewell meeting in the zone last night too. We all had a chance to get up and say a few parting words, and it was a real sob fest, let me tell you. Elder Dayley, Elder Larsen, and Elder Moll are all from my MTC group, and we all had the chance to be in the same zone for the first 6 months of our missions. And we are all leaving together. Saying goodbye to all of my friends in the zone was just so hard. But that is the mission. In a way, it was almost harder saying goodbye to Chachani than it was saying goodbye to my family, not because I love the people in Chachani more than my family, but because I know I will see my family again, but most likely wont see anyone of the people I love so much in Chachani again. 

So I got transfered to Pedregal in the Siguas zone as the senior comp. I recognized the name of the area when they told me, because I guess it´s the ¨punishment¨ area in the mission. They havent had baptisms here for a while, and their numbers are all super low for some reason. My new comp is Elder Nelson, he´s a new missionary who just finished his training. I literally got here like an hour ago so I havent had a whole lot of time to talk to him, but he seems like an alright guy. I am nervous to be the senior comp, but I can tell this area needs help and I am ready to work hard to get this kid a baptism. i know the Lord will watch over us as we go forward in this work, and that as we work hard, we will see blessings. This will be an interesting change for sure haha. 

I finished my time in Chachani by working hard and trying to find more investigators for Elder Ramirez to teach. Another elder from my group, Elder Heaps, came to replace me, and the kid is a stud, I have no doubts that he will take good care of my beloved chachani. 

Love you all, have a great week, pray for Elder Nelson and I!

Elder Matheson

Marching on

Well, time is MARCHing on, as we are already in month 3 of this year. Seems like it was just yesterday I skyped home, and now we're more than half way to the next call home! 

The rain is slowing down, and the sun has come out finally. My shoes are dry and poop is no longer running through the streets of Arequipa. It still kind of smells though. We are working hard to try to find new investigators, because the ones we are teaching right now really arent progressing. They are super Catholic and refuse to accept anything that is not Catholic. The problem here is that a lot of people say they want to listen to us, we take an appointment, go back the next day-- nobody is home, they went to play soccer, they're washing their clothes-- long story short they're just floreando (saying a bunch of crap). But, I know that if we keep working hard to find these people that we will find people who are truly interested in the Gospel and are willing to progress. 

We had 2 baptisms this week! Alexandra and Janeth. Deyvis had a date for this week, but I felt like he wasnt ready so we postponed it a little bit longer. Hopefully this week we can get him baptized. The baptisms went well, and they were both super excited. 

We killed the family ducks this week. They were quacking too much, so the only solution was to chop off their heads and eat them. My comp apparently knows how to cook really well, so he prepared a classic Northern Peruvian dish. One of the ingredients is beer (dont worry, we cook all the alcohol out of it), but when he open the bottle, it exploded all over us and we kind of smelled like beer the rest of the day. Thankfully we didnt have to teach anyone the Word of Wisdom yesterday haha. 

Well, that was my week, it was a good one, hope you all have a good one!

Love,

Elder Matheson