Losing track of the weeks...

Well, what a week it was! We didnt have the marriage and baptisms we wanted, but we were able to set in stone at least 3 baptisms for the 27th. It has been kind of frustrating to have almost all of the baptisms we have planned in this area fall through, but these 3 we have for the 27th are solid. If Alex and Claudia get married next week, we could have 5 that day. We are praying for that!!!! 

This week I will hit double digits in the mission. 10 months. I am no longer a new missionary, nor do I feel like one. One thing I can say is, time goes incredibly fast when we are working hard. I was thinking that my time in Chachani doesnt seem all that long ago, but has now been 3 months since I was transfered. i just want to take advantage of the time I have here, because I know that it goes so fast and that this is the only time I will have in my life like this. 

So Elder Nelson is gone and Elder Cerezo is here. He is from Ecuador and he talks super fast and doesnt pronouce his words very clearly, and after having a gringito for 3 months as a companion and talking almost 100% English outside of our lessons, it has been a Spanish shock to the systen. For the first day or so I felt like I did when I first got to the mission and Elder Perez was trying to tell me that we needed to go get money out of my mission card but I had no idea what he was saying and I was so frustrated and just wanted to punch him in the face and tell him to speak English to me, but luckily i didnt and I got over it. But Elder Cerezo is awesome, we work hard, and we are exactly obedient. He is relatively new to the mission, but he really has an understanding of how things are in the mission. he told me his trainer wasnt super obedient and that they had some struggles, but when he heard that he was coming here he was excited to start over. I guess some of the other missionaries in his zone were missionaries that I was with in Zamacola, and they told him that he would work super hard with me. And that is what we are doing. It is super nice to have a comp that speaks Spanish and can help me more in the lessons also. 

So last Pday I was with the zone leaders and we found out that one of our less actives is a ping pong coach (yes, his job is coaching ping pong), so we called him up and he said we could go play some ping pong. We show up and there are a bunch of 12 and 13 year old girls playing ping pong, and he told us we could play against them. i was thinking, "well, i wanted some competition, but oh well, maybe we can make it interesting." Well, what really happened is that the 12 and 13 year old girls must have been part Chinese or something because we ended up at the "loser table" really quick. It was a humbling experience for sure, but now we are resolved to improve our skills to beat the beehives!

Have a great week everyone!

Elder Matheson

TRANSFERS

So the big news this week is that we had transfers. Elder Nelson, my dear little gringito, is leaving me to go to ILO with one of my best friends from my MTC group, Elder Moll. I am sad to see him go, but I know Elder Moll (we were in the same zone for 4 transfers) and Elder Nelson is in very good hands. My new companion will arrive later today, so I dont know him, but his name is Elder Cerezo (sare- A- zo) and he is from Ecuador. So my short little stint with the Gringo comps has come to an end. He has 4 months in the mission, so I will once again be the senior companion and will continue being the district leader as well. Word is that Elder Cerezo was playing professional soccer in Ecuador before coming on the mission, so our Pdays will likely be spent playing soccer from here on out haha. I talked to his zone leader the other day and he said that Elder Cerezo works super hard and will likely be a great leader in the mission. If what they say is true, I am very happy to have such a companion. 

We ate cuy this week! We showed up to a birthday lunch of one of the kids in the branch who is leaving on a mission soon as been going out to proselyte with us and he fed us cuy. Delicious (see pictures sent to Mom). Really, it is quite tasty. The only other time I had had it was a few months ago, but it was oven cooked. This time it was golden fried, and wow, that makes all the difference. The skin turns into basically a giant potato chip haha. Super greasy, and here in Peru it is basically a felony to eat cuy with a fork and knife, so you just dive in and go to work. 

Well, a Risenmay family reunion classic has been growing in popularity among the missionaries here in Pedregal. Yes, you guessed it, we got the mission addicted to playing scum. We were playing the other day and I was the scum 12 games in a row. It was ridiculous. My highest card one of the rounds was a 10. Just bad news. Oh well, I came to preach the gospel not to play scum. 

have a great week everyone!

Elder Matheson

The missionaries of Pedegral

Happy Birthday Elder Nelson!

"The ugliest dog ever" - says Elder Matheson

Crispy Fried Cuy (guinea pig) - Yum!

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