Monday, February 23, 2015

February 23, 2015

So this is going to be short because the space bar on the keyboard I´m on is broken and it bothers me so we´ll see how this goes.

This week was good. Actually it was extremely uneventful. We had a mildly frustrating day at church yesterday because we went brought somebody to church and we got there at 8:40 so we could get there by 9:00 but he wasn´t ready so we left at 9:15 which is totally ridiculous. When he finally came out after we had been waiting for over 30 minutes I asked him what time we had told him we would be there, to which he replied 8:40 of course. I  then asked him why it  was 9:15 and we´re still standing outside then and there was an awkward silence for a while before I told him that it was very important for us to get to church before 9. I'm still kinda mad about that, I'm gonna make him feel horrible in our next lesson  Wednesday :D  The first step to repentance is to feel bad about it. Sometimes it require s a lot of work to do that.

I don´t know why the package hasn´t gotten here yet.  It still hasn´t gotten here this week and it makes me worried because they changed the address to the mission office so I don´t know how they would get it at the new location. Maybe you should email them to see what´s going on.

We're going to the temple again on Friday which will be fun again in spanish and we dont have p day so we´re going to be working all day and that sucks because I have a bunch of stuff I need to do but whatever.

We're working with a new investigator named John. His aunt is a member and gave us the reference because he was into drugs for like 15 year s and is living in a rehab place so we can only visit him on sundays. He has a hard time understanding but we'll see how it goes on next sunday.  Another thing about sundays is that I have to give the counts to the zone leaders which takes almost an hour, it's ridiculous. My companion slept on the couch the whole time and when I finished I turned off all the lights hoping that he would wake up so I could jump out and scare him but he didn't wake up. I had done that to Elder R one time and it was hilarious ahhahaha. 

That's pretty much all that´s happened this week. I can't think of anything else, sorry!

I love you! Send me dear elder letters and tell everyone else to also!

Love,
Elder Mitchell

Monday, February 16, 2015

February 16, 2015



Hello family and Nancy,

This week wasn't particularly exciting. Maybe a little bit way more stressful than ever before but that's okay, I'm just getting started with that experience.

The whole district leader thing is going pretty well. Most nights I have to do a count thing to the zone leaders (I don't know how to say it in english). Usually they're super stressed out and the cell phones are pieces of junk so it's all kinda hard to do really fast but I guess we figured it all out anyways. Last night was the worst because it was Sunday. Every Sunday we have to do a count thing for the whole week for the whole district and I was on the phone for over an hour just to get all the numbers right. I first had to call the missionaries in my district and receive a bunch of numbers from them and then I had to call the zone leaders and there were some problems with a few numbers and it was really confusing because some numbers don't count for this month because the 28th is a Saturday so some numbers counted for March and I was way confused so that was great and I didn't go to sleep until like 11.

My companion is going pretty well. Really he doesn't do anything so I pretty much am always in a hurry to make sure everything is going right but that's ok. He usually just like sleeps off to the side (picture included) but im good with that because it means I get to make sure everything is going smoothly. Things are going smoothly. We should have 5 more baptisms by the end of this transfer. One of which is a family (married, husband, wife, son) which is a huge deal because families and temples go together really well.

Yes, there was valentines day and no, that's not really something I wanted to think about. I was super busy that day anyways but I still had a little bit of sad in my heart :´(I'll be engaged by Valentines day in 2017 anyways so I wasn't too stressed about it. <3 xoxoxo ;D no but seriously ._.

Speaking of Saturday, I had to do some baptismal interviews. That's a responsability of a district leader so that was kinda excited and nervewracking. Especially because they were both girls under the age of 20 and the interview includes me sitting in a room alone with each of them individually for like 40 minutes each. One was only like 14 and the other was 16 but she had a baby (which she breastfed during the interview O___O) It's actually a problem here because they don't know if these 16 year olds that have children should go to young womens or relief society during church. Like what the heck. I asked her for her birthdate because we have to fill the baptismal forum and she told me 1998 and her baby was born last year so that happened. Then after the interview we asked them who they wanted to baptize them and the 14 year old said "Elder Mitchell" and I was like wtheck. I told the zone leaders that they need to talk to her about that because I really don´t want to.

We had another multizone conference this week which was 6 hours long but they gave us pizza so that was bombin'. It was from pizza hut but it was from peru so it was totally different and was about the equivelant of Little Caesar's so I was happy.

I've been feeling really good recently. We go running in the mornings which helps me wake up and I feel motivated most of the time to do everything I need to every day. It's pretty great. Plus I'm going to complete 6 months here soon, so that's exciting too.

Thanks for all the support!
I love you guys!
Shout out to mom because you be mah mama! Loves <3
Elder Mitchell


Sunday, February 15, 2015

February 10, 2015

So this week was kinda super hard but I guess everything got figured out.
Elder T was being really difficult for the last 2 weeks of the transfer. He refused to teach during lessons, he got mad for no reason and pretty much refused to talk to me at all. Like, I'm not perfect but I guarantee that I didn´t do anything that justified anything that he was doing. He stopped being stupid for the last like 2 days of our time together just in case we ended up having another transfer but it didn´t really help. I was counting down the minutes until I never have to see him again anyways :D

People tell me all the time that I must be trying to learn everything right now because after having Elder R as a trainer I must not know everything I should. It´s true, but I´m progressing. At least the president thinks I am because he called me to be A DISTRICT LEADER. PLUS IM STILL IN MY FIRST AREA IM GOING TO HAVE BEEN HERE FOR 6 MONTHS WHAT THE HECK.

Elder T left to Nazca (he´s gonna burn alive :DDDD)  and I´m staying here in Pachacamac with my new companion named Elder L He´s EXTREMELY passive and not particularly excited. I had been told that if I was excited he would be excited and that if I was depressed then he would be depressed. So for the last 48 hours I have been really pushing myself to be all smiles and way excited about working even though we´re cooking alive here holy cow. It´s actually been going really well. Elder Lipe is super cool and easy to work with. Yesterday we found 2 new investigators and put a baptismal date on one of them for the 14th of March. We now have 5 investigators with baptismal dates, one of which is for next week but I don´t think its going to happen because he´s not quite ready and we need the zone leaders to interview him before tomorrow so... yeah.

Things are going really well now. I have no idea how to be a district leader but the zone leaders called us this morning to tell us that we´re going to do an exchange tomorrow so that the zone leaders can train me on how to do my calling lolol. I guess they´re worried about it (me too) Also tomorrow I have my first district meeting and I´m going to meet the missionaries in my district and I have to direct the meeting and teach things for 90 minutes. Pray for me plz thanks :D

Not really a whole ton of stuff has happened this week. There´s always the people cussing at me in englishs in the street which is really annoying but I try to be patient. I almost got killed by some dogs a few times this week but I guess that´s pretty normal. Plus you would be suprised at how many people start crying during the lessons, it happens a lot.

Thanks a ton for all the information and pictures you put in the emails. John is getting old and Will is getting so big!

Thanks for all the support,
Elder Mitchell



February 2, 2015

So this week was pretty neat I guess. We had 2 exchanges so I spent 2 days with other missionaries in our district. Changes are again next week, and more than likely i´m going to get transferred to another area and I won´t be sending you any more emails until Tuesday but we´ll see.

I´m really hoping I go to an area that is called Ayacucho because it rains there and it´s actually like, green. If I do go there it will be a 12 hour bus ride to get there but I think it would be great. There are 3 different like, seccions in this mission. There is Lima, Ayacucho and the south. I´m in Lima right now even though I´m in the furthest out part of Lima. Like furthest from the center. The south is from Chincha to Nazca, which is all pretty much just desert where everyone is dying right now because it´s the summer and it´s extremely hot and dry. Nazca is like at least 11 hours away in bus, so there´s a lot of potential for me to be traveling next week. I´m hoping the president will have mercy on me because I´m very white and the south wouldn´t be that much fun, especially for me. Seriously the missionaries there are walking through sand dunes when they´re outside proselyting.

This week we had a lesson with a boy named Moroni. His parents are sealed in the temple but the whole family is less active. Moroni got into EFY at the last minute so we´re not going to be able to visit him, but this week we went to his house twice. The first time was to try to get him to get inscribed into seminary. I brought all the paperwork. Now a little background about Moroni. Moroni lives in his house with his parents but they also live with his uncles and all his cousins, which are seriously all total psychopaths. Like, I knocked on the door and I started talked to one of his cousins who is like 7 but then he all of a sudden just started spitting on me. Like, spitting. I was kinda tempted to do something horrible to him but I didn´t. Anyways, all of Moroni´s cousins run around the house screaming like 24/7.

So we started the lesson with a prayer and I read a scripture about the what we can learn from the scriptures. Moroni had locked all of his siblings out but we could still hear a ton of screaming. I start talking about how the scriptures can bless our lives when we learn about the prophets when one of his cousins runs through the door screaming about how his brother is sick. Then his brother runs through the door like screaming and holding his chest and he´s like drooling all over and there was snot all over his face and he just starts throwing up ALL OVER THE PLACE. And he kept screaming and vomiting and walking around and vomiting some more. I turned to my companion and started laughing while I said "What´s going on" in english because of how ridiculous the situation was. The boy who was sick just kept screaming and he didn´t have shoes on so he had vomit all over his feet and he was dragging it all over the place and everything was disgusting so I was just like "we´re going to just finish right now then, i have these papers for seminary, fill them out and bring them to church on Sunday" and we finished with a prayer and we left.

Another time we asked this way old grandpa guy to take us to some references he had. He doesn´t really talk hardly at all and you can´t really understand him but I wanted to contact some people so we went with him.

He took us to a house where this lady answered who was pretty fat and her skin was like chocolate. We sat down and started with a prayer and started teaching her some stuff about the atonement. Turns out she has 9 kids, she isn´t married and none of her kids listen to her and most of them never talk to her any more. So of course she started crying and telling us her life story about how she has always had contact with her mom and she doesn´t understand how her kids never think about anything and they blame everything on her. We had an appointment last night but we didn´t go because we didn´t think she would progress and we have other people to teach that have the desire to come unto Christ.

Vasilia and Jose are still waiting for their papers so they can get married and baptized. They went to Nazca this week with Brissa with their clothes business and they´re going to see if they can get their paperwork there because that´s where Vasilia was born.

We had 8 investigators come to church so that was pretty neat. We didn´t even know most of them but we´ll go teach them this week.

Things are going pretty good.

Love you guys,
Elder Mitchell