This is It

I guess that this is my last time writing home in the mission. I´m not really sure how I feel about that. I have a problem with recognizing how I´m feeling I think. Maybe I´m kinda in denial of what´s actually happening. Like 2 weeks ago I was panicking about coming home but now I´m pretty indifferent about all of this.

ANYWAYS, this was a good week. We had 3 interchanges so that was pretty killer. One of them was with a missionary that hasn´t been doing very well and I think he wants to go home like.. right now. But instead of him it´s me :D

Anyways, we found a new investigator this week named R. He´s 20 years old and is studying in the university here in Pisco. He got out of the air force after two years recently and i think they hit them a lot because he´s super traumatized. We taught some good restoration stuff and he had a ton of questions. We went to go pick him up for church on Sunday and that was super awesome. He liked it and the members were all super supportive.

Anyways I guess I´m supposed to like share my testimony and stuff in my last letter home. It´s kinda hard for me to do this because I feel like I´m still not going home so we´ll see how this goes.

The mission isn´t easy. Basically no part of it is easy. It´s been very hard, every day is a challenge and requires constant self-motivation and diligence. It´s basically like God just grabs you and puts you everywhere that ISN´T your comfort zone. You have to just learn how to deal with it, and then you have to learn how to be happy and deal with it. I´m glad to say that I´ve been happy as I´ve done it. The opportunity I've had to get to meet and talk to SO MANY people has been incredible. Just learning how to do everything and how to talk to people and get a long and help them with their doubts, especially when they almost never understand why you´re talking to them and many of them are kinda hostile. Working in companionship's is a very patience building, social skills stressing experience. I've learned things in these two years that I probably would have taken like 5 years to learn in a marriage situation.

I feel kinda sad about leaving everything behind. There are so many things that I´ll miss about Peru. I love the people here and I worry about them for when I leave. I wish I could do more to help them but I´ve done all I can and have put my best effort. I feel bad sometimes for my weaknesses but I´ve never felt bad about the effort I´ve put. When I talk about my mission I have a rush of faces go through my head of people I´ve taught and loved - I´ve learned that being here is all about the people. I hope I can be enduring as I remember the things I´ve learned in this time.

Definitely not something I would ever regret.

Well, I´m not sure if I´ll get onto this email again before I get back. I hope that everything is coordinated and that you guys have the information about what time my flight gets in and everything lolol.

I´ll be home on Tuesday next week I´m pretty sure.

I love you guys and am excited to see you again.

Elder Mitchell

p.s. the family we were teaching in villa maria got baptized :DDDDD

 

July 25, 2016

I guess that next week will be my last time writing before I come home so that´s happening.

A few highlights from this week.

Actually this is from a few weeks ago but we went by an active families house to pick someone up to go to an appointment. Their name is the R family. So we get there and they say that the daughter can´t come with us because her back was hurting her and the dad was really sick with an ear infection. In the moms words "He keeps crying, I´ve never seen him cry this much." In Peru there is no embarrassment about crying so to say that was pretty normal (to everyone except for me). We offered to give him a blessing. We asked the elders quorum president if he had given a blessing before (the answer was no hahahahhaa waatttt) so me and my companion ended up doing it. So we go in and the son wakes up his dad. He just touched him and I guess he woke up because he literally started crying. I was like "I guess we need to do this pretty quick then" So I go over and did the oil-thing (whatever that is in English) and then my companion did the blessing. Immediately he stopped crying. We went to the appointment and the next day the family told us that the dad got up right after we left and started playing games on the computer haha. #healed

Next major event: So I guess God just doesn´t want me to relax as I go home because this week was very stressful as we prepared for our open-doors "Meet the Mormons" event. The pictures I sent you from my pensions phone were from that activity. It was inside the church but the majority of the people were not members. There were like 30 investigators that came so that was super awesome. It´s a long story about how everything went down but to make a long story into only 5 words: stress stress stress success pizza

I guess that´s pretty much everything I wanted to tell you about. We´re teaching some awesome new investigators. Also J, that dude that was super awesome and when his family gave him some money to go to the store he never came back, we found him this week and he´s progressing really well. That´s super exciting. We have two people with baptismal dates so that´s good.

I want to write everyone but as my companion would say "ya, para que?" = "for what?"

I love you guy