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

July 18, 2016

So this was a pretty good week. This email is gonna be short because I´m losing motivation to put a lot of stuff in my emails - it would probably just be easier to tell you in person :D

Well I guess Tanner and Hank are home, I´m pretty sure hank got back last week so that´s neat. I had a dream last night that I got home but I couldn´t find anyone and nobody even recognized that I got back so that was pleasant.

So we´ve been doing a lot of street contacts recently. We try to contact as many families that we see as we can. Last week I saw a young couple walking down the street so I thought "I definitely have to contact these people" so I took out a pamphlet of the family. Just before talking to them I realize that they were kinda waving their hands around (I don´t know how I didn´t notice before) and it hits me: they´re speaking sign language. But it was already to late as I say "Can I give you guys a pamphlet?" and hand it to them and they both freak out and start shaking their heads and pointing at their ears. I felt like an idiot so I just kinda pointed at the pamphlet and did a thumbs up like an idiot and handed it to them and kept walking. So that happened.

Also I was thinking that because I´m not even going to be in the mission for this whole transfer that president wouldn´t make me keep being a district leader. WRONG! Well that´s okay, they only gave me one more program than the last transfer so now we were six missionaries. Then I got to the district meeting and WRONG! They said the assistants had messed up and now my district is going to be everyone that weren´t those three programs - so now I have 10 missionaries in my district (majority of the zone what the heck) so that´s super awesome. I guess this is my opportunity to go out with a bang because now I´m even more stressed out than I would have been without the big district, but you know -- whatever.

Anways, we´re teaching a lot of people, so that´s good.

- The first family we´re teaching is a couple named K and P. Also we´re teaching K's mom O and her brother L. So the first visit we had was super spiritual, pedro was all excited. K is less active and her aunt is an active member in another ward. So we went to the second visit but P wasn´t there but whatever it was good anyways - K is awesome.  The third visit P was there but it was awkward because we had invited the elders quorum president but what we didn´t know was that he had brought 2 other members so there were a total of 6 people invading their home... but once again -- whatever. This last visit we went and P was there but he didn´t want to come to the lesson. K told us that his mom is an "Israelite" (Israelites are probably the weirdest religion I´ve seen in Peru. Supposedly they still follow the law of moses (they don´t even do it even close) and they walk around in old testament clothes (just imagine) and it´s prohibited for the women to show their hair so they wear like long mantle things on their heads - they put them on their kids and everything) ANYWAYS, P went to visit his mom and she must´ve trash talked the crap out of the mormons because now he´s all confused and doesn´t want to talk to us. So that´s kinda frustrating but I´m sure he´ll come around here soon. In the mean time K and O went to visit K's aunt (the active member) and the aunt took out a bunch of book of mormon videos and she basically taught them everything about the church and they both became converted in that moment. So that´s definitely positive :D.. Nobody came to church but we have another lesson tonight so that´s exciting.

- The second family is a younger couple (the husband, P is 20, the wife A is 17 or younger - not sure but they have a kid that can walk and she´s trying to finish peruvian high school which normally ends at age 16) Anyways P is progressing, his brother N is 19 and is less active. I´m not sure why he doesn´t want to come to church but we found him kinda drunk the other night so maybe he doesn´t feel worthy. Anyways we´re going to try to get them to get married so that would be cool. They´re not progressing that much.

We have another investigator named E whose 27 who has a baptismal date for august 20th so that´s cool. She didn´t come to church this week either (but you know, who does?) but she´s super cool and very decided on getting baptised. That´s exciting.

I think that´s basically everything that´s going on. I kinda had a realization this week as I told my sunday pension that not this week but next week would be my last time eating with them. Basically every day I just get a punch to the heart as I realize that time is passing and it´s not slowing down. Just gotta take things as it goes I guess.

Thanks a ton everyone for all the support,

Love you guys,
Elder Mitchell

July 12, 2016

This was a good week. So first off I`ve gotten the pictures of the family that we were teaching in my last area - the one`s named milagros and Abdìas. They got baptized so that`s super awesome.

President has been getting on us about if we`re actually preaching so yesterday we were in a small van called a convi of about 15 people when I got up and started preaching and telling them to go to church hahahhaa. I was super nervious so I probably talked way too fast but it was a good experience, there are not busses here or anything but I`ll definitely be looking into more stuff like that to do.

Anyways we didn`t get transfered so that`s exciting. I guess I`m down to the "less than four weeks mark". My companion keeps telling me "your family doesn`t write you because you`re already going home." :DDD

Anyways, here`s some pictures.

cool beans,

Loves,

Elder Mitchell

July 4, 2016

Hello.

I guess I don´t really know how to start my letters with anything other than "well this was a good week".

First things first, transfer are this week so ill be writing on tuesday next week. yesterday was my last fast sunday in the mission - i guess i still have one more but ill be home like 2 days later so i don´t really count it :D

We put a lot of emphasis this week (i write enfasis first ahaha) on doing more street contacts. Yesterday we had a super awesome experience where after only like 2 hours of looking for the house we finally found it. We knocked on door (no appointment) the husband opens a little window, closes the door, then opens it and tells us to come in. We were kinda awkward about it because usually people don´t just let us in like that. So he sits down and his wife comes in, they pull out some chairs and we sit down. We were kinda talking for a sec, then we ask to start with a prayer, we prayed. We started the lesson, we were talking about our purpose as missionaries and asking them about themselves to understand. They asked a question about why we share the gospel and we read some scriptures. It was really cool, we could feel the spirit,the wife was paying a lot of attention. We watched the video "because of him" (not sure in english) we talked about it - it was super cool. Then i ask the husband to say the ending prayer. We all kneel, he says a super awesome prayer - didn´t even forget to say "in the name of jesus christ" at the end. It was super awesome. I say "perfectisimo" like I always do. He says "sorry, I got kinda choked up" and i was like "um wait, what?" then I look at him. His eyes were all wet because he was crying. Then I look over at his wife - she also had tears running down her face. We explained to them that what they were feeling was the spirit. Super awesome. After the lesson me and my companion were both just like "rekt eht ez win" So that was the spiritual experience of the week.

Also a little earlier that day another guy (father of a family- his name is pedro)  accepted to be baptized so that was pretty exciting. We found a lot of new investigators this week. Also on Monday we found a family where the wife is less active and the husband isn´t a member (another street contact) and he´s probably going to be the next bishop so that´s pretty exciting.

Those are the major things that have happened this week. The time is getting short. Transfers are this week, i don´t think president will take me out of the area for the last 4 weeks of my mission but we´ll see.

Everything is going really well, we´re making a ton of progress. My companion keeps telling me "why does your family keep writing you if you´re already going home" so that happens :D

Also I spend basically all of every day teaching my companion english and in return he teaches me how to dance salsa at night in a not-gay dance lesson (don´t tell anyone) Also just throwing this out there but you guys should all be jealous because I eat a ton of delicious seafood that´s super cheap here in a small fishing town in peru. 

I love you guys,

Elder Mitchell

June 27, 2016

Hello,

So this was a good week. I guess that all of the investigators that we had that were progressing or that gave us any faith at all have all disappeared one by one so that´s good hahaha. President only verbally abused the whole mission a little bit this week about how we´re not doing enough street contacts so we´ve been going pretty crazy with that. We´ve talked to a ton of really good people and a lot of complete families that we´ve found walking in the streets so I´m hopíng this helps us to find more new inestigators. We have two appointements tonight to find new families of investigators so we´ll see how that goes.

A few funny stories from this week:

1. So a few nights ago we were in kinda a secluded part of our area when we go to see if we can talk to some members. The windows were dark and as we assumed nobody answered the door. We noticed that next door that there was a man walking around. We decided to go talk to him to see if we could teach him and his family. As we approach the door we realize that there is no light in the house and that there´s another lady sitting next to the door. We introduce ourself and when the lady stands up to shake our hands my companion says "are you pregnant?" to which she replies "no" and then he says "oh, it just seemed like it" and then my companion continues talking to them as if nothing had happened. Turns out the light in their house had been cut off because they weren´t paying the electric company - silly them. We leave and my companion says "I wanted to leave" and I just started laughing and laughing. Like WHY WOULD YOU ASK A LADY IF SHE´S PREGNANT LIKE THAT and he´s just like "I don´t know, she looked really pregnant, I thought it was obvious!" ahhahahahaha... oh silly.

2. So yesterday in our first sacrament meeting it was the ward conference so the whole stake presidency was there. I guess in the morning someone had messed up buying the sacrament water so everyone got a nice surprise one by one as they got a little cup of carbonated water lolwat.

3. Also the lady from that same ward that directs the music is basically deaf and I don´t know if she just doesn´t realize it or if she can´t hear the music that is so loudly blasting into her ears but she does not sing to the music AT ALL. If she sang it without the music it would be fine but the problem is that I´m in Peru and everyone else just sings the song however they want. I do the piano (not play, i just put the prerecorded hymns on the electric piano because I´m the only one who knows how). Maybe I would play sometimes but the congregation basically just makes up their own song every time they sing so that´s never happening because they don´t care at all about the music.

4. So we went to go visit a less active lady who has a lot of problems. 1. she´s epilectic, no seizures but she passes out basically all the time over and over again. 2. her husband is literally a hippie and he´s got a lot of drug problems. 3. He doesn´t give her any money so she only eats lunch every day because some program gives her food every day. SO she passed out in a lesson this week so that was exciting. Then yesterday she passed out a whole 6 times during the second hour at church yesterday until we just called the ambulence because she´s got serious problems. That´s the short version of the long story, ask me about it again later.

I´m out of time. I love you guys all a ton!

CUsoon on August 9th

Elder Mitchell

June 20, 2016

So this wasn´t that great of a week. Basically nothing out of the ordinary has happened, just working all normal. I gave a talk in sacrament meeting yesterday so that was exciting. I was the last speaker and I started the talk like 30 minutes before the meeting was supposed to end so I got to talk for a long time hahaha. Also I teach gospel principles every week.

We went to Paracas again this week so that was exciting.

Say happy fathers day yesterday to dad for me :D

That is all.

Loves,

Elder Mitchell