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

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

January 26, 2015

Hey family,

So this week was pretty good.

I feel like I´m pretty focused, like I don´t really think about anything other than like the missionary work so that's good.

I don't remember anything super weird that happened this week, so sorry about that.

I got your package though! That was super nice. Turns out that the packages have kinda a rough ride to get here because the cheese itz were kinda crumbs but I ate the whole bag anyways :D You don't need to send me any more gum by the way, I don't really like chewing gum and we're not allowed to in public. The letters were super nice.

We had interviews with the mission president, so that was kinda neat. It was the second time that has happened. I don't really know how to explain what happens but its a lot of revelation and it helps to become a better missionary, like a lot.

We have 6 people with baptismal dates but I'm pretty sure all of them are going to be after I get transfered at the beginning of April. Ive been here in Pachacac for almost 5 months now so it's most likly that im leaving, but we'll see.

2 of the people with baptismal dates are name Giovana and Angel. They're a family that we started teaching this week. They're pretty good. I don't really know what to say about them. Angel drives a taxi for a living and his car is brand new so I don't understand how they can afford that because they rent the third story of a house and they only have like 3 rooms so it doesn't really make a ton of sense but whatever. They're nice but they didn't come to church this week because they had "things to do" but we asked their 7 year old son and he said they went for a walk  ._.

Vasilia and Jose are 2 others. Vasilia is the one who can't get married because her papers got burned by terrorists. Their daughter Brissa got baptized a Little while ago but she's really difficult because she's like 15 idk. They should be getting their papers to get married here in like a week or something so we're waiting for that so they can get baptized. Vasilia has a stronger testimony than pretty much everyone in Utah. She reads out of the Book of Mormon every day and says that she made a promise with the Lord to do that, so that's pretty neat. All she wants is for her family to feel the same as she does about the church. She brings them to church every week, is super amazing.

Jairo and Sheyla set a marriage date for the 25 of April and then changed it to the 10th of April. Jairo will get baptized right after that too, so that's cool. He's pretty amazing, he figured out a way to not have to go to work yesterday until a Little later so that he could come to church for the full 3 hours. I sat next to him and he asked me some questions about what it means to be converted and stuff. He answered questions durning priesthood to the teacher so that was kinda neat too.

We haven't been walking nearly as much recently because we've been teaching a lot. I've learned a lot about how to teach families so we don't have to worry about having a male with us. Also about who is really going to progress and is willing to sacrifice a lot of things to progress in the góspel of Christ.

I feel like the Spanish is pretty good now, hahahahha sometimes.

It was nice to get a package and 3 letters in one day, the other missionaries were p jelly.

Today we're going to go play vollyball and handball as a zone again in a nearby park place. We have to pay to get in and to use the court and field but it's way amazing, its like a waterpark with like trees and grass and stuff. I'm excited for that.

We took a bus to a large plaza place called plaza veya on last Monday. We then climbed a large hill and took a bunch of pictures. Then we went back down the hill and took a bus to our apartment, which was about the extent of how much we could risk being outside with our cameras.

The flash drive you gave me is pretty nice too.

I love you guys,

Thanks for all the support, sorry my english is getting worse and worse these letters are getting really hard.

Love,

Elder Mitchell

January 19, 2015

Hey family,

My companion is still pretty great. I've learned he does some really weird stuff, like he pees on the toilet seat which is gross and he´s pretty paranoid about his shoes getting dirty which is retarded because we´re in the desert in Peru, but whatever. He teaches well even though he´s really quiet.

We had 3 complete families of investigators that went to church yesterday, so that was super neat.

Jairo and his wife set a marriage date for the 25 of April which is way too far away but idk if there´s anything we can do to help that. Jairo said that he and his wife promised God to obey the law of chastity until then even though they´re still living together, so that happened.

Not much else is going on.

I´ll have been in the mission for 6 months next month, so that´s pretty weird.

Thanks for all the support!

See you in less than 2!

I love you,

Elder Mitchell

January 12, 2015

Hey people!

So first off as I´ve mentioned before, I got here in Peru in the spring and it´s only been getting hotter since. My companion says that the summer peaks in like February which totally isn´t that much fun because im already dying. Also there are changes again in February so I could very easiliy get sent south to Nazca or something where it is literally hell on earth as far as heat goes. One of my zone leaders told us that because he was there last year and he´s pretty much almost black and from Honduras, and apparently when a Honduran says it´s hot as hell then it´s probably like being on the surface of the sun. Pray for me plz, kty.

This week was actually very adventurous and exciting. I feel like a ton of stuff happened so we´ll see how this goes with including it all.

So another thing i need you to send me is earplugs. Write this stuff down because im only going to tell you once and then im going to forget and I'm going to be disappointed when i get things from you and i realize im going to have to sleep another month without a pillowcase if I can even sleep at all because I don't have earplugs. I want the same earplugs you sent me when i arrived, they're like purple and you squeeze them and theyre like foamy so they fit in your ears. I love them, I sleep with them every night and theyre kinda necessary because there´s a bar right across the street that blasts music until 3 am on a regular basis. Ok thanks. 

My companion told me in our first few days together that he has only known 4 people who are not native spanish speakers but that still have amazing spanish accents. He told me that I was one of them and the other one is like some orchestra singer or something, so that made me feel really good. Actually my companion doesn´t talk that much like to anyone so i pretty much call a ton of people and answer calls and talk to everyone and make appointments and I like to think that my spanish is pretty freakin´ amazing, but maybe that´s just my pride :D

Also, if you could tell me more about how to send packages back to the US through Vanessa that would be great. If you don´t tell me how soon then im just going to go ahead and send it through the government because there are some peru things i want to send back for like Nancy and stuff. It´s really expensive to do that though.

Things are going really well with my companion. He´s super chill, way clean and very focused on the missionary work.

So I have a story. The other day we got back to the room like 10 minutes early, so at like 8 50 and my companion wanted to go to a paper store place to buy some things to organize the papers in the apartment. So we left and I was looking through the store while he was buying things. He was only like 10 feet away from me though so there was no problem.

I was just waiting there and this lady comes over to me and started asking me questions. Like, it was really weird and uncomfortable. She was like kinda obese and she was asking me questions like "are you.. like.. christian?" and like asking where Im from and stuff. Plus im freakin´ retarded so i told her happily that im from the united states and yeah. I was thinking about asking her if she would like to visit her to share some of our message but i felt like it was a bad idea so I didnt. I kinda signaled to my companion to come help me because I was getting kinda nervous talking to this woman. So he came over with what he had bought and the lady kinda like backed away as he got closer and she went outside.

So we went outside to go buy something else and I watched her out of the corner of my eye and saw that she was following us, which wasn´t really a surprise because we´re in Peru and yeah its weird. Also she was carrying a roll of toilet paper for no reason and im pretty sure she had like some kind of mental condition because she didnt really make any sense and she was talking about how her daughter had been blessed or something.

We went to buy an avocado because my mexicompanion eats literally everything with freakin´ avocado and the lady was like waiting outside for us so that was super weird. Then we left and like passed her super awkwardly and went to a bakery to buy bread for dinner. Of course she was waiting outside again and i was pretty freaked out. So we went the opposite direction from our room after we had left the bakery. We turned into like an alley and just started RUNNING AS FAST AS WE COULD BECAUSE THERES A PSYCOPATH FOLLOWING US. I was laughing because it was so ridiculous but also because i was scared. We like ran around a few blocks or whatever and went in a very roundabout way to get back to the room.

She couldn´t follow us because too fat and i haven´t seen her since :D

Anyways i dont have any more time.

I love you guys,

Elder Mitchell

January 5, 2015

If you haven´t sent the package yet with the flash drive, please put videos on it. Like a bunch of mormon messages and whatever. Things that can help me (all in spanish please) like videos about addiction or families or whatever. That would be great. Also I need another pillowcase. I included how I want it in the last email so refer to that for more information.

This week was pretty crazy because I had to direct the area with my new companion. That includes pretty much me guiding us to everywhere we have to go. We still had like 17 lessons this week which is pretty good, so I guess I´m doing a good job. Also I have had to talk to everyone and call everyone on the phone and confirm appointments and find adult men to accompany us to lessons, so that´s been good.

My new companion Elder Tenorio is super astouding. He´s super good at teaching and he pretty much does everything really well. He compliments me on my spanish and teaching and whatever and he really works to teach investigators according to their needs. Yeah it´s good.

Also I feel like my spanish is going really well. I understand like more than 90% of what people say now and whatever I don´t understand is because they talk like they´re disabled. Seriously, my companion is from mexico and it so the slowest, clearest spanish I have heard in the mission. Elder Riveros was so hard to understand it´s amazing. Prolly because he´s chilean and he doesn´t even know spanish because he speaks chilean. (They should be the same)

Turns out Chileans are really hated all throughout Peru. There´s a new chilean in our zone and he use to be the companion of Elder Tenorio and he has it really rough. His laundry person refuses to wash their clothes now because he "won´t wash the garments of a chilean" and my companion told me a story of how a mototaxi driver almost punched him and was screaming and stuff just because he said he´s from chile. Hahahahhahaha

This week was new years. Oh my gosh everyone was drunk. Seriously all of the 31st and 1st and 2nd the drunks were in the streets like zombies. I got yelled at so many times those days. One of them came over and robbed my companions waterbottle because he thought it was soda and he keeps his water in a glass gatorade bottle. He ran to catch up to us and I like gave him a handshake and stuff hahahhaa.

Then in the night there were a ton of fireworks. My companion had a really hard time waking me up even though the house was shaking from the explosions outside, haha. We went to the roof and watched them. Its a tradition here to go outside and burn things during new years and people make like, lifesize dolls out of newspaper and stuff and light them on fire. I took a picture of a burning couch in front of our house that ill send next week.

Overall it´s been a really good week. We have a new investigator who is living as the boyfriend of a less active that we found. We taught them the law of chastity with the bishop on the first lesson and they commited to get married right then and there. They came to church the next day and the bishoprick blessed their baby. Then in gospel principles we watched a video about fathers and the investigator started to cry and asked if we could come visit them again any earlier during the week. It was super cool, yeah.

I´ve been feeling really really good. This week went super fast and I was tired every day, which is great. There are some amazing places here, I really want to try to take a picture some time.

You should send me an email next week, that would be good, yeah. Also send me letters and pictures or whatever. I lost my usb and all the music I had so i´m gonna be waiting on the new one, haha. I bought a new usb but it doesn´t have anything other than a few videos.

thanks for all the support,

I love you, team

Elder Mitchell