Week 33

(Cutting bushes with a rusty machete.)

This week has I have just been worn out, I guess it's from the hard work.  But anyway, there have been tons of mud slides and floods that have gone down in Chosica and parts of Campoy, like houses have been swept away by the river and whatnot so they are taking missionaries out of those areas for a while. We received another companionship in our room because it is pretty huge. It is Elder Chau who I met in Santa Anita and Elder Beach, a new missionary. They are pretty dope, so it's fun. As for the houses and people that are being affected we really don't know that much. The river knocked down a bridge where they bring in tons of stuff like fruit and whatnot so the prices have gone up for the time being, but as for us we are totally fine. We are just trying to work hard.

Not a ton of stuff has happened this week. We found 18 new investigators though so that was pretty sweet. Haha There is section in our area that is actually pretty affluent that my companion has never contacted in....idk he says his last trainer didn't like to go there for some reason, but we have had a ton of success there!

We found a family of 5 that are super interested. The dad is most interested of all which is kinda weird because it usually isn't like that and so we invited them to a baptism yesterday, hopefully they come to church on Sunday.

We blessed this member's house because she really wanted us to. We have heard of some weird stuff happening with priesthood ordinances like where the priesthood holders won't actually touch the person's head.  

It was Elder Hunt's birthday this week on St. Patrick's Day so his parents sent him a package which he shared with us!  We haven't had water for about a week now, it goes on in the morning for like an hour maybe. (Probably due to the swollen rivers)  We have been showering out of a bucket that we fill-up so I mean it's better than nothing! The elders that arrived in our room were stuck in their room for 4 days before the water receded enough to where they could get out of the area and they hadn't showered in those 4 days. 

I am doing fine, its kinda crazy in a room with 6 and there isn't a ton of space but it's chill. The work is going really well for us right now. I just hope that those we have with dates will be baptized in the coming month as we are planning for. It's kinda hard always having to be the example to my comp. I found out I need to be stricter with him, sometimes I just let things go but we really need to learn. If he doesn't learn now idk when he will. But anyway thanks for the emails, Peace. 

 

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Much Love,

Elder Mortenson

Week 32

So this week was pretty sic. On Tuesday I got to take a visit to Zack"s mish (Lima Central)because I had to go and get my DNI at migrations and it's in the center of Lima. It is super cool over there, all of the buildings are super old structures and whatnot. I spent the whole morning from like 8 to 12 there just waiting for them to take my picture and fingerprints but at least I can now officially say that I am an official Peruvian! 

On Wednesday I went on divisions with Elder Macias our zone leader from Tegucigalpa, Honduras. He is super dope and taught me tons of new stuff about how to run things in the mish and just about life in general. 

On Thursday we went and did service for one of our investigators. She had us chop all of these branches down from above the wall outside of her house. It wasn't pleasant since it was 100000 degrees and i got soooo dirty, idk if you will be able to see it in the picture. But it was cool because I got to use a machete and just swing hardcore at some fetching plants. Also on Thursday we were going to interview one of the investigators that was gonna get baptized on Saturday but she has literally disappeared. We don't know what happened, she isn't at home, her sister doesn't know where she is and she doesn't answer her phone so I hope she turns up at some point. 

On Friday we had interviews again with president Boswell. He is a super inspiring guy. I talked to him about how I can not focus so much on the weaknesses I have, but rather strengthen the strengths I have and use them to help teach the gospel. I am still trying to figure out what those strengths are but I am doing pretty well I think. One thing I have found out is that I am a pretty dang funny person....even in Spanish lol. 

On Saturday Santos got baptized! It was pretty cool. He is a super good guy, and although he has some pretty harsh economic problems, he is super strong in his faith and so happy to be able to change his life for the better. He also received the priesthood on Sunday so that was cool to see! 

Yesterday was the average Sunday. The ward here is super good and cool and helps us out a lot. We had two of our new investigators come to church and they seemed to like it even though the little brother can be pretty hard to get to at times. 

 idk what happened but I accidentally got tons of grease on one of my shirts and my favorite tie so that stinks. I think I'll just save the shirt to burn when I hit a year...

Today we went to the chapel and played basketball in the hot sun. It was super fun, I sure miss playing ball at the SARC and the ARC with Brett and other homies. We kinda just chilled and talked about cool spiritual experiences and how you all are so lucky because tomorrow is taco tuesday at Cafe Rio, I sure miss it! But anyway, I am still doing great just working away trying to figure out who I am and what I can contribute. Scripture of the week Matt 24:25. How many times have I said that the church is true? 

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Much Love,

Elder Mortenson

Week 31

Wow this week has been so dope. I can tell that this transfer is going to fly by! My new area is amazing haha they nicknamed it the promised land because of how humble the people are and how willing they are to listen to the gospel. It is pretty impoverished and there are parts in our area that are clear up in the mountains! But it is super cool and actually like 10 minutes from La Molina, the rich part. We have two baptisms on Saturday and two more lined up for the 25 and should have 2 more for the first of April if all goes well! Hahahaha I've taught more lessons here in one week than almost a full month in San Borja.

My new companion is a super good guy. He is 25 and was baptized 3 years ago and went inactive until about a year ago so he doesn't know a ton of stuff. I really have to help him learn the doctrine and solve his doubts. But it is ok because in our room there are two other elders and you guys will never guess who it is....Elder Hunt!!! My comp from the CCM. His companion is Elder Jañez from Chile and we have a good time. Elder Hunt and I have the most time in the mish in our room and practically in our district It is so cool to be able to discuss doctrinal topics with them in the room and learn a ton. 

Our zone is tight. Its the biggest zone in the mission. Like half of the zone are gringos so that is fun. Today for pday we played soccer and basketball and volleyball and cooked carne asada and watched Kung Fu panda. There is another elder here that is barely shorter than me, he is from South Jordan. I'll get a pic with him tomorrow and send it to you guys. 

We had a Luau on Friday night which was pretty cool. The members prepared tons of fruit and the young men and women did dances and stuff. It was pretty cool. All of our investigators came and really enjoyed it and have tons of friends now. The ward here is really good. Like most wards in Peru it can be dysfunctional at times but it is good. 

We are gonna go to the temple this week with a recent convert and do baptisms so that should be cool I haven't been to the temple with a convert yet! Our pension (A member woman who cooks meals for the missionaries) here is really nice and cool. Tons of Elders that I know have been in this area before. Our pension has a family tree so when I get put up I will take a pic and send it. 

But anyway that is about it, this is awesome and I think I will really enjoy this transfer. I have learned so much about more than just the gospel and hope to keep going. The spiritual thought for the week is a scripture that I love and use to answer tons of questions that investigators have. It's 1 Nephi 13:22.  

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Much Love,

Elder Mortenson

Week 30

Que tal muchachos? Como les fue esta semana? So i am being transfered to Los Portales in Vitarte. I am going to have a Son!!! I am going to train Elder Muñoz in Vitarte. Idk how i feel haha i would'nt say that I'm necessarily ready to train someone but we will see how it goes. I will do my best. Vitarte is super ghetto and poor so that is great. I'm headed from one of the richest areas in the mish to one of the poorest haha. I will let you guys know how it goes next week with pictures and whatnot. I'm kinda sad to be leaving this nice area and nice ward and all of the people that i know here but that's the way the mission is I guess...the transfers come and go and you just gotta get used to leaving everyone behind and adapting to a new place again. 

Today for pday we spent the morning helping the sisters in our district move. It sucked haha. They are closing their area and putting elders there so idk why they even moved but we helped them anyway. From 6 in the morning until about 8 we had to move their stuff and there was a ton of it! But it was fine. We got lost trying to get back, took the wrong bus. Later we just chilled, went to the mall and ate burger king and walked around in the stores in the air-conditioning. It was pretty sweet, just like being back in the states. 

We had that training from Elder Falabella which was pretty cool. He just pretty much based what he taught off of what we said and gave us suggestions on how to improve. He gave some really cool ideas on ways to work with members better and whatnot. Nothing super huge that he said really impacted me so sorry. 

Haha i was thinking about it this week and I remember something Brett said about like after 4 or 5 months in the mish and you are forgotten by almost everyone. That's why I was so surprised that the USU coaches emailed me. But honestly it's so true, such is life I guess. 

If you guys could do me a favor and send me talks I would really appreciate that. I'm gonna print them out and study them so i dont want crap. I want like the Joseph Smith, McConkie, Maxwell, Bednar type deep doctrine stuff. I started reading the New Testament as well this week and it is going pretty well so far. I never even thought about reading it before the mish and so i know like nothing... so now is the time. 

I'm going to start trying to take more pictures for you guys. After talking to a lot of the RMs that's what they say they wish they had done the most. And some of them did it and have loads of pics and videos to share so I will start trying. 

But ya anyway that is about it, todo esta bien en zion. Saludos a todos. 

--

Much Love,

Elder Mortenson

Week 29

So this week went pretty well. We dunked the family! It was super cool to see them finally take the step that they had been waiting to take for so long. I will send pics. I got to baptize Alvaro, the older of the two sons. He is so dope and my comp baptized the younger son, and a member baptized the mom! 

I got you guyses package this week! haha holy fetch i doubt you could've sent more crap! Idk how I'm feeling about having to drag it to a new area if i get transferred next week.. But thanks a ton i really appreciate it. (Trish added: Can't you tell how grateful he is?)

We played white elephant this week among the missionaries and it was super funny. I will try to get the pics but elder peterson bought a pineapple and put a face on it and i got that and took some good pics ¨Chupando la piña¨ as they say here haha. 

I'll give a good shout-out to the old man´s birthday this week. Happy 63 or wherever you are at now! Hope that it goes well and you guys eat my share of the Harbors Bake at Red Lobster or whatever its called. I got you a present but I have yet to send it so just don't get your panties in a twist, it will arrive sooner or later. 

Elder Falabella is coming to talk to us this week on Wednesday. He is the area 70 here and half of the mission will go one day and half another. It should be pretty sweet to hear him speak he is a super good speaker and super powerful too. I will let you guys know how that goes next week. 

I was beginning to think the guys at home had forgotten about me but the emails are coming in today from Coach Wells and Maile. I'm keeping the focus on the mission for now but soon enough my time will come. 

We did splits this week with the assistants. We went in trios and it was super cool, we went with Elder Garate from Arequipa. He is super dope. He taught me so many cool things like how to learn scriptures and how to be a leader and whatnot. I just try to take advantage of all the divisions with more experienced elders because they really do know a lot more than i do and the way i see it is that it isn't necessary that i relearn everything that they have already learned when they can just tell me different ways that work best. 

Um its been a fairly short time since i emailed you last so that's about it haha. Today for pday we didn't really do anything. I found a place in San Borja that has a ton of homies practicing to be barbers and they give haircuts for free in the mornings so i got mine done today. We played cards and chess and wrestled in the chapel today and then some dude in the sisters ward fed us in his restaurant for free. 

Nothing else, hope all is well at home! 

Week 28

So this week has been just another week haha. We went to the temple this morning and had to be there at six-thirty so we ended up waking up at four-thirty to get there on time. But it was alright because we got in and out and had all of our pday to chill. I bought a small quad because my scriptures are enormous and hurt to carry around all day.

We had a family home evening last night with a super super rich family in our ward. It was dope. We thought we were gonna share a lesson and everything but they invited the family that we live with over, we chilled in their backyard and he just talked about how phones are killing the young people these days. Haha and then they gave us Papa John's Pizza which was pretty sweet.

On Wednesday the senior couple in our mission came to our room to help us clean and make it better. Hahahaha he was trying to fix the shower and idk what happened but he blew out the power and almost started a fire in our room. Nothing huge happened. But we didn't have power for a day and it ended up knocking out the power to the whole house where 3 other families live hahahaha. But they got it all fixed and we didn't end up proselyting until like 6 that night hahaha.

I have to get my suit jacket cleaned sometime this week because my comp opened up the drawer to his desk and a cockroach jumped out and started running so i grabbed my slipper and splattered it because we have competitions every night to see who can kill more, and it ended up splatter juices all over my suit coat so that is just great. But anyway, i usually end up winning the competitions like 11-5 or so if you were wondering.

I didn't really mean to this week but i kinda burned my comp on learning English because he just kept complaining and complaining about how i didn't teach him and stuff. Lets just say that he never studies and his family wants him to learn super bad but i had had enough and whipped the scriptures out on him. I felt a little bad afterward haha.

Haha we were asking some investigators if we could go visit them today in the night and they were like "For real, it's Valentine's Day!  You guys aren't gonna be doing anything special?" We both looked at each and busted out laughing and ended up telling our investigators that actually yes we were planning on taking each other out to dinner and whatnot. It was so funny but i guess they don't understand that we are always with each other and that we don't have relationships...or maybe they were referring to the fact that we're "companions". Who knows????

I'll send you guys some pics of Elder Peterson and me from today. He is from my group and he and Elder Hunt are probably my favorites out of my group. He is from Brighton...and yes knows Simi. But this is us in a store near the temple.

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Ya so that is about it for this week. Happy Valentines from my love, Elder Peterson, and I.

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Much Love,

Elder Mortenson

Week 27

On Mon, Feb 6, 2017 

Don't feel any different and the goal still seems far away but its hard to believe i have 6 months already in the mish haha. To celebrate we burned a tie but the video is super boring so i won't send it to you, it's just 7 minutes of us standing there. We also went to Pizza Hut again because that is like one of the only places i like here haha and they had a good deal going on. I wanted to go to Chili's but it's super expensive and i felt weird among so many people as a missionary. 

Anyway, this week has gone pretty well! Our family that is going to be baptized freaked out the other day because she saw some pics of a kid's baptism in our ward and they threw like a whole party for him and so she thought she would have to do the same and she doesn't have any money because she is a teacher and they are on vacation rn. But its all good we moved her date to the 18th and they will be fine to be baptized then so i am excited! they had us over for dinner last night and she made us salchipapas which is just fries with hot dog but i really liked it...i do miss eating hot dogs roasted over the fire up in the mountains with the boys. 

 

I have now seen the glory of God while in my youth and it was amazing... My comp burned a Jehovah's Witness yesterday without even doing anything. I now know we have the truth. Somehow my companion got a hold of their bible in one of his other areas. So what happened was i told him just to give the true doctrine to this like 70 year old man like we are supposed to do, not burn him but just teach as Jesus would since the truth "pierces" the hearts of the wicked. So anyway they were talking and whatnot and he got riled up as Jehovah's Witnesses sometimes do and my comp told him to turn to some random scripture in John. Turns out they are missing tons of random scriptures in the bible and the dude knew it and didn't have it and didn't know what to say. My comp said, "When you have this scripture in your bible we can talk!" and we walked away. You actually had to be there to see the hurt but it was pretty sic. 

They put all of the schedule changes in this week so we are waking up at seven and we do our comp and language study after lunch rn. I really like it tbh. Being out in the sun at 2 in the afternoon is the worst, i just want to die everyday! They say the radiation from the sun here is really bad too so i am using tons of sunscreen. 

I started Studying Jesus the Christ this week and am making progress. The book is amazing and holds so much doctrine. Haha i have learned soo much in only 6 months. It is absolutely amazing what you can learn when you read the scriptures every day and are helping people with their problems and have to live in a way to have the spirit constantly with you. 

Nothing much really happened this week. It has been just one of those weeks. I think we had like 3 lessons and just contacted and contacted and i just want to die sometimes. Haha we asked our ward mission leader what we could do and he just told us to keep on going. hahaha we both laughed at how easily he said it but its true you just gotta keep knocking on doors and teaching. 

To sum up my mission so far i would have to say that it has been the absolute weirdest thing i have ever done. I always saw the missionaries as a kid like they were Angels but actually being a missionary i feel very differently. It has been super weird and difficult to leave my old life behind, from just chilling, playing ball every day and whatnot to talking with everyone we see. I have been so humbled just seeing the way others live and being able to live in the same circumstances. I think one of the coolest things is though, that the church is the same here in our humble 100 member ward as it is there with the 3 wards of like 500 that attend our chapel in North Logan haha. But ya anyway that's about it... 

 

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Much Love,

Elder Mortenson