Week 84

Ya so another good week! To start out, on Monday we went to some member's house in the zone and cooked up like infinity hamburgers and ate them and watched a couple of movies. We ended up not going to the abandoned church because they couldn't get us in but it was chill. 

Tuesday was a fairly good day. I gave my training in the district meeting on some sports psychology and how we can apply it to the mission. I talked about setting high goals and mentally visualizing them daily and then using some other techniques to help us achieve them. It was a pretty cool training.

Wednesday and Thursday were just normal days. We did divisions that night so that we could go to both the correlation meeting and to an appointment with the family that we are teaching so that they could go get their documents to get married. They ended not being home because that had to go to the dentist with their daughter. They are taking forever to get everything done because she is super scared of not being able to keep all of the commandments after she gets baptized. So we took this member from our ward with us yesterday and visited them and we talked them through their worries and it was pretty cool.  I think they could start doing better now. 

On Friday I went and did divisions with Elder Halls again so I could interview 4 of their investigators that were going to get baptized. I interviewed a little girl and then on Saturday morning when I was in the shower, the mom of the family that was going to get baptized(her with her two daughters) called and told Elder Halls that they wouldn't be able to do it for different reasons. So we went to her house and were trying to help her and whatnot and the other Elders came and suggested that she just have the interview so that I could help her out. So we went to the chapel, lets just say that I spent 2 hours trying to help her out. I ended up not passing her because she didn't even have a testimony.  It was interesting. 

Yesterday was kind of a sad day. This guy stopped us on the street and told us that he had family that was part of our church and that he just wanted us to read him a verse of the Bible. He told us that he was living in the street and that he just earned money to eat and to do drugs. It was really sad he was crying super hard while he explained all of that to us. Not that its the first time that it has happened to me, because it happens fairly often, but it really made me think about how there are people that literally live in a hell on earth and to see how strong Satan's chains really can be and how hard it can be to escape them. It was a testimony that the gospel really is freedom. 

Anyway, me and Elder Guanilo are staying together, no surprise. Today we are gonna go to Burger King and clean our room. Everything is going well. We are hitting the gym 3 times a week and I really am liking it. We try to run the other 3 days of the week. So that's about it. Shout-out to the little bro for getting his call to Arequipa!!! I'm gonna have to tell Elder Garate to be on the lookout for you. It should be a super cool mission! Arequipa is considered here to be a different country because it is the richest part of Peru. But I'm hyped that we will have served in the same country!! Time to get started on the Spanish...

--

Elder Mortenson

Week 83

I feel lucky to have gotten through this week. To start the week out on Monday we just watched a movie and made hamburgers. Tuesday was normal as well. But then on Wednesday morning was when stuff started going down...Idk what happened but we planned out the English class that morning and then went and ate lunch and then when we got back to the room I started feeling pretty funny and then we spent the whole day in the room because I couldn't get out of the bathroom. It was so bad. They told me to take all of these antidiarrheals and stuff but they didn't really help. I was like that all day until about Thursday afternoon I got to the point where I wasn't in the bathroom like every 10 minutes and so we went out and proselyted. hahha but ya now I'm fine, I ended up losing like 10 lbs so that's not good either. 

So anyway we went and visited the bishop on Tuesday and asked him where we should proselyte to be able to find the people who really want to know the gospel of Jesus Christ. Its a new thing that we are doing in the whole mission- considering the fact that the bishop holds the keys over the area. So he told us a specific little part of our area where we should go and so that is where we are focusing right now. We started out by visiting one of the really strong families of members there and inviting them to fast and to pray to be able to invite one of their neighbors to listen to us. The daughter is a ward missionary and she ended up doing it and coming to church with a whole list of references for us so that was pretty cool. We have yet to visit another one of the other really strong families that live there and then we are going to look for the less-actives and whatnot but I think it should go well. 

On Saturday I had to go interview a little girl that the zone leaders are going to baptize.  It was an interesting interview. She was super shy so I really had to focus in on things just to see if she had actually understood anything that she had been taught, but at the end she opened up more and it was fine. 

Yesterday we did a "zone attack" in an area of our zone. It was pretty interesting, we all did splits with some members and I was talking to the guy that I was with and he was telling me about his conversion about a year and half ago and I asked him what elder had baptized him and he said that it was an Elder from Utah and so I asked what part and he said Logan and then he told me that it was Elder Pearson. Hahahah I told him that I knew him and that he had graduated from SV when I was a sophomore and whatnot and the next thing I know he is handing me his cellphone telling me that Kolton is on the line. So ya, I ended up talking to him for a sec so that was weird but cool. 

But that's about it for this week. Today we are going to an abandoned church that some member owns hahah it seems sic and it has catacombs which should be cool. But ya that's about it. SKYBI out. 

--

Elder Mortenson