Elder Weaver's Almuerzo
What is Up?
So, another week down in Padre Hurtado. Elder Ortiz and I worked super hard this week and taught 30 lessons. I don´t know how it is in other missions, but here 30 lessons in a week is a pretty solid week of work. Nothing super out of the ordinary happened this week. Yesterday there was a drunk guy on the street that approached us (as they always do), and his face was JACKED UP. I mean he had blood everywhere and a huge goose egg in the middle of his forehead. He was tripping and falling eveywhere, and we had to give him some support just to keep him standing. This guy was so beyond drunk it wasn´t even funny. Especially as a missionary, you just feel incredibly sad for people like this. So that was fun helping this guy get on a micro so that he wouldn´t die. It was super late too and we were heading back to the pension. Stuff like that happens all the time though... I just never have time to tell you ALL of my experiences.
So I was a little frustrated yesterday. We only had 1 investigator show up to Church. I´m super grateful that we had one, but for how much we worked this week I was expecting more. That´s the mission though... you work super hard, the people feel the spirit while you´re teaching them, and then as soon as you leave their home they forget all about their commitments and go on with their daily lives and routines. I find incredible comfort and happiness though in the fact that I at least have the gospel, and I without a doubt feel the love of my Savior daily and the love of all of you who are praying for me!
So I´m going to kind of just write about what it is I exactly do on a daily basis.
6:30- I wake up and say a prayer. It´s usually pretty cold in the mornings and it´s definitely a struggle to get out of bed. But I have yet to not get up on time!
6:40- I have my running stuff on and Elder Ortiz rides his bike by me while I go for a 15-20 minute run. The mornings always smell like death because all the dog poop and trash just resonates from the previous day. I also always run faster than Elder Ortiz can ride a bike, so I still end up doing a lot of loops back to him, just so I can keep in sight of him.
7:00- Without fail, I always do 100 push ups, 100 sit ups, 2 minutes of wall sits, and 2 minutes of planks while I wait for everyone in our pension to shower.
7:30- I take a miserably cold shower. Our calafome doesn´t work. Hasn´t worked since I got here. And the pesnionists don´t seem to want to do their jobs here. But big whoop... it´s a cold shower. As it´s getting colder here in Chili though.... the cold shower is kinda a heartbreaking experience every morning and night.
7:40- Eat breakfast while listening to Elder Barraza´s general conference talks or BYU devotionals that he has blaring ALL MORNING LONG. I actually really like the talks though and without them the pension would be deadly quiet. I also have talks in spanish that I listen to or I listen to my MoTab on my iPod. It´s actually an incredible pick me up in the mornings, so I´m grateful for music and church talks!
8:00- Personal study. I always read the Book of Mormon in spanish out loud, then I read Doctrine and Covenants, Old Testament, New Testament, Jesus The Christ, and Predicad Mi Evangelio in spanish. I also finished Our Search for Happiness by Elder Ballard this week and that book was super awesome to read. I´ll talk about that later.
9:00- Companionship study. Elder Ortiz and I sing a hymn in spanish, say a prayer, and read the missionary manual in spanish. Then we share what we learned in personal study. After that we do My First 12 weeks packet where we basically just practice teaching and read Predicad Mi Evangelio.
11:00- I FINALLY GET TO LANGUAGE STUDY. I just am knocking out all the language study books they gave us in the MTC right now.
12:00- Leave the pension and start teaching. Elder Ortiz is super slow on the bikes and he just learned how to ride one about 2 transfers ago... so getting to places takes some time. Our SECTOR IS HUGE!
2:00- We have Almuerzo at a member´s house. They´re usually pretty good, but they are repetitive and it´s hard sometimes to stay within the 1 hour limit we ahve for lunch because the members usually don´t have everything prepared and Almuerzo is a BIG meal here.
9 or 9:30- We head back to the pension and plan for 30 minutes for the next day.
10- I shower, write in my journal, and go to bed. All of this while listening to more Talks blaring from Elder Barraza´s speaker.
That´s the life of a missionary. Every. Single. Day. The day itself consists of a lot of highs and lows. Either people recieve ya or you´re just riding your bike around every where not accomplishing anything.
So we have a new investigadora named Nataly. She is super, super, super awesome. We taught her the first 3 lessons this week and SHE CAME TO CHURCH. Here´s the problem. She´s living with a guy and has a child. So she can´t be baptized until they get married. That´s the problem with quite a few of our investigators right now actually... But, her husband really liked the lessons too so we´re just praying that they make the move to CHANGE THEIR LIVES.
This week while reading Our Search for Happiness by Elder Ballard, I realized how blessed I am to have the gospel in my life. Without it, I know that I honestly wouldn´t have TRUE happiness in my life today. No, I have never seen God and I´ve never seen Christ. But, I know that this gospel is true because I have feelings of incredible peace and comfort and joy that really can´t be adequetaly described and that´s because it´s from the Holy Ghost. Even this week I had a sudden feeling that we should go to this house of a person we contacted my first week here and I wasn´t sure why I felt so strongly to go there... Turns out that this lady was having a really bad day and a really bad week. She confessed that she has depression and that she´s extremely worried for her son right now. She talked with us outside her house for close to an hour and we´re going to visit her later this week. She was extremely glad we stopped by and she wondered why we did because that time we contacted her she didn´t want much to do with us. It´s stuff like that, I can´t describe how that feeling was or why I felt that we should visit this random contact, but it turned out that Heavenly Father NEEDED us to visit her in that moment to simply give some comfort. That´s the essence of how I KNOW this Gospel is true. Not only do I know it through feelings, but I know that it´s true because IT MAKES PERFECT SENSE!
Anyways, I´ve talked enough. Hope all ya´ll have a fantastic week! Keep strong and find the joy in the small things in life. LIVE IN THE MOMENT! Everyday can be a good day if you choose for it to be!
Love,
Elder Weaver
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