Wednesday, August 10, 2016

MTC - Week 4

Chevre Means Cool


Que tal! So I need to start out with the proselyting experience. So all 40 of us get on this bus outside the CCM and we drive for probably 20 minutes through Lima. This city is seriously so big. And trashy. And perros (dogs). 

So we get to this church and it's in the Lima East Mission. To be honest I was pretty scared after seeing the city and all the people and whatnot. But they have a little orientation telling us what we are going to be doing, and they assign us to some other missionaries in the Lima East Mission. It was cool because we got to see some of the guys that were in the CCM a week ago. And so Elder Hunsaker, Elder Bumstead, and I went with a Peruvian from Trujillo named Elder Sanchez who had only been on his mission 3 months so he knows zero English. 

And we start walking, we walked like a block and then suddenly a bus stopped and we got on. The ceiling was short enough that we were all hitting our heads on it. Another group of 4 missionaries was also on the bus with us, and their experienced missionary was a North American who had been out a year. But he had the latino accent. And his clothes were wore out and everything. But the thing I noticed the most about him was how happy he was. 

Anyway, we are on the bus for probably 15 minutes and we passed this big market where everyone was selling and buying stuff. People walk down the middle of the road in between traffic selling stuff to people in their cars, it's so crazy. 

And then we finally get his area and we go into this little house of a newly baptized convert who wasn't attending church. And so we taught the restoration and I got to share the first vision, it was pretty cool, but something wasn't right because the spirit just wasn't there. This guy was probably in his twenties, and he had really big expensive speakers and a nice TV in his tiny house. 

One thing that's kind of mind blowing for me is none of the houses here have yards. Like there's no room, the whole block is full of buildings. It seems really disorganized, but it's cool. And then we just went street contacting. Elder Sanchez wanted us to participate, but really we would just take turns out of the 3 of us introducing ourselves and then Elder Sanchez would take over. I think I got a little bit of culture shock because I started getting frustrated. On the way back we got a taxi and the taxi driver was trying to talk to me but I just couldn't understand what he was saying and he would just laugh at me.

When we got back to the CCM everyone was telling stories and there were some good ones, like Elder Reukert (who sleeps below me in our room) got bit by a dog, and Elder Fawcett got kissed on the face by a girl during a teaching lesson haha. 

But oh it's also true that some of the houses don't have roofs, at least partially. Like we knocked on one and we looked through the hallway and there was no roof haha. 

One thing about the food, sometimes they have shredded chicken in the eggs in the morning haha its weird. And also one thing I don't like a lot about the food here is that there is not very much cheese. I love cheese, but it's alright. 

Quick story so the elders in my district really miss barbeque sauce, and so they made a deal with our teacher, Hermano Sosa, that if we went a whole day only speaking Spanish that he would buy us a bottle of it. And we did it. But we don't have the barbeque sauce yet haha. It was so hard though haha, I probably only said twenty words in English all day. 

Yeah so sometimes during companionship study Elder Hunsaker and I read out loud from the Book of Mormon in Spanish together to help with the fluency. The spirit is so strong here at the CCM. I could feel the difference when I got back from proselyting. I feel like I've learned more about the gospel and Jesus Christ and the Plan of Salvation than I ever have. There have been so many times already where I have prayed for help with something that I was particularly struggling with and seriously the following day it always gets better. The Lord answers prayers. Love you all, hasta next week.

- Elder Harris



We got haircuts last week when the principantes came. (Clarification - they were professional barbers, not Elder Fife)


Elder Fife cutting Elder Amann's hair

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