Monday, September 12, 2016

Pachacutec - Week 3

Pollo a La Brasa


Hey guys how's it going? So the address to my house is Manzana (Block) H Lot 9 of Los Cedros. I think the street name is Cusco, and it's right next to a park. I don't know if you can see it on google maps but you can try I guess. So one cool thing here is the way they utilize their resources. They use old tires to make retaining walls, and I've also seen them be used for flower pots, haha it's kind of cool.

I had my first experience with the language of Quechua this week. We knocked on this door and an old lady came out and started talking to us, and then she started talking Quechua and I asked my comp if he could understand her and he was like nope. She was really old I think she was just confused. So yeah, President Stauffer said once we perfect English and Spanish we can learn Quechua if we want.

One interesting aspect of this work here is how we work with couples living together that are not married. Normally when we contact someone we always ask if they are civilly married, and if they are not, we can only teach them one lesson and invite them to church. Then, if they want to continue to learn about the gospel they can in gospel principles class. The reason for this is unmarried couples are very unlikely to progress, because they can't be baptized until they are married, so our time is better spent on married families. But I think we can teach them if they have a date to be married...anyways its tough because probably over half of the couples we contact aren't married.

Another interesting aspect of the work in this area (the South America Northwest area) is the work with recent converts and less active members. We have this chart thing where after a person is baptized, the ward and the missionaries continue to work with them, passing step by step until they are ultimately sealed as a family in the temple. We have been working with the Soto family since I arrived here. They were less active members, but now they come to church every week. I think the term is rescued, but it means that we taught them all the missionary lessons. They are meeting with the branch president soon to set a date for the temple so we are super excited for them.

There are some weird connections to WWII that I have to share. So Pachacutec is broken up into little communities like Los Cedros, and the church is in the community named Hiroshima (yes like the city in Japan). And we have an investigator named Hitler right now. Yes his first name is Hitler. And the Spanish word in the scriptures for burnt offering is holocausto.

The Spanish is good. I really don't know how to describe it. I'm understanding more and more everyday. At times I'm really comfortable in lessons and stuff, and other times no. Some people are easy to understand and others aren't. I can usually say what I need to, it's just really slow.

One spiritual experience I had was yesterday, and it's kind of just a normal experience for a missionary, but honestly I don't know if I've ever felt so guided by the Spirit in my life. So it was like 8:50 pm and we were heading back to our apartment, and we passed a street and I looked down and saw this house. We kept walking, and I tried to shrug it off, that it was just another house, no big deal, we need to get home. But the feeling just kept getting stronger and stronger to turn around, and eventually yeah I turned around and we went back and knocked on it. But... no one answered. We left a card with our phone number on it, and returned to home. But I was confused...I knew that the Spirit it led me to that door...So why didn't they answer?  Then Elder Chalampuento told me that they were old investigators and maybe now they are prepared to accept the gospel. I really hope so, we are going to return and find out.

Con amor,

Elder Harris







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