Hey, hey, hey!
Alright, well the weeks keep going by and I continue to forget what has happened when I sit down in front of the computer on Monday. Wow. Well, perhaps I can get my mind in gear. Let’s see, the zone did better this week. We didn’t end March very well, baptizing only six. That is pretty low and considering that we are the biggest zone in the entire mission. However, we are hoping that with about 500 new investigators and over 1,000 lessons taught in the month of March that there will be much better results here in the coming weeks. (Wow, that really looks impressive!) We have General Conference this coming weekend, as I am sure many of you already well know. I am pretty pumped for that. Guess what? It’s my LAST General Conference as a missionary. That’s nuts. So, it should be a good measure to see how far my Spanish has come over these last 20 months. I am looking forward to it. Oh, and this week Semana Santa (Holy Week) gets revved up. HOORAY (note sarcasm). I am not looking forward to that at all. It is pretty much the saddest excuse ever of a religious holiday. I probably explained it before, but it’s basically an excuse to be able to make a few extra bucks here and there, selling religious videos and other items, while walking around with giant crosses and ending the night with a huge beer bash. Nothing like a bunch of drunkards fighting each other to ring in holiness. Sorry, that is probably too much sarcasm. Actually I doubt it will be as ugly here in La Victoria as it was in Catacaos. It was pretty bad last year. We’ll see - and I promise to provide a full report.
On the far more positive side, we had four investigators at church yesterday. It is seriously hard to get people to church at 8:00 am - just too early for everyone here. There is a new capilla opening up here in two weeks nearby, so I am hoping the meeting schedule changes to something later in the morning. Sandra is coming along great and actually taught the young women’s class about the priesthood. Pretty impressive for an investigator who has come three times. She is already teaching! We are hoping to have her baptism this next week. We met another young lady yesterday, who is a friend of an RM that got back last week and we are teaching her now and have a date set for April 17. We actually have quite a few people with baptismal dates right now, which is great. Yolanda and her kids also have that date set, but we recently found out she is not married, but we are never able to talk to her husband because he works a lot. So that might take a bit longer but they are doing great. Last month we did a fast together as a zone to be able to find families, and we didn’t have any in February, and now we are teaching four or five, which is just amazing to me. The progression is coming along, however slowly, but the fact that we are now teaching full families and contacting families is just awesome and I am really very excited about it. The Family Sarate is doing ok. The husband has a hard time exercising his faith and wants us to be able to explain and convince him of everything (instead of relying on the spirit, going to the Lord himself), and he is not totally willing to search for answers, pray, put goals to improve, and all that good stuff. But his wife and daughters are all there listening, so it will be a process with them, but it will come. He is stuck on his belief that the Sabbath Day should be on Saturday. He kind of tests our patience with a lot of questions that seem more aimed at merely trying to find a chink in the gospel armor than to get at the truth. (The fact is that even if Alberto does believe Saturday to be the Sabbath, he doesn’t keep it holy anyway, so I am not really sure why he is allowing that to be such a stumbling block.) But, we have exercised patience and love Alberto and his family very much.
Our investigators are coming along. I am sure there will be more success this month. Our area is fun. My companion is extra frightened about getting robbed, but I’m not worried at all. People around here - including the robbers - normally respect the missionaries, and I know the area well enough where we should and shouldn’t go at late hours and what not, but Elder Vasquez is kinda worried. I just laugh at him. I have fun walking the streets here. We saw some guys get in a fight the other day and that was pretty interesting. Stuff like that happens all the time but it’s never really serious. Anyway, we are safe, especially since our pension’s husband is this big respected guy that no one messes with and everyone knows that we are in his house three times a day, so if they mess with us they have to answer to him, and they don’t want that - so they leave us alone. (Don’t worry, Mom! We are good here.) Life is going good. I am healthy and am anxiously waiting for the Peruvian summer to end. Apparently Chiclayo actually gets cold in the winter and I am sooooo down for that. I have been in what feels like a literal endless summer for way too long now. Well, I love you all very much. Everyone have a great week, and remember the Lord loves you, His gospel has been restored to the earth, and His living prophets and apostles are not only here today, but they will be speaking this weekend at General Conference. What a thrill it is to know that. If people believed Peter, James and John were speaking at the Thomas & Mack, they’d be flocking to hear them. The fact is that men just like them, in their same capacity as prophets, seers and revelators will be speaking this week - and the world will hardly notice. Take good notes this weekend. Cherish the words of counsel to be shared, and let’s all live to be great in the eyes of God!
Elder “Casino” Royal
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