Hey Hey Hey
Alright, so wonderful to have spoken with you all yesterday!! Life is pretty good here in Chachapoyas. Elder Tietjen is doing just swell, and we are having fun. Besides getting kicked out of the basketball court today by a 6́3" Cuban woman teaching children to play volleyball, it’s been a great Preparation Day. Anyway, so this will probably be shorter for having talked yesterday - but for the sake of having my life typed and saved in computer files, I’ll probably still work in most of it.
So it was a good Mother’s Day. Church was definitely interesting. There were about 20 people in sacrament meeting - including four missionaries (us!) and five investigators. Wow. That was a bit rough. Why such poor attendance, you ask? Somehow word got around that church was cancelled due to Mother’s Day. (Yes, they recognize Mother’s Day here.) I discovered that one of our investigators heard that rumor and did not come to church as a result. Yeah, not too excited about that...but, what can ya do? Sooo, three of us gave talks during sacrament meeting, and for the 10 people that decided to stay after sacrament, my companion and I taught the first hour class, while Elder Russell and Elder Wariner taught the second hour. Oh man. I can’t imagine what would happen if we weren’t here. But, I do love it, I must say. And I also say that while I like giving talks, I love teaching the classes so much more. Just a fun environment. So that was church yesterday. We are considering putting about half as much work into investigators and putting a lot - a lot - a lot more into fellowshipping members. Because...if we baptize and no one comes back...what’s the point? I think there were nearly 50 baptisms last year and how many are active? Hmmm. So, we are really trying to figure out what we can do to strengthen the members. It’s a bit difficult, but really we just need ways to build more confidence and unity among the branch members. We’ll see what we can do. It’s a bit of a struggle, but it’s cool. It makes the work really interesting. Apart from that we do have investigators coming along. We have a family (or most of it at least) that is coming along, and the mother, Lucero, gave the best prayer ever the other night when we taught, asking God to help her family unite and be members of the Church. I can’t figure out why she doesn’t get baptized! But she will. I can feel it. And when she does the rest of the family will follow. She is a great example and is putting away coffee even though it’s been a struggle for her. We have a few others: Maritza, Leidy, Katy, Percy, and our new hair cutting lady Sheyla, who is SO cool, and has two sons that are way cool too. She will be an awesome member if we are able to help get her there. It’s hard to find people that progress, but we are managing to find a few, and actually have quite a few good people to contact this week, so we’ll see. But things are going good.
Oh, animal stories! We got chased by a dog last week, which marks the first time that has happened to me as a missionary. We were trying to find an investigator at her house, but to get to the door you have to really invade their property and that was a bit uncomfortable. So we started shouting a bit and got the dog’s attention. He started growling so I figured if we could get him barking it would get someone’s attention to come outside. Sooo, my comp and I started growling at the dog, who seemed to take it personally. He shot up real fast and chased after us - and we ran away in different directions screaming like little girls. We haven’t gone back there yet. Oh! Even better! I got to play with a monkey on Saturday!! We went to Jaen for interviews with the president and on our way back to get a car for Chachapoyas, we found a guy in the street who had a monkey and we asked if we could play with him and take pictures! It was definitely the highlight of the week...maybe of the mission. Haha. Ok maybe not but it was pretty dang cool. First time I got to play with a monkey. Mom, you know what to get me for my first Christmas back home. :) That monkey was crazy cool. His name was Chavo.
Life is going great here. I finally bought a raincoat today and that was a score - 35 soles! Oh man, that was a good find today. Oh, and since we keep our shoes outside of our apartment to keep it clean, my feet FREEZE during study time and what not - so I went looking for slippers, too. Pretty hard to come by, but I found some today! The only ones that were my size were brown with the face of a cat on them. I didn’t have money at the time so I asked the guy if he could hold on to them for me until I came back. He said sure and then when he saw what it was he started laughing sooo hard. But hey, they are wonderful. And now my feet will be warm. We call them my Peruvian Hello Kitty slippers. Cool stuff. I am pretty excited about them. Ok so that sums up my life right now. Everything is going great. It was great to see President Chipman and talk with him again, I just can’t say enough about how much love and respect I have for him. The mission is going great. No worries, I am sprinting to the finish with awesomeness. We are working good, working hard. The Church is true. I hope we all know that and have the desire to tell someone else.
Elder "Handsome Sweater and Slippers" Royal
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