Monday, November 10, 2014

Hitting the dirt...

Hola Familia,                                                                                                                                         

Yeah, so I think I may have all of 30 minutes to write today. President gave me my change on Sunday afternoon and since then I have been super busy. I am in Trapiche Branch, in the San Felipe Stake as a zone leader. Elder N is my companion, he´s 19 years old I think, and he´s from Piura, Peru. Ummm, yeah basically that´s all I can think of to tell you about him haha. We get a long really well, and I´m glad that the zona doesn´t seem to look at me as the big scary asistente. This week has been a ton of fun, getting to know the area, and the zona, trainings, and just jumping in headfirst with the work.

We met a 27 year old man named J this week and started teaching him. He is a member’s nephew and lives in the same house. He has had such a dark difficult past, but he says that he has tried a lot of times to pull himself out of it. He battles with depression and at the same time, he has been unemployed for a few weeks. We started our first lesson with him talking about the plan of salvation and especially what our purpose is in life, and why we have trials. He is really quiet and really thoughtful. He listens to us teach, and when we ask a question he ponders it and then responds after 10 or 20 seconds of silence. It´s such a spiritual experience to teach him. Well, we challenged him to be baptized in the first lesson and he accepted for the 29th of this month, then we invited him to church and said that maybe this is the time when he really will change. This Sunday, we passed by a couple of investigators houses before church and while we were walking about an hour before the first meeting (2 pm sacrament meeting) he passed in the street with a couple of friends...in soccer clothes. We reminded him about the church and that we would pass by his house, but he wasn´t there when we got there. We passed him again in the street after the church meetings and he just kind of hung his head while we passed. He wants to do better, but he feels a lot of pressure to fit in with his friends and he doesn´t have a good connection with the branch members yet. We´ll be working with him a lot this week.

There are so many experiences I can´t even begin to tell them all, but that´s why I have thrown a little bit more effort into writing in my journal, I was able to write at least once this week, and it felt great. I´ll be writing more this next week so that I can remember all of these experiences. The branch is out on a corner of the mission and goes out to a river that’s called Rio Chiyán. I haven´t seen it yet, but my area definitely has a small town feel. We run into our investigators and the members practically every day in the street, and it seems like everyone knows everyone. The streets are all dirt and so we get back to the room with white shoes from all of the dust. Also...there´s got to be more dogs than people out here haha.

Well, I´ve gotta go, but I love you all, I hope it´s been a great week, and I´ll try to write more next week. Anybody I didn´t respond to know that I´ll try next week, but no guarantees!

Love,


Elder Nelson

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