Divina Providencia

Yeah, I haven't written in a while because I have been busy on Pdays. I have time right now so here we go.

Tuesday: Welcome to Divina Providencia

My area got changed, again. I guess I should pack light from now on. I headed out to my area. We took a taxi to a mall and from there a bus to my area. My area is a really small town 1 mile out from Tegus. There is nothing here. From the highway it literally looks like a power plant and that's it. We have the catholic church building, the town market and several streets worth of houses. 

We don't have running water, the water we do have is green (was brown when I got here) and yeah...  

After unpacking my things,  we left the house to go get lunch because we don't got a pensionista here. After lunch, we went and visited with some people. We helped some ranchers heard cows (yee hah) which was pretty fun. These cows are big but they sure do think only about their stomachs so they kept on stopping to eat. 

Wednesday: Machete time!

Our Elders Quorum president needed help cutting his lawn, so we borrowed a machete from someone and went and macheted his lawn. First time in my life with a machete, but it was fun. After that, we ran into the ranchers again and helped them with their stupid cows.

Macheteing and Herding cows, welcome to the pueblo life.

Thursday: Zone Council 

I guess those are a thing... All 8 companionships in our zone got together to have a meeting. We all talked about our goals as a zone. The Zone Leaders set the goal of 20 baptisms in the month for the zone, 3 each group. That's alot. That's a ton, but we are going to try our best to complete it. 

Later that day we went out contacting with a member which was cool. We found some of the member's friends who were interested which was great.

Friday: Almost there...

We went and visited 2 people who are really close to being baptized, but they are still dragging their feet through the mud and still don't want to.

We invited them to pray about it and left it at that. Its up to them whether or not they'll accept the invitation.

Saturday: "and walked and walked and walked"

We needed to got to a baptismal interview in the other area in our district so we walked 15 minutes to the highway and hitchhiked to the town of Zambrano. Once we got there, we had to walk 1 hour up a mountain to get to where they lived. The dedication these people have sometimes. After doing the interview and having lunch we walked back down the mountain. 

Once we got back to our area we walked up a mountain in our area to visit some people. It was not as long of a walk but still.... 

We went contacting and decided to knock on doors. I hadn't had done it since my training. My companion was just like "do it" so I went and did it. I was able to get us a lesson. Even though it was been a while, I still got it.

That night we met someone who was being taught before. My companion didn't know where he lived, so it took a while to find him. He's interested in the church and even had his own copy of all the scriptures we have. First time I've seen an investigator own a Doctrine and Covenants so that's interesting.

We taught him a lesson and asked if he was willing to come to church. He said he didn't feel well, so it wasn't likely that he'd come. Well, we decided to give him a blessing and my comp said that he'd have the strength to come to church the next day.

Sunday: Oh Dear

We got to church on Sunday and I discovered just how small our group was. Yeah, we don't have a branch or a ward. We have a group. About 23 people came and most were very late. The person we gave the blessing to came which was awesome.

Yeah, our group is small. 23 people in that building is strange. We do not have any married couples that come together and the primary is just the little kids of one family. We are going to need some Divine Providence to help the people here (bad joke but here we are).

On the bright side, we met this guy who is super interested in the church. He told us that he has been searching for a long time for the truth and is just waiting for someone to help him find it. He asked a ton of questions and told us he wants to know everything there is to know about the church. Even though some things are struggling, we always somehow are able to find that little spark of hope.

By the way, my new companion is a gringo from Colorado Springs, Colorado and his name is Elder Baer.