Hola mi Familia y Amigos:
When you have difficulties in life you ask why? Why me?
It’s not different on the mission.
With having a difficult companion that I am training, I have asked why
me? Why am I with him? In my difficulties during my life, I have
spent countless hours on my knees and it has been no different here.
During one particular very difficult day, I spent a long time praying. That night I had a dream, I dreamed that I was
in an interview with the Mission President in which he told me “Elder Fawcett,
you have given him because he needs you and you need him.” I woke up and I have taken that as my answer
to my prayers. He needs me and I need
him! Though now it might not seem like
it, there IS a reason for everything so every day I try my best to learn from
him what I am meant to learn as well as I try to teach him so he can learn what
he needs to.
Despite the difficulties, I’ve seen miracles after the trial of my
faith. There have been days this week
where we walked all day to countless houses that we had appointments at just to
get the door slammed in our faces or for them to not even be home. But one day after having no success, we went
and visited our recent convert Kevin.
Luckily, he was home! We entered
the house and met one of his aunts named Marisol who just happen to be moving
in to live with them. We taught her the
lesson of the Restoration and at the end, I felt prompted to invite Marisol to
be baptized. She was a little hesitant
but accepted that if she came to the knowledge of the truthfulness, she’d by
baptized. So after a day of complete
frustration, we found a new investigator and at the same time invited her to be
baptized.
I’ve learned a lot on my mission that the blessings of hard work don’t
always pay off when you want it too.
Sometimes, the Lord simply wants to try our faith and test us to see if
we will keep trying. Eventually we will
see the reward if we keep working at it and that’s what I know will happen with
my companion as well.
Here are a few funny and interesting things from this week:
- They don’t have much Christmas stuff down here, but Elder Haws (from the other companion set in my apartment) and I found the garland stuff for railings, took some wire coat hangers and made our own homemade Christmas tree. To be honest, it honestly looks pretty good!
- People down here like to try and take advantage of me because I’m white and they think I only speak English. So, I was in a little market trying to buy something when the guy tried to sell it for 50 soles. Speaking in English, he tried to tell me how good of a deal it was. I responded back to him in Spanish and told him that I would buy it for 25 soles…no more than that. He looked at me stunned and agreed. So, if anyone wants any help buying stuff in South America in the future, I’m all in for that.
- So we put all of the garbage in our house in a big bag and the garbage man comes around every other day (No paper allowed in the toilets so it is good to get rid of every other day). Anyway when the garbage man comes, he play music and that is how you know that the garbage man is there. At our house, he come really early in the morning and he plays his music. My first days here I was really confused because I would hear this music in the mornings. Now the music is not what you would think, it is the same music that the Ice cream truck would play at home. The ironic thing is that they don’t have ice cream trucks here. So I have a whole different meaning for when I hear that music.
- Last thing I want to mention is an experience we had this week while walking by the park. There were 4 boys out playing basketball and they challenged me and my companion to a game. Now the basketball standards down here are only 9 feet tall so I am able to dunk the ball pretty easily. We accepted their challenge and they wanted me and my companion to verse them but my companion has never played basketball so it was more like me against the 4 of them. We ended up beating them and we got to share a message with them as a result so it turned out pretty fun.
Thank you all so very much for all of the support and prayers! I hope everyone has a happy and safe holiday
season.
Love
Elder Fawcett
A Tour of Our Apartment!!!
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