Monday, May 8, 2017

Week 43 - Four Failed Attempts

Hola,

Wow this week flew by! The office life seriously just flies by even faster since I am busier than I ever have been. To start off, let me just talk about some highlights for the week.

As one of the new office missionaries, we are basically responsible for making the mission run. Our tasks are really important because without them, the mission wouldn’t function. So with my job, I am over literally ALL of the entire money for the whole mission. You wouldn’t imagine how much it cost to make a mission run for a week, let alone for an entire change (6 Weeks).  I deal with every aspect of money with every missionary in the mission along with my mission President as well. So, this week consisted of several meetings with President Herrera, planning and thinking of ways to help our mission become better, etc. As well, since it was the first week of the change, we are responsible for training and helping of the new missionaries.

Overall, it was a super busy week. It seriously is crazy to think we are back to the next Monday already. Along with all of the office work I have to do, I also spend a lot of time as a normal missionary. So let me share a quick few highlights from my proselyting and normal work. First off, this is my first time serving in Cusco. The city and atmosphere here is completely different from all of the mission that I previously served in. The city is huge and consists of many members of the church, which is a good thing because a lot of members are really willing to help the missionaries. When I got here however, I realized that there are so many families where everyone in the family isn’t a member yet. So as we were out in the streets this week, we were walking in the crowd contacting people. There were tons of people to talk to, but I didn’t know who it was that I should talk to. As I looked around, I noticed a lady and her baby sitting on a bench nearby. I felt a very distinct impression that I should contact her, so I did. As I spoke to her, I quickly learned that her family were all members of the church, it just had never really interested her. As I talked, I asked her a total of four times if she’d be willing to let us pass by and visit her. Each time she told us no. After the four failed attempts, we thanked her for her time and walked away. After about five minutes, we saw the lady walking towards us. She then commenced to tell us that she wanted us to visit her. Asking her why she’d changed her mind, we found out that she had previously had a divorce recently and had been praying to our Heavenly Father for someone to find her and help her, which she had realized was us.

One more cool story. So since I’m here in Cusco now, the city is enormous! We use a lot of transportation to get around. I’ve quickly realized that the ten minutes you have sitting in a taxi is a perfect opportunity to contact, so I always make it a habit to try and contacting the taxi driver.  Throughout the week we have ridden in so many taxies, that we’ve gotten a TON of contacts. The problem however is that all the people we contacted lived in another sector or other sectors in our zone. One day however, we were riding in a taxi and once again I was thinking to myself that the driver was going to live in another sector. To my surprise, I quickly found out that he indeed lived in our sector, but the coolest part is he was genuinely interested in our message and was the one who asked us if we could visit him someday. After that experience, I will never question whether I should contact the taxi driver or not.

Here in Cusco the people are super friendly and perhaps one of the friendliest is our Penchanista, Hermana Yesenia. She is the best and seriously makes really good Peruvian food! The cool thing is that she has a six year old little boy who seriously is hilarious, but one of the funny things is he listens to some rap music from the states and unknowingly will say words. But perhaps one of the funniest things is he ended up calling my Companion a word he heard in a rap song that ended up being racist and had no idea what he had just said.

I seriously love the time I am having here in my mission. The Lord has never taught me so much in such a short amount of time. No matter what it is, I know that the Lord will always bring us through our trials. I love this work and the lives I see blessed each day through it. I love you all so much! Have the best week!

Love,

Elder Fawcett

It Is Truly Amazing To Learn How A Mission Works And Getting
 To Work With The Mission President Daily Is Awesome!
Office Work Takes About 30% Of My Time Leaving 70%
For Regular Missionary Work