WEEK 65: Lambayeque
December 31, 2019
These last few days have been so crazy. I blinked once and Christmas was over and now it's almost a new year. It really feels great to be in the mission, even though everything goes so fast.
This week has been so amazing. I wanted to write every night, but there wasn't a lot of time, we have been so busy. We had our Christmas meeting with half of the whole mission, and that was great. I'm really grateful for the Savior, and this Christmas was so good. We had eight other elders from the pueblitos (little towns) come and stay in our room for the night. We put a bunch of mattresses on the floor, and there was barely any space to walk around in the apartment. The elders were all in one room with a tiny fan, and my companion and I were in our room with an open window, and the heat from their room was like a wall.
Christmas was good, but what happened after was 100 times better. We taught Lucy and Raquel every day during the week of Christmas. Their faith was super strong, and their date was set for December 28th to be baptized. The day of their interviews came, and Raquel's boyfriend (and the father of her babies) came and he told us that he wanted to get baptized too. He was there during a lot of the discussions, and so we had him come for an interview too, so they could all be baptized. Well it turns out that this dude just really didn't want Raquel to be baptized, so he went and rigged the interview to make Raquel look bad, and lied about her not living the commandments. So when the guy interviewing them told us, we thought it was impossible and we figured out that her boyfriend was lying the whole time.
So everything was sorted and good until the next day, the day of their baptism, when Lucy called us and said they weren't going to be able to get baptized because Raquel's boyfriend had kidnapped her two daughters, and they didn't know where they were. To me, this all sounded like something out of a movie, but they were in the police office all day trying to find their daughters. Even with all of this, we felt that everything was gonna turn out ok. We had planned their baptism at 5:00pm, and so we went to their house at 4:00, and even though this dude had stolen her daughters so that she wouldn't get baptized, and even though they were all crying from the situation, they were still ready and wanting to get baptized.
That was a moment that I won't forget in a long time. That even with all of these challenges, they had so much faith to go forward. I thought of a scripture in that moment that really describes these two hermanas. In Alma 19:10, "Blessed art thou because of thy exceeding faith; I say unto thee, woman, there has not been such great faith among all the people of the Nephites." These hermanas were devastated to not know where their kids were, sobbing because they didn't know what was happening to them, but they still wanted to be baptized. I'm not sure if I've wept more in one day than the 28th of December, because this faith was really something. I won't forget what Lucy and Raquel did, because they've really changed and they have really come to be family. This is why I came on this mission. When you see amazing things like that, the only thing you can feel is gratitude for being able to witness it.
The family found a cat and now they call it "Oof" after me. Elder Navarrete and I don't really have anyone to teach right now, but we have a lot of faith that God is gonna put us in the way of a lot of other people. We are ready to start this new year going 200 miles an hour. I love the work, and it was amazing to see all the fireworks that went off at midnight. Because we were still awake when they went off, we went up to the roof on the 5th floor, and it was awesome to see all of Lambayeque lit up. Everyone was burning their life-size dolls and there was a ton of smoke.
These last few days have been so crazy. I blinked once and Christmas was over and now it's almost a new year. It really feels great to be in the mission, even though everything goes so fast.
This week has been so amazing. I wanted to write every night, but there wasn't a lot of time, we have been so busy. We had our Christmas meeting with half of the whole mission, and that was great. I'm really grateful for the Savior, and this Christmas was so good. We had eight other elders from the pueblitos (little towns) come and stay in our room for the night. We put a bunch of mattresses on the floor, and there was barely any space to walk around in the apartment. The elders were all in one room with a tiny fan, and my companion and I were in our room with an open window, and the heat from their room was like a wall.
Christmas was good, but what happened after was 100 times better. We taught Lucy and Raquel every day during the week of Christmas. Their faith was super strong, and their date was set for December 28th to be baptized. The day of their interviews came, and Raquel's boyfriend (and the father of her babies) came and he told us that he wanted to get baptized too. He was there during a lot of the discussions, and so we had him come for an interview too, so they could all be baptized. Well it turns out that this dude just really didn't want Raquel to be baptized, so he went and rigged the interview to make Raquel look bad, and lied about her not living the commandments. So when the guy interviewing them told us, we thought it was impossible and we figured out that her boyfriend was lying the whole time.
So everything was sorted and good until the next day, the day of their baptism, when Lucy called us and said they weren't going to be able to get baptized because Raquel's boyfriend had kidnapped her two daughters, and they didn't know where they were. To me, this all sounded like something out of a movie, but they were in the police office all day trying to find their daughters. Even with all of this, we felt that everything was gonna turn out ok. We had planned their baptism at 5:00pm, and so we went to their house at 4:00, and even though this dude had stolen her daughters so that she wouldn't get baptized, and even though they were all crying from the situation, they were still ready and wanting to get baptized.
That was a moment that I won't forget in a long time. That even with all of these challenges, they had so much faith to go forward. I thought of a scripture in that moment that really describes these two hermanas. In Alma 19:10, "Blessed art thou because of thy exceeding faith; I say unto thee, woman, there has not been such great faith among all the people of the Nephites." These hermanas were devastated to not know where their kids were, sobbing because they didn't know what was happening to them, but they still wanted to be baptized. I'm not sure if I've wept more in one day than the 28th of December, because this faith was really something. I won't forget what Lucy and Raquel did, because they've really changed and they have really come to be family. This is why I came on this mission. When you see amazing things like that, the only thing you can feel is gratitude for being able to witness it.
The family found a cat and now they call it "Oof" after me. Elder Navarrete and I don't really have anyone to teach right now, but we have a lot of faith that God is gonna put us in the way of a lot of other people. We are ready to start this new year going 200 miles an hour. I love the work, and it was amazing to see all the fireworks that went off at midnight. Because we were still awake when they went off, we went up to the roof on the 5th floor, and it was awesome to see all of Lambayeque lit up. Everyone was burning their life-size dolls and there was a ton of smoke.
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