gospel fruits

Dear Family,

I am doing well. In fact, I'm doing much better! I took a little more time this week for personal reflection and prayer, rededicating myself to a good attitude and hard work. With so little time during the day for such meditation, I admit I stayed awake (although in bed - at least fulfilling the letter of the law) late an extra while as I put on a new lens to look at the world around me.

Let me tell you a little about the people we're teaching. There is an older couple, Manuel and Martha. Manuel is 65, and his wife, I imagine, is trailing along nearby in her late 50s or early 60s. Manuel lost his job shortly before retirement and somehow (I believe he grumbled the blame at the last president or government official in Peru) lost his claim on social security. They gave him what he had paid over the years, but he's still worried about how he's going to get along for the next x years he plans to stay alive (that's the variable "x", not a roman numeral 10). He accepted a baptismal date after reading the Book of Mormon, coming to church, and a couple lessons we've taught him. He isn't in a great financial situation to pay tithing, but he said he would anyways. I love that faith. Fantastic! Martha hasn't come to church yet; however, we've been paddling the boat of conversion through her sea of excuses, and I know she'll be blown away if she comes to conference. Brother Arriaga (or Hermano Arriaga, for us), our ward mission leader, has come with us to a couple of lessons with us. Hno. Arriaga is 68, so they're more or less on the same page of life. He has been a member for 26 years, but he teaches like a missionary and, furthermore, has endless life experiences to back up the principles he teaches. Hurray for teamwork!

One night a couple weeks ago, we were walking down the street, and as we are wont to do, we said "buenas noches" to all the passersby. One man, apparently in his 50s, paused to ask us if the second coming was near. We testified that it certainly is, "even at the doors," and that we're here to help him get ready. He invited us into his house, which was only some 10 feet behind us. His name was Wilson, and we only had time for a short conversation that night, but in the meantime, we met his wife, Magda. It turns out that Magda is good friends with several members! One of them, Jackie, has been coming with us to visit her in every lesson - we can only find Wilson at home on Sundays, so we usually teach Magda by herself during the week: member help is crucial. We found out this week that Wilson is still married to his ex-wife (an unsettling trend here in Peru) and that, despite the fact that he and Magda have been together about 10 years now, they are still outside the bonds of marriage. Magda wants to get baptized - she has prayed about the Book of Mormon and knows it's true. So we've got a goal to work toward. The other night revealed another piece to the puzzle: it seems things haven't been going so well in their relationship, but even so, Magda said she was willing to get married anyway, just to do things right. I suppose that sometimes, as missionaries, in our urge to get things done right and done quickly in terms of weddings, we look over the important factor of chemistry between the partners. Nevertheless, I was a bit nonplussed by the idea of just tolerating someone while you live with them and.. yeah, anyways, the special part was at the end of that lesson. Magda offered the closing prayer and prayed for the Lord to bless her family with that love that they once had, and she asked for help in getting married. She was in tears when she said, "amen," and I might have been, too. Heartfelt prayers are heard on high.

Speaking of getting married, there was a wedding this week. Hilton and Silvia were finally married after 12 or 13 years of being together. Silvia was already a member (indeed, she's the Bishop's sister) but had been less-active for a while. For the last year, they've been coming to church nearly every week. They tied the knot in Trujillo on Friday, and Hilton was baptized on Saturday night. The Bishop performed the baptism. Now the whole family are members and are active. I wish I could tell you the roller coaster ride it has been for Hilton since last year. A 180-degree change.

Well, looks like my time is running out - President Mora called and took up some of my time in the middle of this, so I'll continue next week, hopefully with some new people from this week. Thanks for your letters and your prayers! Happy Birthday, Tori (I know, a little late)!

Love,
Elder Withers

spring

Dear Family,

I'm a little sunburnt. You can get sunburnt on any part of your body in any season here. This morning, we played soccer, basketball and volleyball today to celebrate a fellow elder's birthday. I think the sunscreen wore off after sweating a bit. It could have been worse, I suppose. And technically, we've jumped into springtime here! Apparently that means cloudy mornings that burn off into sunny afternoons and fade to chilly, windy nights.

This week was a bit more of a struggle than last week. A family we're teaching - Rayner (father), Romi (mother), Hyromi (daughter), Rayner (jr.) and Stephen - had a few doubts about the plan of salvation, so we've been helping them understand that the Book of Mormon is really the deciding factor: if the Book of Mormon is true, then so is the rest of it. Rayner traveled to his place of birth (Chiclayo) to get a copy of his birth certificate, sign a paper to end his last marriage, and pick up all the rest of the papers necessary to get married. Apparently there was a delay somewhere in there, because he's still not coming back till tomorrow. It will delay the wedding a little bit, but I'm happy that he's showing his desire to finally get things right. We went to visit the local "municipalidad" - which might be translated as "municipality," as I saw at the bus station, but would probably be better off as "town hall" or "government building" - to see what was necessary to get married around here. It gave me a headache just thinking about it. Bishops don't have authority to marry people here, and the whole system seems designed to make one spend the most money possible just printing off the necessary documents and publishing the event. Nevertheless, the marriage-coordinating is in the hands of the members, who know a lot more about the system than I do, so I'm grateful we don't have to do too much logistical work.

At one point this week, I was feeling a little down, so I took a look at my personal goals and realized I had just run out of them (first step, find the source of the problem). I pulled out my little notebook - the one often used for brainstorming - and jotted down a few thoughts. I also pulled out a list I had made a few months ago about goals I wanted to achieve on my mission. I started with some daily goals and started working at them immediately. The effect was immediate. The discouragement fled and I was happy all over again. The scripture that says that men should be "anhelosamente consagrados a una causa buena" helped me understand a little bit more what I need to do to keep moving forward.

I started studying differently this week. I picked up a Book of Mormon and selected two colors to begin marking "doctrine" and "principles" - to avoid problems with semantics, my companion and I defined doctrines as basic, eternal truths and principles as doctrines applicable to life. It was easier to see why Nephi always delighted in plainness: it has made teaching clearly a whole lot easier. Both my companion and I are focusing more on keeping it simple. I love it!

Thanks for your letters, your good examples, and your prayers!
Love,
Elder Withers

going digital

Dear Family,

I love reading your e-mails. I wish I could reply to them all, but since it takes a half hour just to read them, I have a time constraint on that desire. I'm delighted to have such talented, intelligent, culturally awake, and spiritual family members. And the humor is always uplifting.

Winter has been smiling on us lately, but mostly at night. During the day, the sun tends to burn off all the clouds by noon and give us a warm day until about 6pm. Then the sun goes down, the wind picks up, and the temperature drops. We started eating in members' homes for dinner this week, so we didn't have to come home at 6pm every night. We made the mistake a couple times of leaving at 3 in the light of sunshine and then getting caught in the cold - and at 6, when we wanted our sweaters, time just wouldn't allow it, and dinner didn't give us a reason to go back. We now pack the sweaters with us at 3, just in case.

We worked like crazy this week. President Mora gave permission for the zone leaders to buy and use a cell phone, so we took advantage of that offer last week. The cell phones are a little less complicated here: normally they're all pre-pay with phone card recharges. However, cell phone to cell phone, cell phone to home phone, and cell phone to a different phone company's cell phone all have different charges. I don't quite understand it, but I just know that I can still call people. Nevertheless, this asset helped us work miracles this week. Our baptismal service was starting at 6, and nobody was showing up. We called the ward mission leader and convinced him that it wasn't going to start at 7, and we pulled off a fantastic baptism with many investigators watching it. I managed to get into my white pants again, but it wasn't easy. We might have bought a size bigger. I think we can go elastic next time on the waistband. In other ways, our cell phone helped us coordinate a lot of lessons with members to come with us. And since almost every member has a cell phone, we save time - instead of walking to their house and hoping they're home, we get instant results. I've wondered about living without a cell phone. It is possible and it is cheaper: however, I firmly believe that God allowed man to invent them so that they could be used in His work.

This week's zone meeting was fun. After the usual reports, updates, and announcements, we had a little activity inspired by a story we heard of in some far-off seminary class. Our zone had listed some high goals of baptisms they wanted to achieve this month, and we wanted to show them that accomplishing goals requires work, commitment, love, and teamwork. Using the chalkboard, my companion started asking our district leaders for the names of people they wanted to help join the church this month. After writing each name, he looked at me and I did 10 push-ups. Being about 15 pounds heavier than I once was and out of the habit of some 50 push-ups daily, I was getting pretty tired after about 8 names. Nine and ten were rough, and I think I couldn't do any more after eleven. When it was apparent that my effort wasn't enough, my companion asked one of the district leaders to help out. He did three or so, and we ended that group. There are eight companionships in our zone, each with their goals. It took a while, but we went through all of them. I loved seeing some elders just stand up and walk to the front to do 10 push-ups for someone another companionship was teaching. I even got to do some more after recovering a few minutes. We didn't make the sisters do any push-ups, and the grand total ended up being 60 names - even higher than the goal they had set last week. I really liked the example, and I think it helped the missionaries understand the worth of a soul and the love and work it takes to help them. I heard once that the glory in doing something hard is in doing it. Like a sign I saw on a wall in Going Vertical (my favorite personal training place back home): if it were easy, everybody would be doing it.

Needless to say, my arms were a bit sore for the rest of the week. But I learned that I can do a whole lot more push-ups for my zone in one morning than I can do for myself in my own exercise time. I don't think doing push-ups actually saves souls, but it's interesting how a certain level of motivation moved us to give a lot more of ourselves than we normally could. I love it.

Well, until next week. I've got some spiritual experiences to share, but hopefully the above (is that gramatical construction legal in English? "lo arriba" - ha, I'm not even sure if it's legal in Spanish, but it sounds fine to me; I'm getting out of practice here) will help you feel just a little of what I'm feeling right now.

Love,
Elder Withers

fun

Dear Family,

It was quite a busy week. I've been uplifted so much! Let me tell you all about it.

Monday night, we hopped on a bus to Trujillo (about 2 hours) and stayed the night in the office elders' apartment - I actually got to sleep in a bed this time! Tuesday morning at an unknown hour, somebody woke me up and in my drowsiness I offered to go play soccer with them. It woke me up at least, and after a quick shower, we were all ready to head to the nearby church building to start a long meeting with President Mora, his assistants and all the zone leaders in the mission. We got going at 8am - I got to play the piano: I've been missing that for a while, because our ward here in Chimbote actually has several able (more or less) pianists and a chorister who knows the difference between 3/4 and 4/4 time. We listened and worked until the afternoon, and we all went out to eat "pachamanka." "Pacha" means "earth" and "manka" means "oven", so - you guessed it - it was a meal cooked under a pile of dirt. It included several whole chickens, large cuts of beef (unfortunately, the hole wasn't quite big enough for whole cows), piles of potatoes and yams, and a number of sweet little tamales wrapped in corn husks, glazed with butter, and cooked to perfection. They wrapped most of the meal in large fronds, together with white-hot rocks, put a little burlap blanket over it and covered it in dirt. More exciting than a groundbreaking ceremony is when there's food for 50 hiding under the dirt. It was delicious. We continued our meeting after getting back to the church, and we finished around 7 at night. We finally made it back to Chimbote at 10:30 and got to bed more or less on time.

We took some time Wednesday morning to share with our zone everything we learned in our meeting with President Mora. We had the evening free, so we got to visit some new investigators we have been teaching and take care of a baptismal interview for next week.

Thursday morning, bright and early, President Mora and his assistants came down to Chimbote for our interviews with him. There are three zones here in Chimbote, so it wasn't a quick process. We were there all morning and still didn't get an interview. However, we participated in training (further) all of our zones on the important principles we learned in our previous meetings. That lasted until after lunch time, but we got the afternoon to ourselves again, since President Mora had a few meetings with the local Stake Presidencies.

Friday morning, once again bright and early, we had a training meeting with President Mora and hammered in further the ideas we had been developing the last few days. The meetings were highly spiritual and powerful: everyone was motivated to work even harder to achieve their goals and be obedient to mission rules. In the afternoon, the assistants came with us to an activity in a nearby ward: we went out with members and leaders to visit all the less-active members we could find. We enjoyed borrowing the assistants' cell phones and using them to coordinate appointments and getting the members to help us. We sure could use one of those.

Saturday morning, our perfectly planned morning was cut in by our long-awaited interview with President Mora. We also drove around with Hermana Mora to inspect some of the missionaries' rooms and make sure they're keeping them clean (or to check if the rumors are true and they are as dirty as they're reputed to be). In the afternoon, we took what little time we had to meet with a member who had given us a referral: we invited her to come to the appointment with us later in the evening. She told us she'd meet us there. In the meantime, we threw on our suit coats and took a moto-taxi over to the stake center for the Priesthood Session of Stake Conference. Elder Vladimir J. Campero presided in the conference. He's an Area Seventy from Bolivia, and it was nice to talk with him and hear him speak.

We raced out of the conference and hopped the closest moto-taxi to head to our appointment that started in 3 minutes (the same one we had planned with the member earlier). Unfortunately, the taxi-driver ran a red light and got pulled over. That delayed us a minute, and we pressed on. I think we picked the slowest moto-taxi in all of Peru! We finally made it to an intersection where we needed to turn, but the taxista didn't seem to understand us. He couldn't turn right for some reason, so we just paid him and went running. We ran along the sidewalk until the sidewalk ended. It appeared to start on the other side of some small bushes. Jumping the bushes was NOT an inspired idea. In the dimming twilight, I failed to see some kind of cable coming down from the power line and connecting to the wall about eye level, hovering above the small bushes. I got clotheslined and thrown to the ground. My companion was a little concerned, and I was completely surprised. But we brushed off the dirt and kept on running. We got to our appointment a few minutes late, but it turned out to be one of the best ones in a while.

We got the whole family together and began teaching by explaining the law of chastity. There was no apologizing for the truth. We knew the parents weren't married and we taught them the doctrine and principles of chastity. The father understood, and he even made himself an example: he held up the key to the front door and tried to shove it in the keyhole backwards. He explained that he always knew the principle but never used it correctly. He began to cry, and after a tender moment, we invited them to get married before the end of September. The father proposed to his wife in the middle of the lesson! They hugged and kissed, and after a few "I love yous" (I think their 12-year-old daughter was the most impressed out of all of us), we invited them to be baptized, too. Fantastic. The whole family came to the general session of stake conference the next day, too.

Whew. I suppose that's a lot of detail, but I just wanted to give an idea of all the things we did this week. And it's the emotion I want to convey. Right now, I feel detailed. We've been focusing on getting every detail right. The prayers, the lessons, the words, the scriptures, the studying, the obedience: we've been fighting for the details this week. And it has provided us with results. I love it! I didn't have time to be trunky all week. There's too much to do. I love being busy.

Love,
Elder Withers

make it shake

Dear Family,

It has taken me about 35 minutes to read all the e-mails (that was 35 new e-mails in the inbox) you've sent me. It seems the most exciting and popular themes had to do with cows pointing north. Modern Dutch, I'd say. But thanks for writing so much. I felt a little special.

On Tuesday, we were out proselyting with a young man from the ward, and we knocked a door where we had an appointment planned. The people inside invited us in, and we found ourselves face-to-face with an older woman and some six other women, her daughters and daughters-in-law, I believe. They all professed different religious beliefs, though a couple of them seemed to be united as Seventh-Day Adventists. Either way, the opportunity presented itself as a fun lesson from the start. We got through the first half of the lesson, then the house started shaking and a little earthquake interrupted our lesson. That was exciting. It reminded me of our MTC District's motto of "hazlo estremecer" (or "make it shake"), taken from a talk given to us from Elder Holland in which he encouraged us to - like the angel sent to Alma - make the earth shake on behalf of our investigators. They all accepted another appointment, and we had a great lesson on the Book of Mormon later in the week.

Wednesday was a stressful day. I was with Elder Smith (I might have mentioned that he's from another area and his companion was also ending his mission) and basically alone in coordinating the trips of outgoing missionaries and picking up the inbound ones. We received eight new missionaries in our zone, and we sent 4 on their way south to little towns that are farther away. Our zone was then divided, and I don't have to worry about them much anymore. We're down to just 8 areas now (from what was 12), so there's only 16 missionaries here for us to focus on. My new companion, Elder Cavazos, is fantastic. He's from Utah, though he was born in California. He's just about to pass the year mark in his mission, so we're pretty close in terms of time. We've been working hard these last few days.

One highlight from this week was a lesson we had yesterday. This last weekend, there was a convention for the married couples in the stake. The Stake President and his wife, and other experienced couples, gave some classes and then they ended in a dance. They even had a dance competition for the couples. We weren't invited (I might have liked the dance competition..). Anyways, a member invited a friend of hers (and her husband) to come to the convention, and they found it interesting. We received the referral and taught the husband yesterday. I had never seen anyone so interested in investigating the church! It was fantastic. We talked about the Restoration and left him a copy of the Book of Mormon. His interest was contagious, and his kids ran off with the book and began trying to figure out what it was in the meantime. We have another appointment planned for Wednesday. The first counselor in our ward's bishopric told us that he had met the man at the convention. He told us that he's the future Bishop. That made us smile.

Elder Stone was an assistant to the president when I arrived in the mission. He picked me up at the airport with some of the other office elders. He was a fantastic missionary, too, but unfortunately I didn't get the chance to work with him in any zones.

Thanks for writing and have a great week! Good luck in school for everyone.

Love,
Elder Withers