Weird occurrence + All you need to work is a black guy

Good day, good day to all,

I assume that the title of this week´s blog sounds a lot more racist there in the States than here in Peru where it´s a lot more acceptable. :D But fear not, I shall explain all in due time...

First off, on Tuesday we went and picked up Elder Gutierrez from the airport. He was supposed to have come all the way back in June, but he being from Nicaragua, they didn´t want to give him his visa. So he served for 5 months in Nicaragua until he finally got his visa and came here last week. He´s not so black, but he´s blacker than most other Latinos, so here he´s black. And as we (Elder Lewis, he and I) were walking somewhere the other day I asked if he was offended if someone said that he was black, he said no, so I said that everyone was looking at us weird asking the question in their heads, "What are 2 white guys and a black guy doing together? In white shirts and ties even..." So yeah. Normal here.

Wednesday was tramites with Elder Jensen and Clancy, then afterwards they went somewhere with Elder Lewis and they came back a while later with the mail.

Now, you might think that the sentence found above ↑ is normal, but it´s not. Now the question, what´s not normal about it???

Wait another minute and examine it. ↑↑

And another 30 seconds. ↑↑↑

Now just 10 seconds more trying to find out what´s not normal with the above sentence. ↑↑↑↑

Okay, now I´ll tell you, trusting that you at least put in the ten seconds to guess what´s wrong. The thing that´s not normal is that a while ago, shortly after getting to the office Elder Lewis either had his keys stolen or lost them. We replaced all of them we knew of besides the one to the mailbox. So, for a good 3-4 months now there has been no way to get the mail out of the ever filling mailbox. Until the point where nothing else could be put in and possibly things were being stolen from how full it was.

So, that´s what´s not normal with the above sentence. ↑↑↑↑↑↑ There should not have been mail to bring in! But they did!!! From my suggestion they had gone to a hardware store and bought a new lock to put on in place of the old one. (padlock style) but not to my suggestion, rather I´d just said we´ll figure this part out later after we have the lock. They also bought a hacksaw! And then the next time I saw them they had their arms full of letters, bills and other papers. (see photo)

And that´s when I finally got the Christmas card from my bishop from last year. Pretty nice. And there were lots of phone and light bills, (power bills) and letters for Elder Clobes, Elder Fackrell, Sister Johnson and Elder Clancy. Not many other peeps. (so if you´re reading this, and you know someone in a mission, send them a card! Because those 4 people are only 2.5% of the missionaries in the mission, and I´d say less than 25% receive letters regularly and less than half receive letters. (guessing, but just send a letter! :D C´mon, please?)

Then Thursday was a multizone conference, really good I´d say. And then Friday, some of Saturday and Sunday we got to work! Elder Gutierrez really inspired us to leave since there was nothing else for him to do all day but study.

We had a couple really great citas. One with Franco whom we met this week, he seemed super interested and we´re hoping that he´ll progress a lot and quickly. We also visited with Raul, he´s been coming to church for a few weeks now, but we haven´t been able to visit with him yet, and last night we had a great cita and Elder Gutierrez invited him to baptism which he readily accepted, and then a little bit further along we put a date for the 24 of November. We´re really excited to help him come unto Christ like he´s wanting to. And also Irina, who we´ve taught a couple different times came to church yesterday! We were super happy with that since she´s been studying Sunday mornings and now she was able to come!

So in conclusion, all you need to work is a black Elder from Nicaragua called Elder Gutierrez to come and be put in a trio with you (because President still hasn´t assigned him a sector...so he´s stuck with us) to be motivated to get out into the field and do the work of the Lord. It´s pretty great I´d say.

--

Hurrah for Israel!

~Elder Fincher