Judging, transfers and good friends

¡Hola a todos!

Aiai anchu? Wie geht ist dir? ¿Cómo están? Iminaya casianki? Guten haven. Allin punchay kachum. Buenas tardes. Allin tarde kachum.

I don´t know if I´ve actually ever said hello in English to you guys, so, hello! I hope that you´re well and that your week has gone well!

Well, I was talking to my dad and he mentioned that we need to make sure to love and avoid judging and all that talk. I thought about it a second and this is what I told him:

Oh! I learned about that one too! I don´t know how to mention the situation without making it into gossip, but the general idea is that me and another Elder would talk and talk and talk about something that we thought others should change, I justified it by saying it was ¨solution finding¨ but it was just gossip in the end. Because nothing was put into action, and so whenever I´d see the other missionaries I´d think they were terrible and should be better and that they were always taking advantage and everything. Turns out, they weren´t, there was just bad communication and I´d let my relationship with them go down the hill while they did nothing and I silently judged them. Good lesson to learn early!

The whole of this week was transfers and it was insanity. But, as far as I know, the only mistake I made was forgetting to give out the welcome letters that no one knew they were getting anyway, so I could toss them and no one would know the difference, but I´ll give them to the news as I can.

Also, I went to the airport three times on Tuesday. First, I picked up all the new missionaries with the office. Then at lunch time I went with Arian from Puerto Maldonado to send him to the mission. He´s off to Bolivia la Paz. He´s quite amazing. And then I dropped off Sister Valdebenito who was ending the mission and didn´t have a flight with everyone else the day before. And the rest of it was normal, but stressful.

I honestly don´t know what else to say, be good, have fun and I hope that you´re all doing well.

Be honest, be loving, be kind and read the Book of Mormon.

--

Hurrah for Israel!

~Elder Fincher

Elder Calderon and Randomness

Hola a todos!

No sé si ustedes han escuchado, pero mi familia se fue a Canada esta semana, y estoy bien feliz por ellos para que pudieran conocer el país en que servio mi hermana, es bien chévere. Mientras, yo estuve aquí en Perú y pude conocer al ex-Presidente Calderon, ahora Elder Wilson Calderon de los Setenta. Él es bien chévere también.

Well, English time now, I hope that all of you guys are learning Spanish so that when de repente yo utilizo una word in Spanish in a conversation, ustedes me puedan entender. That´d be awesome if you could all do that to be the best for you guys. Spanish is really cool.

Anyways, this week has been good, prep for changes. I´m staying with Elder Lewis in the office. It´s amazing! A lot of other people have changes. We´re the same other than Elder Pinedo changed out Elder Ordoñez since 2 weeks ago (they´ve both been here for these last 2 weeks). It´s about time for Elder Ordoñez to leave the office after having been here for 7 transfers. Or roughly 310 days, or 85% of a year and 42.5% of his mission time. He´s been here a while... Elder Daybell is going to be here as assistant for the same amount of time... And I´m going to be here for..... at least until the end of November, maybe January, maybe February, maybe April................................

Well, we had a Stake conference this week in Inti Raymi, and the ex-President Calderon, (before President Harbertson) now Elder Wilson Calderon came to visit us. He´s actually really cool, but President Herrera is our mission president.

He talked about family and mission work. He had the members think about people that they loved, think about them being encircled by the love of God, being in the Temple with them and then talking to the missionaries so that they could see that same scene in real life. We got a couple references and I recommend doing the same thing with the missionaries over there where you´re at so that the life of your best friends can be blessed.

Anything else? A ver...

Tramites, office work, planning for transfers, naming my cuy, (Charlemagne{picture}) llama (Mason{picture}) and alpaca (Esau Caesar{no picture}), sitting in a chair for most of the day and eating. That´s about it. We did go to Qorikancha though, that was kind of cool, better said, we went to the museum.

The cool things we learned in the museum are that the Nephites (we went in with a knowledge of the Book of Mormon timeline) may have done brain surgeries. Or they dated the operations badly and they we Lamanites. Also, the Lamanites got the idea to deform the skulls of people to make a prestige system (Lamanites are called Inkas in world history) they also made golden idols and the surviving  beliefs from the Lamanites (Inka) are somewhat close to the beliefs we have as Latter-day Saints. Different, but kind of close.

Also, they´ve been making ponchos here in Perú for a good 1000ish years too. They look pretty much the same as nowadays. Also, Wiracocha was almost definitely Jesus Christ by a different name, so, there are still some traces of worship of the Savior here in Cusco. Cool stuff.

As far as I go, I´m striving to be more obedient especially with going to sleep and waking up, and I see the difference. Even though I couldn´t sleep for hours last night, I´m only slightly tired, because I got to sleep on time, even if it didn´t come on time. So, in conclusion, be obedient and be blessed with the blessings that God wants to give you, because He wants to, but we need to act. Just like you can´t reward a child without them having done anything to deserve it, He can´t give us blessings if we don´t deserve it. So, be obedient!

The end.

--

Hurrah for Israel!

~Elder Fincher

Repentance

Hola a todos!

¿Qué tal? ¿Cómo están? Espero que estén muy bien y que están guardando los mandamientos de Dios para que puedan ser bendecidos y tener Su Espíritu consigo.

Question: (based on the fact that I´m 2/3rds of the way done with the mission...)

What golden nuggets have you learned?

Well, the first one to mind is that even missionaries can fall into sin, and we need repentance. Just like Hermano Velasquez from the CCM would always tell us, ¨I need repentance¨ and then we´d repeat after him, ¨¡Yo necesito arrepentimiento!¨ good times.

And yeah, I´ve realized that being in the office has taken it´s toll on me and I´ve become somewhat disobedient... I´ve not been getting up on time, nor getting to bed on time, nor have I been exercising and with being in the office and always having stuff to do, I´ve not kept the Sabbath day as holy as I should have. So, after the district meeting on Friday and the short zone testimony meeting afterwards, I put some goals in place and printed them out to have them in front of me to be able to focus well on them.

And it´s working! I´ve gotten up at 6:30 for the past 3 days and I´ve gotten to bed a lot better, I exercised on Saturday and I´ve been doing better at keeping the Sabbath day holy.

That´s a bit gold nugget that I´ve picked out of the mission so far, be obedient! Others, be kind, be patient and just in general be like Christ, because He´s perfect and He´ll help us to progress to become like him.

Have a great week and be obedient!

--

Hurrah for Israel!

~Elder Fincher

THE END IS NEAR!!!

Hola a todos!

Esta semana ha sido buena. Pudimos hacer unas citas más y ¡ya estoy por terminar los tramites! Estoy bien feliz.

Questions from one of my cousins that I´ll answer for all:

How do you like Perú? Have you had any intense/scary stories?

It´s quite great actually, it´s not like the States at all, at least on the overall scale. The people are regular people that speak Spanish instead of English, but they´re normal. And the places are awesome!

Only sometimes do things get ¨intense/scary¨ and I can only think of a couple times. When a dog bit open the door of the taxi I was riding in, when a crazy drunk guy with a knife chased some other missionaries and I was eating dinner as they got to the pension and when all the lights go out. Besides those I don´t have anything come to mind, there´s more, but nothing spectacular.

Well, this week we went to visit an older lady that Elder Yangali and I contacted. The cita didn´t happen, but Elder Lewis taught her in the door and we found out that she´d been baptized 30 years ago but had since stopped coming to church. We had a spiritual doorstep visit and set up another cita but when we called to confirm the cita they didn´t want us to come over. Lesson learned, don´t call to confirm citas, just go! Maybe once you´re teaching someone you can confirm the citas, but until then, just go!

What else to talk about? Well, let me think...

Oh! I think that the story related to the title of this week would be wise. Here goes:

So, since I´ve been in the office things have happened. Good things, bad things, silly things, sad things, crazy things and other things. All in all, many things have happened. But up until now, there has been one thing that has not happened. And that is the end. The thing that is the end is soon to happen... And it will happen soon... Very soon....

In other words, there´s been lots of experiences that we´ve had in the office since I´ve gotten here. Including tramites, I´ve done lots and lots and lots of tramites. And now the end is near. Now don´t get me wrong, the tramites will never end, but the end is near.

All boiled down to simple language. This Tuesday I´m going to go to migraciones for the last time until a week or two down the road. Thinking about it, I´ll need to pick up what I drop off, but after that, the tramites will only be happening little by little each transfer. Because THE END OF THE BACKLOG IS NEAR!!! I´m going to go pick up 10 new foreigner´s cards for 10 missionaries. And then the back log will be done! I won´t be going to migraciones with other missionaries for a while until the new ones get approved in the system. For meanwhile I´ll just need to renew some of them and cancel the ones for those missionaries finishing the mission. I feel good!!!

I also got another tramite done for a Brazilian sister that has a fancy Ç in her name. Which makes paperwork terrible! Because all the documents needed to have that letter, or not. We decided to have them not have it. Then they said it needed to have it, and this, that and the other thing happened and so this Thursday I finished the process that took 2 months that normally is done in a day. I´m happy about that.

The lesson I learned from that experience though, is that success is so much sweeter after failure, after failure, after failure, after failure.... and after another setback and another and then finally it happens. And WOW! It feels so good!

The more I think about it, the more that this office job is teaching me spiritual truths. Because if you look at it, is that if you didn´t know the context of the paragraph above this one, you could assume I´m talking about many different things. Now imagine this one. You´re at the side of your Heavenly Father in His Kingdom, and he asked you how your mortal experience was, and you tell Him, ¨The lesson I learned from that experience though, is that success is so much sweeter after failure, after failure, after failure, after failure.... and after another setback and another and then finally it happens. And WOW! It feels so good!¨ And you´re there with Him and His Son and your family, and WOW! It feels so good!!!

--

Hurrah for Israel!

~Elder Fincher

Volviendo a la Obra (Back to the work)

Hola a todos!

¿Qué tal? ¿Cómo están? Esta semana para mí ha sido bueno, ocupado y triste y muy feliz. ¡Como se cambia su actitud durante la semana!

Well, this has been a good week, a long week, a sad week and a very happy week. The normal pretty much. Other than one thing...

The sector is doing better! Friday I went with Elder Yangali on divisions and that went well, we contacted some people and taught some too. We went to visit yesterday also, and first off we knocked on the door where we´d contacted a 10 year old girl who was the only one home on Friday when we passed by, so we came on Sunday when she said her parents would be home. She answered the door again and said she´d go get her parents.

Then her dad came with the pamphlet we´d given his daughter on Friday, and told us that he´d been a Mormon before, that we were new to the area and that he wanted nothing to do with us. As we were trying to ask why he didn´t want to talk to us he just stepped back in his house, said that he wasn´t Mormon and that he was Catholic and then slammed the door in our faces... We went on, I thought we should maybe go back like some missionary stories talk about, I mentioned to Elder Lewis this idea and he turned right around and we knocked again... And nothing. So we kept going.

But later that night we visited with a young man whom some members had presented us to and had a very spiritual lesson and we have another appointment next week with them. We´re very hopeful for these two brothers Jim and Eric.

On Monday we went touring the downtown historical center and we went to one shop where they insisted that we put on Waiki (Incaish) garb and we got pictures. We also visited the 12-angled stone, which isn´t anything much to look at unless you realize how exact the Incas had to cut each rock to line them up like that. (photo where I´m next to a rock wall) The wall is still original Inca. We also got a tour of the Marriott hotel which was super cool. (free!) And then we went up to the White Christ on the hill. I learned this time that it was a gift from Palestinians who had been treated well by natives when they stayed in Cusco, they shipped it over seas to put it on the hill. (Elder Lewis has these pictures, so I'll get them when I can)

During the week there was a lot of stuff going on, but it´d going good. Basically I´m seeing that the more I strive to be like Christ and remove bad habits and even not great practices I feel better and am feeling the Spirit more. So, I invite you to take a habit that you have and would like to change, see what other habit(s) you can replace it with that are good, and ask God to help you change them out. And you´ll see that it happens, not all at once, but it will. And you´ll feel better because you´ll be better.

Have a great week!

--

Hurrah for Israel!

~Elder Fincher

My Birthday! + other stuff

¡Hola a todos!

¡Esta semana ha sido una locura! Fue muy interesante y bueno y todo eso.

So, I didn´t get much of a chance to write last week because I was busy for all of it. But I did get a moment, so I was able to write. But this week I have more time, the normal to be exact, so I´ll write.

Cool happenings, I got a haircut, from Elder Valenzuela, the same missionary who cut my hair before I went to Puerto Maldonado. He did a good job like the last time.

It was my birthday. That was cool. They egged me again but I was prepared with my rain jacket, so I only had to wash that and my head. It worked out good. President and Sister Herrera threw me a small birthday party in the office on Saturday before my birthday since they were going to be with Elder Uceda during my birthday in Puerto Maldonado. There was cake and ham sandwiches and some Tampico to drink. (to anyone who may have been to space camp with me reading this, Tampico! Drink it it´s the best!)

I also ate some of my cake with chopsticks, the sisters in my district gave me candies for my birthday, steak and potatoes for lunch, cake, popcorn and egg sandwiches for dinner. And we played with President´s daughters on Saturday for a little bit. (our p-day)

Also, Elder Yangali took me out to eat at Papachos the other night for my birthday, basically it´s a fancy tourist burger joint, but really good. I got the chaufa burger. It was really good. Elder Bever gave me some of his onion rings, so good! Long time since I´ve had onion rings. Let alone good ones.

And in the spiritual category this week, the conference with Elder Uceda was awesome! District meeting went really good as well. We talked about how people need to use the Atonement of Christ to fix bad decisions they´ve made in their lives. Because the natural man doesn´t want to change, and can´t either. Once a natural man is presented with a new situation, he makes a decision and that´s it for the rest of their life! They cannot change, they don´t have the power to do so, we may think they can because we change everyday, but if you look at the roots of it all, it´s because of Christ and His Atonement that we can change, because He can help us change for good, left to ourselves, we´d be nothing, we´d quickly deteriorate and become a horrible person- Because without Christ, we could not do good, we would choose evil and badness because there would be nothing else.

So, when you decided as a kid that you didn´t want to wash the plates, you would never do it unless you used Christ´s Atonement through His power and decided AGAIN, made the same decision over again and decided anew to wash the plates. The same thing applies to every other decision you´ve made in your life. Without Christ, we could not and would not be good or choose good. So go and choose to be good, have Christ work in your life to be able to make more of yourself than you ever could.

(I don´t have scriptures to back this up right now, but I feel that it´s true, study it out yourself and ask God to help you understand what you need to know)

--

Hurrah for Israel!

~Elder Fincher

Elder Uceda

Hola,

Well, this has been another crazy week.

We finally got everyone shipped off to their news sectors after the changes and strikes coordinated por fin.

And, Monday we had an amazing conference with Elder Uceda from the Seventy.

He talked a lot about obedience and about how to be better teachers.

I´ll try to write more next week, but I´m out of time.

Photos (ice cream sundae from an office meeting a while back, Hermana Herrera knows how to do those! Elder White looks like Tom Cruise, my pants finally ended. And I had a lot of purchase evidences (I don´t know how to spell receipt) and got a lot of money for them.

Take care everyone and have a great week!

--

Hurrah for Israel!

~Elder Fincher