To Be a Missionary

Hey everyone!

 

I have little time, so I'll start with the part I'm most excited about. We got to go prosylite for 5 hours on Saturday in the streets of Lima! So we did real missionary work! It was pretty much the most fantastic thing ever. I really love how wonderful the people are down here. We got into three houses and taught a total of six people. And gave short lessons to many more. So here are the stories of my first ever missionary experience!

 

So we got sent out (two North American missionaries who don't speak spanish with a teacher here).

We started knocking on doors and I was really confused, because I wasn't sure what was a house and what wasn't. The houses are just lined up, no space between, all the way down the street, so it's like a super dirty and broken up alley way. So at first, it seemed kinda sketchy, since no one was out. But there were houses that didn't have roofs and there were houses that had totally broken windows and doors, and it was the worst living conditions I'd ever seen. By a long shot. Across the river at the end of our road were houses that were half there and covered in trash. They looked abandoned, but no, people lived there and had their laundry strung up. It was super crazy. But despite having little, the people were all very loving and polite.

 

The first person we taught was an older woman who had an amazing amount of faith!! She has been a strong beliver in God and has had two amazing miracles in her life. the first was when her son fell out of a two story window as a baby, but survived with absolutely no damage to himself. She ran down the stairs and he was completely fine. The second was when her father was hit in the head (I wasn't able to understand how that happened, but it sounded really bad) and he had died from the hit, but immediately after, she prayed to God that he would bring her father back, and he did. So it's amazing to hear the amount of faith she had and the miracles that come through it. She was amazing receptive to the Spirit and by the end of the lesson, told us that she knew that our words about the restoration are true, and that the book of mormon was the word of God. I was stunned. She said that after 15 minutes. So we've sent the missionaries back to her to teach her the things she needs to know, but she knew just after we taught her how to pray and had her pray. It was so amazing to see the Spirit work through her. Oh, and after this lesson, the teacher told me that my Spanish was amazingly better than when I was at the MTC. =)

 

The second house we went to had some very strong Catholics who were being pretty difficult. They weren't being very receptive, so for the sake of time, I'll skip them.

 

The second lesson was to a man who started with a question that the Priests who taught him previously didn't answer well enough for him. "Why do bad things happen to good people?" My companion taught this lesson amazingly. He pulled out scriptures of how we are tested and grow and learn, and how God trusts us and knows we can make it through it. And then the second thing was how a priest told him that he would remember his sins perfectly, as would God, when he died, and he was terrified of that. My companion and I could tell he was weiged down by something from the start, and now we knew he was. So we taught him about repentance and the atonement of Christ and how we can be forgiven of our sins. We taught about hope and happiness and that our Heavely Father loves us. He took the lesson amazingly well and asked us to come back. So I was so happy about that.

 

Anyway, I just ran out of time.

Hope everyone is doing great!

 

Elder Seth