Week 18: What Are You Doing to Pablo?!?!

 ¡Hola! I hope you had a fantastic week! This was a pretty fun week. Feel free to reach out if you have some missionary tips or questions for me!


For some reason Tuesday was really cold. There's no air conditioning or heating in the house, so it's always just a little hotter or a little colder than it is outside. I had to put on a sweater and everything just felt cold. In contrast the water in the showers is boiling hot all the time, even though I was told I'd probably be taking cold showers. I'm not complaining about any of this, I'm happy to be living the mission experience.

Elder Beizaga has an English copy of "Jesus the Christ" and this is probably the fasted I've read any book. I guess that's because I read it whenever I have a free moment. It's definitely opened my eyes up and has caused me to be in even more awe of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, just as Elder Ulisses Soares said we should in the last general conference.

There's this one group of about 7 or 8 kids we pass occasionally on the street who are fascinanted with me. The first time I could see the whispering to each other about me before I even crossed the street to reach them. They said "hello" to me and I responded with "hola," which caused them to burst out laughing. Then they chased me down to ask me what certain Spanish names and words were in English.
"¿Que es Anita?"
"Anita."
"¿Qué es Ricardo?"
"Richard."
"¿Qué es Jorge?"
"George."
"¿Qué es pelota?"
"Ball."
"¿Que es helado?"
"Ice cream."
"¿Qué es golpes?"
(Sometimes I needed Elder Beizaga to help me since my vocabulary is limited)
"Bangs."
(This would go on for a while)

"Soy famoso"

I saw a different group of kids further up the mountain playing a strange game. One kid was on the roof and had a plush of what looked like Pablo from the Backyardigans tied to rope by his feet. He proceded to swing Pablo off the roof and the other kids would jump and hit him. What kind of cruel torture is this? "Why are you torturing Pablo!?!? What did he ever do to you?!?!"

We had great attendance at church yesterday, with 9 investigators coming. Despite this, things are progressing a lot slower than we'd like them to. Jhony and Yrene have set up a wedding date so we can baptize them since they're living together, but they're set it for the middle of June so well have to wait a while on them. We're hoping to get Juana and Keymi set on baptismal dates, but Elizabet, a member of that family, is going through a hard time. Last Friday we had a meeting with her entire family, so there were about 20 people in the living room, including Juana, Keymi, and Elizabet. Elder Beizaga and I spoke about hope and prayer. Afterwards Elder Beizaga said that I definitely had the gift of tongues during it and the spirit was so strong during my testimony. I hope everyone can help me pray for Elizabet. We visited Consuelo yesterday, who is bed ridden with cancer. Once again I felt the spirit during that lesson and I thought my Spanish wasn't half bad. We're also trying to set up baptismal dates for Rodrigo and Nicolas, a 12 year old and a 9 year old, but their father keeps saying that he'll baptized them even though he's inactive. I also attended my first baptism. It was for the hermanas in out zone, but Elder Beizaga performed the baptism. It was a great experience to see a child of God make their first covenant.

We also spent a bit of time trying to find inactives. Strangely, half the house numbers didn't exist when we got to the street. Also the lady who does our laundry always seems to bring it back to us at 10:40 at night when we're already in bed.

Today for pday Elder Beizaga and I walked around the plaza en La Esperanza and got some ice cream. Man those ice cream carts are every where blasting the same whistle song for what seems like 16 hours straight every day. Even worse are the other carts that blast a woman's voice advertising Spanish foods or the ones that just honk a loud horn. I mean the ice cream and cachanga dulce are delicious, but I'm trying to sleep here. That goes for you too, bar across the street that has live bands every night of the weekend. But to be honest, I love the different culture.

I had a pretty fun week! Unfortunately, transfers are tomorrow and for some reason I'm getting moved to an area in central Trujillo, even though I've only been in the field for 3 weeks. I really like Elder Beizaga and was starting to like the people in the ward and am sad I won't get to be directly involved withthe progression of the investigators. Now I'll have to start over again. Anyway, I hope you have an amazing week!

Elder Jensen


1. Elder Beizaga lamenting after having "failed" his English test. (And me getting a better score on my Spanish one)
2. Elder Beizaga and I
3. Kids torturing Pablo. From a distance
4. At the plaza
5. Raising the torch







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