Popayan (Recuerdo) - Week six

This week went pretty well, even though my companion went back to staying silent and letting me do everything by myself. But he got transferred so weeeeeee!!! My new companion is named Elder Torres, from Ecuador, he's pretty new in the mission, I think I might be his third or fourth companion? and this is his second area. He seems super motivated and ready to work, so I hope I'll be able to keep his spirits up, he kind of told me that his last companion was kind of a bum so he was pretty discouraged about that. The weird thing is that he is just barely 18....Darcy is older than he is! And you can totally tell that is like 3 years younger than I am, but he seems like a really good kid. While we waited for him the terminal I went to "el Morro" with Elder Lindao and took a bunch of pictures, but something went wrong with the camera, so we could take pictures but the screen wouldn't turn on.  So we didn't actually know if the pictures looked good or not.

I feel like the reason this branch doesn't progress is that the members are so lazy! Yesterday when sacrament meeting started, there were only 15 members in the chapel, and almost ALL of the members showed up 20 minutes late, while we were singing the sacrament hymn! Things like that frustrate me. I immediately felt like giving a talk where I make all of them feel bad so that they start doing things right........this week they decided to do a "mini MTC" branch activity, that we "the missionaries" didn't even know about until they called us 5 minutes before it started. saying that they need help! Things like this, are pretty irritating....I could name a bunch of other things that aren't good in this branch (the branch president speaks every Sunday and talks about things he really shouldn't when there are at least 100 members who haven't given a talk in years) but whatever.

The mini MTC was pretty cool though. They paired all the returned missionaries up with all the young men/women who where in the MTC, and I was paired up with "Elder Arcos" (who doesn't even go to my branch but decided to go to the activity), and he was really cool. I was able to explain how to use the planner, how to study, we did a bunch of scripture games and missionary practices, and after a few motivational talks, we went to go do street contacting! So it was pretty much exactly like the normal MTC. I told Elder Arcos that I would do the first few contacts and then he would have to do the rest but I would help him out, and the experience we had pretty much reminded me why I don't like to do street contacting (everyone said that they were Catholics almost immediately and told us to go away hahahah). But I told Elder Arcos not to get too discouraged, and we kept at it, and the last guy we ended up contacting was actually super cool, and has a family! And he said that he would really like us to go visit and teach him.  So I guess what we learned is to keep at it, even when the first hundred people are super rude. Elder Arcos was like super stoked afterwards and gave me a huge hug and said he would always remember me haha, so I guess it was a pretty good experience for him. It's an everyday experience for me!

The only investigador that Im hyped about is named David. He's like 19 or 20 but he's living out here by himself, going to college. He's pretty confused. I think his parents might have been Jehovah's Witnesses because he has a bunch of really weird ideas in his head and is probably the only person I've ever taught who instantly doubts what we teach him. Which I guess isn't really a bad thing. He's also a CS major so we get along pretty well, always making programming jokes and stuff. When I ask him if he ever has any questions he always says that hes "compiling." That always makes me laugh. He said that he would go to church yesterday, and when I called him in the morning and asked him if he would go to church he said he was already leaving but then never showed up. I think he might have gotten lost or something, but I know that he'll progress in the church and get baptized, he has such a big desire to learn more, and read the Book of Mormon, and everyone who has the desire and reads the Book of Mormon always get baptized....the problem is is that hardly anyone actually does that...😣

Love you!