Week 5 Talara

It was another awesome week but also pretty strange week. Today we had an awesome p-day where we hiked down the beach for about 2.5 hours to see some caves. I have a lot of pictures to send so hopefully they can download on time. However, we had to wake up at about 5 this morning to be able to do that and we started the day off with someone trying to rob us. We were looking for another car to take us to the area and a guy that was kind of drunk tried to stop us. He first took Elder DuPaix's wallet and took the money. I decided to talk to the guy straight up and he gave us almost all of the money back except for 10 soles. We thought everything was cool till we got to the beach and found out that the guy stole my comp's camera. We are all good though and everything is fine with no harm done but it is definitely frustrating that there are people like that in this world. 

Apart from that, we had a pretty good week proselyting. We have a good amount of investigators with baptismal dates now but the problem is getting people to church. If we can get some of these people to church here then we could have some baptisms next transfer. We also did find someone super cool this week who understood everything super well. It was also a bonus that she has a big yellow lab that is exactly like Peach but it is named Moana. I'll try to get a picture with it this week. 

Love you guys and have a good week!

Elder Smith

Hey Dad, I think you might like this 

Week 4 Talara

This past week was pretty good and we finally got to meet President and Hermana Vega. They are pretty cool people and Hermana Vega is super funny and awesome. She practically just roasted us the whole time we were with her. 

We did have some ups and downs this week though. We started off the week really well by finding some old investigators from a year or 2 ago. We were able to put them all with a baptismal date on the first cita which was awesome. We have definitely seen a lot of progress here in the last few weeks though. We probably won't baptize this transfer but it looks like we could have some good success next transfer. 

We are doing really good as a companionship though and we are starting to see a lot of the miracles we have been working for. 

Take care and love you guys!

Elder Smith

Week 3 Talara

This past week was pretty good but it went by a little slow because my companion was pretty sick for a day. It was the first time I've had to stay in the room all day for someone being sick in the companionship and I hope it's my last. It wasn't very fun to just sit in the room all day without anything to do other than study. 

We did have a few interesting experiences with some people this last week. We had some people here that let us in their door but all they talked about the lesson was that they wanted to marry us haha. We also had another guy stop us in the street to talk to us for 45 minutes straight about how Satan exists and we should always remember that. 

Other than that, we didn't have as much success as we wanted to because we've been working super super hard. We definitely feel like we will see some miracles in the last half of this transfer. (It's crazy how half the transfer with Elder Dupaix has already gone by!)

Love you guys and have a good week! 

Elder Smith

This is how you know it was a good personal study

Week 2 Update from Talara

This week was a pretty good week and we had some more success in finding people. Something we focused on this week was just finding ways to do service to find new people. It didn't matter if it was planned or unplanned and if the person was a member, investigator, or just a random stranger. It was cool to see all of the opportunities we were able to find. 

Not too much happened other than those things and a few activities we had in the church and as missionaries. I did play 1 on 1 with a non member in basketball after an activity and I made the deal that he would have to go to church on Sunday if I won. I ended up beating him 11-0 but he didn't fulfill his promise. On the bright side, he could be a future investigator for the other missionaries in our branch. 

Have a good week and love you guys!

Elder Smith 

A grill we had out on the beach in another area of our district

Bello Horizonte

It was a good first week here in Talara. My area is on top of a plateau and there's not a whole lot here. The only bad thing about moving to a new area is literally every single member asks me if I'm a descendent of Jose Smith. The area was also in pretty bad shape when I got here but my companion and I are working super hard to turn things around. There looks like there is a chance that we can baptize this transfer but we'll see what happens. My companion is really good though so I think a lot of good things will happen as we work hard. 

The new President did come in so we will see how things go with him. I'm not sure when I'll get to meet him or anything but I am a little nervous. 

I don't have a lot more to say but it is nice having members in my area! It is only a branch but we have about 110 people who attend which is pretty good.

Take care and love you guys!

Elder Smith