A Rough, Faith-Filled Week

Tanner's new companion, Elder Quispe, is on the left.

 SOOOOOOOOOOOOO

This week was really hard. Despite our best efforts to be obedient and work our hardest, things are just falling. No worries though...

One of the people Tanner has been working with has had some incredibly tragic stuff occur in her life and in particular this past week. Unfortunately, there was little Tanner could do to help. Due to the sensitive nature of her life story, I have chosen to exclude it from the blog, but I will include Tanner’s reaction.

We instantly began to fast for her. My heart was literally broken for her. I do not know what else to say.

Although we never have problems with mosquitoes, there is a new rule in the mission. You can probably guess what it is.

We had a killer lesson with Valentina this week. The President of the Branch was there and for the first time he did a great job. She was a no show in church. It has gotten to the point that we will have to stop teaching her. I love Valentina so much. I have worked with her for three transfers. However, if people do not want to change, I cannot drag them to Christ. It must be their desire. I hope that one day she will regain the desire to come unto Christ.

 Also, Juan Carlos pretty much told us that we were wasting our time with him. I do not know what brought this change of heart, but it was a killer.

So we literally will be stopping work with three best investigators. I do not know how to write my feelings about this.

Watch tan

Elder Quispe and I are great. He is from Peru and has only been a member for 1 year before his mission. He is 8 months in the mission and is short, a little nerdy, but great. I am learning more from him than I did during my two transfers with Elder Ramirez. I really like Elder Quispe. His knowledge of the scriptures and doctrine is outstanding. I am trying to soak up as much knowledge as possible.

 So I ate chicken feet this week. We did some service for an investigator of Elder Galleguillos and Elder Carriel. She served us soup with chicken feet. You pretty much slurp up the entire foot, suck off all the skin and cartilage and the tiny bit of meat, then spit out the tiny bones. Good taste, gross texture. Cool.

Emma, Colombia is Colombia. Not Columbia.

Also, there is no Thanksgiving here, but Christmas is huge here. There have been trees up with lights for over a month now. The people here are more crazy about Christmas than Chelsey is!!

I also have been super sick as of yesterday. During the night time I just got hit by a wave of freezing cold. My body ached, and aches. That night I could not sleep as I wrestled with a fever and waves of diarrhea and vomiting. I was so cold but sweating like a pig. I did not sleep very much. Today I feel slightly better, mostly due to the drugs in my body. However, I am still super sick as I write this.  Whatever though.

So overall this week was super hard, both physically and emotionally. We have so much work to do. We need to find more people to teach. This week will be a good one. I know it.