Ceviche & Intercambios

This week I ate a Peruvian dish call ceviche. It is cured fish that they cook with Lime. It is still cured when you eat it, but apparently the lime cooks it. I do not know how, but it was good. I enjoyed it and did not get sick.

This week was a good one. As you know, we do a butt ton of intercambios. This week we did intercambios with La Cumbre. It went well and we had a good day. It was fun to work with a gringo for a day. His name is Elder Allphin and he is a great young missionary. I like him.

These upcoming two week are gonna be ridiculous. This week we have intercambios with the assistants. The missions got changed up a bit by the first Presidency, so now the assistants do not go to the zones to do the intercambios, the zone leaders go to the assistants. It is the same thing with the district leaders. Before, we did exchanges with the district leaders in their areas. Now they come to our areas to work. It is new and different, but for right now I do not have any complaints. The only bad thing is that this week we will be out of our area for 3 days. We fly to Bogota on Thursday afternoon, all day Friday working, and then fly to Bucaramanga on Saturday afternoon. The flights completely kill our day though. 3 days with zone lessons. What is worse is that next week, we have concilio in Bogota, another 3 days gone. Literally. We are in Bogota week 5 and then in week 6. It is a lot of travel time. Gotta do what you gotta do though.

Things are well with Elder Ramirez. He is a real good missionary. He has a ton of confidence in himself. We get along real well and are on the same page. I have not felt like I have had a companion completely on the same page as I since Elder Gonzales. We are working hard despite the difficulties.

This week we found a golden investigator. Literally golden. She is young, wealthy, and smart. She read 1 and 2 Nephi in 3 days. We had two amazing lessons with her. I do not want to brag, but the teaching was flawless in those two lessons. The day after the second lesson she calls us in the morning, thanks us for being nice, and said she never wanted to meet with us again. Withholding my frustration, I was able to schedule another lesson with her that we have yet to have. She did not explain her reasoning, but I am guessing that her sister, who came for a visit, talked real bad about us. We will wait to see how the next lesson goes.

Companion study question from Chelsey. We sing a hymn. Pray. Read 3 pages of Preach My Gospel. We share our personal study, then usual prepare training that we have to do or prepare for lessons. We try to use our time effectively.

Also, President Laney is improving a lot. He still makes some decisions that I would not make, but then again I am not the President. He is getting better with his Spanish and management of the mission. I really like him and he is a really good man.

Today for preparation day we celebrated one Elder`s birthday. He made us food. It was good and free.

This week I felt really tired. It just hit me on Friday and on Saturday. I always feel a little tired, which is normal, but on Friday and Saturday it was weird. 19 months is catching up on me.