Hey mom! Naw the card is good and everything is fine. We´re alive!
So Wednesday we received our companions and right now I`m with Elder Briñez, from Cali Colombia. He´s been a member all his life, was inactive for about three years, but decided to reactivate himself and go on the mission. He´s 21.... come to think of it, I think all my companions have been older than me. Even two that I´ve trained! Dang. Anyway he´s a good missionary and he wants to learn. I think the first week has been hard for him, it was for me, and what made things worse is that just barely he got an email from his family saying that his mom had a heart attack a couple of days ago. She´s alive but in the hospital. Oh it´s hard..... but that´s why the Lord´s given us the Atonement and companions to help us through. Trials.
Well alright so I called the branch president and his wife before leaving Quito on Wednesday and the wife met us in the bus terminal at 9:30 at night. She then took us to find our apartment. Turns out that the original apartment´s street is under construccion (like the rest of Tena) and is under danger of fallin in the giant hole in the street. So, the government has moved us to a storage unit. So we arrived to our storage unit and walked in, it´s one room and a bathroom. It´s not too bad, it´s big enough at least and has a bathroom, which is a plus, could be worse. We walk in and I step into a big puddle.... the whole floor is covered in water.... so I walk into the bathroom to find a toilet destroyed out of it´s potty mouth. (Photo included) Whew! So we start cleaning up. We didn´t have a plunger so we went to use the bathroom of the neighbor (HEY neighboor! We´re new here! Nice to meet you - where`s your bathroom?), ate a little bit of dinner that the branch president´s wife (Veronica) brought us, moved the beds out of the water, prayed and slept. When we woke up we finished cleaning everything up for a couple of hours and then we could study a little. Hermana Veronica then helped us get to know the sector and start to know where a few of the old investigators lived. And thus it began!!
This week was good, we´ve been able to find most of the investigators (they were four in total so that wasn´t too hard actually) and get to know some of the members. The branch president is really helpful and it´s cool. I really like Tena, it´s not as hot as Coca but it´s still jungle and it has mountains. JUNGLE MOUNTAINS!! What else could a man want? The church has been here about 15 years and we have an attendance of around 40 people every Sunday. The chapel is on the second floor of building that nobody seems to find...but it´s great! The members told me that the missionaries get discouraged here because there are a lot of natives here that don´t have principles, and the people that do have principles are evangelists and Jehovah's witnesses, and that everybody likes to drink more than anything else. We met a man who shouted ¨Elders¨ and we asked him how he knew the Elders and he said he once was one.... wow. But I won´t get down, I was thinking about the example of my buddy Ammon. Now the Lamanites were a people without principles!! He had to fast and pray for several days and had to suffer a lot trails but the ending result was that thousands of souls were saved. Now I just have to deal with the apostate great grandchildren haha. I´m sure the Lord will give us success and we´ll be able to help the branch as well, if I´m obedient, have faith, follow spiritual impressions, kick myself in the rear and look at myself with a Clint Eastwood face every morning.
Being second councilor is good, my companion and I were able to help with the tithing and get to know the system of the Church. It´s interesting how organized the church is. I wish my suitcase would be the same. Next week my companion and I are going to give talks in the sacrament meeting... I have to talk about the importance of fulfilling callings. Should be fun. We also are helping the branch choir.... a whopping total of 7 people including us. Which is good! It´s a start haha.
We found another returned missionary when we were wandering the streets trying to figure out where we were. We were walking and then all of a sudden the thought came to me ¨Hey! Why don´t we buy some food in the market while we wander¨ So I stopped right in front of a small cell phone shop. I was going to tell my companion my idea when all of a sudden a man from the store yelled ¨Hello missionaries!¨ I asked him how he knew the missionaries and he said because he was one. Heh? So we sat down and taught him and turns out that he served in Quito as a missionary but now was living with his girlfriend (not married) and they have a kid and he´s looking for work repairing cell phones and he didn´t even know the church existed in Tena. So we told him that we´re here to bring him back! Hopefully. He couldn´t go to church this Sunday but hopefully the next. Get the man married! But what impacted me is that JUST in that moment when I was JUST going past that store, the thought to stop and go buy food hit me. Some might say, ¨Brett you always think about food don´t kid yourself¨ but I think the Lord works through mysterious ways to get through my thick head!! He knew that I would stop to think that, so he made the thought go through my head. At least that´s what I believe! I´m stickin to it!
But I´m good, training is good for me, helps me refocus and remember my purpose. I´ll be learning alot and start working like the white water buffalo that I am. I´m excited and I´m happy and I´m frankly enjoying life. How could you not be when just looking around makes you want to sing ¨IIIIIINN THE JUNGLE THE MIGHTY JUNGLE THE LION SLEEPS TOOONIIIIIIGGGHHTTT AAAAWWWWWWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!¨ well you get the picture. But the gospel is the same no matter where you are. I´ll focus more on the people.
Hope you have a great week mom, good luck with all that computer stuff, yeah sign me up to whereever you want, I´ll make it work. I mostly wanted BYU (at first for the wife but now...) for the chance to keep studying in a spiritual place. I wanna be able to hear the apostoles and prophets and keep studying the scriptures. If I can do that in other places let it rock. I´ll decide when I get home. I tried praying once about it and all I felt was ¨You´re on your mission. Focus.¨ So we´ll see what happens.
Tell everyone I said hi, thanks for the support, and enjoy the blistering wind! Buh! Adios! I love you guys.
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