Mission Week Seven Moquegua, pictures

Mission Week Seven Moquegua

Well I have been doing a lot of teaching with my companion not a lot of contacting. We have tons of investigators and Less actives who we want to visit. I teach an English class of mixed members, less actives, and investigators. All of which vary from time to time. Its every week and we have an average of about twelve people every time. My Testimony has grown a ton and I love the people here in Moquegua. I am confident enough in my Spanish to the point where i dont really need my companion to talk to people. Every now and then I run into a word that i dont understand or a person that doesn't speak very clearly but I feel I have a pretty good grasp on the language. 

I was just sitting on my blanket and on my bed wearing my new socks and i couldnt help but smile because both were gifts from A friend and grandma Davis and I was just so happy to have them both! 

The picture of The the baptism is Nilda Condori she is Eleven years old and she has been recieving the lessons for about six months she has a powerful testimony and her baptism was a really powerful experience for me! The spirit was so strong and I was able to feel the love that the lord has for all his children over all the earth! 

Mission Week Six Monquegua

Well This week has been amazing and stressful! We had changes and i get to spend another month and a half in my favorite place in moquegua! This place has really become my home! We went to a park called Cristo Blanco for P-day last week and we had Grill. No one could get the fire started underneath so i plopped down and got to work and had a corner of it lit and then started blowing like crazy to get all the coals glowing! Everyone called me Dragon Tanner after that, Thanks to band and my bassoon Buddy Anna Leaman I was able to learn how to have the breathing patter of a whale! God gives us talents no matter what they are!

 

Also This week we had the Condori Family come with us to the baptism of Maddy Faith! Nilda is eleven years old and She has wanted to be baptized for a long time but just the other day her father signed and gave her permission to be baptized! She is excited and the future is looking bright.

 

 

Mission Week Five Moquegua; pictures

Mission Week Five Moquegua

So far all i have needed for the mean dogs was a bottle of water and they all have stopped bothering me and don’t cross my path when they see me coming even the ones who live on the roofs don’t bother me! I am sending letters and i am going to be sending letters every week because There is so much to do during the two hours we have in internet and i am going to print off more emails and send more letters! So all of you who have been sending me emails and didn’t get a response this week expect a note in the write you email somewhere in the blog (Because it’s cheaper just to send them all to one place). Besides that this week in the past was hard! My companion broke the water heater.... not really broke it more just unfixed it.... and having to take cold showers is just one more thing that tries to add weight to my day but i am doing great for now! A lot of our investigators who are progressing and want to get baptized don’t keep their commitments or go to church and the investigators who go to church and keep their commitments don’t want to be baptized. It’s also difficult because I cannot speak the language perfectly and when someone is telling me about a personal experience and i am trying to listen while they are crying i can’t understand what they are saying and i have no idea how to comfort or help them... One thing that has been a major Blessing is my pensionista Mama Luz. She feeds my companion and I along with our zone leaders, she is determined to make me round like a plump before i head out to a new area! I have been gaining weight and where most missionaries struggle and are sick for the first six months I have had little to no side effects! It has been a blessing from my heavenly father because never in my life before have I been able to gain weight but here i am gaining little by little every day!

 

 thought it looked like Diesel :D But there is a dog that looks a ton like daisy who stays on the fourth platform but he isn’t very nice but he won’t let you leave until you have scratched him on the head

 

Something fun that we got to do last week after i emailed you was eat Guinea pig Specifically this one It was pretty good just a lot of work to get all the meat out of him

This week i also got the opportunity to teach Regina! She is our investigator and she can speak English very well! The lesson was excellent and she is getting more and more prepared for baptism but is hesitant because she was offended by a recent convert who was feeling a little self-righteous. After the Lesson we walked with her to her house because she lives close to our Pensionista. We talked about music and a little bit more in English. She is an English teacher for a local school. We were about to leave when my companion noticed a baby humming bird right above her door was sitting a little bird! It was a baby Hummingbird that continually stays in front of her house and I thought it was pretty cool!

Everyone tells me that my Spanish is leaps and bounds ahead of where it should be and all the members are amazed at how i speak to them because the gringo before me didn’t talk at all the first six weeks.

One thing that I find very peculiar and amusing here is that people drink everything out of plastic bags! You will rarely find a water bottle on a person in public! Everyone will have a little bag of juice or tea or whatever they want because that’s how it works here in Moquegua! Also some of the elders don’t have Pensionistas and they are constantly taking food with them everywhere and every tuesday and thursday i see one elder specifically carrying a bag of chocolate milk. I decided to buy one the other day because it is very cheap and they say it is really good! I drank the whole bag in one night! (AND I DIDNT HAVE STOMACH PROBS for mom :D) I will definitely be buying more bags of chocolate milk in the future!

 

 

 

Mission Week Four Moquegua

Hey Everyone!

 

Last week we went to Ilo  and walked along the beach but didnt go into the water it was fun to see a new group of elders and hermanas and hear their stories!

 

I hope you had a nice Easter weekend! General conference for me was amazing and when Elder Boyd K Packer Talked about Weber State University I had a little bit of a celebration! I thought about my Weber state family and i hope you guys were able to listen to the words of the prophet and his apostles too! This week was good but challenging! A lot of our investigators Have personal challenges, one of our new converts always says she is doing very bad but that she is doing very good too! Her parents are having difficulties and they might become divorced, I didnt truly understand why she was always saying that she was doing very bad but it was because of her parents. It must be extremely challenging and hard but she is the only one in her family who is an active member and two of her siblings want to be baptized but they need permission. Also Easter morning somone left this world and returned to live with their heavenly father. It was the first time I had seen body outside of a funeral home. It was a hard to see someone just lying in the road and it must be even harder for the family to whom he belonged but i hope they can come to know that just like Jesus Christ we will all live again its a hard life that we have right now and the only way to make it easier is to live worthily to recieve the blessings of our heavenly father.

 

Love Elder Tanner