Week 5 in Porvenir

Week #67
4/13/15
This week was rather ordinary. We went to Bogotá Monday afternoon, and I got to sleep in one of the houses in my old zone, which was fun. The bus ride was about 4 hours on the way there, and we got to the house at 9:20. Our training with president on Tuesday was a lot different, he didnt teach much that was new, but did remind us of a lot of old things he had taught us. I liked the meeting a lot, and I learned a lot. We promptly came back to Villavicencio, and the bus ride was shorter. It was nice unwinding and chatting with my district leader. We got home around 7 and we got to make one visit before the night was up. 

One difficulty we have been having is that our appointments fall through- a lot. We are able to fill up our planners with appointments each hour, but people cancel a lot, or we get there, and they're not home. I suppose we have to really look into who wants to receive us, and who doesn't. Thats probably the biggest challenge here in the smaller cities in our mission; finding people who really want to change and progress. Many people seem to be very content just with where they're at. So we do a lot of looking. 

We began to do something I really like this week. There is a question in PMG that says, ¨Who do you know that would be interested in our message and benefit themselves from it?¨ Our mission president has taught us, like PMG says to always ask that question. Ive always asked it, but not with the specific wording. Its interesting, this week I asked with the exact wording, verbatim, and it was much more effective. Then, when the members began talking about someone we would ask them the name of the person. We write down that name in the ´potential investigator´section of our planner. We have about 5 of those pages, with 19 spaces on each page. In 6 weeks, we normally fill up maybe 1 of those 6 pages, but now we are filling it up much more, and we will be able to do better follow-up with the members sharing the gospel. 

Ive realized this week that its hard to get out of bed, especially because I'm on the second bunk without a ladder. As they say here, que pereza. But things are great. I'm really content, and love being here.

I know God loves us, and that He send messengers to prepare the world for the second coming. I know that there are apostles and prophets in our day. I know that the Book of Mormon i brings us closer to God. I have experienced it. 

Thanks for reading!

Elder Beck

pics: 

me with President and sister Lozano, and my companion