It has been weird being back here in Leon. In Querétaro, there are 3 zones of missionaries, and it's where Presidente Williamson lives. Here, despite having a larger population of people, there is only one zone, we're about 3 hours from Querétaro and sometimes it feels like we're out here on our own. It was stake conference this week and I was able to see members from Leon Moderno. They all remembered me! It was fun seeing how they've been doing. It's almost been a year that I showed up to Leon. It's been bizarre being back, but also a lot of fun! Our area is the largest area in the mission. It's a third of the city of Leon, and I've never walked so much before in the mission. My feet, legs and back were all sore. My last area was pretty small and I feel like having a small area is so much more productive. A good chunk of our day is just walking around to have a few lessons. I have a few ideas that we're gonna start using to work more efficiently. We're gonna focus all our work in the morning in one area and in the afternoon in another area so that we're not walking around all day.
My comp and I get along great, and it's been
fun having an american comp again. It's been raining a lot this week,
and we have to walk through a muddy field everday. That's been fun.
Also my camera broke... It got wet and it stopped working. I put it in
rice, and I guess we'll see what happens. The memory card still works
though. A lot of this week was spent with administrative duties. We
had our leadership meeting in Querétaro, planned our message for the
zone conference, and established some goals with the other leaders for
the zone. Zone conference is this tomorrow,
and I'll be relieved to get it out of the way and just focus on our
area. Anyways, it wasn't that exciting of a week. Love you guys tons!
Elder Cherpeski
9/17/2018
This was a pretty good week! We had our zone conference and interviews with Presidente Williamson. It's crazy to think that I've already had 13 interviews with him and I just have 5 more. The work in the area is still frustrating. On Saturday we started walking and hour to a lesson, walking an hour and a half to another lesson, walking an hour to la comida, and walking to another hour and a half to another lesson. We can't even take buses because there are no direct routes, so we would have to go to a bus station and wait for the right bus to take. This would take like an hour as well, so it's not worth it. I've been pretty sore. We found a cool family, and taught them the plan of salvation. They committed to going to church. I called them Saturday night and they said they we could pick them up. However, come Sunday morning they were nowhere to be found... Hopefully we can find them this week.
9/17/2018
This was a pretty good week! We had our zone conference and interviews with Presidente Williamson. It's crazy to think that I've already had 13 interviews with him and I just have 5 more. The work in the area is still frustrating. On Saturday we started walking and hour to a lesson, walking an hour and a half to another lesson, walking an hour to la comida, and walking to another hour and a half to another lesson. We can't even take buses because there are no direct routes, so we would have to go to a bus station and wait for the right bus to take. This would take like an hour as well, so it's not worth it. I've been pretty sore. We found a cool family, and taught them the plan of salvation. They committed to going to church. I called them Saturday night and they said they we could pick them up. However, come Sunday morning they were nowhere to be found... Hopefully we can find them this week.
We got soaked a few times this week. I'm pretty sure my bible is
still damp haha. We're still trying to work more efficiently in the
area but it's hard when you walk 7 hours a day... This week should be
better though. We're scheduling lessons in the
same area around the same time so we don't have to walk back and forth
so that should help. The zone conference was good. We talked about
Christlike attributes, how to be more positive, and had a testimony
meeting. I felt more motivated afterwards. Later
we ate with the American family that lives here in Leon that I ate with
last Thanksgiving. It was fun seeing them! My comp and I get along
really well. He just has 3 months left, so I'm trying to not let him
get too trunky. I beat him 3 out of 4 games
of one on one basketball today. 3 pointers will beat 2 pointers.
Anyways, it was a good week. Hopefully we can work more eficazmente
this week. Love you guys!
9/24/2018
This was the absolute least productive week of my
mission. We have a combined zone activity against Irapauto next week
and we got soccer jerseys as a zone and we ran around a lot of the day
getting money from the district leaders and putting
in the order. Wednesday morning I woke up with a fever. I took some
advil and we started divisiones with the Elderes de San Pancho. I was
with Elder Rios, one of my best friends in the mission, and we we're
killing it that morning. We found some old investigators,
got some good contacts in, but when I got to the comida I got a fever
of around 103 degrees, so I called Sister Williamson, took more advil
and went home to rest. I woke up in the evening still burning up. I
got a blessing and was able to go to sleep. I
woke up with a light fever. Also my stomach had some issues. I kept
thinking that with a little more rest I could get better, but I kept
getting worse. I stayed that way until I finally called the doctor on
Friday night. He told me it sounded like a stomach
infection, so he prescribed me antibiotics and some other medicines.
Saturday morning I had to call and talk to the church insurance to get
my medicine for free. I did it all in Spanish, and it was a pain.
However, I did get it all figured out in the end.
Saturday afternoon was taken up going to the far corner of our area
to give a blessing. On Sunday our investigator showed up to church
drunk. He made some... interesting comments in Principios del
Evangelio. Oh well, I'm just glad this week is over.
I'm gonna try to work double this week to make up. Super frustrating
week. The only picture I took this week was me playing chess this
morning. I'll take more this week. I guess not every week can be
amazing. Also we should never take our health for granted.
Love you guys!
Elder Cherpeski
10/1/2018
Hey guys! This was a much better week! We worked super hard and we
stayed extremely busy all throughout the week. We found a golden family
of 6 and they're all on date for the 27th of October to be baptized.
The hardest thing will be getting
them to church seeing that the church is half the city away. I went in
divisiones with a missionary that had been having some difficulties.
He told me that it was impossible to find new investigators in his
area. As soon as we started divisiones my number
one priority was to find someone new. I pulled some old investigators
from the area book, grabbed the members list, and we went to work. We
worked all afternoon contacting, looking for old investigators, and
knocking doors. Nothing. At 8:30 we were planning
on going home, but I saw some guy pull up on his bike and start
unlocking his door. I contacted him, and he invited us in to talk. We
taught him the Restoration, and put a return appointment for a few days
later. I was stressing pretty bad, but at the end
of the day we found a new investigator. It was pretty cool!
Today we had a multizone activity playing fútbol and it was pretty
fun. We all had a good time, and went all in buying jerseys (tottenham
jerseys because they're the coolest). I played for like 20 minutes then
went to play basketball. Basketball is
still the superior sport in my opinion. I'm really excited for general
conference this week and hearing the voice of our living prophet. I
hope you all have a good week.
We've been walking a ton, working hard, getting sunburnt, and trying to
teach as many people as possible. We had a special fútbol activity
today and
it was tons of fun! I still can't play very well, but at least the
jersey is cool. It's crazy to think that I'm 3/4 of the way done with
the mission. I've been reflecting on my mission a bit, and have come to
realize that it's the hardest thing I've ever
loved to do. It's been a sacrifice, but I wouldn't be anywhere else in
the world. I love you guys!
Elder Cherpeski
10/8/2018
The highlight of the week was definitely General Conference. I loved a
lot of the talks. The talks of President Ballard, President Eyring,
Elder Holland, President Oaks, and of course President Nelson we're all
very powerful. I realized that
this is the last conference I'll see in the mission and it made me a
little sad. I love Conference in the mission. The hymns were also
amazing this conference. I think that it makes perfect sense that
President Nelson commanded us to use the correct name
of the Church. These are "los últimos días," and we need to step it up
a bit. Every conference seems to just get better and better.
The rest of the week was pretty decent. It was very hot some of
the days this week. On Tuesday we went on divisiones in Silao, a city
about an hour from Leon. We had a good day and we went to a little
Pueblito called Romita. It had missionaries for the first time
ever a year ago. There's an ice cream place there that makes good ice
cream and you can get a half liter for 13 pesos (60 cents) . Obviously I
bought a half liter of strawberry ice cream,
and it was really good. In the divisiones Elder Marin and I found a
family of 4 knocking doors and had a great lesson. It was a good
divisiones. The work in our area went alright this week. Our
investigators aren't really completing with their commitments,
so it's a little frustrating. We have one possible baptism coming up,
so we're working towards that. Also some crazy lady came up to my comp
and I and tried to convice us to marry her daughters and take them back
to the states. It sounds funny in the email,
but she was 100% serious and it was a little freaky. That's what
happens when two gringos are together... Anyways, have a great weeks
guys. Listen to the conference talks! Love,
Elder Cherpeski
10/15/2018
We were one cigarette away from a baptism on Saturday... Our
investigator Arturo called us Saturday afternoon a few hours before his
baptism saying that he had just smoked and needed to postpone the
baptism. That phone call sucked, but we'll
keep trying him. It was pretty discouraging especially since it was
the Saturday before transfers. Speaking of which, we did in fact have
transfers. I'm going to be training a new zone leader who was actually a
district leader here in the Leon Zone! It
was a super weird transfer but I'm really happy because he's an awesome
missionary. He's from Alaska, has a year in the mission, and is really
dilligent. I think we'll have a lot of success.
It was sad to say bye to Elder Wright since we're great friends,
but I'm glad I have a focused companion again. We were all over the
zone last week to give baptismal interviews and do some divisiones. The
week really flew by. I spent so much money on
buses and transportation(plus I had to buy a gas tank for the house)
this week and I'll have to pull some personal money to go to Querétaro
on Thursday. That's pretty lame. We started teaching one of our
neighbors and he's incredibly prepared for the gospel!
He read some of the Book of Mormon and prayed after our first lesson
and he said that he slept better than he had in years and he said he
took that as an answer. We have him on date for 3 weeks so hopefully
that happens! I'm super excited for this upcoming
transfer. Here's a pic with Elder Wright. Pictures with Elder Hayers
are to come next week! Love you guys!
Elder Cherpeski
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