Elder Chandler Haws: Last Week Here..? (August 17, 2016)

Week 5

Oh my HI.

So, It’s my last week in the CCM!! Pretty weird that I’ve been here for 6 weeks.. It feels like I left yesterday!! Anyways if I’m being honest not a lot happens here, we do the same thing everyday! Not that it’s a bad thing! It just drags on ya know? It’s awesome here and I’ll be sad to leave, but I’m pumped for Cusco. Everyone is jealous of the Cusco missionaries. Legit. It’s amazing.

Life is one of those things where all you can say is just, “Life man… it’s weird..” Which is probably my favorite thing to say ever. No one knows how to take it. I say it all the time to the new missionaries and they always say, “Oh. Um. Yeah same.” So that’s been my life this week.

Our district teacher, Hermano Velasquez is the best person in the world. He is an amazing person. He doesn’t speak a lot of English(wow someone in Peru doesn’t speak English? Shocking.), but he’s a convert of the church. He was baptized at 17, went on a mission at 19 and left a professional Soccer career behind. He is also probably one of the funniest people I’ve ever met. He jokes around with us so much. Whenever we “break the rules” he smacks our hands with his belt. What a guy. I would tell you more. But it wouldn’t be funny to you lol.

There’s a lot of things that I want to talk about, but they’re all such small and simple things that happen every day. Things that I couldn’t explain because they wouldn’t make sense coming from my mouth. A lot of people will say that in the MTC you don’t have any experiences. Which is completely false, the only reason they don’t have any is because they don’t look for them. That also goes for you people back at home. You might think that “Oh well I don’t really have any of those experiences.” Or, “You have to be missionary to have those kind of things happen to you.” FALSE. Oh my goodness that’s false. LOOK FOR THEM. And I promise you WILL find them in your life. I look back at my life before I left, and every single day here, and there’s no way that I would be here without some sort of help from Heavenly Father. All you need to do to find those things in your life, is look for them. You’ll find them.

Everyday is the same, but everyday I’m learning so much about myself, and about my Savior. I’ll just share some of my personal study this week. I guess. Alma 24 is one of the greatest chapters in the Book of Mormon. It’s the story of the Anti-Nephi-Lehies, or better explained the Lamanites (Who were nasty, wicked people) who were converted to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Including their King. This story is the ultimate story of repentance and having faith, and being a true disciple of Christ. These people were once horrible, wicked people. But, are now made clean through Christ. The last line of verse 19 says, “they buried their weapons of peace, or their weapons of war, for peace.” If you don’t know the story the people buried their swords and their weapons, because they were ashamed of who they used to be. Think about that though, what is a weapon of peace, and what is a weapon of war? In those times a sword was your protection, it was everything. And they willingly got rid of them. If you read more you’ll see that even when the rest of the Lamanite people came upon them and killed a lot of the people, they still left their swords in the ground.

FAITH. It’s quite something. We all need more of it. J

I love you all. Look for those small things. LIFE IS REALLY REALLY COOL. TTYL. See ya next time… In Cusco (: BYE.