Deathbed Repentance

by Lisa/Tyler’s Mom

I swore I was over it.  No more packages.  But it’s my baby’s birthday tomorrow and I can’t not send a package.  He’ll spend the whole of his 20th year in another hemisphere.

So here I am putting together a package of junk that he doesn’t need and he’ll probably never see.

Oh how I envy mothers of domestic missionaries.

*Sigh*

Sometimes It’s Bigger Than It Looks

Hey everyone,

So this time I think I actually got the pictures to send.  On Wednesdays, we always have service activities in the morning and this week this couple in the branch asked us to "subir" [English: to lift up] some things for them.  We were in their apartment with them and we thought that meant like some furniture up to the 3rd floor where they live...turns out that meant to carry some sand bags up a mountain for them...Haha.  Afterwards they told me that they were vague on purpose because they thought we wouldn't do it.  So yeah, 50 pounds of sand up a mountain. I was absolutely exhausted by the time we got to the top.  And the bar is one of those steel rods that you use to just make holes.  Looking up at the mountain from the bottom It looks pretty tall.  It feels a lot taller when you're carrying 50 pounds of sand up it and a steel rod.  I really loved it because it kinda took me back to summer workouts for football with the hill and weights and everything.  It was pretty cool, but it killed.

Conference was the best but a really stressful experience as well.  [General Conference occurs twice a year.  The leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints speak on inspired topics to a world wide membership via satellite.  We just exceeded 15 million members!  I can remember when we hit 10 million!  You can listen or view the talks HERE].

We were told that we were going to watch it in Nueva on Sunday all week so we went around telling everyone that and that it would start at 11.   So come Sunday morning, the signal wasn't working so we had to change it to go to Moyobamba (we could have stayed much closer 30 min v. 1hr but nobody wanted to listen to me)  but we had to run around like crazy people that morning to try to tell everyone that we were changing it and everyone was just mad at us (like I could control that) and then all the members that were already there just wanted to know why the missionaries were taking so long instead of helping us. 

It was just a very stressful morning but, the Sunday morning session may have been the best full session of conference that I've ever seen.  I really loved all of those talks.  My take away from conference is that a lot of times we see the Gospel as a way to not have problems in our lives but really that's not even what it is.  It really is just the power and the ability to be able to overcome the problems that are going to come in life.  So when we're doing what we're supposed to, we don't have to be surprised when problems come, we just have to keep doing what we're supposed to be doing.  That's really the only way that we'll be able to overcome those things.  When trials come, get closer to God, don't get further away.

I love being a missionary and love being here.

Love you guys,

Elder Peacock

PS I’ve been a missionary for 11 months today

PPS Transfers today

PPPS 1 week until my Birthday....how am I supposed to be a 20 year old?

Glimpses at Life in Nueva Cajamarca

Extracts from letters received from Elder Peacock this week:

“I guess I’ll tell you about the food here, it’s a lot of rice.  I know I’m thinking really far ahead, but when I get home, I don’t want to see rice for 2 weeks…at least.  So, for breakfast, I eat with my “pensionista” (aka the lady who makes us food).  She’ll make an egg thing or cereal with yogurt, bananas, fruit salad, pancakes and once she tried (unsuccessfully) to make french toast.  But she always gives us Ecco or Kimbo which is a cebada [English: barley] drink.  When I first saw it in Iquitos, I was 100% sure that it was coffee, but it isn’t.  At first I could not drink it [observant members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints abstain from coffee].    Later I figured out if I put in 1/2 a spoon of cebada and 6 spoons of sugar, then it’s doable.  Still not a huge fan.  Lunch is with the members and it’s really about always the same:  rice and chicken.  Sometimes with a little bit of other stuff like potatoes or bananas or “salad”.  Salad is cucumbers and tomatoes with lime juice.  Then dinner we’re with our pensionista again and it’s basically the same as lunch, just smaller.  I’m usually not even hungry for dinner though.”

“It’s nice having a pensionista though, even if she is just trying to get me fat.”

Mother’s comments:  Top two least favorite vegetables on Tyler’s list:  tomatoes, cucumbers. Maybe he likes them now.  We have penionistas in America too.  They’re called “MOMs”.

“We have a cement floor right now which is basically impossible to keep clean.  I would sweep & mop and it would look just about the same as it did before I started.  It was very frustrating.  Apparently, the secret is to clean it with gasoline…who’da thought?  But then we found out that nobody had ever even sealed the floor, so that didn’t help.  I sealed it.  It was a project, but it looks much better now.  There really is just a lot of dust here though.  When I got here, this place was a sty.  There are 3 rooms (bedroom, study room, “kitchen”) and everything was all over the place, but I threw away mountains of stuff and organized just about everything.  You’d be so proud mom.”

Mother’s comments:  This paragraph is an absolute testament to how transforming a mission is for a young man.  Of my three sons, this one by far had no interest in tidiness or cleanliness or organization or, well, you get the idea.  That he has spent so much thought and effort on this floor and in organizing the apartment is absolutely contrary to everything I know about this person who is my son.  And, where did he come up with the idea to clean with gasoline and why did he have gasoline in the first place?  These are questions I will likely never know the answer to, I suspect.  There’s just so much wrong in this paragraph I hardly know where to begin.  My very foundation has been shaken.

“You may remember my watch situation?  Well, the watch I came here with broke and nobody could fix it, so I bought one.  Like a week later it broke.  Then Elder Bravo gave me one of those cheap digital watches, which is cool.  Well, not too long later, the band broke.  I took it to this guy in Iquitos and got a new band put on.  Well, fast forward  2 months(ish) and I’m in N.C. and, the band breaks again.  But here, I don’t know a watch guy to fix it.  So, I may have made one of the coolest things ever.  Cutting a hole in a part o fhte band, I put a think rope in it and tied it off.  On the other side I put my keys.  So now I have a pocket watchy keychain.  It’s awesome.  Best part?  I think I have found the best way to have a watch but not have a ridiculous tan line on my wrist.  Isn’t that cool?  I know you’re jealous/proud of that :)  And I know I could buy a new watch, but this one is cooler than anything I could buy and I’m 98% sure that it won’t break.  That % is not an approximation either.  That’s the exact percentage that it is.  I calculated it with some really complex equations.”

Mother’s comment:  OK, maybe not ENTIRELY transformed.

And, this piece of art:

“Don’t worry, I’ll carry a rock around with me for the dogs now :)”

which relates to THIS POST.

“I’ve decided that hard work is a mindset.  If you decide to focus on what’s at hand, you’ll do it and do it well.  If you focus on being somewhere else, you’ll never get anything done.  So really, if you want to be good at something, just focus on it and then your actions will follow.”

Elder Peacock, et. al.

Treasure Hunt

[Email dated 9.30.13]

So this week was pretty cool.  I heard my letters got home so that's good.   If you didn't get a letter and wanted one, well maybe you should write me!

Anyways, so this week we had a baptism of W*.  He's 16 and awesome.  He basically doesn't have much of a family and it's kinda sad but he just accepted everything and changed everything that he was supposed to and was just one of those really prepared investigators. 

However, him being 16, he doesn't have the greatest memory all of the time.  So we had his interview this week and because we’re out in the middle of nowhere, it's a bit of a time drain for the Zone Leaders to get out here to do an interview.  So, when we got out to his house to go with him to his interview, well, he wasn't there... We went everywhere that we thought he could be and asked everyone that knows him (which is a lot of people out by where he lives), but nobody knew.  So the Zone Leaders were already waiting for us so we kinda just had to find him because if not, they'd lose at least 2 hours and maybe not be able to do the interview this week.

By this time, we had looked everywhere he would logically be. Then the thought came to mind: he went to go and work in the workshop of this one member.  That really didn't make any sense because I didn’t think it was what he would be doing.  But we just went out that way and when we get out to the workshop/house, we don't even have to knock the door because W* was just outside walking back and we're like....what?  He had gone to the river to swim!  I was just like, “Cool man, let's go they're waiting for us”. 

In all honesty, if we hadn't gone to that exact place at that exact time we wouldn't have been able to find him. The Spirit didn't tell us that he was going to be walking back at that time. Nor did it tell us that he was swimming in the river.  But it told us what we needed to to be able to find him.  It put us in the right place at the right time.  It didn’t save us from running around with our heads cut off for like 20 minutes.  Sometimes we have to work and suffer before the Lord will just tell us where to go because sometimes we really just don't have the answer, nor could we have possibly had the answer.  The Lord will always just get us what we need and get us where we need to go.  It was cool and there was a similar experience on Saturday for his baptism but I don't think I'll have time to talk about that one too. 

So I guess the wards are all getting split and changed up [in his stake back home—we are organized geographically and sometimes it’s necessary to adjust boundaries.  We become comfortable in our ward/congregation families, so change is always difficult]. It's sad but also a good thing.  Change is good and just take it on the run.  That includes you Bryce.  The girls are gonna follow a good lookin’ guy like you even if you're in another stake so don't worry about them. Everything works out, there are no coincidences, God knows best.  I don't know that I can say too much more about that.  Even though right now it doesn't affect me all that much, it is weird to know that I won't be going back to the same ward I left from...

Anyways, Love you guys and hope you all have a great week!!

Elder Peacock

Hope

[Email dated 9.23.13]

hey everyone,

So things are the same ol’, same ol’ here in Nueva Cajamarca.  Still working hard here with Elder Villar and things are going relatively well.  

So once again, I feel like I have run out of things to say, but luckily, pictures are worth a thousand words and I've got one of those for you...reminds me of the turkey leg from Disneyland [November 2012- last hurrah with our Payne friends before Tyler left, see above], but this is much better.  It's the leg of majaz which is some jungle thing that looks like a giant guinea pig...haha  [See picture below courtesy of Google Images]

This week was a little tough but we did find this family from a referral who had listened to the missionaries before but did not progress.  But they've been through a lot of stuff in the past years that has really changed everything for them.  Now they see the importance and are much more willing to act than they were before.  Sometimes the Lord lets us fall, so that he can lift us up higher.

From what I keep hearing at home, there are some really tough things going on in the lives of a lot of people and I think it's always like that in any group of people, it just seems a little bit more prominent right now and it really is just a part of life.  There are always ups and there are always downs, so we can't be surprised when things are going good that something goes wrong.  The most important thing to really do is just to stay positive and have hope that things will get better.  They always do get better it's just that sometimes you have to wait a little bit.  Just remember that things will get better and then go to work and do what you're supposed to.  I've seen so many people that just don't have hope.  When things go bad, it's the end of the world and when things go good, they can't figure out why it's not always like that.  Also people need to remember that people can change.  Everyone really just needs to be a little more positive and understand that a lot of things are going to happen in life so just be happy about it.  That's really the only thing we can do, just be happy. If you think you can't control your happiness, you're very wrong.  Just choose to be happy and it'll happen.  One of my favorite scriptures (I have a lot of favorite scriptures right now) is Juan 14:26:  

“But the ^aComforter, which is the ^bHoly Ghost, whom the Father will send in my ^cname, he shall ^dteach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.”

What God gives us won't really make sense to the world but that's because he is not of this world.  

Things are really awesome down here and I really am happy and loving what I'm doing.  Send me some questions so I can have something a little more interesting to write you about next week.  Some of you should be getting some letters in the weeks that are coming, I just sent a bunch to mom so that should be coming.

Love you guys and have a great week!

Elder Peacock

Apostolic Counsel

hey everyone!

So this week was awesome, pictures just still don't want to load so you’ll just have to take my word for it... These computers aren't exactly state of the art... [Here’s one from just before his mission for fun]

Anyway, on Sunday there was a District Conference here and in all of Perú actually... and we got to hear from Elder Bednar and Elder Scott with a Seventy and someone from the Relief Society Presidency.  Being the middle of nowhere in Perú, we only really got to see like half of it [likely it was broadcast via satellite or internet] but from what I did hear, I can tell you that they are really men inspired of God and they speak directly to our needs.  At first, I couldn't figure out why they were doing a special conference for Perú, but they really spoke directly to what we need to hear here.  They talked about chastity and the youth because really that's where they're getting hit the hardest here.  A lot of youth go inactive [fall away from the Church] especially due to chastity.  It's really sad.  As a youth, there are sometimes just so many voices surrounding them.  Sometimes we let the voices that lead to the bad speak louder than our own that lead to the good.  It’s really all just because sometimes we don't want to open our mouth for one reason or another.  But one of the many things that I've learned is that you just have to open your mouth and speak for the good. [Stand as a witness of God at all times and in all things and in all places…Mosiah 18:9]

Another thing I learned from it is that sometimes when we need to hear something, God is telling us exactly what we need to hear but we don't want to listen.  I spent half of the conference trying to keep the youth from yelling in the church.  It's really sad that even when an Apostle is talking directly to someone, they don't want to listen. 

My companion is coming along.  I have a hard time just having a few minutes of silence so I usually just talk.

Love you guys, Gotta go....Pictures next week?....Maybe.

Elder Peacock

10 Months!!

Well, this is going fast....I hit my 10 month mark this week and I really feel like I just started not too long ago.  Apparently everything is going to be going even faster by the time I hit a year though...And I think that I've changed quite a bit since getting here as you may notice from this email.

Anyway, this week was good, but I'm jut really annoyed by one thing:  Procrastination.  Anyone who knows me should be confused by that because I procrastinated my way through high school [true, that.  A surprisingly successful strategy for him, though I would not recommend it] and that's just always how I've been.  Now, I’m the exact opposite.  I don't get why everyone wants to wait to do good things, especially when they understand everything and know what they should be doing.  That seems like a very common thing here that they can know something, and know it with their mind and with their heart, and yet still just want to do things later.  People, just know that there will never come a better time to act.  Doing everything all at the last minute is not a very efficient way to do anything and the thing is, with the Gospel, we don't know when we're actually preparing for, so really there is no way to procrastinate this and get it done.  Because by the time we know it is about to be all over, it'll already be over and we won't have time to act. 

Also, we were talking to someone yesterday and they said something that mom would be very shocked about.  They were talking about companionships of missionaries and how there's always the really friendly talkative one and the one who is very quiet and doesn't say too much...well apparently I'm the first one...I think it's partly out of necessity because Elder Villar is very nervous whenever he has the  opportunity to talk to anyone so he doesn't say all that much or talk to all that many people, so I'm doing a lot of the talking and a lot of the teaching right now (not the same things).  He's a good kid and all but it's just not something he's comfortable doing. [YET!]

[Mother’s rebuttal here:  Tyler and I are nearly polar opposites.  Where I think more words are always better, whereby to assure clear communication (ok, my bias is showing, I’m aware), Tyler feels no need to use 3 words when 1 is sufficient.  He’s a man of few spare words and is more likely to watch in amazement as I ramble on, and then reply “OK”, which is usually considered by me to be a totally inadequate response.  OK is not even an actual word.]

And for the record, every week I start off my time on the computer starting to load a picture but there really just isn't ever enough time to load the picture...these computers aren't exactly the fastest machines in the world, so just know that eventually you will get to see my beautiful face mom....eventually....maybe after i get changed again....

[I might have mentioned that I’d love to see some pictures…*SIGH*]

Love you guys!

Elder Peacock

PS did you know gasoline is a cleaning agent here? well now you do. also just remember not to use too much of it...that's a bad thing for sure....haha