May 28, 2016

Jeremy's email to us this week is short, sweet and right to the point.

"The sisters from my district had a baptism on Thursday and needed us to fill up the font for them. The only problem was that the drain was open and we could only close it by flipping this lever that's at the bottom of a hole. It was quite the experience."

May 14, 2016

A little bit of what Elder Thacker sent to me and his mom this past week.

I'm freaking out about Kaitlyn's graduation. She can not grow up, in my mind she's still a sophomore! That's so weird for me. Everything will have changed when I get back. It's a good change though. 

I'm still trying my hardest not to be an adult. To be honest, that was part of the reason I wanted to go on a mission. That way I could put off being an adult for two more years. Little did I know that the mission is not just fun and games and I actually have responsibilities. Oh well.


Our trip was really fun! I love Puno, I was so excited to go back there. Plus I saw a lot of friends that I haven't seen in a while. We went for just a day, took the night bus sunday night, we were in Puno for Monday, then monday night came back. When we got back to Cusco we were dead. It's so tiring. But I got a lot done, as did Elder Hogan so it was a success. Also, we may or may not have gone to the Bolivia border. We ended up with a couple hours free and couldn't pass it up. We took some photos with a sign that says "Welcome to Bolivia!"

Other than that, our week has been fairly normal. We were teaching this couple named Nikolas and Olga. Nikolas is from Cusco, but Olga is Colombian. On thursday Olga had to go back to Colombia to be with her kids. We were sad to see her go, she's super cool. She was baptized about 2 months ago in Colombia and was helping Nikolas a lot to learn about the Gospel and accept it. Now she's gone, but we're still going to visit Nikolas. If everything goes well, he could be baptized within a couple of weeks. But that depends more than anything on whether or not he can read the Book of Mormon. I don't know why but it's so hard for people here to read it. However as soon as they start, they get an immediate testimony. It's amazing. I really hope Nikolas can read it.

May 7, 2016

It's been a while since I updated this blog with letters from Elder Thacker. If you are one who looks forward to reading about his updates, I apologize. I'll try and do better. Here's some of what he wrote to his mom and me this week.

 

"So I want to start off with last week. Remember me saying that I spent the night in the hospital? That was because Elder Cárdenas was sick and couldn't leave. He stayed there for a couple weeks and so I ended up staying the night there a couple more times. It was a huge pain, but at the same time it was kind of convenient because Monday through Wednesday I was really sick. The worst was on Tuesday, I went to the bank to make a couple of payments for migrations and ended up fainting in the line. I don't know why, it was the same as when my blood pressure drops only I have no idea what triggered it. But basically the security guard came and helped me up, took me to the front of the line, then I got a police escort back to the office where I promptly flopped down on the couch and died. It was quite the adventure. But after that they moved me to the hospital and I stayed there with Elder Cárdenas until he was cleared to leave. Then he stayed with us for a few days before President told him he had conversed with the area presidency and they agreed the best option for him was to go home and recuperate. Poor kid. I had to help him with his visa and stuff though.

There was another change in the office this past week too. Elder Webb, the records and health secretary, left to Juliaca. His replacement is an Ecuadorian named Elder Pereddo. We generally just call him Pedo or Pedi. He's a funny kid, I met him when I got my change to Choquehuanca and I like him a lot. It is kind of weird though having Webb gone. The office now is almost entirely different than when I got here. The only other Elder who was here when I came in is Tsosie. We're also pretty sure he's getting his office kid this coming week which means we'll be in a trio for 2 weeks or so while Tsosie trains the new guy on his office responsibilities then I'll be the oldest office elder. That's weird for me to think about. I've never had more time in a sector or zone than the other missionaries that are there. I feel like I've been here in Vista Alegre for so long.

 

We also just had a baptism! Remember Claudio? He got baptized today! Actually that was the biggest news of these past couple weeks. We had a cita with him last week and he says "Elders, I'm sick of this back and forth stuff with my baptism. I want to put another date as soon as possible." Obviously we didn't have any problems with that. So he had his interview last Sunday, passed it, and today we got him dunked! I'm uploading photos to Dropbox :)"