This week was so nuts I'm writing two days late! It was officially the craziest week of my mission, and on of the most fun as well. Wednesday we had our mission tour with Elder Walter F. González of the seventy, the area president of the Caribbean! We had three meetings to plan, a leadership council on Wednesday, then two multizones for Thursday and Friday! Holy cow, there are so many tiny details to plan that I'm sure no one even notices! At least, I never noticed them before! It's kind of like a referee in a basketball game: you only notice it if it's bad, if it's good it goes unnoticed. If that makes any sense haha. But everything went fairly smoothly! We didn't really have any part in the meeting except for preparation, clean-up, and conducting. I tell you what though, I got strangely nervous just conducting! We got this mini-biography off of LDS.org that I had to read when I conducted (Wednesday and Thursday) and I was completely psyching myself out beforehand. But, all went well, and it's a relief to have it over!
Elder González was powerful though! The guy stood up in every meeting with just his quad! He's pretty much a wizard with the scriptures! He started by quoting a few scriptures and I though, "Well, looks like he came in prepared with a few memorized scriptures as part of the script," but the meetings continued and different topics were brought up and he kept pulling out scripture after scripture after scripture! Supporting missionary behavior with scriptural doctrine! There definitely wasn't any "script" at all. And honestly, if he wasn't a general authority, his wife would probably be part of one of the auxiliary presidencies. She knows the scriptures just as well as he does! It was a neat thing being with them for each of the meetings!
A cool thing happened on Tuesday as well. We were in the office preparing for Elder González when President Rios called us into his office to help with the transfer, something he often does. This time, however, was pretty much transfers on steroids. There's a big group going home, a big group coming, and tons of trainers and leadership positions to be filled. He pretty much just said, "Alright Elders, ideas," and we got to work on it! It was an honor that he would trust us enough to even call us in there and listen to our suggestions! We were there for a little while until it was pretty much nailed down, and before we left he asked us to join him in prayer to seek further revelation. It was quite the experience and privilege to be a part of!
Saturday, the day after the mission tour finished, we headed up to Huaraz with President and our financial secretary to interview and train the missionaries there. It's about a six hour drive so it's an adventure every time! Here are just a few quick hitters from that trip:
We stopped toeat lunch at this little half run down place on a little beach called Tortugas (Turtles). There was a really neat view and we even went down to the ocean while we waited for them to prepare our food! I'll see if I can attatch a few pics...
After stake conference Sunday morning, we made the one hour trip to Carhuaz (where we have one companionship), and then one more hour to Caraz (two companionships) basically just to do room checks and show the wards some support. So we were in the car for the majority of the trip!
Speaking of that, driving with President is an experience in and of itself. He takes speed bumps at full velocity and drives in the opposite lane about half the time. Or just straddles the white line between lanes haha! It's like real life Mario Kart! Or Need for Speed or something like that haha.
Carhuaz is this little old town with really old traditions. Right now, they're in the middle of this festival for "La Virgin de la Merced." I don't even know what that means. But while we were there we saw a strange amount of bulls. We learned from the missionaries that the people basically just keep the bulls around, dress them up in costumes, make them drink alcohol (as the people themselves are also drinking, of course), then kill them and eat them at the end. It's so random! Definitely an interesting sight though, we probably saw at least 15 bulls in the 15 minutes we were driving around there.
As we were driving in the darkness from Caraz back to Huaraz (a two hour trip) President says, "What if a person just appeared in front of us and started floating and walking through the air?" It was thee most unexpected comment possible from him in that moment. He's a serious guy! Just shows you what his fears deep down are haha;)
We didn't have any place to eat dinner last night, so President took us to his hotel and left us in the restaurant part while he went up to bed. We weren't that hungry, so we just got ice cream crepes and garlic bread. All the fancy people in the fancy restaurant were giving us some pretty strange looks haha!
We also had three baptisms last Saturday! What a week!!
I love you all:) Have a wonderful week!
Love,
Elder Tanner Hart
1: Our baptisms last Saturday! Luisa, Luis, and Claudia were all baptized and confirmed!
2-3: Eating at President's fancy hotel
4: Looking down at Huaraz (even though you can't see the city very well haha)
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