la semana

Well, i will start this email the way i think i always start, by saying its been an incredible week!!!! 

K imma get right to it, first i gotta hit you with the details from last pday!!!  WE DID THE COOLEST THING EVER!!!!!!  There is this place where the natives here have little wooden benches with wheels that sit on old abandoned train tracks, and then a motorcycle attached to the bench to push it, and with the motor cycle the people can come buy tickets and they shuttle the people into the jungle right before the mountains on the inland side of Buenaventura, SO WE DID IT!!!!!  We got shuttled in there and then hiked a bit to a sweeeeet WATERFALL!!!!!!  Ahhhhh man it was incredible, felt like i was in havasupai again, but with waaaayyyy more trees and thick greenery, and even hotter climate!!!!  So ya that was sweet!!

ANother fun adventure from the week, we had a service project for a family in the branch that lives up on the edge of the same jungle!!  They live in what is seriously a little log hut made completely by them, and even though it doesnt have water or electricity its actually suuuper cool!!!!  But ya so they need a path built through the thick jungle, so what did we do??  Thats right, we went in with machetes (how do you spell that???  The giant knives/small swords just incase i spelled that word sooo poorly that you dont know what im talking about) and started wacking away at anything (and anyone, no jk) in our way!!!  I think in an hour we cut down 14 trees of decent size, one of which almost fell on me, but its all good we are over that.... so ya it was an absolute blast, until we got to lunch...

So of course since theyre such nice people these members there, they offered us a big nice lunch, which was suuuper good, exept for one little thing.... I mean i cant complain, the poor people were giving us their very best, and yes it was very good actually, just a little different... ya they gave us pig with the skin still on it, and the hair.... i didnt even know pigs had hair.... or at least not thick and hard hair like this, it was like, ya im out of words, it was like shaved, the hair, but just lke a buz cut... so it was the first time my lunch had a 5 o clock shadow, but other than that surprise it was a great day!!!!

K shoot im already running out of time sorry, i had a lot more to share darn it, but one really really cool thing ive learned this week!!!  We have an investigator whos INCREIBLE!!!! absolutely INCREDIBLE!!!!!  We had a family night with him and his family this week (hes the dad with a wife and two young daughters, but they arent officily married, thats the delay right now) and he gave the lesson, and it was incredible, talking about how Nephi built a temple that didnt have all the nice decorations that the temple of king solomon had, but that it had everyting necessary and was a house of god, which makes it jsut as sacred an special, and he compared that to how we all have bodies very different, and how lots of people feel insecure becuase in some ways their physical apprearance might not be what society accepts, but they are still created in Gods image and are of equal importance and potential, and it was amazing!!  This is just one of many stories of this guy, but as we have listened to him so many times weve realized hes saying all sorts of stuff weve never taught him, and has all sorts of knowledge you dont just learn on your own in this life, no hes proof that The Lord prepares people not just to accept the gospel, but to carry it forth.  My comp and i think this guy will be a big leader who helps this small branch of buenaventura soon become a stake, its what The Lords prepared him for, not just in this life, but im sure he started learning a lot of what he knows in the prelife, and agreed to come to buenaventura in a critical time to help the church grow!

Entonces que pena por tener que irme tan pronto pero ese es mi testimonio, ni siquiera puedo estar màs feliz en la obra apresurada del Señor, sè que las familias pueden ser eternas, en el nombre de Jesucristo, amen.

les amo

nos vemos 

Èlder Tenney

Wooowww im typpping soooo fasty

Alright the letter to all!

Ive got a quick list of some things ive leanred this week just to get it out there real quick incase i dont have time to explain it all in detail, so ya things ive leanred:

1 You cant throw animals with a dust pan

2 The hiccups can be a n answer to prayes

3 Volcanos errupt in a way very different than humans

4 There is a direct correlation between agency and testimony

5 The spirit opens our eyes to see paterns of The Lords love

6 the word ``pattern``has two ``t``s

Alright, so, we were sitting in the chapel waiting for members for a meeting, and with nothing to do noticed the floor was a bit dirty, so we went and grabbed some brooms and started to sweep.  After, i went to get the dustpan from the little closet and when i picked it up it shook all over the place, and i was like what the heck, and then i saw a tail wiggling around and there was an iguana inside!!!!!  So i go inside with it to show everyone and one of the poor sister missionaries screamed sooooo dang loud haha (apparently there arent iguanas in peru where shes from) and i went outside to throw it over the pack fence behind the chapel and into the big jungle that lies back behind the fence.  However, even thoughy i thought i had it all calculated perfectly, the trajecotry and all of the iguanas flight pattern, when i swung the dust pan up (one with a long handle...) it just fell straight down plop onto the ground haha right infront of me, and i laughed for half a second, until it flipped over onto its feet and then RAN STRAIGHT AT ME!!!!!!  so what did i do?  ya i dropped the dust pan, screamed, and quickly ran back inside, slamming the door shut behind me, jsut to see a circle of everybody else looking all weird asking me what on earth had happend.... so ya that was fun!!!

alright the catholics in Colombia are nuts, im not saying its cuz their catholics, or because their colombians, not all the catholics here are nuts, but yes all the people who are nuts are catholic... alright so we were visiting a less active when his dad arrived (catholic, and nuts), and he sat down and started talking sooooo much!!!!  Just saying absolute nonsense, not criticizing us, just saying all sorts of nonsense stuff hes learned from the Bible, and ya we kept trying to but in and cut him off, to get him to stop talking for peets sake, when after like 10 minutes of him talking he totally hiccuped suuuuper loud, like his whole body shook hahaha, and so he quickly began to talk again, but hadnt even gotten 4 words out before he hiccuped agian, just as abrupt, and kept hiccuping, and trying sooo hard not to laugh my comp and i were then able to but in and then keep teaching the lesson!!

Alright, so i was feeling suuper good about my spanish for a while, coming up on my 8th month mark and all, when i got humbled in a rather humorous way the other day. To start companionship study we alwyas share what we learned in personal study, and i was reading in 3rd nephi during Christ`s death all the crazy stuff that happend in the Earth, and as i was explaining to my comp what my physics professor at byu taught us last year (that the darkness for a few days was probably a series of catastrophic volcanic erruptions), i thought the word ``errupt`` in spanish was ``erruptar``, so i started using that word a few times and after my comp began laughing i realized ``erruptar`` is a false cognative in this case and actually means ``to burp``, so in short i said that when Christ died volcanoes burped all over the world...

Alright besides studinng burping volcanoes this week, i read a talk from Elder Cook (i like his talks more and more the more i read them) called something like learning to tune into the music of faith or something like that from gen conference last year, and it has a line that really caught my attention that says ``the divne doctrine of agency requires a testimony of the restored gospel to be based on faith rather than just external or sientific proof```, and at first i just thought well ya of course a testimony has to be based on faith and not proof, but then i realized i had never thought of that connection before to agency, better said, to the ``divine doctrine of agency``.  after talking about it with my comp a lot weve learned that if it werent for the incredible gift of agency, our inability to choose and automatic must to choose the best would subject us to scientific evidence in making every decision and never let us choose to follow the better future where our spirits would direct us, aside from all scientific evidence.  Im not sure if that came out very clear haha but ya weve talked before about how according to the adversaries plan we wouldve been robots here on teh earth, but even if that worked out that plan wouldnt have worked (i know it wouldnt have for lots of other reasons as well) but we would have only been able to choose worldy prises here on earth as robots and never would follow spiritual indicators or recognize The Lord`s love which leads us back to Him.... ya super cool!!!!!

Alright and also ive just seen soooo much lately about how someone learns to recognize The Lords love, and the patterns that His love has, as they learn more about the gospel, this goes for all people, members, recent converst, less actives, and non members!  one neat story this week was with a recent convert.  Ive been studying more about something i read from Brad Wilcox before the mission that we arent just earning heaven here on the earth, but we are ``learning`` heaven.  The gospel doesnt just invite us into heaven, it prepares us to be able to be happy in The Lord`s presence too!!  We explained that this week to a recent convert who we were having trouble with, and it really turned thigs around with him!!  Now my comp and i feel like we have so much more love for him, and he is not getting along better with everyone in the ward and we can tell he is feeling more The Lord`s love in his life!!!

Bueno gracias por todo el apoyo que siempre me dan!!!  Enserio, desafortunadamente no todos los misioneros pueden decir que tienen familias apoyàndoles en su serivio misional, pero yo si puedo decir eso y muuuuuuucho màs!  Estoy infinitamente agradecido por todo lo que ustedes siempre han hecho a mi lado en mi familia para prepararme para la misiòn, y estoy aun màs agradecido por el sacrificio de Jesucristo!  Sè que Èl estaba dispuesto a darnos su vida porque sabìa que un dìa llegarìamos a ser como Èl!  Y lo comparto en el nombre de Èl, de Jesucristo, amen.

les amo 

nos vemos

Èlder Tenney

Don't worry, I'm alive

sorry sorry sorry for not being able to write yesterday.... yesterday was a big holiday here and EVERYTHING was closed here, including all the internet shops, so they told us we could write today since we couldnt yesterday, but they are only giving us half an hour, so im sooo sorry but this will be a short and boring letter... I promise it will be better next week, but heres a funny story real real quick and something cool ive leared this week!

 

So the sister missionaries called us late one night last week and were freaking out!  After calming them down a bit my comp asked them what was up,. and they said there was a massive spider in their bedroom and they were scared to death and asked us to come over and kill it for them (they live just around the corner).  So we went over thinking like ``what are you serious just stomp on it or something).  So we get there (dont worry they waited outside while we went in, we arent allowed to be in the house at the same time) and they were there with their beds on the floor in thefront room where they study, all ready to sleep there haha because of the spider that broke loose in their room.  So we go into the bedroom, dont see anything, and then they tell us to start picking up the clothes on the bottom of the closet, and hooooollllyyyy cooowwww, after picking up a few shirts, this MASSIVE SPIDER, seriously the size of a full grown humans hand, started crawling up the wall!!!  Im sorry, but if im gonna be honest, i will say that i totally screamed and ran out of the room!!!  When i recovered and came back, my comp and i both got mops to move the clothes with and try to cruch it.  So we start trying to hit it as its running along the back of the closet (and scariest part is its eyes were like the size of pearl earings almost, HUGE, you could like see its eyes flickering around and stuff) and then it JUMPS onto one of theshirts hanging up!!!  It didnt crawl over onto the shirt, no it totally JUMPED!!  a good jump too!!!  So we carefully slid each shirt over to the other side of the pole where they were hanging until we found it on the back of one of them, batted it down onto the floor and stomped on it!!!  But woooowwwwww hahahaha i seriously cant even describe how big this thing was, alright well ya i hope you enjoyed that one!

 

K ive been re-reading a ton from last general conference and im pretty sure itwas Anderson who said that lowering our standards brings self contentment instead of self improvement.  I thought that went along well as well with Brad Wilcox`s famous talk about Christ grace, which helped me understand this week that the whole plan of salvation and Christs atonement and grace arent just to make us comfortable with sin, but to help us always improve, and thats something ive been trying to apply with everyone here.  Its easy for missionaries to say ``oh well we are doing our best`` as they get home a bit late or get up a bit late or arent as obedinet as possible.  its easy to think we arent perfect and then just be content that way, but thats not how we are going to become enough like our Heavenly Father to have infinite happiness being worthy to live in His presence.  Pero la parte màs importante es que no estamos hacièndolo solos!  Si es cierto que no somos perfectos, todavìa, pero si lo seremos gracias a lo que hizo posible Jesucristo!  Testifico de Èl, de Su divinidad, de Su expiaciòn, de Su amor, de Su ejemplo, y de nuestro potencial gracias a Èl!  Es por eso que estamos aquì todos, y que estoy re feliz en la misiòn!  Amo esta obra, y este plan de nuestro Padre Celestial, y lo comparto en el nombre de Jesucristo, amen.

 

les amo

 

nos vemos

 

Èlder Tenney

New Year!!!

Sooooo.......Im proud to say i confidently feel like a missionary whos got some respectable time under his belt now!!  I mean im coming home next year!!!  LIke what?!?!  already got a christmas, new year, and birthday down in the mish!!!

Alright so the scoop from Colombia...

So all day on new years eve was INSANE!!!!  K, let me rephrase that, colombias always insane, new years eve was EVEN MORE INSANE!!!  The streets were just packed with people, and most of them were dressed up in costumes and all.... I think these people mix up their holidays a bit here... But ya so it was packed and the music that you always here walking down the streets of Colombia was soooo much louder!!  It was crazy haha we were just walking around thinking like wow how are we supposed to teach a spiritual lesson right now.... but it was cool to see all that they do!

So the biggesgt new years tradition here is that they make big dolls, kind of like scare crows, and then put them in the street infront of their houses waiting to burn them at midnight... so ya all week there were these huge dolls all over the street, most of them with weird masks and stuff... 

THe other big tradition, thats really not that big of a deal, but everyone was talking about it, is that they try to eat 12 grapes in 1 minute and if they do it they make a wish... haha i found it kind of funny, they ALWAYS talked about it, and talked about it like it was a hard thing to do... 

So ya for new years we actually did manage to squeeze in some lessons, and then at night there was a ward party where we played some fun games with the members and an investigador and all... but then the elders on the island stayed at our place with us for the night and we just hung out in the house all night till midnight and then went out on the porch and watched all the fire works go off and the neighbors burn their doll and it was pretty cool!!  There were some suuuuper loud fireworks, haha nobody got any sleep that night, but it was neat!!  A picture of theneighbors doll burning is on its way...

Only one other story from the week really, i got spit on.  So ya not much to it really, i guess the guy was from some other church, and ya he spit on me...

Haha no jk it wasnt quite like that some guy infront of a bar was talking with his buddy and turned his head to spit on the ground right as we walked by and the spit landed on my shoe... he looked soooo emberrased haha and actually was really nice trying to apologize and all, my comp and i just laughed and told him it was all good, probably should have tried to contact him and teach him some other day haha, while walking away i was thinking about what a story that would be if the guy ever managed to join the church since he met the missionaries by spitting on them... but nah we were in a hurry to the next lesson.

So i got put in as the second councelor of the branch presidency here this week!  President Pricoli and his wife came and told my comp and i we have to start helping the members not be so dependent on the missionaries and all, so im not sure why the President called me to be the counselor, but he told me it would probably just be for a short time till they call another member... but ya as ive said its super interesting how The Lord doesnt call on the most capable people, just the ones who He needs to see learn and grow!

Entonces eso es todo lo que tengo para compartir esta semana.  Espero que les guste y que tengan muy buena semana!  Como siempre sería un gusto dejarles con mi testimonio que sé que estamos en la iglesia verdadera, la de Jesucristo, se me hizo saber de la veracidad un poco más esta semana por el Espíritu que sentí al tomar de la santa cena esta semana.  Sé que mis errores fueron perdonados en ese momento, y sé que eso solamente es posible gracias a este plan del Señor para nosotros sus hijos, hecho posible por Su Hijo, Jesucristo, y lo digo en Su nombre, amen.

les amo

nos vemos

Élder Tenney