… I wrote you a letter forevs ago and never sent it. I’m gonna write in some excerpts from it right now.

                “Hey Seester,

It’s me. Elder Brian… Dude, today kinda sucks. I don’t feel super good and … (blah blah blah) … people bug me I want to go watch soccer and eat McDonalds or something. These are the days in the mission you don’t ever hear about. Probably because they pass and you don’t ever remember them (I´ve actually already forgotten this one). Anyways, I was thinking about how at home on such a day I would whine about it to you and then start being really overly cynical and laugh about it and move one. Little harder in letter form but I’mma give it a try. So in order to understand the situation you have to understand that my companion, thinks he’s a Navy SEAL. What does that mean? That means he gets hopped up on protein shakes every morning and does overly-aggressive exercises while grunting loudly, the purpose of which appears to be nothing more than learning how to grunt more loudly than the day before. Probably to frighten his enemies before he pounces upon them and gives them an old fashion eye gouging. Now the secondary problem to this is that he seems to mistake every Jehovah’s witness or Adventist we find in the street for a Soviet Terrorist whom he must defeat Jack Bower style with arbitrary biblical arguments while I just stand back and try and keep him from going for the eyes. It’s like I’m living in this ridiculous God’s Army pun gone much, much too far. So I don’t like that. I also don’t like when he burns helpless Hermanas or old ladies in the street for having the audacity of owning an opinion without checking with him first to be sure it coincided. What I´m saying is I miss my last companion and wish I could put on a few verses of “Where is the Love” and have Fergie’s dulcet tones soothe his angry heart. This is mainly all I have to whine about. …. 

 So there’s a letter you never got. Most of it anyway. Disfrútala.

Elder Brian

Don't Underestimate the Details

Last week this missionary known for some obedience issues called me at like 11:15 at night to tell me he needed to go to the clinic. I dragged myself out of bed, took a cab over there with him and sat there in the clinic in the world’s most uncomfortable plastic lawn chair and talked with under qualified doctors while this other missionary promptly fell asleep in his hospital bed. And that’s where I stayed, until about 6:30 in the morning. At which point I was told that he just had some bad gas. I remember thinking, “Is this really what I came to Peru to do?” And that really bothered me. Till my dad wrote me a letter. Like 3 hours ago. Turns out in his mission he spent a lot of time in the office when he was a missionary in Korea. He had no time to proselyte and spent most of his time fixing the mission car to get ready for trips throughout the mission for training. One day before a trip he spent the whole day doing tune-ups on the car and thought, “Is this really what I came to Korea to do?” I hadn’t told him anything about my clinic story before he wrote that letter or how I was feeling in the office, but I think he saw it coming. And he explained how now he can realize the importance of his missionary service; both the time spent serving investigators and the time spent serving missionaries  I think we underestimate the details of our lives. I’m realizing a little more all the time that the experiences and circumstances of our lives are guided for eternal purposes. I believe that we are always divinely guided. So don’t underestimate the details of your life. Aight? That’s all I have to say about that.

January 7th

Hey Fam.

It seems I defeated you again this week in the email race. Hmm. You know when you're starting an essay or something and you have absolutely no idea how to get into it? So you just sit and look at the screen for several minutes rereading the first line. That's what I'm doing right now. Usually it's caused by lack of thesis. Could be the case.

This week didn't really have a big over riding theme. Elder Andersen went up to Huamachuco this week to do some work visits. I was super bummed I couldn't go. I'm not allowed to leave Trujillo in case something goes down. Lame. But get this. Last time I went on a work visit with Elder Andersen we went out with the East zone leaders. So I go off with one zone leader and he with the other. As we're walking down a street on the way to a reference I hear someone yell my name from a window. Which is weird cause I'd never served in that area in my life. Then I see two of President Salinas' kids from Huamachuco come running up to their big gate thing on the street. Hadn't seen them in like three months. I guess they were living with their aunt to go to school down here. Anyways, coincidence is God's way of staying anonymous, right? 

So it was just Elder Richards and I in the apartment for a couple days while Andersen and Davila were in Huama and Vera and Escobar went to Chimbote. (pause here while I go read the email you just sent me.) Ha... fat cheeks. But mine were so much worse. not even comparable. But still funny. So then Richards and I go into the office all excited because we figure we're gonna get done and get out proselyting for once. False. One hour into the chamba the power cuts. Pretty common occurance here in Peruland. So we go downstairs and discover our little electricity meter that´s set in the concrete all aflame. Don't ask me what was on fire, everything in this country is made out of concrete and brick. So the door guy gets a screw driver and just starts poking randomly at things through the little opening where you read your meter. Well turns out that wasn't actually the most effective plan so we popped the box open and flip the breaker.... long story short Elder Richards and I have to sit in a dark office all day waiting for the electric company to come. It was terrible. But then the next night we got a really awesome reference in our area. Things tend to balance out. Except for Peruvian building codes. 

In other news. We got our surgery done this week. Pretty uneventful. I pretty much play doctor like non-stop now though. After a lidership consejo last week I just got swarmed by missionaries with all their plethora of strange medical questions. I literally stood there and turned in circles from one person to the next writing down medication names and answering weird questions for 30 minutes. It was madness. And then once I escaped it was just to go to the clinic to see the EEG results. So medical stuff is a little out of control right now. So President talked to one of the IFR's this week and found out that, by number of missionaries, we are the largest mission in all of south and central america. And that being the case, we're assuming in all the world. I'm sure we'll drop in number the next few months but for right now it's pretty intimidating to keep track of all this. President gave me a good pep talk this week though and I think we'll get by.

I am... out of things to say.

Seacrest out.

Elder Brian.

Grace--Learning Heaven

So I’m officially done with my bang up job training Elder Richards. Now I sit and watch my Hijito fly. Except I keep going back to do his job too. Generally not because he needs me to. Just because it’s refreshing to do things when I know what I’m doing. The personal Secretary gig is definitely super confusing right now. Normally it just feels like I’m waiting for disasters to strike and then frantically try to save the day. So I’m pretty stoked on the theoretical day when I stop working reactively and toss some proactivity in there. I’m not sure if proactivity is a word. It really ought to be. For right now I’m getting prepped for a Sister to get her gall bladder out while simultaneously helping an elder get an EEG in the middle of Backwardsville Peru and in the mean time dodge/diffuse the profusion of all the lesser (slightly whiny) complaints that 200 some odd missionaries can throw out.  Get your game face on folks.

Hope you guys had a good Christmas. Mine was super awesome. Something I learned this week: Remember the parable of the bicycle? Dad does ask him. Well I was listening to a talk and reading some stuff and I decided that, as good as that parable is, some people misinterpret and it tends to perpetuate a misconception about grace. Everyone always seems to want to battle us about grace. How we’re trying to earn our way to heaven. Not true. We’re not earning heaven. We’re learning heaven. We’re practicing for it. Of course we’re saved by grace, but the bigger question is if we’ve been changed by grace. The scriptures make it extremely clear that no unclean thing can dwell with God, but no unchanged thing will even want to (see Alma 36). So this is where the bicycle parable comes in. Some people seem to think that our small obedience and righteousness (the few coins saved in the parable) are needed to fill the gap that stands between us and perfection. That Christ will fill the gap after all we can do. The truth is that we don’t fill any part of that gap. When Christ invested in us, he paid in full. He didn’t pay it except for a few coins. He paid it all. It is done. Christ then turns to us and offers his own requirements. These requirements are not to appease justice. They’re to help us change into more heavenly, Christ-like beings. I heard it said somewhere that, “heaven will not be heaven to those who haven’t chosen to be heavenly.” Example: remember going to EFY and there was always that one kid in your group whose parents made him come and then by the end of day one he called up his mom and shouted, “get me out of here!” Happens all the time. Why is it so awful for him but so many other people have excellent experiences? I used to have this idea of heaven where I was sitting there nervously in a chair and Jesus was there looking at his clipboard shaking his head, informing me that I’d missed it by 5 points, then me begging him to take another look at my essay questions and so on. But I don’t think that anymore. I don’t think it will be the unrepentant sinner begging “Please, let me stay.” He’ll probably be saying, “Get me out of here!” What we are asked to do here is not to appease justice or to qualify in some mystical account for Christ to fill our gaps. Grace is not a booster engine that kicks on after “all we can do” is reached. It is a power received daily as we continue in our weakness to do “all we can do” in any given day or moment. If Christ didn’t require this practice we would never become what we need to be. This perspective is easy to see in things like learning the piano, but very difficult to see in learning heaven. When kids mess up and hit wrong notes in piano no one says they’re unworthy to keep playing. We just expect them to give a continuous effort. It´s all a part of the learning process. Grace is not the light at the end of the tunnel, it’s the light that moves us through the tunnel. It is not a finishing touch; it is The Finisher’s touch. It is not the absence of God’s high expectations; it is the presence of His power. When we depend on grace we don’t discover, as some would say, that Christ requires nothing; we discover why he requires so much. 

So there you go.

-Elder Brian

The "Curveball"

I got the stocking package. My will power will be exercised to the max to leave it uninvestigated till Christmas. We're starting to get pretty stoked on Christmas. We're doing this massive Christmas Program in the Plaza. Sister Turk is going nuts. were getting flood lights and spots and full sized stables and choirs and santa claus and all kinds of madness. Ask me who has to find and purchase all this random stuff while living in a slightly less than modern country?... this guy. Guess who's stressed... But it's gonna be awesome. We're doing Seize the Day from Newsies. It's gonna be tight. Glasgow’s gonna be David and I do the drum line thing. Anyway it's madness. You'll see videos one day.

K here's the thing about this week. Remember last change when I got hit by "the curveball?" The curveball has officially come full circle and made contact with the back side of my head. Allow me to explain. I've been the financial sec. for almost one change now. We all knew Glasgow had to go out next change because he's going home in like two changes. So we've all been guessing at his replacement all change because we know they're gonna be my companion for a long time and we all have to live together, so anyway, we're pretty interested in it. So Monday-ish, I get the year end budget reports and go in to go over it with President... blah blah money blah. Then President asks me if I'm feeling all settled in and such. “Yeah, feelin good, yeah”. Then he says, “Well I've felt you've been underutilized where you're at right now so... we're gonna have you train a new financial sec. and at the same time train you to be the Personal Sec.”  Straight blindsided. So now I'm training Elder Richards to do the financial stuff and get set for Christmas but at the same time I gotta be trained to do Glasgow's job, which President informed me was "the most difficult job in the mission." So my terror level's at about 8 right about now. Crazy right? So I'm gonna be doing travel, health and President's schedule. You guys could maybe like... pray for me a lot or something. Cause if I mess up, really bad stuff happens. Like deportation. Or, like... death.

So that's where we're at this week, fam. It's madness up in Peru land.


Later famisky,

Elder Brian

Life as a Financial Secretary

"As far as financial secretary stuff in concerned. Yeah. I like it just fine. Sometimes it's weird to not go out working all the time. But we get to do cool stuff (just came from a super pituco dinner with Pres. for my day of birthing). And no, I don't feel like a big deal. I am a big deal. My homies down here are all high rollers. Examples- sonja, check out lady at wong's grocery store. we're bff's; Melisa, gives me my ticket at movistar (phone company), laughs at me when I sing the one taylor swift song they play on an endless loop all day; and last but not least Sebastian, who tells me which line to stand in at the bank, we have a secret handshake. So yeah. I'm big news down here."

Christmas Pictures