Chambeando como chasqui/mr beast in perú/baptisms

I know a bunch of people havent been getting my emails for a long time, but I think I figured it out. If anyone still isn't getting them, sorry. 

Last week we went on a hike to a waterfall called yumbilla. It was really really cool. Really enjoyed. I will throw some pics in. Something crazy that happened was that when we were hiking out we bumped into a guy that asked where we were from. We told him the US. He was like oh yeah thats where mister beast is from. He was like oh yeah a couple weeks ago he was here. I asked him ayo wait mr beast was here? He pulled out his phone and showed me a picture of him with mister beast guiding him to the waterfall. Insane. It turns out mr beast was in Chachapoyas and went to yumbilla. He said he went to gocta but thats clickbait he actually went to yumbilla. Who would've known. Crazy. Mr beast was in the house. This place is really off the beaten path and hardly ever are there americans here, so the fact that the youtuber with the most subscribers in the world was here is crazy. I have never watched one of his videos, but kinda crazy. 

We did some service for some inactive members clearing an overgrown lot. They gave us machetes and we just hacked away. It was a blast. No thought was put into where to start or anything. Just grab your weapon and go to work hacking away at everything. They were blasting Los Alegres de Bambamarca, got to be the most cholito serrano peruanito music group to exist. Nothing like a pan flute and some random wind instrument and some dude yelling LAS MANOS ARRIBA, ESO!!! SALTANDO SALTANDO SALTANDO, BAILANDO BAILANDO, ARRIBA ARRIBA ESOOOOO!!! I can't say I love peruvian music but I love how proud people here are of their music. They love it so much and are so proud of it. That makes me love it I guess. It is wholesome music too. Its usually about how they work on the farm, how the rice harvest is going, or just straight up saying how to dance. Nothing can make a Peruvian more happy than when a white guy can sing along to some random song about working on the farm or making bread. They eat that up. It is an automatic pass into their heart. Hearing the same 5 songs blasting in the street all day every day for almost 2 years has them ingrained in my head. 

I finished my Peruvian coin collection!! 

We had 2 baptisms. Both were absolutely miraculous. The first one was David. He is the insane miracle man that I shared about. His story is insanely cool. I am going to make a voice message about his conversion because his story is so insanely cool. Like seriously the coolest thing ever. I will make a story about what happened with him and send it out so you can listen. He is absolutely incredible. 

The other baptism was Katy. She is also absolutely elect. We met her in a park on a saturday and invited her to english class that night. She went to english class that night and then to church the next morning. That afternoon she accepted a baptismal date. She is so elect for 2 weeks out. Her family is also super interested and have plans to be baptized as soon as they can get married. 

God is so cool. Yesterday was probably the best day of my mission with those 2 baptisms. Seriously the coolest thing ever. 

I have learned a lot about perseverence. We have spent 9 weeks chambeando como negros and finally, we have seen incredible results. It has been worth every single second. 

I love my savior, I love Perú, I love the Peruvian people. 

Elder Pohlman 

2️⃣0️⃣

Today marks 20 months as a missionary. Time flies doesn't it? 

We were driving back to Chachapoyas late at night after zone conference. We passed through a super dark pass in the middle of the mountains and there were hundreds of fireflies flying around the van. It was really cool. 

Perú beat bolivia this week. smokin dat bolivia pak 🤣🚬📈 glib 

We weren't able to work much in our area this week because we were in Jaen for a few days, and then the other days we had to film videos here for Facebook. One thing that was really cool is that we were randomly asking people in the street to help us with the videos and one lady accepted and acted for us in the videos and turned out to be really receptive actually. She is now a person in teaching.

We had a crazy lesson this week. We traveled an hour to Magdalena to visit David our miracle guy. 10 minutes into the lesson he got a call and went outside. 15 minutes passed, 30, an hour. We called him and in classic peruvian style he said hed be back in 2 minutes. 30 more minutes passed. If we hadn't traveled a whole hour to get there I would've left for sure. After about an hour and a half he came back. He told us how an insane miracle had happened. Someone he had had arguments with for years showed up out of nowhere to make things right. He was so excited to tell us how our presence and the changes he is making in his life is leading to huge miracles like this. Then he told us that to celebrate they had drinken 2 beers 😐 lol. We shared the word of wisdom with him and he accepted on the spot and said how he needs to stop drinking and how he knows it's the right thing to do. We finished with a prayer on our knees (something I have never done before in lessons). It was one of the wildest lessons of my mission. 

A bunch of people were weirdly agressive towards us this week. We got texts telling us how we are going to be damned for having Sunday be our sabath day, people ignoring us in the street, throwing our contact cards on the ground, and one guy actually slamming his door in our face. It was the first time that someone has agresively slammed a door on me in my mission. I have thought a little bit about all this contention and realized that the spirit of contention is truly deadly. It takes a bigger man to listen to someone yell at you and insult you, your precious believes and your way of life when you are sacrificing to serve them and just turn the other cheek. But that is what Christ did. I am trying to be like him more and more every day. 

The prophets that wrote the Book of Mormon never had the Book of Mormon as we have it today. It was written for us. For our time. That Book is powerful. It has the power to change lives. Let is change yours. 

The small things (prayer, scripture study, ministering, fasting, repentance, taking the sacrament, etc) are all really easy to do. They are all really easy to not do though. But that fine line has huge consequences, both for good or bad. 

This speach is incredible, we studied it as a mission and it has changed my mission. Find it in english and listen to it. He talks about the fact that the small things are easy to do, but also not to do. It is about living with real intention. Super good. 

Kuelap/David Caro

Last week we went to kuelap. It was a blast. The only gondola in perú is there. It goes through some of the prettiest mountains I have seen down here. The ruins were cool. I love learning about the culture here. Perú has so much cool culture. 

I found a place that sells maracumango juice for 1 sol. I think in the highest level of exaltation maracumango juice comes out of the faucet and chirimoyas grow on every tree. I want to go there. 

The work is picking up a little bit. We have three baptismal dates and a couple people with a lot of potential. We contacted a girl named Katy in the park a few weeks ago. She was interested in English classes. She came and we shared a super breif spiritual thought about families and how they are eternal. She teared up. It turned out her grandpa had just passed away. She felt the spirit strongly as we shared. She came to church the next day. Then accepted a baptismal date in our lesson with her that evening. We have met with her and her mom throughout this week. Her mom is super interested to, and said that if Katy decides to be baptized, her and her huband would like to as well. She has a date for the 29th, and we are hoping the rest of the family will make the same decision to all be baptized the same day. Her parents and brother went to sacrament meeting yesterday as well. All of the time we have spent contacting is paying off. I had been a little bit beat down, feeling like we were wasting our time and not seeing results. But this week my eyes were opened and I was able to see a mountain of miracles and blessings. Pray for Katy, Zamara, David, Gloria, Elizabeth and Marco. 

David, the guy that I wrote about last week that we miraculously found that lives in an hour from here came to church yesterday. One of the coolest things about teaching latinos is that they often receive revelation very vividly. In South America the people often have vivid dreams, see visions, hear voices and see angeles. I think it is really cool. Anyways, David has been receiving vivid answers to prayers through his dreams. This week he had dreams about the temple. On sunday he had to leave his town at 6 am to get to church. He said that he was having a dream about someone hitting him with a broom and telling him to wake up. He woke up and it was 5:55. He got dressed, called the combi and got here in time. After the meeting we met with him and he accepted a baptismal date for March 30. I can't even describe how cool it has been teaching him. From just happening to sit next to him in a combi, to seeing him receive answers to prayers, and now travel over an hour to get to church, it has been one of the coolest experiences of my mission. 

We are going to Jaen this week. I'm hyped. That place is madness. I'm pumped to drink some coconuts, see some old people from my time there, eat some chifles, listen to the inspired words of my mission president, and kick it with other missionaries. 

I love this work. I love the peruvian people. It is cool to think that these people in the remote Andes mountains with one little branch within 3 hours and the people in Salt Lake City with temples scattered throughout the valley will receive the same Lord when he comes again in glory. He will come. May we all prepare to receive him in that jouyous day. 

 

Cheleando

I think this week I felt more guided by the spirit than any week my whole mission. It just seemed like we were always in the right place. There were multiple times when appointments fell but other people in teaching just happened to be walking down the street of the appointment that fell. On thursday we had Cuy (guinea pig) for lunch and there is 0 meat on those things so we were hungry after. We bought bread and talked to the girl working in the panadería and she turned out to be super interested and now is a super cool person in teaching. We had a lesson in a park and were teaching about prophets and the lady had doubts. Out of the blue an absolutely awesome member walked by. We asked him to share a testimony and he shared a beautiful testimony. One night the last apoinment fell and at 8:45 with 15 minutes left in the day we walked into a farmacy because it was the last place we could find someone to contact because it was raining. The person working turned out to be someone that had met missionaries before. We contacted a guy in the street one day that gave us a super vague reference to get to his house. The next day we got in a taxi and told the taxi driver where we were going. He took us out into the countryside to a group of probably 30 houses. The second door we knocked just happened to be the guy we were looking for. We had a super awesome lesson with him and were able to find a taxi back to chachapoyas so we didn't have to walk all the way back in the dark. I could go on and on about all the super cool moments when I felt like an instrument God's hands. Missionary work is cool. 

One thing I have been thinking about lately is confidence/trust. A lot of what we do as missionaries depends on our condidence/trust. I have full confidence that we can be guided by the Spirit to the people that are waiting for us. I have full confidence that if someone reads the BOM, prays about it, and applies what they learn, they will be baptized. It really makes our job a lot more simple. 

We had an emergency meeting as a mission because aparently the church is worried about threats against american missionaries in Latin America due to the deportions going on in the states. I personally don't think it will escalate to anything here in my mission. I have heard that in Lima things are getting a little scary in some parts though.

We met a super cool inactive member. She gave us a bunch of free Chirimoyas because she has a Chirimoya farm. They were so big. Chirimoya is the best fruit on earth. She also came to church on sunday and brought her nonmember friend. 

This transfer has been one of my favorites. I absolutely have loved my time with Elder Arellano. I have never talked to so many people. It is the first transfer of my mission that nobody has gotten baptized. That has been a little hard to swollow, but at least I feel 100% certain that I did everything in my power. At the end of the day thats all we can do...

We were teaching a lesson this week litterally inside the evangelist church during their saturday morning meeting. We could hear the meeting going on and we thought their chappel was next door but it turned out it was attatched to the little house we were teaching in. A couple of their members walked in and just stared at us. It was crazy. We then invited the lady we were teaching to be baptized and she accepted. Evangélicos in shambles. 

On saturday we had english class. Because the chappel is a rented house sometimes the landlord is in there. He is not a member. He is a big problem because he always gets everything all dirty because they are doing construction above. On saturday him and all his boys were in the chapell with 12 packs absolutely hammering beers. We had no idea what to do. They ended up leaving and going outside. They posted up right outside the door and were hammering chelitas. It was not a good look for our non member friends that came to the english class and saw a group of drunks posted up right underneath the sign of the church throwing back tragos. Happens. It will be cool to see in a couple years that the members here have their own beautiful chappel and don't have to deal with garbage like the landlord drinking in the church. 

Yesterday 5 people that we had contacted in public this transfer showed up to church. We hadn't had 1 contact come the entire transfer but then yesterday a bunch showed up. After all the time we have spent doing what felt like hopeless contacting, that felt really good. It was a super spiritual meeting and everyone that came loved it. Then they got to stay for the second hour and learn about Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdry and the translation of the BOM and got their brains boggled. I'm sure they still felt the spirit though. 

Love you all