Conference in Cusco

Mom

Well I'm sorry it is super cold there. I know how that feels. Not right now of course because I'm in the jungle but yeah I know about the cold. I don't think it ever got that cold but we didn't have heaters so that was super fun.

Well so sorry I didn't get to write to y'all yesterday. I was on a 10 hour bus ride. I threw up one time trying to get here in Cusco. So now I'm writing y'all here in Cusco. We had an awesome training. Elder Evans who is the head seventy from the missionary department came and talked to us. He talked about a lot of different things but the one I really got out of it was how to find new people. The things he talked about were straight out of preach my gospel and I had read them probably a ton of times but it really just hit me today. Ask for references from everyone!!!!!!! That was the thing that I realized that I have missed most in the mission. I have left here in this training with the determination to do that and do better in finding new people.

So this week we have had a lot of people to teach. No crazy stories we were just super super busy!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We had so many appointments that we couldn't even go to all of them because we have to walk so much. Its an awesome feeling. SO for this Saturday we have two with a baptismal date. Hans is getting baptized. We also have one date for a young woman named Ali. We have been working with her mom who is  a less active and here kids Fabio and Ali who aren't members have been listening too. So Ali wanted to get baptized. Fabio still wants more time but I think he will come around. What we really need prayers for is the dad of the family he has like no time and I don't know if he would be willing to listen even if he had the time. 

Something super happy happened to me this week. The mom and dad of Hans and Jon we were talking to them. Basically to set some goals about the temple. They basically had already had the goals set and were like yeah we are going to the temple next year we are going to be active we are going to pay our tithing we are going to get our life in order. It was so awesome to just hear them say thank you so much elders. Even though they made the effort to do everything it was just one of the happiest moments to just think from the little bit I did they came closer to Christ. Also the dad will be getting the Melchizedek priesthood here in the next two weeks. Same with Layo the guy we taught. He's preparing for a mission. Moments like that make everything worth it

I love y'all so much and I hope everything is going good. Please keep the faith.

Elder Kotter

Dad,

So to answer your question about getting robbed. The guys in our room were guys fixing the water pipes that I guess they were having issues with.  Not with us but other rooms so they just redid everything. I'll be honest too, I didn't downplay the robbing. I had only two things stolen nothing else I don't know why that happened but it did. Don't worry now we have a beefed up security so we won't be getting robbed again.

So we got the chance to teach a Catholic deacon. Super awesome experience. So how it goes is this guy contacted us and was like hey I want to learn English and I also have some questions about the church. so we were like yeah that's fine. So we go to teach this guy and he whips out a packet of papers. It's flipped over but I already knew what it was. sure enough after a little English lesson he flips this packet of paper over. The title How to respond to the Mormons and the Jehovah Witnesses. Yup so he opens this packet and starts to explain to us why the apostasy didn't happen and how Joseph Smith had basically copied our religion from other religions. 45 minutes to an hour later he says ok it's your turn to respond. Well after that much information it's basically impossible to respond to anything in a logical manner. So we pause for a second and then pull out Matthew where it says beware of false prophets and by your fruits you shall know them. Then we pull out the Book of Mormon and we testify that it is true and that God had answered our prayers that this book is really the word of God. We take a total of 5 minutes and after that telling him that God gave us an answer all he says is vale (translation valid)  or what he was trying to say is basically I can't say anything. That scripture of the small and weak and humble things will confound the wise it happened. It was fulfillment of that. This man has had 4 years of psychology and 4 years of theology and 3 years of philosophy, he had a packet composed by the Catholic church with all the logic man could come up with and in 5 minutes two young men with 6 weeks of theology and 1 year of college experience between the both of us got this guy to say our argument was valid and we even got him committed to read the Book of Mormon. Being a missionary is awesome!

I love you so much dad keep the faith I hope this story helps you with something this week. I felt impressed to share it with you.

Elder Kotter