Changes

March 6, 2017

 

The life of an Elder is hard! Exhausted with his Scriptures in his lap.

 

This has been a beyond difficult week for me. So what had happened was.... Monday night when we were ending up our day, my new companion wanted to go into Copiapo to meet up with a member from Antofagasta. I didn't have too much of a problem with that until he said that he didn't want me to come with him. So we argued for a long time about that and kept telling him that we couldn't be apart, that we had to be with members or with each other {from Cami...this is a big part of the rules for missionaries set by our church}. So after a long time of him not understanding, or not wanting to, I said that we should go to Bryan's {a young man in their local ward/congregation} house to see what he had to say about the whole thing. We get to Bryan's house and my comp doesn't even go into the house. He got in a taxi and left to Copiapo alone. So I was with Bryan for a while before I finally called the zone leaders and President. After that, they told us to go back to our house to see if he had gone by the house and taken his suit cases. We get there and all of his stuff was still there, so the zone leaders tell me to go ahead and go to bed, it is like 4am at this point, and that they were going to come over in the morning. So, Bryan and I slept for about 3 hours that night. In the morning, whenever the zone leaders get there at 7am, we start packing all of my companions things because as soon as he gets back he was going to be on a bus to Antofagasta. Right when we get everything all packed, he shows up and walks in like nothing, at like 8am. He doesn't tell us anything other than that he was with a amigo from Antofagasta.

So, we get him on the bus at 10 and he leaves, but one of the zone leaders had the idea to talk to the driver to tell him that he was going to Antofagasta and that if, for what ever reason, he doesn't get off at Antofagasta or if he gets off before to call us. Well that call came about 2 hours after, the loco got off in Chañaral and the driver over heard that he was going to buy a bus ticket to go to La Serena, a city out of our mission. So our President told us to go to all the bus terminals in Copiapo and that we had to search every bus until we found him. Because all buses go through the city and all of them stop. So, we got the biggest 12 missionaries in Copiapo and we were searching buses all day. For like 5 or 6 hours we checked every bus that came through. It was honestly kind of cool, it was like being in a movie. So we finally found him and he refused to get off the bus. He told us that he had a brother waiting for him in La Serena. So we call President and ask him if we have permission to take him off the bus, and he told us that we had to let him go.

Come to find out, the brother that he mentioned doesn't exist and some of his old companions confessed that he had gone to la Serena before on intercambios {exchanges}. So that's what my week was like. Because I am the companion I was held responsible for him leaving, and because I didn't call right away, the missionary department got pretty upset with me. They called me the other day and said that nothing would happen to me but that this would serve as a very strong lesson.

Elder Brayton and his temporary replacement companion

This week I have literally been fighting for everything I have to keep my sector alive. A ton of members called me on Sunday because the attendance had dropped by half. It has not been fun for me at all. But the mission is going to send me a new companion that is preparing to serve a mission in Ecuador, so he will be with me this transfer. It also looks like I will be in Tierra Amarilla for a bit longer with what happened. The good thing is that the boy coming will get to baptize this week! I have two getting ready and they will be ready for the water of baptism this weekend!

In other news, the mission changed my district. I am now the district leader of the 4 sister missionaries in our zone. They are calling me the Relief Society president because it is 4 of them and one of me.  love you!!

Elder Brayton