We had transfers this week. My
companion finished his mission and went home Thursday morning. I was
in a trio until today with the 2 other Elders here. Then this morning,
Elder Diederich left to go to Mollendo. He’s going from the cold
mountains to the nice warm beach. Elder Malloy and I are staying here.
However, no one else is coming. There are just going to be the 2 of us
here in Chivay. The mission is dropping from about 250 missionaries to
200, so there aren’t enough to have 4 Elders up here. It’s going to be
a huge change. Hopefully it goes alright. President said he wants us
to go to Arequipa more often for meetings with the Zone so that we
don’t feel so alone, but it’ll definitely be weird just having 2 of us
here.

It’s been kind of a crazy week. We were getting everything ready for
my companion at the beginning of the week. Then he left and we were in
a trio. Now instead of being in 2 companionships, we’re just one. My
new companion is already here, and I already know him kind of well,
but now we need to pack up and move all of our stuff to one of the two
rooms that we’ve been using. Then we need to work hard. Even harder
than before because we’re a smaller work force now. We know that God
has a plan for Chivay, though. He’s certainly going to be helping us.
And we’re going to need a lot of help.

We locked ourselves out of the room last night. That was quite the
experience. We had to go looking for a ladder, climb up to a 1 1/2
ledge, shimmy across to our window, and crawl through to get the keys.
Plus it was late at night and in the freezing cold. That won’t be
happening again.

We also had to give all the kids a test in Seminary this week. We
found the 9 of them during the week and gave them a copy of the exam
to prepare for the real thing during the class on Saturday. We went
over the answers on Saturday to help them out. Then on Sunday they
took the real thing. Only 4 of the 9 took the test, sadly. But they
did well on it, even though only 1 of them went to the class Saturday
to get the answers.

My companion lost all of his pictures the day before he left. That was
a huge bummer. Some how his memory card got corrupted and couldn’t be
read by the computer. Luckily, after some trial and error, I was able
to get the majority of his photos back. He, sadly, lost the videos he
had recorded, though. He’s at home enjoying life, and we’re here
working hard.

I hope everyone else is working hard, too. Missionary work isn’t just
for the Elders. We need help from you guys. If we never get references
from the members to visit their friends or family, we will baptize
very very little. The people that we find on our own don’t convert the
same as references from members do. Those people already have friends
in the Church. They already know someone and have someone they can
trust to ask questions and stuff.

I hope everyone has a great week!

-Elder Kehoe