La Pisca

La pisca. The worst time to be a missionary. For those of you that don't know, right now is the beginning of picking season for apples (la pisca). A typical day for a picker starts at 4 AM so they can be at work around 6 AM and get home (very tired) around 5 PM. Although the fruits of their labor are very rewarding (I have never had so many good apples in my life) it makes it troublesome for a missionary whose day starts at 1 PM, and works mostly with people who don't get home until 5 PM. You walk into a trailer park and it is absolutely vacant. It looks like a ghost town. Not to mention school is in now so there aren't even kids walking around. It’s almost eerie. Well since we have nothing else really to do, those hours are filled mostly with knocking doors hoping to catch someone that was sick or working a night shift in the potato plant, but more often than not there's not much to write home about for those hours.

Sunday, though, it all paid off. A couple that was hardcore fellowshipped by a family came to church, despite their sick two year old who had kept them up all night. They are already having family home evening, and one of their kids insisted on going back to the "I Am a Child of God" church (in the Primary room it has that stickered on across the front of the room).That was cool to see them there. Plus, an investigator who we had met only the week before came to church and really enjoyed it. When we went to pick him up, he was actually waiting and ready to go. We had put him on date the night before so I am excited to see where this goes.

And in the random department, we had a pretty funny run in with a drunk guy this past week. He was speaking in Spanish and was slurring his words so I'm not 100% sure on everything he was saying but he repeated everything several times so I think I caught the gist of what he wanted to say, which is as follows:

• The Catholic cross is different than the Christian cross.
• Going around and drinking and smoking and sleeping with women is bad.
• We look attractive to older women because of our backpacks and our shirts and ties and pants and shoes and backpacks (he repeated that one at least 6 times).
• Because of that we are now in sin.
• I was a bigger sinner than him but he was a bigger sinner than my companion which is bad (not sure what that one meant).
• He doesn't understand English (after me telling him my name; he look very dismayed about that one).

I didn't actually plan this because I had already chosen this quote a while back but it plays in pretty well with that conversation so here goes. It was from a meeting a couple weeks ago when all the trainers (missionaries who were training new missionaries) met with our mission president. He said:

"Take the work seriously, but not yourself."

Although who knows, maybe I need to tone down my backpack to take myself more seriously.

And with that, I will leave all of you as confused as I was when I said goodbye to that gentleman. ¡Adios!

Elder Kupferer