Monday, February 22, 2016

Hola familia!!  This week was super extremely highly stressful.  We were stressed out the whole time but it was also a great week!

First off, we had another baptism!  Her name is Marycielo.  She is a girl that has 9 years and her mom is being reactivated.  It was a miracle though because the church that we go to we normally assist at 10 in the morning.  We go to church outside of the mission and our capilla is the stake center of the other stake.  So yesterday they just happened to have their stake conference and so our meeting got pushed back to 2 o clock.  Ok, now with all of that in mind.  Marycielo had her date for the 20th but she went out of town and was going to get baptized on that day.  So we had planned for her to get back, teach, get her interview and baptize her.  So we went to her house and her mom was like I don't know if we are going to be able to go to church tomorrow because we just got back from viaje and there are some things that we need to do so probably next week.  BUT.  Surprise, we went to church at 2 so she was like ya, we are going to be able to go!  So Marycielo got baptized right before church yesterday and then got confirmed in the sacrament meeting.  It was such a miracle and she was really happy to get baptized.

Another cool thing was our convert from last week was in church yesterday, PASSING THE SACRAMENT.  It was awesome!  We were so excited for him and he was super happy.  He is doing good.  

ANOTHER MIRACLE.  So last week I told you about the lady that said she was not easy to convince and dura and didn't want to leave her world.  We had a couple of super good lessons with her this past week and we helped her with a couple of problems and she came to church yesterday!!!!!  Her and her two kids!  And she liked it and the members did such a good job of being friendly to them and helping them out.  It was seriously perfect!  They loved it and they have a baptismal date so hopefully they can keep progressing and be able to get baptized her in March.

Those are just a few of the miracles that happened this past week.  I love you all!

 

Monday, February 15, 2016

So this week was AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We seriously had such a big miracle.  God gives us miracles when we are exactly obedient.  So I don't remember if I told you about this last week but...  Our investigator, ____ had permission to get baptized but then he didn't (get baptized).  His parents didn't want him to get baptized so we decided to fast with him and he did it.  So we had a cita (date) with him on Tuesday and we asked him if he had permission and he said....................... YES!!!!!!!!!!  He got permission from his parents.  It was awesome!  Such a big big big miracle.  He was so happy.  So we got him ready, he passed his interview and he got baptized and confirmed this past weekend.  He was so happy and this week we are going to get him an interview with the bishop so he can get his temple recommend.

Another miracle!  So we were knocking on doors this past week and this lady came out and started telling us that she has a brother that is Mormon but she was too wordly and hard of heart to change.  And we got an appointment with her and honestly just talked to her very directly for like 20 minutes, after we saw that all of that was not working we decided to try something else.  We gave her a card with the steps to say a prayer on it and she started praying and she said the shortest prayer I have ever heard but started crying so hard.  Saying she wanted to change.  The spirit was so strong.  Honestly it was a HUGE change from when we first started talking to her.  It made me really realize that we are not the ones who teach but it is the spirit that teaches and can get to the hearts of the people.  It was another miracle.  

One funny story that I forgot to tell you all last week is that whenever we walk past a big group of people here everyone always starts yelling HELLO HOW ARE YOU?   Because we are two white kids walking around in Perú and the other day we past a group of kids that were boxing in the street and They all stopped to say HELLO.  And one of the kids that was fighting stopped and said hello then BOOM.  The other kid came over and hit him in the face and knocked him over and oh my word.  It was funny.  So then after we helped him up we told him he was a champion and got his direction to go teach him but that was funny.

 

Monday, February 8, 2016

This week was much better than last week.  Last week we worked super hard but we didn't really see any success in getting people to church.  This week we were super worried the whole time that we were going to work super hard again and then otra vez not have anyone in church.  But those worries were taken away when we got to church and there were investigators there already and when we were sitting down more investigators came in.  It was so nice.  A load was taken off of our shoulders.

On Monday we met a really cool guy named ____.  He is 22.  He had just barely moved here from Chiclayo and has been here for a week.  And that same day we knocked on his door he said he had found out that one of his best friends had just passed away.  So that was a bummer but we kind of just said like HELLO.  What more do you need?  Like the same day that this happens two missionaries knock on your door, a random house that we didn't know and we found you.  So we have had a couple lessons with him this past week and they have all been super good.  Especially focusing in on repentance and baptism.  We read 3 nefi 11 with him and it was the best.  The spirit was so strong and we made him some pretty cool promises if he fulfills his commitments that we gave him.

We also met a really cool guy one day just contacting in the street.  He has been the administrator in his church for like 10 years but was super open to listening to us.  He even at the end of the lesson accepted a baptismal date in March.  We have a follow up lesson with him today so hopefully it all goes well.  Hopefully he read and prayed.  It is a little funny thinking about how simple it is for someone to get an answer.  We tell them just to read, pray and go to church and it is so easy.  God just asks the people to act and he gives the answer but sometimes people just get lazy or who knows what happens and don't do it.

Also I have been thinking a lot about all of the seeds that we plant on the mission.  Like sometimes we don't always see all of the success that we have.  We contacted a couple this past week and started talking to them and he starting telling us about how he like 6 years ago was going through something really hard and he met the missionaries at a friends house who was a member and said that the missionaries helped him out a lot and for that reason he really respects missionaries and loves them.  So when we went in his house he just like exploded with excitement.  So even if we don't always see everything we do, some day it will have an affect on someone's life.

Monday, February 1, 2016

Hola familia!!   This week was AWESOME!  I got changed to la zona condevilla ward -Jorge Chavez.  Elder Clark is my new companion and we are the zone leaders, he is from Alpine Utah and is awesome.  Except for the fact that he went to Lone Peak but it is ok I already expressed my feelings to him about Lone Peak.  But seriously he is awesome. He was going to go to Ukraine on his mission but while he was in the ccm he got changed to Perú because of the war over there.  He has 1 change more than I do.  It is a little different having a white companion.  We just understand each other and talk about cafe rio a lot haha.  So my sector is half Callao and half San Martin.  The people here are so much more receptive.  The whole week we were just running around like crazy just talking to everybody and being super energetic and making people laugh then teaching them repentance and inviting them to baptism.  I love this place.

This past week we had a bunch of people that we contacted that were really interested in listening to our message.  We found one guy in the street and sometimes to make people laugh we ask them really dumb questions but there was one guy drinking a peach juice called pulp.  And we asked him if he liked it then if he liked inca kola or pulp more and he said inca kola so then it was hilarious because the next question was sooo why did you buy pulp instead of inca kola?  it was seriously hilarious and we had him laughing and then we told him we were missionaries, got an appointment went to his house and he accepted baptism so this month we are hoping he gets baptized.   

We teach good together, me and my companion.  Like we have really just been asking people a lot of questions this week that make them think and then they basically teach themselves.  It is really cool.  It is like what Christ did to the people, he asked them questions that made them think and then after thinking and answering Christ taught more.  So that is what we have been trying to do this week.  

This week has been seriously awesome.  It was a little disappointing at the end because we didnt have very good attendance at church.  Not as many people went as we would have liked but it was still good and even though we were sad we were happy because we had done all we could have done in the week so we were happy because we worked hard. 

Now we just have more meetings with the President and the stake president to coordinate the missionary work and then after those meetings we teach the zone what the mission president wants us to teach the zone.  So it is fun.  My room also is awesome.  In my other room in Santa Cruz it was liike an oven in there.  But this room it is cooler so I can finally sleep now.  

Those are the stories and updates from this week.  The work is awesome and I love it.