Monday, June 8, 2015

Here in Zarate we had a really good week!  When I first got here we didn't really have many people to teach so it was kind of rough.  This week, we got to contacting.  Oh boy, we had a lot of success.  A bunch of people accepted us and accepted us back for other visits too!  This whole week I felt like we barely had any time to breathe!  We have been so busy and so full we have basically almost had to run to appointments to make it to the next one.  It was awesome.  The best days are always the busiest ones.

One thing that was awesome from this week is what happened last night.  We gave a blessing to a little baby who had been sick for a while and it was incredible.  We started talking to the family (they are recent converts) and we shared a lesson then we gave the blessing.  Wow, the spirit was so strong in the room and my chest was on fire!  Seriously it was such a spiritual blessing and it is awesome to know now that the baby is going to get better.  it was great because then it felt like that spirit just followed us around throughout the rest of the night.  So it was a big testimony strengthener about the priesthood after the blessing we gave to the baby. 

We had another lesson with this guy that is going to church, praying and doing all that but he just doesn't have his answer yet.  He isn't reading much so that is why, but he is such a good guy!  We were talking to him and he also feels that baptism is an easy way out.  That to repent we should have to suffer in a way.  So we read in Doctrine and Covenants 19: 16 -19 about where Jesus is talking and he says that He suffered so that the people don't have to suffer.  Obviously to be able to repent we have to feel a little bit of pain and regret, if we didn't we wouldn't be repenting because we wouldn't feel the need to repent.  But after that we just have to recognize that Christ already paid the price of sin.  Everything is paid for already!  We just have to be willing to accept the atonement and the sacrifice of the Savior and we will be clean!  After this lesson he said that he felt a little bit better about it and he actually accepted baptism for the 20 of June.  That is if he has his answer.  But I know that if he reads he will get it, that is all he needs to do so that was good.

Another thing that happened cool is that we found new investigators and they were really interested.  They are already a part of another church but they were paying attention really well.  Seriously every single time that we teach and we teach with the spirit, I leave the lesson feeling like we have just taught the best lesson in the history of good lessons.  It is an incredible feeling.  They were staring like deer in the headlights the whole time.  In a good way.  And when I said the first vision it was silent and the spirit was so strong.  Just like it is every single time we share it.  It is incredible.  Anyways during this lesson I had a flashback to Hartvigsen.  When we would go there as a basketball team to the special needs school to help the kids out because when we got into the house one of the daughters has special needs and she was so cute and funny and i just thought about Hartivgsen and seriously it just made it so easy to love the people in the house.  And when you love the people and the message you are sharing, everything will work out.  Anyways, we have another appointment with them this week so hopefully all goes well and hopefully they keep their committments during the week.

Also, we had a multizona with President and Hermana Borg and it was awesome.  We only have a couple of weeks left with them so it was kind of sad but they are so great and I am sure the new president will be the same way.  

And in other exciting news.  This month, the 21 of June they are going to dedicate the temple here in Trujillo and all the stakes in Perù get to see it so that will be fun.  We are excited for that and so many people have traveled to Trujillo to see the temple and they say it is huge so we are excited waiting for that!  Presidente and Hermana Borg gave us handkerchiefs, just spelled that wrong but oh well, that were really cool!   That is my report for this week, hope you all have a great week!  

Monday, June 1, 2015

Hello family!!  this was a very tiring week!  We put in so much work this week and it was tiring!

As I told you all, our sector is really really big.  So we are trying to become familiar with it all and to find people in all the parts of our area.  One good thing that happened from this week was that we found a family of 5.  It was so cool.  We were trying to contact old investigators that were in the area book and we found the name of this guy and we went to his house and he answered and said ahhh right now I am about to leave.  The normal excuse.  We said just 2 minutes hermano.  And he said ya ok, come in.  So we went in and we started to talk and then we were able to stay longer than two minutes haha.  It was great.  We taught the lesson one and the whole family was there listening.  Then the daughter who is 18, who I thought was going to be less receptive than all of them, was the one at the end who said I will read the book!  Speaking of when we introduced the Book of Mormon.  So that was cool and we will see how everything goes this week with them!

Other good things that happened was with one investigator named ____.  She is awesome.  Her whole family is recent converts and she is the only one that hasn't been baptized.   She came to church for the first time this past week and apparently in the past she hasn't read the Book of Mormon at all but then we gave her the assignment on Saturday and on Sunday she told me that she had read it and it was so awesome!  She said that she liked church a lot so it was so cool!  We were talking and she said that she doesn't really feel anything when she prays.  She prays and doesn't feel a single thing.  And after she said that I asked her if she was reading and she responded no.  She had read the Book of Mormon a long time ago when the first missionaries read the introduction with her.  So then we opened up the introduction and read the last two parragraphs and I told her that to be able to feel something in her prayer first she had to read it.  That if she didn't try it how was she going to know if it was true or not?  It is like a cake, or any food.  To know if it tastes good, we only have to try a little bit.  We just need to take a bite, we don't have to eat the whole entire thing.  It was cool after that because the spirit was in the room and you could tell that she felt it and it looks like it worked because she read the other day!

We also had another guy and we had to teach him in English (it was hard).  He is Peruvian but works as a translator and likes it when we speak English to him.  But anyway, same problem, he is praying and says that he wants to receive his answer but he doesn't feel anything.  Then the same thing, I asked him if he was reading.  And he also, said no.  So we explained the same thing.  That if he wants to know, he has to read.  It was a good lesson also and he also went to church.  We had so many investigators in church on Sunday and some of them that we thought were going to go didn't go so next week we could have even more.  

Those are basically the highlights from this week.   This week also, I feel like my prayers have gotten so much longer.  It is awesome.  I can say that we are actually talking with God while we pray.  Knowing that someone is listening is such a good feeling.  If we need ANYTHING we can talk to him about it.  

Monday, May 25, 2015

Thanks for the birthday wishes.  Yes mom, the package did arrive in time.  I got it on Wednesday and I am not going to lie, I didn't wait to open it, sorry!  But ya, a couple people here in the sector knew that it was my birthday!!  A couple people cooked food for me and some had cake!!  It was really nice, I didn't really expect them to do it because I am a new Elder in a sector so I was really grateful that they took the time to do that for me!  I was really full at the end of it all because everyone gave us food and it was hard to pack it all in!  A tradition here is to smash eggs on people's heads and throw flour on them on their birthday.  I was hoping it wasn't going to happen.  It did happen.  We taught a lesson and afterward they came out and smashed an egg on my head and threw flour on me, so it was interesting.  

 My companion is Elder Romero.  He is from Texas and he is part Mexican, part American, but he didn't speak Spanish before the mission so he is learning.  He has 4 months in the mission!  So he is my comp and my sector is Zarate.  It is really big.  My other areas have been really small but this one is huge!  I don't like being the new one in a sector because you don't know the streets or the houses so it is confusing.  But it is fun!  We have a lot of work to do because there aren't that many people to teach here!  So it is rough but we are going to find a lot of people!   

We are going to work hard this change and see miracles.  This sector is really calm compared to the last one.  There are parts where there is a lot of traffic but there is like nobody in the streets.  My last sector there were always a ton of people in the streets.  So it is a lot quieter here in this sector!   Life is good and things are going well.  I am 20 and I feel older.  

Also we had stake conference this past week and the temple president was there and gave one of the most powerful talks that I have ever heard.  It was incredible.   Love you all!  Have a great week.   

Monday, May 18, 2015

Helloooo family.  I am still here in Bellavista2.  But that is only because they call with the changes later tonight.  We are pretty sure that I am getting changed, it is kind of sad.  I don't really want to go.  

First of all, we are teaching a family and they are seriously so cool.  Family _____.  So they were a reference from Hermana Edith, (the mom of the missionaries here).  Edith asked the dad of the family if he wanted a blessing and he said yes because he recently had heart surgery.  We gave him a blessing and talked for  a while with them and then made another appointment with them.  In the next appointment with them they had read the pamphlet that we left and they explained everything perfectly.  And they said that everything made sense that the pamphlet says.  By the way they are really Catholic but so awesome.  Anyway, we had another lesson this past week and we talked about the Restoration, and their kids were there for this lesson too.  Their daughter is 19 and their son 13.  We talked about the Restoration and the spirit was so strong and they all were accepting of it.  We got through the lesson and invited them to be baptized and the dad started to tell a really long story and it ended with him saying that when he had 13 years, he made the decision to be baptized in our church.  He didn't keep going to our church because he didn't have anyone to go with and then he married his wife and kept going to the Catholic church.  He doesn't remember much about our church and so it is all basically new.  But the lesson ended really good and the spirit was undeniable.  We had another lesson with them and it was all question and answer.  They had so many questions and we spent the whole time answering them but it was another really good lesson and they are learning more and they are reading the Book of Mormon.  They are progressing and it is so awesome to see.

One thing on the mission that I have learned is that the number of lessons that we have at the end of the day doesn't really matter.  It doesn't always show everything we did during the day.  We had a day this week that was really tiring but really good.  At the end of the day we had only taught 2 lessons but it was a good day.  In the afternoon we had SERVICE - two service projects.  1, was for _____, she was moving, close by but didn't have a truck or car to put the stuff in.  So we had a little cart hooked up to a bike that had pedals that didn't work that we would push with the things in it.  Her husband was working so he couldn't help and they had to get everything out that day.  So we would make trips back and forth and back and forth and back and forth.  Until finally we got everything put in the new house.  One fun thing was that the cart we had, the pedals didn't work but to go back to the house, the main road has a little downhill slant.  so one person would hop on and the others would push them and so that was fun.  We had to wait for a red light because it was against the traffic but it is legal here so it's ok.  haha but ya, we helped ____ then we had to go to another house and do another service project.  So that took almost the whole day then we had a couple hours to teach.  But anyway, During the day when we were taking things back and forth I decided to pay attention a little bit.  The whole time there were so many people watching us.  And it was a good thing because we were helping somebody.  It seems like so many people here know who we are, we walk by and they always shout Elder!  And when we are doing good, the people are going to see that so we should always strive to do what is right and people will see our example.  So in the mission the numbers don't always reflect how much good you did in one day.  

The third thing that I want to say is something that hasn't even happened yet.  Today, we are cutting our p day short because we are going to the hospital at 4.  At 4 o clock, thanks to the church, they are doing operación sonrisa!  Operation smile.  When the kids have the thing with their lips, I don't remember what is is called in English.  Cleft tooth?  Something like that, but anyway, today we are going to the hospital because they are doing free surgery for the kids and we are going to be with them before their surgery to play with them and help keep them calm.  So that is going to be fun and hopefully I have lots of pictures next week of the smiles that these kids have.  I am really excited for it.  

That is all for this week folks!  Hope you have a great week and that all goes well!!  I love you all.  I might be writing from a new sector next week!  Chauuuuuuuu

                                                                MORE PICTURES BELOW ENTRIES.

Monday, May 4, 2015

Hello family this week was great just like the last week.  The time is still flying by and it is insane.  The first highlight from this week.  TEMPLE.  We went to the temple on thursday with Luis!  There were other converts there too but it was the first time for Luis.  It was really awesome.  Luis was super worried about the water and how his head was going to be and all that.  But we went in the temple and there was (as always) a peace inside that is so special.  Literally words can't describe what we can feel inside the temple.  The temple president talked to our ward before we did the baptisms and he said that the veil in the temple is very thin and sometimes it doesn't exist.  After that we did the baptisms and afterward we were talking to Luis and he looked happy.  We were talking to him and he thought he was only going to get baptized for 1 person but he did 4 and he said that he was fine and his head didn't hurt him at all.  It is so good to see that he is progressing so much.  

The next highlight from this week was on Saturday.  So this week in our district meeting we had talked about being persistent and we all agreed to be more persistent and just go straight into testifying instead of accepting no for an answer.  Anyways, there wasn't really a differenece in the first part but on Saturday we understood what being persistent really means.  First of all, we were going  to the house of a lady that just got reactivated and she wasn't there but her son answered who is like 45 and told us to come back in an hour.  We came back in an hour and she wasn't there.  After about 20 seconds of walking away we both looked at each other and said why did we not talk with him??  So, FOR THE THIRD TIME we rang his doorbell.  He came out and accepted us and we ended up putting a baptismal date with him for the 6 of June.  

Second, after that we went to a house of this 80 year old lady who had listened to the missionaries before when I first got here.  We went and she said she was busy so we said just for 10 minutes and she again replied no.  Then we said how about just a prayer in your house?  So she went inside to ask around and then she came out and said another time and again we said that the prayer would help her and she said ok, come in.  Then we started to teach a little and at the end of it all we put a date with her also for the 6 of June for baptism. 

Then after that we went to search for a new investigator that we have and he wasn't there but his older sister answered the door and she said no one was there so then we contacted her.  She said that she was really busy at that moment but we kept on persisting and she finally said ok, ya, come in.  So we entered and it turned out that she wasn't doing anything but anyways we started to teach her.  She was probably paying more attention than any other investigator that I have ever had in the mission.  She was able to answer all the questions we gave her and at the end she didn't accept baptism yet but we got invited back for another time.  So all in all we got 3 new investigators from being persistent.  Before this I don't think I really understood what persistent meant but now I do.  It is really easier than it seems to go into a house to teach.  We were able to do great things on Saturday just from going one step farther. 

Also we had another lesson last night in which we were teaching about family history.  We have a convert Yolanda who has gone to the temple but hasn't taken names because her grandpa doesn't want her to be baptized for his parents so we were talking to her grandpa last night to try and get the names.  In the end we didn't get the names quite yet but we were able to soften his point of view a little bit.  And something that I really recognized in this moment was that we are actually in the church of Jesus Christ.  I already new it but this lesson just confirmed it.  Being able to teach him and respond to his questions with scriptures from the Bible (because he doesn't believe in the Book of Mormon) just reassured my testimony.  We are literally in the same church that Christ established in his time.  

This was a great week.  I hope you all have a wonderful week this week and that you have success in everything you do.  Love you all.  Oh and we have a baptism this Saturday if all goes as planned so that will be fun!  Love you all!!

Monday, April 27, 2015

Hello my wonderful family!!  That is so crazy about this week, Blake is married!  The week went by kind of slow because I think I was excited for Blake haha.  Friday it is a good thing that we had our baptism because if we didn't it would have been a very trunky day.  Anyway, this week was a really good week!

I am going to tell you all this story first so you can understand things later on in the letter.  This week on Tuesday we had a couple things in the church.  1.  Rocio had her baptismal interview.  2.  Luis had his temple recommend interview.  Anyways, we got to the church and only the sacrament room had light.  The other half of the building had no power.  So we called Luis and told him not to come because the bishop said he wasn't going to do interviews.  Luckily we got the sacrament room before anyone else so Rocio could have her interview.  But then people were turning the power off and turning it back on trying to fix it and I was just like NOOOO don't do that haha but oh well, she passed and it all went well.

First thing first...  The baptism!!  So Friday we had the baptism.  It was awesome.  Seriously I think one of the best baptisms I have had.  Despite a few things that happened.  So we were cleaning the church and filling up the font a couple hours before and then the light started to flicker in the church.  This is about an hour before the baptism that it happened.  So the light flickered and then it completely ran out.  So we ran back to our room and grabbed the little flashlight that I have and then we called the other missionaries in our ward to see if they had one and they did but weren't there so I had to crawl through their window and go through their stuff to find their flashlight and then we had to run back to the church.  So we kept filling it up after in the dark.  6 o clock comes which is the time that the baptism was going to start but nobody was there.  There is a thing here called la hora peruana.  Which means that everyone shows up late for everything.  Seriously it is so bad.  So the first person got there about 5 minutes late.  Rocio got there about 10 minutes late and then the bishop who was going to conduct got there 35 minutes late so we had to wait for him.  And the relief society president was going to give a talk in the baptism but wasn't showing up so I had to ask Elder Hiatt to give one of the talks at the last second.  But then comes the baptism and the whole thing started at about 7 so it was already dark.  We all go to the font and there is no light so the only lights we have are from the flashlights.  But, she was baptized and the spirit was so strong.  Afterward she bore her testimony and it was so strong.  After three years of investigating the church she was finally baptized and she wrote on Facebook afterward (someone told us) that she was so happy that she completed one of her goals and now she has a lot of goals to come.  She even talked with her husband about getting sealed in the temple so we are putting the goal with them that in one year they can go to the temple and get sealed with their children.  Really it was such an awesome experience.  There was white in Perú and Salt Lake on Friday.

Another thing that happened was that Luis again is doing so good.  He still thanks us so much for visiting him and he tells us how happy it makes him and how sad he was before we found him and it is wonderful.  He is so happy now.  And anyways, he is making friends in the church and we went to our missions office of family history and we printed out names of his family and he is going to the temple with us on Thursday to do baptisms for his ancestors.  It is seriously so great.  When we went to the family history place I also saw Elder Tonga so that was fun to catch up and see how everything is going.  But that is the update on Luis.  All is well.

Also we have an investigator named ____ .  She is the girlfriend of a young man in the ward.  Well he is about my age and is going to go on a mission in this coming year.  Anyways, she wanted to learn more and we taught her and she accepted baptism for the 9 of May.  I might have already told you all about her.  but anyway our lessons with her this week were so good.  She is reading and praying and said that she felt good when she prayed.  Also she said that before when she prayed she just repeated everything and now she is actually praying and feels like she is talking with God.  She is excited to get baptized so hopefully all of that works out.  Yesterday in our gospel principles class she sat down and the teacher said this class is for converts and investigators and I told the teacher she is an investigator.  The teacher said this because she seriously looks like a member!

We had an interesting experience this week also but what I will say is that it is interesting that when people have problems they call the missionaries.  We have 19 and 18 years and grown people are calling us to fix their problems.  It is awesome.  it really makes you think and realize that we are set apart by a leader with the authority from God to help people with their problems.  We really are representatives of Christ and the people recognize it.    

Oh and la hora Peruana.  for example.  Our church started at 2:20 yesterday.  20 minutes late.  Normally it isn't that bad but there is an example for you. 

 

All is well here in Perú.  Love you all.  

Monday, April 20, 2015

I will start off by saying Friday is going to be a great day!  I will be in two places at once.  Here in Perú and in Salt Lake.  Two very different places but I will try to be in both places at once with the help of my cardboard cut out.  Also Friday is going to be an awesome day because we have a baptism!!  It is the lady that has been an investigator for years and years but she finally decided that she wants to get baptized.  We had a lesson with her and it was easy.  She just accpeted it in the blink of an eye.  We originally made the date for Saturday and then she said that she couldn't so we changed it for Friday and I was thinking about it and in my head I was like oh, that is perfect!  My brother is getting married that day.  So that should be a fun day for us all.   I hope that you all enjoy it.  

Also, today I learned a lesson.  So I was running low on money for the month and for a couple weeks I knew it so I was using less and less and today something just told me to go take out money from my personal account.  So I went and did it and when we were eating lunch this guy walked in.  He shook our hands and he was really small and he told us that he was from the stake Maranga which is in our mission.  He was a happy little guy and he started talking to us and we were eating afterwards and he was just sitting there and I noticed he was hungry because he was happy but he was looking at the food a lot.  So I asked for a menu and brought it to him and told him to order and he was like no it's ok and so I told him to just do it and so I bought him his meal.  It wasn't anything huge or anything like that but maybe he needed that meal more than I thought he did.  But it was cool because something earlier in the day when we were by the ATM told me to take money out and I did it and hey, something good happened!  

Also this week I had an interchange with our district leader and it turned out so good.  We were able to find two new people and we put a baptismal date with both of them!  One of them is a young man that was sitting in front of his door.  We were actually going to teach his uncle but his uncle wasn't there and we started teaching him lesson one in his door.  It was cool because the teenagers usually don't pay much attention but he was the whole time.  Focused.  Then when I said the first vision it got kind of silent.  Seriously there is something so special about that experience.  Every single time we say it as missionaries it is almost impossible not to feel the spirit.  He accepted baptism for the 16 of May.  Also, we had a lesson with this girl that is dating someone in our ward and we started to teach and if people cry it is normally at the end when we bear testimonies but I noticed that her eyes started to get watery and she started crying at the start of the lesson.  The whole entire time there was a special spirit there and she accepted baptism for the 9 of May.  At the end the Bishop's wife gave her testimony and the whole thing was just really awesome.  

It is crazy how fast the time is flying by.  People are completing so much time in the mission.  I want the time to slow down sometimes.  It feels like just yesterday I was here in Perú and didn't understand a thing the people were saying and struggling and now I am almost done training Elder Aroni and it is just crazy how fast time flies by.  

I hope that you all have a wonderful week and that all goes well on Friday :)  Love you all.  Haz lo justo.