Cambios!

Well transfers have arrived again. My companion is getting transferred to open up a new area for his last 3 weeks of his mission. It was a good transfer with Elder Alcas. He was super goofy and always keeping me laughing. I was able to learn to always have a good time and a good attitude about things. Sometimes I was a little too serious but my companion sure helped me a lot this transfer. 

My new companion is Elder Nye. He was in the MTC here in Lima with Elder Huff. Also when I was in Surco, he was in the same zone and he was in the area right next to us, and I had gone on a split with him so we already know each other pretty good. 

This last week we had the baptism of Edileidy and it went super well. A lot of the young woman came and supported her and she was very happy. The church was able to help her out a lot. 

She is from Venezuela and living her with her brother but she was really lonely. The members really just took her in and she now has a lot of friends in the church. 

Yamira is progressing very well. Last week when we went to visit her, she had a notebook and she had taken 2 pages of notes on Alma 32 the chapter that we had left her to read. She also loves the church a lot. The relief society is also doing a great job at taking her in. 

Saraih is finally going to get baptized this Thursday after about a month of working with her inactive dad to try and get him to go to church so that he could baptize her. 

Last week we found 2 new people. One was a 10 year old girl that has been to church 6 times and she has come with this family in our ward and the last Sunday she comes up to us and says that she wants to get baptized so we're like we need to visit her. So we visit her and her parents and they are totally fine with her getting baptized. The parents are not interested at all but the girl is. Her name is Luana Roman. She is very smart as well. We left her with a chapter to read in the Book of Mormon and she completely understood everything. 

The other person that we found was Josephy. He is a friend of Fiorella, the recent convert from 4 weeks ago. He has come to church 2 times after he saw her baptism and we visited him and invited him to get baptized but he told us that he wasn't ready yet but the other day he told Fiorella that he was ready and he accepted a date, the 16 of November. 

We were teaching Felix as well from last week but during the middle of the week he told us that one of his family members died and that he couldn't come to the lesson. He said that he was going to come to church on Sunday but he never did and he won't answer. So please pray for Felix that he will feel peace and comfort in this time of his life. 

I hope everyone has a great week! 

Finally Miracles!

Well we finally had 2 great miracles this last week! The first was Yamira Gonzalez. She was a reference from online. Usually the references that I have received from the online missionary portal have not really been too great. But we just had her number when we received the reference. We called her but she didn't answer but later she started texting my companion and said that her dad and her sister were members in Venezuela. She said that she had gone online to ask for a Book of Mormon and that's how we received the reference. She accepted a date for the 9th of November. She also lives with her daughter and we are going to visit her this week. 

The other miracle was a contact from the street named Felix. He is a 26 year old man and he lives with his mom and his brothers. He was going to play professional soccer but he did drugs and it messed up his life.  This week is the baptism of Edileidy and she's doing good and progressing well. The dad of Saraih has been a little difficult with getting him to attend church but we finally set a date with her on the 27 of October. We are also teaching a family of 5 that attended general conference. They are super close with accepting a date but if everyone can pray for the family Oceda that would help a TON! I hope everyone has a great week!

Not much going on

Not a whole ton has happened these past two weeks but I'll catch everyone up on what happened. So the week before last week, we taught English classes in a huge public park in our area. It was pretty enjoyable. There are 4 missionaries in our ward and one of them is white and we brought a whiteboard and a speaker and a microphone and we just put our stuff down in the middle of the park and started teaching the class and people started to just come and watch. We got a pretty decent crowd. There were a couple of people afterwards who we took their numbers to call them to go to church on Sunday. 

So last week we went to the temple for p-day and we went and ate sushi after. It was SO amazing like, everything was amazing, but I ate way too much.

That night at a lesson with a Venezuelan family, they fed us these things called araipas that are very similar to empanadas but they are super greasy, and I was so close to throwing up that night from all of the food that I had eaten, haha. It will be a while until I eat sushi again. 

Last week we also had English classes again in the park and we got up to about 50 people that were present at one point and it was hype. No one really showed interest afterward when we were offering our number and giving out cards but we are going to try the classes a couple of more times and then move them to the church. 

These past few weeks have been a little tough for me and my companion because we have found a handful of people that have accepted baptism dates or that have come to church but in the end have fallen through. But we know that the Lord is only preparing the way for us. As we have watched some of the Book of Mormon videos, I was just reminded how Nephi always had a good attitude and just trusted that the Lord would always help him and his brothers in obtaining the plates. He had to try various ways to get them, but in the end he was successful. I know that the Lord is just preparing people for us to find and teach, and I will be very happy to tell you all about it when he does. I hope everyone has an amazing week!

Gustav and Edileidy

This week, wow, flew by. My companion and I were able to get to know the area better. We taught Hermelinda this week and she was doing really good. She was always praying about her baptism in the prayers in the lessons and she just has that light in her eyes. The only thing is, is that she didn't go to church again on Sunday and her phone was turned off all Sunday. We went to her house but her dad said that she wasn't there. So we are going to pass by her today again so please pray that everything can go good with her and she can continue progressing for her baptism. 

We are also teaching Sarah. Her other family are members but her dad is less active, and he wants to baptize her. He is coming back to church now and it's just really good to see him making changes in his life to come back to church. Her mom just came up to us yesterday and told us how grateful she was for helping her bring her family back together again. 

On Saturday we had the baptism of Fiorela and that went super good. A lot of people came and the spirit was really strong. 

Fiorela's baptism

She also shared a 15 long minute testimony and that just describes who she is, haha. She pretty much shared her whole life story about meeting the missionaries and it was all good. 

So the miracle of the week was that last Friday we had a ward mission activity and we watched the new Book of Mormon video and played games after. There was a Venezuelan couple there, and I just thought they were less active members because of how comfortable they were. It was a brother and sister. Gustavo who is 24 years old and Ediliedy who is 17 years old. We had to leave the activity early to go to a lesson and later that night the other elders from the ward sent us a text saying that the girl wanted us to visit her and that she was a less active member. Next day at the baptism the elders come up to us and tell us that she's not actually a member. So we hurry and invite them to come to the baptism and they come. They both really like it and they say they are going to come to church. They come to church and we take out a lesson with them and we visit them. So Gustavo is a less active member that got baptized last year by the elders, and he was recently becoming active. His sister, Edileidy, came here to Peru 4 months ago. He just barely started bringing her to church and she accepted to get baptized yesterday. She just feels really alone because she is still adjusting to moving to Peru. So that was the cool miracle. My companion and I also had some other lessons with some other people but they fell through but we are looking forward to working even harder this week! 

Ediliedy and Gustavo bought Jackson a cake for his birthday and made him grilled sandwiches.

I love you all and testify that Jesus can change anyone and who they are in any moment. I love the mission! I wouldn't rather be anywhere else!

Pictures from September 9-12, 2019

The Ward members had a going away party for Jackson

Transfers and a New Area!

Monday July 9, 2019

Well transfers are here again. The time is really going by fast and it's kind of scary, to be honest. I am really enjoying my time here in the mission. 

So last week we were able to teach Josep and he's doing super good. His baptism is this Saturday. Yelina had her work schedule changed and all last week she worked from 7 am until 10 at night so we weren't able to visit her at all but we stayed in contact with her and next week she is going to be able to come to church. We still aren't going to be able to visit her until Friday so that's the only difficulty. 

So yesterday we got the calls for transfers and and I'm getting transferred to Santa Clara. Last week we had the monthly meeting with President Amato and stake president. The stake president asked President Amato if he could move us to the stake center so that we could be more central in the zone, because at the time our area was at the very edge of the zone and is was a little difficult to try and get to the other areas in the zone. President said that he could do it but it would be more likely for next transfer but it happened this transfer, haha. So the elders that were in Santa Clara are leaving and Elder Alcaz (my new companion) and I are opening Santa Clara! I'm super excited because it's a really big area with a lot of people and we're looking to go and baptize a lot of people there. 


https://goo.gl/maps/NzgV856y1RRjVQx5A
Copy and paste the above link if you would like to see the Stake Center and surrounding area in Santa Clara.

Isamar's baptism!

This past week we had the baptism of Isamar! Finally, after a lot of tribulation she got baptized! She is a lot happier and doing well. 

Isamar's baptism

So last p-day we went to a place called Gamarra to buy some stuff for Elder Muniz. Gamarra is just this huge place where you can go and buy any type of clothing you want. It's about 6 blocks by 6 blocks and we bought some cool souvenirs. 

Gamarra

Last week we found two new people, Yelina Izuierdo and Maracielo Boitron. Yelina is 18 years old and we found her contacting. Her grandma is a member but she lives far from her. She had been having some family problems and her aunts and uncles had some problems with her parents and so we were able to help her understand that through baptism she can find this peace that she is looking for. She accepted to be baptized the 28 of September. We also found Maracielo contacting and she told us about the problems that she had with trying to help her mom financially support her family. She is 16 years old and she lives with her mom and her brothers. 




We had to drop Fabian because all of last week he didn't answer us at all and we were trying to take out a lesson with him. On Sunday we went by his house and he was there and we talked but in the end he told us that he didn't want to get baptized because he didn't have time. We told he to call us when he was ready to be baptized. We are pretty sure it was the influence from his parents because he had told us before how his dad told him that he didn't have time to get baptized. 

New ponchos

Josep went traveling last week so we didn't have a lesson with him until Saturday but he's doing good as well. He slept in on Sunday so he didn't go to church but we went and we talked seriously with him. No one came to church yesterday so that was a little frustrating but it was a good week. We worked pretty hard. 

I also had a chance to take a picture with Paolo Gallardo. 

Jackson and Paolo

He was a professional soccer player that got baptized in our mission by the missionaries and he gave up playing soccer because he didn't want to break the sabbath day and now he's preparing to go serve a mission. There was an article about him online and I encourage all to read it.  Hope everyone has a great week.

https://www.thechurchnews.com/members/2019-08-14/peru-paulo-gallardo-soccer-mission-157321