Fun in Puerto

Hello all! Just another week here in good ol` Puero. Nothing crazy to report. Progress is going well! Jhasmina and Yersin and ready and excited to get married!! I think I`ve told you about them, no?? I hope so. If not, sorry, but we`re super excited for them. Everyone else is doing great. A little too great. But I`m not complaining :)

More than anything, I`ve really been working on goals this week. We make goals every day/week/month as missionaries, but I`m trying really hard to actually set goals that matter. I`ll keep you updated on the progress. I was thinking of something that I could do, and I want to send a letter home to myself with everything that I "accomplished" on my mission. A list of thing I want to do and by the time I get home I`ll have finished. The letter is a sort of "look at all these things you just did" but from the future if that makes sense. So heads up for that and keep it safe for me for the next year. 

Sorry this is a kind of lame letter again... But again and as always, I love you all!

Have a super duper week!!

Pday = get fat day

Yup, get fat day is my favorite!

Amo Maria!

That's an unfortunate name . . .

Puerto before the storm

One Third?!

Holy moly. 6 months gone. Excited for the next year!!!

Don`t have much to say this week. Remember how last week I told you that we went to every single cita that we had and it was incredible?? Weellllllllll, this week was a complete 180º turn... we literally only had one or two lessons every day. But, I learned something. When we have good weeks full of appointments and great things, we`re good. When we have really slow weeks with lots of walking and not a lot of teaching, we`re still good. As long as we`re really trying and doing all we can to serve the Lord we can finish a hard day or a hard week feeling like we`ve done our part.

I feel a little lame because I don`t really have much else to say. We`re still excited and getting ready for the wedding!! That`s the most exciting thing happening right now. Sometimes it`s hard and frustrating, but ALWAYS worth every second. 

KEEP GOING WITH THE BOOK OF MORMON!! (little Spanish treat)

Estoy leyendo también. Quiero leer el Libro de Mormón uno vez cada seis meses. Voy a empanzar mañana otra vez!! Podemos leer juntos :)

xoxox

Just a  really cool wall that I liked!

Hna. Nelson made a new friend

Best pizza in Peru!

Once upon a time we woke up at 6:30. 6:35 we heared the bread cart honking the horn outside our house. Hna Nelson looked at me and kinda yelled "lets go buy bread so we can make french toast!!" So we threw on the closest clothes we had and ran outside, may or may not have chased him down the street. We came back and just had to laugh that we ran down the street looking like this. For bread. To make french toast.   :)

Cloud 9

Ok, seriously and incredible week. I could write a book on all the amazing things that happened. I´m gonna stick to nine tho (see what I did there?!)

1// Alex: so, I was really bad at keeping you updated on him. After that lesson we had with him, we stopped by later that week and found out he got a new job working in the fields so he´s only home for one day every couple weeks or so... But, there were a lot of people off work this weekend for Independence Day so we figured we´d give it a shot to see if he was there. And he was! We were pretty stoked! We hadn´t had a real lesson about the Book of Mormon before this, but we had given him a Book of Mormon. He told us that he was reading every night. He even knew the page number he was on when we asked him where he was. Little miracle, he reads every night after work, but it´s really dark in the cabins where he sleeps. He said he was up late reading and there was a light out of nowhere following the page as he read. Coincidence? I think not. It really is incredible to me how the Lord helps us when we really have a desire to learn and do the things that He has asked us to do.

2// Jasmina y Yersin: Don´t remember how much I´ve told you about this family/couple. Jasmina is a less active member and her husband (even tho they´re not married yet people still say husband or wife here...) is investigating right now. They´ve been working with the missionaries since about February. The past two weeks have been incredible! Something snapped and they´re reading and praying together every night. They´re planning to get married and have his baptism on the 30th of this month!!! We´re pretty stoked about them too!

3// Victor: Victor is new. The president´s wife stopped by our house the on Thursday and asked if we could come meet one of her friend´s, Rene. Rene is a less active memeber that has friends who aren´t members who want our help with something. The couple wasn´t there when we went by their store so we stopped by a little juice bar for a snack. We started talking to this lady, Ana, and her sons, Victor (13) and Junior (19). Follow?? So, we made another appointment with them for Friday, and it was AWESOME. Ana couldn´t come to church on Sunday because of work, but Victor wanted to come really bad. So we stopped by and picked him up and went to church. He got up and bore his testimony about Christ. Oh my gosh. This kid is incredible. After sacrament meeting he came up and asked me if he could serve a mission like the elders one day, with his shirt and tie and plaque and everything. THEN, when the elders asked if anyone could help show them around (they´re both new to the sector) he raised his hand. So he spent the whole day going to citas (appointments) with the elders. Made a few appointments of his own with some of the younger kids. Seriously, words can´t describe how cool this kid is. And remember, we just barely MET him 4 days ago!

(the rest will be short and sweet)

4// The new elders in our sector and pretty amazing. One is being trained right now so I´m not the newby anymore!!

5// We have a flower on our love fern

6// We had ELEVEN of the people we are working with in church yesterday

7// NINE new investigators. And really good ones that we are pretty confident will actually progress. 

8// Literally every single appointment we had actually happened. That´s incredible for a single day. A whole week like that... I´m still shocked that that happened.

9// Reallly I can just sum everything else up in number 9. Everybody is just progressing really well right now. It´s 1,000,000 degrees outside and we never have breaks to just sit and breathe right now, but I have never felt so good.

Really incredible things are happening in Puerto.

As for the Book of Mormon challenge, keep it up! It´ll be one of the first things I ask when I get home :) It really does make a difference. Like you said with sacrafice, 15 minutes everyday can make a huge difference. In all the hustle and bustle, sacraficing a little extra time for the Lord will bring more blessings than we´ll ever be able to explain.

Love you all!

Have a great week :)

Choa!

Our love fern

Sexy dirt lines

¡My companion is cooler than yours!

Lida and Tatiana

Fun at the fair

That one time I ate cow heart . . .

This is sure. It's this nasty worm thing that they wanted me to eat. 

Couldn't make myself do it quite yet . . .

*mom looked it up -In Peru, suri is the name for the larvae, or grub, of Rhynchophorus palmarum, a palm weevil commonly found in the Amazon.