Moving Trucks and Bucket Showers

What a week. No hot water. No gas to cook food. No elders to help move a family. But one of the best weeks we´ve had in a while!

Started with our conference with Elder Evans. He talked about a lot of really cool things, but the focus was a lot about finding new people. Working with members, contacting on the street, and the real "how to" for all of hit. We put it to the test this week, and I gotta say, those general authorities know what they´re talking about. 

Usually contacting and following through goes something like this:

// Meet on the street and talk for about 2 minutes about who we are and ask if we can come by and teach them and their family sometime.

// They say yest, we get their info, make a cita and call it good.

// Call ahead and stop by the day of the cita. 90% of the time they´re not there and we can never find them again...

This week changed tho. The first process is about the same, just a little bit more directed to every single person personally. Can´t say that the success rate is up to 100%, but it´s definitely better! We are teaching 2 new families and 2 other people from contacting alone this week. And they seem pretty solid. I´m excited to see what happens with them!

All in all, it was a great week. This week taught the most lessons since I´ve been here. I LOVE working with Hna Sanchez. She´s an amazing teacher and we have a lot of fun together! I have to stop talking every now and then because I give her athsma attacks from laughing so hard... Don´t know if I´d say that´s a good thing or a bad thing. But the point is that I love every moment with her. I´m a little nervous that they´ll take one of us out next week. Fingers crossed for no :)

Really there´s nothing huge to report. Just that I´m happy and working :)

Love you all! 

xoxo,

Amie

P.S. I finished the Book of Mormon this week!!!! Lo maximo.

CCM or MTC reunion

Hna Condie & Hna Sanchez 

(*she didn't title the pictures this week so I'm guessing)

old fashioned floor waxing?

(I remember from my mission)

Meet Victor

My focus for this week´s letter is a man named Victor. He´s a member in our ward. He got baptized about 2 years ago, and he is incredible!! 

He can barely walk, but he never makes that an excuse to not go to church. 

He can´t see out of one eye, but he still loves to read the scriptures and never misses a day. 

He loves to joke and laugh and he makes everybody around him happy even though his life is one of the hardest I´ve seen. 

He´s really lonely and rejected by a lot of people, but he´s so happy because he knows that the gospel is true and he´s so grateful to have it in his life now. We got to visit him a couple times this week, and every time I´m just in awe about how much I can learn from him. 

We read a chapter of the Book of Mormon with him during one of our visits because he said he was having trouble understanding it. So we read, and every single verse he stopped us and expained what he understood and asked us to help him understand more. The funny part is that he probably taught us more about this chapter than we did for him. 

And he´s a funny guy! Every time he talks I can´t help but just smile. I asked him if we could take this picture together so that I could show all my friends and family who is was. His immediate response was, "please, you just want everyone in the United States to know how handsome your friend Victor is!" After laughing and telling him to smile big and with teeth for the picture, he told me that that would be impossible because he lost all of his teeth several years ago. Laughing the whole time. I love him so much. Whenever I need a good pick me up I try to go stop by his house. 

Another random little side note, when I wouldn´t tell him what my first name was he just shrugged it off and told me that from now on I would be known as Margarot. So, every time I see him now he calls me Margarot, not Hermana Condie. It´s cool.

So that´s Victor. My new BFF.

This was a great week! 

Hna Sanchez got the green light to work again so we´ve been out all day every day and working hard! Somehow, NOBODY was home for basically the entire week. So we didn´t get a whole lot of teaching in. But it still felt SO good to be out and working with a real companion again! It makes me kind of sad that in two weeks we might change. Hoping that I can have at least one full change with Hna Sanchez. She´s a pretty incredible missionary. One of the strongest people I know. Phyisically, emotionaly, spiritually. All of the above. It´s been great :)

Also, tomorrow we have a huge conference with almost all the missionaries in the whole mission with Elder Evans from the 70! I´m pretty stoked!!!

Love you all. Have another great week in Blackfoot! Sounds like you´re all loving it :)

xoxo,

Amie

P.S. How´s everybody doing on the Book of Mormon challenge?? Been a while since I´ve asked.

This is Victor

TBT to my favorite Peruvian child in the whole world!

Night out!

Feed My Sheep

Yesterday there was a little bit of a mixup. Hna Ostler, Hna Valverde and I went to Raqchi yesterday (more stories to come) and when we got back home we couldn´t find an open internet place. But we got permission to write today :) Better late than never! Also, sorry all of my pictures are from Pday basically. I didn´t really use my camera this week...

So I´ll start there I guess. Raqchi is an old town/ruins by Sicuani. It´s said that a white god came to visit the people there and taught them about how to love and the gospel and things like that. On the bus ride over (about two and a half hours) I was reading in 3 Nephi (just so happens that that´s where I´m at right now). It was really cool to be reading about Christ being in the Americas, teaching the people, and then visiting a place like that. Some might say just another ruin, but I thought it was pretty incredible. And it´s incredibly beautiful! Definitely one of the places we´ll go back to if we ever come down here all together!

Other news for the week, Hna Ostler and Hna Valverde were traveling for their sister leader visits, so I was either with members or in the house all week. Not too bad though. I had to go to the doctor´s office with Hna Sanchez and Hna Camacho a couple times. I was in kind of a bad mood during one of the visits with the doctor. I don´t think he noticed, but the first thing he said to me when we walked in was, "Hna Condie! It´s been a while! What was the miracle you saw today??" It caught me off guard a little bit, but definitely put things back in perspective. Even though I was stuck in the hospital and not working, I realized that we had seen miracles that day. We found a member who´s been inactive for over 10 years. All of our planned appointments were there that day. And many more. Grateful for people who help me put my attitude back in place!

This is more just food for thought, but I read the "What Manner of Men" talk from the April Priesthood session this week. I love it so much!!!! It was directed to the men and the priesthood, but I think you can take it with any aspect of the gospel really. The knowledge and blessings that we have are incredible, and are we living up to the potential that we have?? So many good things in this talk. So you should all read it! It´s definitely a new favorite :)

What Manner of Men? - Donald L. Hallstrom

I love you! Have a fantastic week.

xoxo,

Amie

Feed My Sheep

One of the most beautiful places I've ever seen!

Best I could do from far away with this camera

I wanted the man and his reflection.

No crutches!

Happy Halloween!

I have a confession. I have a sort of weakness for little Peruvian children in Halloween costumes. I don`t know why, but they`re so much cuter!! Halloween was a normal working day, but it was fun to see everybody out trick or treating.

Dia de los Muertos was terrible. We couldn`t talk to hardly anyone because EVERYBODY was out at the cemetery. But it`s fine. Everything`s back to normal now :)

I have a couple funny stories from the week, but I`ll start with the missionary/spiritual story. 

We contacted a family in the street the other day and started talking for a little bit. Not a whole lot, but a good 5-10 minutes. They have a family member in the hospital because he got burned really bad and had to get his arm and leg amputated. Obviously not in a good condition. So we told them that we would stop by the next day to meet him and talk to all of them. So, that`s what we did. And it was incredible. He was in the same room as another old man and a little kid, and all of them were just so happy that we were there. We talked about the Plan of Salvation and the Atonement, and you could just see all their faces light up. It was one of the most humbling and touching lessons that I`ve had my whole mission. We`re going back later this week to check up on them. And I`m pretty excited!

Another small expirience. We were walking though the street the other day and I was feeling a little bummed because none of our investigators are progessing. I was saying a little prayer in my head and asking Heavenly Father to send us somebody who was prepared and ready to listen to us. Literally in that exact moment a man stopped us and starting talking to us and asked if we could come visit him and his family. They left the next day for a trip, so we haven`t been able to talk to them yet (we have an appointment for this week tho), but I don`t know who`s more excited for us to come, him or us. Prayer is real and God listens and answers.

Alright. So you know how I told you my Spanish was getting better last week?? Well, I was working with a member this week and then went over to their house for dinner. We were talking about our favorite desserts, and I was trying to explain to them what brownies are because they`ve never had them. I had a little Spanglish moment and accidently said that they are like "cacitas" (like cake-itas - little cakes) instead of tortitas. Well, that means little poops. Not little cakes. They all got a pretty good laugh out of that one.

One more. We like to scare each other in our apartment. I was waiting outside the bathroom door for Hna Sanchez and scared her REAL GOOD. Probably one of the best scares I`ve ever done. Good enough for her to slam the door in my face and give me a little black eye. Not too bad, but it hurts really bad. We all started laughing pretty hard. What I didn`t know was that she had asthma. I may or may not have given her an asthma attack between being scared so badly and laughing so hard at me cradling my face... It`s ok. She`s fine now.

I`m glad everything is going so well! Love you all! 

Send pictures!

Love you.

Hna Condie

Pday in the plaza

First day with both of my companions!

 Pday in waterfall!

CUSCO IS BEAUTIFUL!

I taught them how to make a wish in a fountain :)