Short Email

Sorry, I spent more time than I realized writing President. Sooo, don´t have much time. But, this was a great week! The first half of the week we spent in Cusco/on buses to and from Cusco for consilio. As always, listening to Pte. Harbertson was definitely the highlight of everything that happened this week! Won´t go into details about what we talked about, but let's just say that I´m very grateful to be in this mission. It´s definitely not the easiest mission in the world, but the work is moving forward like crazy! Leaders and members are really getting on board, and the things that are happening are exciting!

The second half of the week in Puno was pretty normal. Vicki officially has a baptism date for the 28th! She´s more than ready, but has to go out of town again for some things so we have to wait a week.  Pretty excited about that! People are progressing well. Every now and then we have setbacks, but as missionaries we just have to accept it and get back up. We also have to keep a good attitude and the "ganas" to keep going. Honestly, thinking about it, there are SO many little things that, when put together, make being a missionary really hard. But at the same time, if we´re looking, there are so many miracles every day too. The trick is just focusing on the miracles and not the setbacks. Yes, acknowledge the setbacks and the things that we need to improve, but focus on the good and always be grateful. 

That was a little tangent, but just what´s going through my mind. Really, it was just a good week across the board. Hna Valverde turned 22 yesterday! Had a great little party with smashing eggs and throwing flour and tres leches cake. No complaints. But she made it very clear that I need to be prepared for what´s going to happen to me next week because of it . . . :) 

Love you all. Sorry I have to cut it a little short again today. Keep me updated on babies and marriages and jobs and missions and all that other mundane stuff that y'all are deciding to do while I´m gone ;)

Chao!

Amie

Condie Birthday Letter tradition continues!

Happy Birthday Hna Valverde!! Peru has this tradition that they smash eggs and throw flour on you on your birthday. First time I´ve done it all out :)

Consilio - (leadership meeting)

Going Strong

Hello!

Well, it was another fantastic week in Puno! I´m already in love with Puno. Everybody talks about it as a terrible place where the people are closed off and mean and it´s cold and miserable. Pero, es así. The ward and stake leaders get how to do missionary work and are more than willing to help. There are TONS of families out and willing to chat with us for a little bit. A good amount of them are willing to meet with us again later too. We have literally had an appointment every hour, every day since the second I got here. I´m pretty much exhausted all. the. time. But I love it so much. It´s easier to focus and be happy when we´re working as much as we do. On top of that, beautiful weather (pday pictures will show, it was a great day at the beach this morning/afternoon- playing soccer and hiking and all!) No complaints. At least none worth wasting my time worrying about.

Oh! We also had our conference and interviews with President Harbertson. Still convinced that he will be a prophet someday. If anything was out of line, which it wasn´t, that always gives me the little extra push that I need to keep going and work a little harder.

Hmmm, people we are working with. There are a lot. 

We have one investigator that kind of sticks out among the rest. Her name is Vicki. She had a baptism date for last weekend, but she went out of town and a whole bunch of other things, and the date fell through. We´ve been trying to find her since I got here with little success. We finally found her and got to talk to her on Saturday. It was kind of a miracle, just kind of ran into each other in the street. She told us that she didn´t want to talk to us anymore or come to church because she was embarassed about not being baptized on the day that everybody was expecting. She didn´t want anyone to judge her. We talked to her for a little bit trying to just commit to coming to church on Sunday. She was hesitant but finaly agreed. Sunday comes and she´s not there. About 30 seconds before we start the sacrament she walks in and sits down. I´m pretty sure the whole congregation could see the smiles on Hna Valverde´s and my face. We had a lesson with her afterwards, just talking about where her head and her heart were. Long story short, it was a great lesson. There were some tears, but ended with her committing to baptism again. This time for sure.  She´s pretty incredible.

Ahh, so many people but not enough time! One more. We are working with a less active lady named Luzmila. Hna Valverde and her old companion had never talked to her before. We just passed by her store one day and Hna Valverde said, hey, I think there´s a member who lives here. We stopped by, and surely enough, we found Luzmila. My heart kind of broke when I listened to her story. When we first talked to her and asked if we could stop by again to talk she was very closed off and a little rude. I judged her pretty hard, I´ll be honest. But the Lord humbled me. Within 30 seconds of our lesson she was all in. It´s only been a couple days, but she is already starting to turn her life around. It´ll be a process, but she´s willing and reayd. I´m SUPER excited to start working with her more and more.

So there´s two. I´ll start telling you more and more as I have the time to do so. 

Consilio this week!! We leave tomorrow morning. All day with President and the APs and everybody on Wednesday and come home Thursday. I´m pretty stoked. This is probably the thing I´m most excited for now that I´m a sister leader. I get to listen to President in a more serious setting once a month!

Gotta go. I have a lot more to say, but it´ll have to wait until next week. But I love you all! 

Chao!

Amie

Conference

Just hanging out in the sector

¡P-day Beach-day Woo!

¡Bienvenida a PUNO!

I LOVE Puno! For the first time in a while I came into a sector that is really doing work!! We have so many strong investigators. Families, singles, teenagers. The whole range. Lots of good less active members that are coming back. A lot of them would already be "rescued," but they need to get married. I`m expecting to be sending lots of baptism and marriage pictures this transfer! 

I`m with Hna Valverde. She is pretty incredible. She`s teaching me a lot of real diligence and hard work. I thought I worked hard before, but now we are literally working every second of every day until 9:29 at night. The last minutes we take to run home so we`re not late. I`m pretty exhausted. But the good kind of exhausted. It`s nice to have so many people to work with. 

I love Puno. It`s beautiful. Lake Titicaca is in our ward boundaries, no big deal. This week was pretty normal, the sister leader duties don`t really start until next week. We only visit six companionships, but we`re not doing that until the end of the change. Really the only difference so far is that I have a cell phone. Took me a while to figure out how to use it. It`s probably the dumbest of all "dumb" phones out there, but hey, está bien. Nice to have one.

There`s the general rundown. I`ll write in more detail about the people we`re working with next week. I`ve only had three full days so far, and I still kind of mix everyone up. Which is kind of good I guess. Means there`s a lot! 

Love you all! 

Hasta luego,

Amie

Just saying 'bye' to some of my Cusco friends :)

Sorry I don't have more pictures for this week . . .

I promise some good Puno pictures for next week.

Mi Corazón Está en Cusco

Well, I`m going to start this letter like all the other ones. It was another GREAT week in Los Alamos. We`ve found so many solid investigators. A less active family that we`re working with is doing really incredibly well as of lately. Hna Hill and I are getting along splendidly. The members are really stepping up and helping us a lot. We had a really good stake conference. Life is good! I love working in Cusco.

That being said, no wonder that I have a change! Yup, going to PUNO as a new sister leader. YIKES. It`s gonna be really cold, maybe a little more stressful, but it`s gonna be good! Like always, I`m sad to leave my sector, especially now, but I know it`s in really good hands! I`ll be here until Wednesday for a training with Presidente Harbertson then I`m off Thursday morning. A little nervous, but I`m really excited! I don`t know if y'all would remember Hna Valverde. She lived with us for 3 transfers then went to Puno. I`m sure I`ve sent some pictures of her. But she`s going to be my new companion. Yeah, pretty stoked.

So yes, that`s the biggest news. We handed Boris over to the elders this week. We thought maybe it`d be better if he was working with them, being a single man and everything. We have a new lady ALMOST with a baptism date. She wants to get baptized. Working hard all around.

What else happened this week? Hna Hill broke her toe. Sort of. The doctor says it`s not broken, but she`s been limping around all week. We ran into a good handful of carnivalers. A dog peed on my backpack so I`ve been using your red one. Besides that, pretty chill week :) In missionary terms anyway . . . I guess it`s never actually very "chill."

Love you all! Until next week from Puno Central!

Xoxo,

Amie

                                        Straight up licked my face!

                                                           Yay P-day!

  

                                                          My Cusco family

          They loved the Valentine hearts!

Just a Little Reflection

Well, another good week for the records! We have some really great things happening. Boris loves the church. He still won`t accept his date because he doesn`t want to pay tithing, but he`ll get there. We contacted 20 families in the street this week. Working with two new families and lots of appointments set up for next week. It wasn`t blazing hot (rained like crazy but hey, better than the Cusco sun). Hna Hill is doing great! She`s ready to finish her training next week. I`m so proud of her. Just lots of good. 

The rest of this email is just gonna be a nice short, one year kind of look back. 

A year goes by really, really fast. And six months goes by even faster. Time to work harder and make everything I`ve learned in this past year worth something. I feel like I`m more motivated to work harder now than I was when I first got here with that "greenie" attitude. Now I know what I`m doing and I realize how precious time is. The Lord has helped me so much. Even when I was being stubborn or lazy or whatever else, He`s helped me so that I could get to this point. 

The church is true. I`ve met people every day this past year who deny it, but it`s true. Those who will listen will change their lives. I`ve seen it first hand. More than that, it`s changed me so much since last February. Still the same me, but so much closer to my Savior. Maybe I took it for granted before my mission, but I love the gospel. He did everything for us, for me, and the least I can do now is work harder and closer to Him. 

Short and sweet. Somehow I always manage to lose whatever I wanted to say when I get to the computer. The important thing is that I`m still happy and I still love being a missionary. I`m starting to think of ways I can avoid getting on the bus six months from now... :)

Love you,

Amie

Happy "it's been raining all week" picture! 

street contacting

Happy Valentines Day 

Hna Hill thought it would be funny to tape this up on the ceiling above my face . . . 

¡Feliz Carnival!

Where to even begin with this week?? It was so good! For starters, the whole month of February is a huge "carnival" in Peru. Baciscally a huge water fight. We´ve had lots of water balloons thown at us. I´ve heard it gets worse through the month, and they start throwing paint or foam or something like that. It´s kind of fun for now. Kind of dreading later in the month. But kind of funny I guess :)

We have a LOT of people that we´re working with right now. Boris is one of them, obviously. He´s doing so great. Every lesson he just gets more and more excited. He came to church with us yesterday and couldn´t stop talking about how much he loved it. We challenged him with a date for his baptism but he rejected it. I´m hoping now that he´s been to church he´ll be more open for the commitment. But he´s doing great. We´re excited for him.

Edward and Diana. We actaully didn´t get the chance to talk to them this week. But, we were passing by one day and decided to try to talk to them even though we didn´t have an appointement. We found his brother outside. Long story short, basically all of his brothers are already members, just less active. So now we´re teaching Edward and Diana, reactivating his family, and teaching all of their wives and children. Or at least we´re starting to. It looks like maybe it´ll be a bit of a process with some of them, but I´m excited to be working with such a big family!

Lots of good things happening. 

Gonna end with some funnier stories from yesterday.

We were walking up one of the big hills here in Cusco trying to find a referal that we got the other day. There was a lady sitting there on our way up, and we started talking to her. About 30 seconds into the conversation she invited us to come up to her house to meet her family. We went happily. The whole way up she kept offering us basically everything that she owns. We get to her house and she starts feeding us and showing us her children´s birth certificates (8 of them, by the way...) and making sure that we are completely comfortable. Super sweet lady. We kept trying to teach her a little bit about who we are and why we´re here. It was hard to get any words in though because she kept singing in Qechua and asking us to teach her prayers in English. Didn´t quite get it. She then offered us a live cui to take home to cook. Then actually gave us cui to eat. I was excited at first becaue I really want to try it before I leave. When she gave us the head, fur, eyes, whiskers, everything still there, my ... animo?? (*I think the word she's looking for is 'enthusiasm') went down a little bit. Hna Hill almost died. It was an interesting visit. We´re going to try to go back another day, more prepared to handle everything and maybe actually teach something.

On the way down from her house we saw a family that we wanted to contact. I won´t go into all the details for this one, but it ended with the wife asking us to touch the husband´s head and heal him from the devil inside of him. We obediently patted his head and they went on their way. Definitely a first. Hna Hill and I both walked away a little confused.

So many things that happened this week, just not time to write it all. But the important thing is that the Lord really is guiding us and the people we´re teaching right now. The church is true and I´m loving the work!

Love you all. Keep me posted on, well, everything :)

XOXoooxxOXoXoo (can´t remember the exact order, but this is a Nacho Libre reference),

Amie

!Happy Carnival!

More Cusco

Some church members we are working with.

This is Hna Hill in denial after she ate 'cui' ear . . . (*guinea pig)

 a fan of the stickers :)

Last P-day, just touring around Cusco

P-day friends

In honor of Valentines this week . . . "come and kiss me"

Just doing some pottery in his house when we came to teach.

Yay sisters leaders!

Sometimes I Forget the Title

Well, this was a pretty fantastic week!

We had our zone conference with President and Hermana Harbertson. Incredible as always. We focused in on the doctrine of Christ- what it really is and how to really apply it every single day. Not only for the people that we teach or for the members of the wards that we`re working in, but for every one of us personally also. And not only right now during the mission, but forever. I love having a mission president who`s so wise.

We ended the conference with a video called "The Refiner`s Fire is Real" or something like that. It talked about how there are some really, REALLY hard things that we have to go through, but the outcome, if we are faithful during the "fire," is something truly great. Anything that I say about it won`t really do it justice, you should try to find it. Something we can all apply. (It has a man working with fire and metal and a lady talking about some of the things she`s had to go through with her family. There`s a little snippet from one of the general authorities too, if that helps you find it)

The Refiner's Fire | Mormon Channel

We found people! We got to go teach some of the people that we met in the street last week. Three really solid people!

-- Boris- he contacted us in the street while we were waiting for a bus last week. He`s been investigating some churches for a couple years. He remembered talking with some Mormon missionaries before, but then he moved and lost contact. He`s been looking for us for a while. We had two really incredible lessons with him this week! The thing about him that impresses me the most is his desire to be better. He knows that there are things in his life that he needs to change, but up until now he didn`t know how. He`s willing and ready.

-- The other two are the two people that I told you about last week. We contacted them. He has two siblings who are members. Found out this week that they have actually passed away. He was going to church for about a year and never got baptized. He still has his doubts, but together with his wife (kind of, they still need to get married... bump in the road) they have SO much potential. Again, just ready and willing to learn and change and be better. 

I`m praying SO HARD that I won`t have a change this next round. Which probably means that I will have one... we`ll see. But there`s a lot of good people popping up and a lot of good things starting to happen in Los Alamos!

Other news for this week, we ate something called "tarwid" this week with one of our investigators and her family. I don`t know if that`s how you spell it, but that`s how it sounds. Maybe you can look it up. Buuuut, it`s possible that both Hna Hill and I were sick to our stomaches and lost a day of work because we could barely move after eating it. Lesson learned. It was bad. It was bad after the first bite. Then I had a whole plate to eat. Hna Hill got stuck into eating a second plate. I couldn`t help her... felt bad. Safe to say I will never complain about food in the States ever again.

So anyway, good week :) We`re still happy. Working and happy. Have fun in Kansas City and Miami. Sounds fun!

Love you all!

Amie

My sweet pensioista and her family are moving today