¡Presidente Uchtdorf está en CUSCO!

Unfortunatley though, I´m not . . . But that´s ok. He came with Elder Bednar for the temple dedication, and they are giving a fireside tonight in Cusco. Don´t know excatly why, but only the Peru Cusco Mission gets to see it, not all of Peru. So maybe I won´t get to see it in person, but at least I get to see it :)

In other news, we had another CRAZY week. I´m so tired right now I could fall asleep at the computer. We were in divisions Tuesday-Saturday afternoon! Sunday we were in the church all day for the temple dedication (more on that coming soon). Then, last night, we had to cancel the only appointments that Hna Mendez and I were going to go to together for the whole week because we had another sister leader emergency. Long story short, we had to send a missionary home yesterday . . . :(  She was a mini-missionary who was here with Hna Ganan after we had to send her first companion home for health problems. So maybe not TOO big of a deal, but still sad. It´s hard to see missionaries who don´t want to keep the rules and really just want to cause problems. We´ve been trying to work with them this whole month, but last night was kind of the breaking point for everyone. BUT, we already have a new mini-missionary for this last week of the transfer. So that´s good :) Makes our life a little easier again so we don´t have to be in a trio this week.

As for things happening in our sector, I couldn´t even tell ya . . . Yes, in general of course I know what´s going on. But it just happened to turn out that I was the one that left with the other sisters to their sectors and Hna Mendez stayed here in Los Incas with their companions. Again, I´m so tired I could fall asleep right now . . . traveling all week is hard.

Yesterday morning/afternoon, though, was INCREDIBLE. We were spoiled and got to go to all three sessions of the temple dedication. Obviously it was beautiful! After not being able to go to the temple for 16 months, it was nice. The talks, prayers, music, EVERYTHING, was just great. Feel free to schedule one or two or twenty temple sessions for when I get back :) 

Keep going with the Book of Mormon challenge! Only have 7 weeks more to finish it. Totally possible :) Also, yikes . . .

Love you all. Thanks for being my favorite family :)

Hna Condie

P.S. Pray that I won´t have a change next week!!!

Not a very exciting picture, but nice to remember the Trujillo Temple dedication.

Sometimes we have to move mattresses from one house to another so that people don't have to sleep on the floor.  It makes taking a taxi really fun when we have to move three at a time!

Pretty sure we ate more than all the elders put together . . .

The Big News!

¡Hola!

Alright, I can finally tell you! Hopefully I didn´t talk it up too much to make it seem not as cool now. Nelida, our pensionista, GOT MARRIED AND BAPTIZED! Kind of a crazy story. She told us a couple weeks ago for the date that I originally told you but told us that we weren´t allowed to tell anybody. I was kind of joking around and asked if I wasn´t even allowed to tell y'all and she, in all seriousness, made it clear that I wasn´t even allowed to do that. So, that´s why I didn´t tell you. They wanted it super low-key. 

We were in Cusco all week so we didn´t have a great hold on everything that was happening here in Puno. We got back Friday around 8:30ish and had to run and do some things with the sisters here and didn´t get back until almost 9:30. Get home, plan, go to bed. The works. Neldia calls us Saturday morning at 9:00 asking if we can make it to her wedding . . . at 9:30! She gave us the wrong address at first so we lost 15 minutes traveling to the wrong municipalidad, leaving us 15 to get to the actual place that was half an hour away. Don´t know how on earth we did it, but we got there just in time! 

Weddings here are a little different. We just stood in the office of the man that was going to marry them. They signed a paper and we left. And they were married!! Sounds lame, but it was nice. It was a little sad, to me, to hear what he said about his perspective on family. He talked a lot about how the family isn´t the main focus in life and that if there are problems down the road there are still ways to separate. After he said his little shpeel (don´t know how to spell that . . .) Nelida and Julio gave their vows and I was happy again. They talked about their goals to go to the temple and be an eternal family and that nothing would keep them from getting there. They both know it won´t be easy, but they are willing and ready. 

The plan after all that was to have the baptism this Thursday, not this past weekend. BUT, we were thinking and talking, and the temple dedication came up (ps, the Trujillo Temple is getting dedicated this weekend and we all get to watch it). We told her that if she wasn´t a member she wouldn´t be able to go. Long story short, we organized the whole baptism in two hours and she came and got baptized the same day. Sounds crazy, but it was still a really good night.

I love seeing how the Lord makes things work. Honestly, there have been lots of times when I´ve questioned why something hasn´t happened or hasn´t happened sooner or a million different little things. But He has His time and His plan. When the people we work with are really ready, He´ll show us how to make things happen. But until then, lots of patience and love and FAITH are required. We are beyond happy right now! Nelida and Julio have never been happier.

Now we just need to find new investigators . . . :) 

In other news for this week, Cusco is nice. Haha, between Cusco and the wedding/baptism, we only had one day to work. And even then, it was full of meetings with the zone leaders and the stake president and things like that. But it´s all good. This will be another crazy week. We´re going to be in divisions every day . . . I won´t see Hna Mendez basically the whole week :( But week six will be (almost) back to normal life again.

Love you all! Keep working hard :) 

Con amor,

Hna Condie

I haven't had a real hamburger in like 16 months  . . .

Typical 'consilio' picture

In the office!

¡El beso!

Afterparty!

Soon happy!! :)

One of the best days of my mission by far!

6/8 ¡Hola de Cusco!

Welcome to more craziness! We started another round of divisions with the hermanas for this change. Always fun but always exhausting. Hna Mendez and I are both pretty pooped, and it´s catching up with us . . . we´ve both been a little under the weather for the past couple days. Nothing tragic though, so no worries. On top of everything, there´s ANOTHER strike in Puno starting tomorrow. We have consilio on Thursday so, we were on a bus for 8 hours today so that we could be in Cusco without problemas. Stressful because we won´t be able to work for almost a whole week, but maybe good at the same time. We can have a couple days to rest a little bit and get out strength back where it need to be. 

Not much to report for this week. Dad´s letter is perfect to describe this week . . . we hit the "storm" part of the journey again. On the bright side though, I´m having to learn the true meaning of patience and charity. I´m studying a Christlike attribute every week and these past two weeks just happened to be . . . patience and charity. Funny how that works out. No better way to learn something than to have to put it in practice. At the same time, again, maybe it´s a good thing that we have a little break to be in Cusco.

Sorry for being short and maybe whiny. 

Love you all and hope you have a great week!

¡Feliz Cumpleaños Hna Mendez!

I don't know if we did more service or damage, but a t least we got her store taken down.

I think this is the first time I've seen this lady smile since I've been in Puno.

6/1 Holy Moly!

Hello!

This was the epitomy of a crazy week. We had to sent one of the sisters home at the beginning of the week because she has some major problems with her leg. Not a happy way to start off the week, but I´m hoping she´ll be able to come back out in a couple months. We sent four other sisters with her to Cusco to do some papers for their visas and such. Hna McMahon was the only other sister still here with us in Puno, so we got to be in a trio with her. There was (another) strike here so none of the buses were running, so none of the sisters could come back and Hna McMahon spent basically the whole week with us, Fun, but exhuasting to be running back and forth between two sectors all week. Meetings with leaders. Money not coming out for the month. Construction in the chapel and having church 20 away in car. Just a lot of random things put together to make this a super hectic week. But, now it´s a new week and we can try to breathe again!

¡My big news! Actaully, I still can´t tell you... sorry. It got postponed and I´m literally not allowed to tell you until after it happens. Nothing too, too crazy. But something I´ve been waiting for for a good chunk of time now.

I´m sorry this is really short. I spent a long time catching up on reading emails that I´ve had just sitting in my inbox for months. Tell everyone hello for me. 

Love you all!

Hna Condie

Family Home Evening.  Like our makeup?

They are huge fans of my stickers!

We love Jhutmay!

Another emergency sister leader pizza visit.

Service project!

They weren't really feeling the green wall either I guess.

* I think she's referring to your green wall - Clay and Alisha

Basically spent the whole week with this clown, Hna McMahon!

Can't Keep From Smiling!

Well, I´d say that this was a pretty super duper week! Apart from some emergency sister leader runs to the hospital with some missionaries and freezing my buns off every night instead of sleeping, definitely a week for the books.

The highlight of the week was Nelly´s baptism! We visited her a couple days before and asked her how she was feeling. She told us she felt terrible because she "did something." First thoughts went straight to word of wisdom or law of chastity. She looked back up at us and told us that she lost her temper with her son´s teacher and yelled at her a little bit. Relieved, we talked to her about it and kept getting ready for Saturday. 

Saturday was a little crazy. Long story short, she lost her job for coming to her baptism. She got there about an hour late (along with the bishop and all the members though, so it´s ok I guess. . .). I could go on for hours about all the bad things that happened to her that morning, but to keep it short I´ll just say that a lot of really hard things happened to her that morning. Things that maybe would have kept me from coming if they happened to me. Luckily though, Nelly is a lot stronger than me and came without hesitation. It was one of the most powerful baptisms I´ve ever been in. Regardless of everything, she was happy and strong. Sunday, after she got confirmed a member, she turned to me and just said, "I feel happy." I maybe teared up a little bit. Basically she´s incredible and I´m still learning so much from her every day.

I have another really, REALLY great, umm, noticia? note? *news? I don´t remember. But, I can´t tell you yet. But I´m really excited so I have to at least say that. Just know that next week is going to be another really good email :)

Other than that, good, normal week. Happy and working as always. There´s going to be (another) strike this week. Don´t know how big it will be but pray that it´s not too bad so that we can keep working.

Love you all!

Hna Condie

My favorite brothers

Us trying to figure out how to turn the stove on for twenty minutes before the baptism . . .

Nelly got baptized!

Softening Hearts

Well, this week was truly a week of miracles. Here´s just a couple stories to prove this point.

// We have been visiting a less active lady since I got here to Puno with Hna Valverde. And when I say less active I actually mean that she´s been completely, 100% inactive for longer than I´ve been alive and has some really hard feelings against the church for some things that happened when she first got baptized. It´s always been hard to really get to her. We would visit her, teach a nice lesson and from there nothing really happened. I went by a couple weeks ago when we were on divisions with some of the other sisters and (long story short) she yelled in my face and told me that all her problems were my fault. If we hadn´t been coming by she would have had more clients, her husband wouldn´t be so mean to her, etc. Threw us out and told us to never come back again. The next week, when we were on divisions again, Hna Mendez went back and her husband (who´s not actually her husband. I just don´t know what the appropiate word for "pareja" is in English. Basically they have lived together for years but aren´t married, don´t plan to get married, and kind of despise the other´s presence...) yelled at them, basically saying the same thing. After that we didn´t really stop by more. We always pass her house because she lives in the middle of our "investigator pool" but we never knock or go in. The other day we walked by and the door for her store was open and she was sitting there by herself. We decided to just go in for a little bit to see how she was doing. What we thought would only be a ten or fifteen minute visit turned into almost an hour and a half. We had a really incredible talk about the Atonement and true repentance. She ended up crying and apologizing and asking us to come back every day if we could to help her get back up.

// We are visiting a family that´s investigating the church. I think I actually told you a little bit about them. The mom is the lady that gave us dinner on her flipped over barrels with paper for a tablecloth. They´ve always been a little slow to understand and act on what we teach. We were trying to figure out how to help them out a little bit more. We usually don´t teach the Family Proclamation until they are close to baptism, but we thought we should teach it with them. It was a lesson that words can´t really describe. Even better, the next time we went by we taught the gospel of Christ and they both said that they wanted to be baptized. I didn´t really know how to reply because it took me by such suprise. They are reading the Book of Mormon and praying and coming to church and making friends. I love teaching them.

// Nelly is changing her whole life. Before I get ahead of myself, she´s getting baptized this Saturday!! She should get a call from a new job that she´s trying to get on Tuesday and depending on what they say, she might have to travel though . . . pray that all will be well. But seriously, I´ve never seen someone change their life around so quickly and so willingily in my life. There have been some really, really hard things that have happened to her since she was younger, and you can see the scars that they´ve made on her. But in this past week, everything clicked with her. She´s always believed what we´ve been teaching her, but now she really gets that it all applies for her as well. It broke my heart, but she would always talk about how the things that have happened are too great to be forgiven. She just started crying the other day when we were with her. We were caught a little off gaurd, but listening to her talk about the Atonement and what her baptism meant for her . . . again, no words. It has truly been a priviledge getting to teach her and learn from her. 

There are so many more, but for time, I´m stopping there. As for news for the week, our distict leader ended his mission. Sad about that, but I´ve only heard good things about the new guy. Hna Mendez and I are staying together her in Puno!! Happy about that :) President is coming to Puno this week. For the other zone though, not for us . . . but that´s alright. Nelly wants us to invited him to her baptism, so maybe we´ll end up seeing him. Haha, we´ll see how that works out. Not too much out of the ordinary going on. Just working hard as always :)

Thanks for the love and support. Love you all! Have a fantastic week.

Hna Condie

This is what I like to call "revenge"

Happy Birthday Elder Beccera!

Nelly and . . . 

. . . her crazy son Andre

Los Uros del Lago Titicaca

Hello! Just a short note to say hello since I saw everybody yesterday! Also, I´m sending a million pictures of our trip to Los Uros. Look them up. 

Love you!

*I'm putting in a link for Los Uros - they are floating, man made islands from a pre-Incan society, the reeds rot from the bottom and need to be replaced from the top at least every three years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uru_people

¡Los Uros!

The elders just picking up houses and moving them around.

No big deal or anything.

They wouldn't let us help . . .

. . . the sisters doing our part!

I match my earrings with my fanny pack ;)

Going back home :(

P-day in Cusco

Chili's after console!

Just hiked to a waterfall for p-day today - kind of pretty :)

Aftermath, victory shot!

Just pretending that I"m actually Elizabeth Bennet just standing on the edges of cliffs in England.