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.

¡Feliz Dia de Independencia!

Yup. Today is Peru`s day of independence. Don`t have cool stories yet, but we are going to a cool fair later today. Pretty excited about that!!

As for this past week, it`s been good! Didn`t get a whole lot of work done because Hna. Nelson was in Lima for legal stuff, but it was still good. Side note, trios aren`t my favorite thing in the world . . . Fun to be with them, but holy moly, praying I never get put into a real trio.

I do have a couple good stories for y'all  :)

One is about Lida. I think I wrote about her last week a little bit. She`s Jimmy`s wife. We still haven`t found him because of work, but she`s doing SO good! We visited her  again on Saturday. I can`t even describe how happy she makes me. She`s one of those people that missionaries pray to find every day. She just gets it. And she`s willing to do the things that she needs to, to progress. We were ending the lesson and she stopped us and asked if it was ok if she came to church with us again. We just kind of laughed and said of course. Two weeks, and she already talks to us about how good she feels in the church, how she knows it`s something special and that it's something she wants. Ahh, I just love it! I`ll try to get a good picture with her and her ADORABLE little girl this week for y'all to see :)

We have a man in our branch, Pedro. He`s been a member for almost two years now. He`s about 60, doesn`t have a leg, and his life is a little rough in general. BUT, every time we stop by his house he`s always so happy. I`m learning so much from him about gratitude, something I`m trying to work on. He has EVERY reason to be a grumpy old man. But he`s not. He`s so happy. And he can make everybody else happy too. It`s cool to see how the gospel really can change the perspective of everything in our lives. He knows that someday everything will be better and lives every day with just a great attitude. I love it. Reminds me of Presidente Uchtdorf`s talk from conference. I could talk about that for days and days, but I won`t. Yall should just go read it :)

Grateful in Any Circumstances - Dieter F. Uchtdorf

What else? Not much to report from this week, sorry. But things are great in Puerto. Oh yeah! And I don`t have a change!!! WOOOO!!! SO ready for the next six weeks :) 

Sounds like everything is going well in the states.  Jonathan, holy moly, I can`t believe how old he looks. Don`t know how I feel about that... haha, Y'all are so awesome. I`m so glad you`re my family :)

Oh, and another thing. I have that picture of you two in front of the temple on my desk. One of the other hermanas said that Dad looked like Superman. I set her straight and said well duh, because you ARE Superman :)

Love you all!

Have a great week!

   

Hamburgers . . .

maracuya juice (*mom note:  I looked it up, it's passion fruit)    

My favorite family.  The twins in the front left on missions this week!! Going to miss them. 

Hna. Nelson walking thru the river . . . I mean street!

 

Talent show :) 

Old lady and the borracho

Incredible kids! 

Don't mind me. Just cutting down a tree with a machete :)

Where's Waldo?

We`re going to start this week`s email with a flashback to a favorite childhood game. Sometimes missionary work kind of feels like 'Where`s Waldo'. Looking and looking, knocking on doors and trying to find a referral.  We`ve had an address of a guy named Jimmy for almost 3 weeks now. We went out the first time a couple weeks ago and looked for almost an hour. The second time we took a member with us (a very dedicated member) and looked for another hour and a half or so. Both times with no luck. Then the third time (about a week ago) we went out again with a different member trying to find this guy. Aaaaaand, we didn`t find him. Almost just gave up on finding him. THEN . . . we decided to look one more time. Thirty minutes later we finally found the street. We talked to a lady that sells bread if she knew a Jimmy and if she could help us out. She pointed us to a house down the street. Wasn`t him. We kept walking and found a house that met the description that he gave us. We knocked with a good amount of confidence on this door. A 20-something year old guy opens the door. Between the excitement of thinking we finally found this guy and the shock that someone that met his description opened the door I just kinda yelled "JIMMY?!" He looked at me kind of funny and said, "umm, un ratito... " Haha, maybe I`m a little crazy, but it`s ok because it was his house!!!!! He was sleeping, and we haven`t actually met him yet... But we made a cita (appointment) with his wife, Lida, for the next morning. 

Let me just say, miracle find! We came back the next day and she told us her whole life story. She`s SO ready for the gospel. She was at church the next day for all three hours and double checked with ME that we had another cita during this week. Incredible.  Two days. Some people we`ve been working with for months aren`t even like that. I`m super excited about her and her family!!

I love missionary work.

I love Puerto.

I love Hna. Nelson.

I love it all!!

I`m really hoping I don`t have a change next week!!! So many good things are happening. I CAN`T LEAVE NOW!! Is it bad to ask for prayers that I stay in Puerto?? :)

This isn`t really news, more of just a thought, but still worth sharing. I`ve been studying a lot about our Savior. Who He is and how we can get closer to Him. There`s some really incredible stuff in the scriptures. So, I have homework for everyone. Read Mosiah 14, and really focus on verses 3-5. It`s incredible. For the bloggers reading this, if you don`t have a Book of Mormon, you can get one. There`s lots of missionaries dying to give you one :) You can also look it up online.

www.lds.net

Scriptures, Book of Mormon, Mosiah

 3 He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

 4 Surely he has borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows; yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.

 5 But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.

Definitely worth reading!

Speaking of reading, I hope you are all caught up on your 9 or 22 pages of the Book of Mormon for the week. It`s amazing how much it really makes a difference in our lives. There`s so much we can learn from the scriptures. And for me at least, I feel so much closer to the Savior when I read. I`m calmer. Happier. Everything is just better when we`re focused on the gospel rather than whatever else is going on in our lives. And the blessings of reading every day are REAL. I see them every day in the families and people that read opposed to those who don`t. And I love you all and I want you to have more blessings in your lives. So read!! :)

Oh, and thanks for all the pictures :) I love getting pictures!! And thanks cousin Tom! I love hearing things like that. 

Finishing this transfer strong! Hope you`re all doing well at home as well. Give everyone a hug for me!

Chao!

Just a bit more of Puerto

Epitome of Puerto

colorful house . . . fruit trees . . . dogs

"Hola, soy un ladrón y lo único que quiero es robar tu corazón"

// Hi, I´m a thief and the only thing I want to steal is your heart

Hna. Nelson's birthday dinner, I forgot what it's like to eat in a real restaurant . . .

Found this little guy on the side of the road! 

Just kidding, it was in the zoo. Still cool :)

Some families we are working with right now

Ummmmm. Hi!

Happy Monday :)

This has been a good week! Lots to do, not enough time to do it all. I need about 50 hours a day and more than just 18 months to do it all! But, it`s all good. Great things are happening in Puerto Maldonado right now. Where to even start?! For one, we have a lot more members helping out right now than we have had in the past. The members really have NO IDEA how much they help! It makes me want to be so much better when I get back to help the missionaries out. The progress is so much faster when our investigators or less actives have somebody besides us to confide in. 

I`m glad you have time to read! I was thinking this week and I`m giving EVERYBODY a challenge! Read the Book of Mormon either before the end of the year or before I get home (depending on how ambitious you are). Don`t worry. I did all the math for yall.

End of the year : 24 weeks of reading 22 pages and then you`ll have 3 pages for the last baby week.

End of my mission: 55 weeks of reading 9 pages and 2 weeks of reading 10 pages.

Piece of cake. No excuses!! :)

In all honestly tho, I`ve learned and seen so much how the Book of Mormon really does strengthen people and families. And I want that kind of strength for all of you. Especially right now :)

So, funny story first. We went to visit a new family the other day with a member from our branch who`s leaving for his mission next week. We didn`t actually get to teach them because they were working, but we helped out and chatted. So we`re sitting there cracking and peeling these weird nut things with them and they offer some to us to try. How to describe them, I don`t really know. They were kind of like really hard, condensed dirt. No flavor. It literally tasted like I was eating dirt. After we all took the first bite, Josè (the member with us) and I looked at each other with the same face and he says (in English) "what doesn`t kill you makes you stronger." I almost choked. Between the situation and his English it was really funny. Maybe you had to be there?? I don`t know, but I laugh every time I think about it.

Other notable news, I gave a talk in sacrament meeting this week. The talk itself wasn`t that exciting, nothing out of the ordinary. BUT, the exciting part, we went to visit a family that we`ve been working really hard with later that night and the husband pointed out how good my Spanish was!!!! WOOOOOOOO!!!! It`s especially great because this same guy pointed out to me how terrible my Spanish was and said he thought I didn`t really have a right to be talking to him on my first day here. So that made me feel really good :)

Anyway, so yeah, another great week over, looking forward to the next! And again, nothing crazy out of the ordinary happened, but we can see the hands of the Lord in everything we do. Even in the little things. Well, ESPECIALLY in the little things. Progress is slow in Puerto, but it`s happening. And it`s really cool to be a part of all of it.

Have another fantastic week! I`m praying for y'all and everything.  Start the Book of Mormon ;)

Love you all!!

Amie

ps- My computer freaked out and something weird happened with all my pictures... 

Don`t worry. Heads up for LOTS of GREAT pictures next week.

Clifhanger, boaconstrictors :)

Happy JULY!

First of all, I can`t believe it`s already July!!! 

This week I hit my five month mark.

What?

I feel like I got here yesterday. It`s cool to look back every month and see the things I`ve learned.

As for this week, pretty normal. I do have one cool story for yàll this week. So we`re teaching this 17 year old kid named Alex. He`s a hoot and a half. He wants to be a rapper. Doesn`t go to school and his job is rapping on the streets near the plaza with his friends.You can assume he doesn`t have a whole lot of direccion in his life right now. But he loves talking to us and the lessons are always good. We got to talk to him about the Restoration about two weeks ago but didn`t have time to explain the Book of Mormon. We finally found him again this week and chatted for a bit, got him a Book of Mormon and all that jazz. We couldn`t actually sit and have a lesson with him because we couldn`t be alone with him and there was nobody else there. BUT, we came back the next day. The first five minutes went something like this...

Us: Hey Alex, how`s it going?
Alex: Good. Really good!

**small talk**

Us: So did you get the chance to read?
Alex: Yeah! (He read the title page, introduction, AND all the testimonies after one day!!) But I have a question. If I want to get baptized, what do I need to do??? Also, am I allowed to serve a mission like you guys?! 

Yup. Needless to say, it was a great lesson. He`s reading and loving it! We`re loving it! Hopefully I can keep sending good news about him :)

What else? Really nothing else crazy is happening. It still amazes me how incredible the gospel is and no matter how much studying and reading I do, there`s ALWAYS more to learn. And it`s always something that just blows my mind.

The church is true. The gospel is amazing! Learning every day. Loving every day.

Love you all!
Amie