Aug. 19, 2013
Ahhhhhhhhh!!!!
Kylee! I am so excited to hear about
your mission papers!! I can´t wait to hear where you’re going! Even though I
won’t be able to read the email until Monday, write me an email as soon as you
get your call, yeah? How are you feeling? :)
Guess what today is! My two month
mark on my mission! Hna. Schroader and I are pretty excited. Especially because
it’s a P day and we can ¨celebrate¨ a little. :) We are going over to a member’s
house later today and they are going to make us brownies.
Wow. So much has happened this past
week I don´t even know where to begin! We have had some really high highs, and
some lows, but all is well.
L. is getting baptized this
Saturday at 8:00 PM and we are so excited for her. She is incredible! She
really wants to go on a mission, and last night we went on splits and she came
with me and we contacted on the streets for an hour or two. It was a
really good experience. I am pretty sure she knows more than I do! She is
really excited to go to institute this week because a general authority (I
think its Elder Cook) is coming. Also, another General Authority is coming this
weekend and we will have a Mission Conference with the North and West missions
on Saturday with him. And guess which zone out of all the zones in both
missions got picked to do the musical number? Yup! Zona Independencia! We are
singing ¨Dear to the Heart of the Shepherd¨ and I will be playing the piano. :P
Only a little intimidating, right?
But no. I´m really excited. We also
have a big wedding ceremony on Friday at the mission offices for all the
couples who need to get married before they can get baptized. Here in Peru 95%
of the people we teach aren´t married, they just live together because it is so
expensive to actually have a wedding, and they don´t receive the same type of
benefits we do in the states. Entonces, not only is our focus in the mission
Baptizing Families, our focus is Marrying, then Baptizing families. I really
love that families are our focus. The mission standard is 8 4 2. 8 investigators
progressing each month, 4 baptisms, and 2 families per companionship, per
month. We won’t be able to reach that this month, but it’s our goal for
September :)
We also were able to commit another
investigator to baptism, G., and he is really awesome as well. We first
met him while contacting on the street and then we went back to visit him he
was sick in bed so we weren’t able to have a lesson, but we did say a prayer
with him that he would be feeling better so he could hear our message, and the
next day we went back and he was up and moving and excited to talk to us! And
last night he came to a Noche De Hogar (family home evening) in a members home
and we watched the movie ¨On the way Home¨ and talked about eternal families
and it was a really beautiful experience because he is a widower and has been
alone for a while. I´m really excited for him :)
Unfortunately a couple that we were
hoping would be baptized this upcoming Saturday as well (The wife had committed
to Saturday but not her husband) have decided they can’t commit yet. They want
to wait until September. We´re still holding out for a miracle, but we´ll see.
They´ve been going to church for almost 5 years and their entire family are
members, and they have testimonies, so we don´t know what’s holding them back.
Like I said, We´re hoping for a miracle!
Unfortunately as well a family that
we had been teaching who were wanting to get married so they could be baptized,
talked to a different Pastor and have decided to get baptized in a different church.
That was kind of a stab to the heart, but oh well. Everyone has agency! We
haven´t quite given up but we´ll see what happens.
New experiences for the week: We
walked into a home to teach a teenage girl and her little brother started
screaming and yelling at us to ¨get out! I don´t want you here!¨ and we were
called several mean words that I didn´t understand till after when Hna. Mamani
explained them to me. We were only there for about two minutes when the mom
told us we had to leave because we were scaring her son. So that was fun.
Also, we are in the market for
a new apartment because ours is super old and has some problems. Also our
landlord didn´t pay our water bill so we went without water for 3 days which
was an experience I´d rather not repeat, but all is well! Hna. Schroader and I
brushed our teeth with water bottles outside our two story window and had a lot
of fun spitting out the window. We were feeling a little crazy that night and
figured out a way to make going without water more fun. We had a good time and
took pictures, maybe I´ll send them :)
So a lot of ups and downs this week,
but that’s how mission life goes. I am loving being a missionary, and the
Church is true, and that’s all that matters!
I hope all is well at home. Good
luck with school starting everybody! That’s really cool that Elder Terry was
there for stake conference, it sounds like an awesome experience! Also,
thank you Mom and Dad both for sharing your experiences in the temple. I love
the temple and love hearing about your experiences there!
P days are all day Monday until six
o clock PM, which is when we start working again. We always have internet at
ten in the morning and then we go and do something with our zone. Last week we
went to central Lima to a Natural History museum which was really fun! We
usually get about an hour on the computers, but we also have to write to our
Mission President so it’s only about 45 minutes to read and write emails. I
haven´t got any letters from the pouch yet, but I´m hoping they get here soon!
:)
And, first initials for just the
investigators. Thanks Mom!
Yo se con todo mi corazon que este
Iglesia es verdadero.
I love you all! Have a wonderful
week!
Hermana Shelton
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