Hola Familia!
First of all, Conference was
wonderful!!!! It was definitely a different experience watching it in Spanish
but I was able to understand it (for the most part) and the Spirit speaks all
languages :) It was a little sad to not be able to listen to the actual voices
as they were speaking, especially when a veces I could hear what they were
saying in English and could hear their voices, but it’s ok. It made me love
Elder Richard G. Scott a whole lot more because I guess that before General
Conference he recorded his talk in Spanish, so they played that instead of
having a translator. It was a tender mercy getting to hear an Apostle give his
talk in Spanish :)
Ok. I have like, five stories I want
to tell you about and very little time so I will type as fast as I can and if I
don´t tell all of them I will finish next week.
Ok, first. Devil dogs. So here in
Peru everybody and their dog has a dog. I wish that was an exaggeration. Emily,
you would not like it at all. You can´t walk five feet without walking by at
least one dog, but most likely two. Most of the dogs are pretty nice and will
leave you alone but there is this one dog (who just so happens to be the dog of
one of our investigators who is getting baptized this weekend) who absolutely
hates us. We can´t walk down their street (which also just so happens to be one
of the main streets we have to walk down every day) without the dumb thing
chasing us and snapping at our heels and barking its head off. It is completely
black and sometimes I could swear it even has red eyes. Best part? This dog only
barks and chases the missionaries. It doesn´t matter if they are latinos,
gringos, elders, or hermanas. Somehow, the dumb thing knows. It does not even
move a muscle if anybody else is walking down the street but as soon as we turn
the corner its ugly little head pops up, he stares us down for about 3 seconds
and then he practically falls over himself trying to get up as fast as it can
to chase us down. We are pretty sure he is the spawn of Satan. If you can´t
tell there is no love lost between us and this dog. We were plotting ways to
get it run over by a car, but then we decided that probably wasn´t very
christ-like so we stopped. But let’s just say that if this dog met an untimely
end, we wouldn´t be very sad. :)
Ok. The Homeless man. So there are a
lot of homeless people here too. It’s really sad. My heart almost broke one day
when I saw an entire family digging through garbage looking for food. It is
really sad that we can´t do anything for them, but that isn´t the reason I´m
telling you about this, this story is actually pretty funny.
Ok, so the other night Hermana
Shriver and I were contacting in the street talking to a man when all of a
sudden I felt a hand on my shoulder. At first I thought it was Hna Shriver
nudging me but when I looked over at her she had a really worried look on her
face so I looked on the other side of me and this homeless man had his arm
around me! He was just standing there with his arm around me staring at us. So
Hna Shriver pulls me back and says, ¨Hey! Don´t touch my companion!¨ And then the man we were contacting says, ¨Oi!
What are you doing?! Can´t you see we are talking about the word of God here!?¨
And then all of a sudden the homeless man starts going into a rant about
something, (not really sure what) and the man we were contacting and him get
into a fight about religion right in front of us! Hna. Shriver and I just
looked at each other, started backing away slowly, and said, ¨Yeah, well,
siempre esta invitado a la Iglesia!¨ and started walking as fast as we could the
other way. Ok. So maybe this story really isn´t that funny but for some reason
to us it was the funniest thing in the world. The next day we were explaining
what happened to the Zone Leaders and we literally had tears running down our
faces we were laughing so hard. Elder Gneiting said, ¨So what you´re telling me
is that a homeless man tried to make a move on Hermana Shelton, and it turned
into a street fight.¨ Yeah, basically that’s what we were saying. And then
Elder Huambo says, ¨Man, the Hermanas always have the craziest things happen to
them.¨ (Something along those lines, it was all in Spanish :)) Yeah. It’s true.
Ok. Jehovah’s Witnesses. So the
Jehovah’s Witnesses are always out proselyting on the weekends and this past
Saturday we were walking past the house of one of our investigators, M., and
saw them talking to her through the window! We were like, ¨Oh no you don´t!¨ So
we made a little detour to walk past her window all casually, and as we walked
by she yelled out, ¨Hermanas! Como Estan?¨ So of course we just had to go over
and talk to her and she asked us if we had time to come in for a minute and of
course we said yes! So she opened the door for us, and said goodbye to the
Jehovah’s Witnesses, and we had a nice little chat about the Book of Mormon.
One point for the Mormons!
Ok. Now a more serious one. Last
night I had the most precious experience yet of my mission I think. We went to
teach a family and the mom had to go run and get water and it was going to take
some time, but she wanted us to wait so we said we would. There was a big group
of kids, (two of them being hers) playing soccer in the street and they ran
over and asked if we could teach them! We were like, well of course! And so all
9 of the kids, (between the ages of 7 and 14) sat down in the street and we
talked about Jesus with them for 20 minutes! It was so precious. They were all
completely attentive, and we taught them how to pray and how they were all
children of God, and then we asked them how they could follow Jesus and they
all raised their hands and named of ways they could be more like Jesus. And
then we sang, I am a child of God, and one of them said the closing prayer, and
then we taught them how to say some words in English. It was so tender I almost
cried. :)
Ok, I have to go. Remind me next
week to tell you about the time I threw up my entire lunch in the house of the
member we´d just eaten at :)
I love you all! Happy Birthday again
Emily!!! And mom, Yes, putting pictures of Jesus on the box helps packages get
here.
I love you!
Con mucho amor,
Hermana Shelton
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