Called to Serve in Peru: Greetings from San Juan de Lurigancho

Buenos dias!

^quote from Elder Cristoferson :)

I am jealous of all those fall leaves I see in the pictures! Que bonito. It’s just starting to warm up here in Lima and I`m back in San Juan where the sun shines even brighter so I am happy about that! Just in time to get a tan before heading back to winter :)

So, conference was great! I loved all the talks given in SPANISH! Everyone here was pretty excited about that. Ky, that quote you mentioned in your last email by Elder Christofferson was one of my favorites as well. I wrote it down in my agenda, but it sounds even cooler in Spanish! ``un dios que no exige es lo mismo que un dios que no existe`` ooo....I liked it a lot :)

This week was good! Today is my companion’s birthday so I woke up sneakily in the night and blew up a bunch of balloons and wrote her a note and placed them all over her bed and on the floor for when she woke up. Tonight we have dinner with Mamita, and the birthday traditions here are nuts. They have been planning for weeks all of the things they are going to throw at my companion. Flour, Eggs, and Cake in the face. Oh, Peru. Good Times. Also, since my companion is from Mexico I tried singing her the ``estes soooon, las mañanitas`` birthday song from Mexico, but unfortunately those are the only words I know :) Also, we started singing another Mexican song, that goes, ``Ay, ay, ay, ay, canta no llores! etc....`` anyone? anyone? haha it brought back memories from Elementary School :)

Remember the family I told you about last week? The dad came to conference with us! And he liked it a lot, and he now isn`t working on Sundays and is excited to come to church. We were pretty sad to find out this week that the only way to fix his wife’s birth certificate is for her to go her hometown which is really far away, and they don`t have money for it. But, miracles exist. We`re going to find a solution :)

In the meantime!! One of our families is getting married on the 22nd!! The wife is less active, and her husband isn`t a member. So we are teaching them both and we are helping them with their marriage! El hermano works on Sundays so he hasn`t been able to come to church, which means we can`t put him on a baptismal date yet, but we`re working on it. One step at a time. We got to go with them to the centro de Lima this week to sign some papers, and their marriage is going to be in the Plaza de Armas, and we get to go! woo hoo! We`re pretty excited about that :)

We had a good week! We are working on finding new FAMILIES and we contacted 101 people this week, and 16 families. 12 of those turned into new investigators, and 4 families. So we`ll see how this week goes :)

We had a conference with all the Hermanas in the mission this week! I`m going to send a picture I took with all of my companions :) Hna Shriver goes home this transfer so it was the last opportunity to be with all of them :`( Also, the mission world cup was awesome! We won team unity :) For some reason the zone thought it would be a good idea to make our zone jerseys fuscia (fucia? the ugly pink color...) and I was opposed to the idea, but they turned out all right :) I`ll try sending a picture too :)

What else, what else.....

Oh. So I don`t think my stomach likes this whole ``having a pensionista`` thing and eating food again. I`ve been living off of water and pepto bismol this week. We had a scare cause we thought I had appendicitis, but turns out it was just cause my stomach was inflamed. It’s whatever. I think I`m gonna go on a diet :)

But don`t worry about me! I`m fine! Happy! NOT counting the days, I still have like, six months, right? :) haha

Well, I guess that’s it for this week! Love ya`ll!

Hermana Shelton

Pictures!