And then there were six...

                                                                                            Aug 26, 2013

Hola Familia!

 

Well. This has been a very interesting week. Where to even begin…

Good news first! Yes! We had our very first baptism this week and it was wonderful! I am definitely going to attach a picture. The whole day was a bit hectic but the baptism was perfect. L. is so incredible. We are so excited for her. The only sad part is that we won´t be able to teach her and see her as much as before :( But our ward is incredibly supportive and loving and have welcomed her in and loved her and she is in good hands :)

 

This week has been super hectic for several reasons. I feel ok telling you about this now because I´m better now, but I had the flu this past week and had a fever for several days. Last week I wrote my email wrapped up in a coat and blanket in the internet cafe by our house because I was so cold and feverish :P So that made working a bit difficult and the three of us have been fighting off sicknesses all week, but we´re doing better now and are going to be working even harder this upcoming week.

 

Our zone also had an emergency this past week with the other Hermanas of Independencia. They had to move out of their apartment immediately but couldn´t find an apartment in their area. So....emergency solution? Move in with us! So. We now have six hermanas living in one house, with one bathroom. It’s been...interesting so far. But super fun as well because we all love each other. They will probably be with us for about another week and a half. Our zone spent the better part of the morning last Thursday moving them out, then in, and rearranging our apartment to accommodate the six of us. Our lideres de zona are worried that we´re gonna have fiestas, but we assured them that we are mature sister missionaries and can handle it ;)

This has put a halt to our current search for a new apartment, at least for now.

 

On Friday we had the matrimonios!(weddings) There were 14 couples that got married, and then baptized the next day. It was a super awesome experience. We got to do a musical program for it and it was great. 

And on Saturday we had our double mission conference! It was SO AWESOME. For several reasons. For one, our zone got to do the musical number which was fun, for two, I got to see all of my friends from the CCM and it was like a family reunion! We were so happy to see each other. And third and probably most important, Elder Tad R. Callister from the Presidency of the Quorum of the Seventy (I think? I can´t remember for sure) came and spoke to us and it was incredible! Especially because we had the musical number and were sitting on the very front row. It was basically like having front row seats for general conference ;) haha. 

 

Our other investigators are doing well. We´ve had some disappointments and some hard times finding people, and we have a REALLY hard time getting people to come to church on Sunday because it’s at 8 AM in the morning (They can´t get baptized until they have two asistencias a Iglesia) (attend church) So when we are hoping to have 5 or 6 investigators at church and none of them show up, it’s a bit frustrating. So, keep praying for them and we´ll keep working hard and hopefully they will come to church next week! :)

 

I´m so anxious to hear about Kylee’s mission call!!!! I hope it gets here this week! Also, mom, I also almost started crying when I heard about the check you received in the mail. That’s incredible! It’s so awesome to hear about how Heavenly Father is blessing our family. I love you all! 

 

Also, the pictures I am sending, the first one is with Lucia at her baptism and the second is all the Hermanas of Zona Independencia a couple of P'days ago when we went to a natural history museum in central Lima. I´m hopefully gonna send one more email with a couple more pictures. 

 

I love you all! I look forward to hearing from all of you next week about school! ;)

 

Hermana Shelton

 

Rachel's zone eating a Chili's

Rachel's first baptism

            Rachel and the Hermanas of
                      Zona Independencia
 

Looking for a reference up in the hills of Independencia

Happy two months to me!

                                                                                                         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

 

Aug. 12, 2013 Apparently my stomach doesn't like fermented potatoes...

                                                                                                Aug. 12, 2013

Hello everyone!

 

How are you all? 

 

It’s been another interesting week! Can you tell from the subject line? :)

Haha, but it´s been good! Last Tuesday we had our weekly zone meeting and I guess in Zona Independencia there is an ´´initiation´´ we have to go through. After the meeting some of the Elders brought out this bag of ´´tocush´´ or in other words, fermented potato. Yeah. I´m here to testify that it tastes as bad as it sounds. We had to either have one spoonful without plugging our nose, or 5 spoonfuls while plugging your nose. We all opted for the one spoonful. The best way to describe it is that it tastes and smells exactly like a petting zoo. And thats the nice way of saying it. ;) haha.  I don´t think my stomachs been the same since!

Actually, It’s probably not because of the tocush, but Hna Schroader and I have both been feeling pretty sick to our stomachs this week. The food is catching up to us once again! But all is well. Our zone leader, who is North American as well, informed us that it was completely normal and should pass soon. Until then though the sisters are making us food that isn´t as hard on our stomachs and we have been drinking a lot of ´´anis´´ or herbal tea to help our stomachs as well.

 

The work! The work is going well. We actually ran into a miracle this last Sunday. Her name is L. She had received a couple lessons from the Sister missionaries when she was living in Trujillo but then moved to Lima and stopped. Last Sunday she decided to come to church on her own and we were able to talk to her and make an appointment to visit her this last week. We sat down for our first lesson on Thursday, and in that lesson she told us she wanted to be baptized! We have met with her every day since to help get her prepared for her baptism on the 24th of August. She really is so amazing. She has been reading the Book of Mormon on her own, and has been looking up videos made from the church, and she has such a strong testimony! She teaches us more than we teach her. We are so grateful to have run in to her.

We are also working with one other family that we are hoping will be baptized that same day as well. Other than that though we are still doing a lot of contacting and finding and receiving references from the ward.

I love my companions so much! They are wonderful. Hna Schroader goes to BYUI also and we´re pretty sure we´re gonna be friends for life. Hna Mamani is our Mamacita and she calls us her Chicititas or Pequenitas. We have a lot of fun together.

Things are good, of course there is opposition in all things and this week has been pretty hard in some ways as well. The language barrier is hard, and I have a hard time contacting because I´m not always sure if I´ll be able to understand what they say back to me, and I´ve always had a hard time approaching people on the street, but all is well. Like Hna. Mamani always says, Poco a Poco! It´ll come.

 

It’s been so cold here! August here, is like our February, and even though its ´technically´in the 60s with the humidity it feels really cold. Luckily this morning though I was able to have my first warm shower! Yay! I finally asked Hna. Mamani how the warm water worked and she was like, ´´You have been taking cold showers this whole time?!´´ (in Spanish of course). haha. I am slowly but surely learning how things work around here. :)

 

In answer to your question, I have no idea what’s happening with my visa! I did leave the CCM once to do visa stuff, but haven´t heard anything since. Hopefully everything is going smoothly with that :) I´m excited to hear about the progress of Kylee´s papers! Keep me updated! I´m also glad to hear about your job at school! yay! I know that Heavenly Father is taking care of us :) Also, I still haven´t received any letters through the pouch, but I did receive one through regular US mail! Hopefully I receive the ones through the pouch soon.

I haven´t heard yet about the new temple movie here in Peru, the temple has been closed the past two weeks for cleaning but opens back up this week and maybe they´ll have the new one? I hope so! When we were in the offices last week one of the assistants told us that our mission is going to the temple soon. 

 

Well, once again I am probably forgetting things but I want to send pictures. I love you all! Good luck with school starting! I can´t believe it’s already time for school!! Have a wonderful week!

 

Con mucho amor, 

Hermana Shelton.

 

P.S. Mom, when you put letters on the blog will you only put the first initial of names? Thank you!

 

 

P.S.S. Oh yeah! Independencia is a city inside of Lima. I forgot to answer that question :) It’s also where the mission home is. Also, tell Ruth thank you for her email! I don´t have time to respond to it right now. Gotta go! Love you!

Our study area

Hermanas Shelton, Mamani and Schroader

1st week in the field- Aug. 5, 2013

                                                                                                 

                                                                                                    Aug. 5, 2013

 

Hola Familia!                                                                                

 

Well, I´ve been in the mission field for almost a full week now! I have been assigned to the Las Violetas ward, in Independencia Peru. Sorry if my grammar or anything is off, I am actually having a really hard time writing in English! 

Ok. My companions names (yes, companionS I´m in a trio!) Are Hermana Mamani from Arequipa Peru and Hermana Schroader from Arizona who also was in my district at the CCM! It’s been so awesome because I have a native companion who only speaks Spanish and then I have a friend from the CCM who I can speak English with when my brain starts to hurt. :)

Hermana Mamani is actually one of the Sister Leaders for our mission so she has that responsibility, plus training two new greenies so I´m sure it’s been hard for her, but she’s so great. We have a really good companionship.

We are living in a little apartment in the middle of town and it hasn´t been lived in for four years so it’s been an experience. Here is a list of things that I have to do here in Peru, that I don´t have to do in the US.

Brush my teeth using water from a filtered water bottle

Throw used toilet paper into a bag instead of the toilet (the water pressure isn´t strong enough to flush paper)

Unlock the bars in front of our door and THEN unlock the door. (we have 3 different keys to get into the house)

Turn on the electric heater early in the morning so I can have a warm shower (still hasn´t happened yet :P)

And the list continues. I can´t think of any more of the top of my head right now but I´ll continue it in future emails :) 

One of the reasons the apartment hasn´t been lived in for four years is because our ward hasn´t had missionaries for a while! We are actually the first sister missionaries our ward (barrio) has had. And before there were some missionaries but they lived closer to their other ward so there wasn´t a lot happening here. We are basically opening a new area :) but it’s been great! The members are really helpful and we´ve been able to find a couple of investigators to teach and the work is progressing.

 One of the best things about Peru though is the people. The people here are incredible! So nice and helpful and loving. My cheek has been kissed more times than I could even count :) Thats just how you greet everyone here! And you greet everyone in the room when you walk in, and then say goodbye to everyone when you leave. I already love the members of our ward so much. Our pensionista, Hermana Berta, is so wonderful. We have breakfast and dinner with her every day and then we eat lunch with a different member of the ward each day. She calls us ¨mi preciosas, or mi lindas´ and I love it :) Really though. Everyone is so loving.

Yesterday was our first Sunday and it also happened to be...Fast Sunday! Which meant we had the ¨opportunity¨ to bear our testimonies in Sacrament meeting in Spanish in front of everybody, and it just so happened that our Mission President was attending our ward that day too! That was only a little intimidating :P But it went well. And things are going good!

Thank you for your emails! It’s crazy what all is happening at home, tell everyone I say Hello and that I love them! I´m sure I´m forgetting so much that I wanted to tell you but time is so limited. I will try to send some pictures :) Also, I haven´t received any letters yet so hopefully they´ll get here soon :)

 

Con mucho amor,

Your ¨greenie¨ Hermana Shelton

 

Rachel in front of the Lima Peru Temple

 Rachel with her "silly" MTC district

 

                                                    

                                               Rachel with a banana tree

Dear Shelton Family,
We are thrilled to have Hermana Shelton join us in the Peru Lima North Mission. She will e-mail you on her p-day which is on Monday.
Sincerely,
President and Sister Erickson

Last email from the MTC- July 25, 2013

                                                                                                           July 25, 2013

 

Hello everyone!

    Well, this is the last email I will send from the CCM because I leave for the mission field bright and early Tuesday morning! Ahhhhh!!! I think that is going to be almost scarier than leaving home for the MTC. :) This week has been a good one. I don't think I mentioned before that I was called to be a Sister leader and I'm in charge of coordinating the music for all the devotionals/firesides/sacrament meetings for a few weeks here at the CCM. I’ts fun! I enjoy it. And I get to go to the Leadership meetings each Sunday morning. Other than that I’ts been a pretty normal, uneventful week. I'm definitely going to be sad about leaving here though. I have gotten so close to my district. It's crazy how close we've gotten to each other after being together for 16 hours a day for six weeks :) I'm so grateful that all of the hermanas will be in my mission. Apparently there are only 14 sisters in our mission currently, and with the 13 of us (9 from our district and 4 others) that are coming in we will be doubling that number! It will be interesting to see how training and everything will go. We are going to miss our elders (who are going to Cochabamba) but it´s ok. We are already planning mission reunions for when we're all home :)

     Oh! We were talking to our teacher who served in the Lima East mission, and he said that every Lima missionary gets to go to the temple once a transfer. So that's exciting! I love love love the Lima temple. This morning was our last time going for a while though. Hopefully we'll be back soon :) The computers are being really slow right now so I am going to send what I've written so far and hope it will send, and if not I'll have time to re send it. Oh! I just remembered. This Sunday is the Peruvian Independence day so we are going to have a mini celebration which will be fun. Also, we are going out proselyting again on Saturday! I'm excited :) Ok. I'll send what I have and hope it works. Love you all!

 

 Con mucho amor, 

Hermana Shelton.  

One month in the MTC... July 18, 2013

Querida Familia,

 

Hola! Como estan todos? I am doing so wonderful and I hope everything is great at home! Thank you for all your emails.

Guess what I got to do this past weekend?! I went out tracting for four hours in the streets of Peru! That was definitely an experience. A good one :) Hna. Hulse and I were paired up with one of the local youth, a 17 year old boy, and then they gave us four book of mormons, 20 pamphlets, and reference cards and sent us on our way! We were actually in a pretty poor part of town, and I knew that there are places like that, but it was still a shock to my system to see it in real life. The houses were all kind of crumbling, the streets were full of garbage, there were dogs running around all over the place, and we were the only white people in sight :) I actually had a bit of a hard time at first talking to people because I was in shock still at what I was seeing. I was also having a hard time understanding everything that people were saying because they talk so fast and quiet. Luckily we had the 17 year old boy (I can't for the life of me remember his name!) and he was able to do most of the talking, but Hna. Hulse and I were able to bear our testimonies a lot and we were able to communicate with them for the most part. The best moment for me while we were out, was getting to talk to a lady that we met at the park. Her name was Zoila and we had a really good conversation and she seemed really interested in the Church. We gave her a Restoration pamphlet and the time and place for church on Sunday and she agreed to go! Well, about an hour later we were walking back through that same park and I saw her sitting there still reading the pamphlet and I got the feeling to go back over and talk to her and get her address so the missionaries could go find her. So I went over and sat down next to her and asked what she thought about what she was reading. Her face lit up and she said that she thought it was very beautiful and she would like to know more!! So I talked to her about what she'd been reading for a while longer, and then I got her name and address and gave her a book of Mormon and let her know the missionaries would be in contact with her, and she told me that she was going to try really hard to go to church on Sunday. It was so cool! Best experience of the day.

We were able to talk to a lot of people that day, and we got lots of references, but that was my favorite one. :)

AND THEN! yesterday we left the CCM for several hours to go to central Lima (p.s. I got to see some of the really old Spanish buildings and they are beautiful!) and take care of some immigration stuff. I was sitting next to Hermana Goulding and a lady sat down next to us and we started talking to her. We found out she was from Colombia and was here on a work visa, but then our conversation got cut short and we thought that we wouldn't get to talk to her again. Well, we were standing in another line later and she came up to US and asked if we could tell her about our church! Of course we said yes, and by some miracle, we had pamplets and an extra book of mormon with us, so we talked to her for a while and gave her a pamplet and the book of mormon and she agreed to meet with the missionaries and she was so happy to talk to us. Best part though, was while we were talking to her one of the security guards who was standing nearby came over and asked if he could have a pamplet as well! What?! Of course we were like....''uh, of course you can!! So while Hna. Goulding talked to the lady from colombia I talked to the security guard and told him about the book of mormon and answered his questions as best as I could, and then I gave him a pamphlet and showed him the mormon.org website and told him to go on there to make an appointment with the missionaries in his area and he said he would! How crazy is that?!

AND THEN! Today on the bus ride home from the temple, Hna. Hulse and I sat next to a man and started talking to him and the first thing he said to us was, ''You girls have such beautiful eyes'' (he could speak a little bit of English) and we told him thank you, and then he asked us what we were doing here in Peru. So of course we started telling him about our missions and where we were from and about our church and we asked him if he would like to know more and he said YES! All we had to give him was a Liahona that had all the general conference addresses that we had just bought at the distribution center so we gave him that and wrote the mormon.org website on the back with our names, and then he wrote down his name and number and told us to send the missionaries his way. He gave me the paper with his name and number and then he leaned over to me and said, ''Just so you know, I work for the Peruvian police and if you are ever in trouble or need help with anything, you just give me a call, OK?'' He was such a nice man, and he seemed genuinely interested and I am excited to give his numbers to the full time missionaries here :)

 

Wow! It just goes to show that if you are willing to open your mouth and talk to people Heavenly Father will put people in your path who are willing to listen! I am so excited to get out in the field! I absolutely love it here in the CCM but I am so ready to go out and talk to as many people as I can and to share the gospel with them! Ahhh!

 

Also, might I add that all of those conversations were done in Spanish!, Broken, very slow Spanish, but they were able to understand me, and I was able to understand them :) So cool.

 

Well, I am running out of time, and I have so much more I want to tell you, but I am planning on writing you a letter after so I will include it in that :) Thank you for the emails from everyone! I love hearing from you. Also, I am STILL finding little notes from you in my stuff and they make me so happy, so thank you! 

 

One more thing! I saw a familiar face arrive here at the CCM today! Elder Parra from our stake just arrived, and it was so nice to see someone from back home :)

 

I love you all!

 

Con Mucho Amor,

 

Hermana Shelton