2 Weeks of Letters Because I forgot

AUG 20

HOla Familia!

What´s up? How´s everything going? How´s the summer? Summer vacations are almost over right? And Livs starts grade 10 that´s crazy. Also congrats Alex on getting the job, I know she really wanted that job. Here we are coming up on transfers again - next week on Tuesday. It´s crazy the time is flying by. It´s winter here right now but things are getting warmer and soon summer will be upon us again.

WOw this week we have had a couple experiences. One of them was that this week we have had a young man who is preparing for a mission (he turns 18 in December) accompany us the visit a couple investigators. The next day he presented us to his family of which none are members. We had a chance to teach his Mom and also his younger sister. They are awesome and he brought his sister to church on Sunday. But while we were they he brought us a glass of water to drink because it was hot. But we started to talk with him and his sister and as I went to take a sip of the water it was strangely bitter. SO I was like I don´t know what´s up with this water but I wanted to be sure so I took another sip and the same thing. I didn´t say anything but just kind of left it there until we said a prayer and were about to leave when Herbert (the young man) said Elder Thompson you didn´t drink the water. And we were like - just take a sip of the water. It turns out the water was from a kettle where they had been making herbal tea from some super bitter herb. He invited us a bit of the tea and it was like the nastiest thing I have tasted - literally the bitter cup.

This week we also passed through some tough times with our investigator Josselyn. Whenever we teach her she always has a ton of questions. She has asked and found out about the translation of the Book of Mormon, has pulled out scriptures from the Bible and asked about plural marriage too. We answered her question and then challenged her to act on the information we have given her and find out if it is true or not and invited her to be baptized the 25th of August. She accepted the invitation to pray personally about that date and we ended up seeing her on Saturday to see and verify her answer. We brought a young couple from the ward who the wife is a convert who had questions similar to Josselyn´s. I felt impressed to tell Josselyn that there will always be reasons to not believe in this, to not read, to not pray or go to church. Those reasons are temptations from the adversary. In the end she told us that she felt the 25th was too soon. But the next day came to church and after church surprised us by saying that she had thought a lot about the things she has felt in the past two weeks and the experience of the other sister that she shared the night before and told us that she has decided to be baptized this week. I really felt humbled because I know she was able to feel the Spirit and the answers from the Lord and trust that voice more than her doubts and fears.

I know really that the church is true, it really is a humbling experience being on the mission because I need to rely so much on the Lord. I know that we are nothing without him. I know the things I have felt in my life and am so glad to be able to share that with the people in Peru.

AUG 27

Hola Familia!

What´s up? Sounds like a good week, how is Grandma? I didn´t know that she lived in John Ware´s cabin that´s super cool. Also love the photos. That´s so weird to see Coleman´s engagement photos it´s a little surreal.

This week for us was pretty good, on Tuesday we had zone conference with President Godfrey. We also got a chance to meet President Godfrey´s Mom because she was in Peru visiting him. She is a missionary in Utah serving her second mission with her spouse. President shared a ton of good stuff with us that definitely helped me to change the way I think. On of the ways was in contacting people in the streets. Just opening your mouth and talking with every person. I tried it out and it works. This week I have been talking with about double the people I was contacting before. I really it a way to show faith in the Lord that he is preparing people and if we suffer with patience, preservere through rejections and other things he will reward us. We have been able to find a few really willing people this week.

As well President Godfrey made a huge announcement for the mission. The prophet will be visiting our mission on October 20th! That´s crazy! He told us that President Nelson has asked for time to be able to shake each of our hands. I can´t imagine the opportunity to meet the prophet face to face. It´s definitely something to prepare for this month.

This week we had the privilege to see Jhosselyn be baptized. After her experience last Sunday she has been super firm this week in her decision. On saturday she was baptized along with four other people that the other missionaries in our ward are teaching. That was a spiritual experience to be able to see that. Also present in Jhosslyn´s baptism was Ana Cristina. Our investigator who was baptized last month. She told us that she is going to insitute - that was super awesome to hear.

I´m always super happy to be meeting new people and working hard with Elder Chuqui. Funny thing is that the people here in pronounce my companions name Choo-key which is the same way they pronouce Chuky like the horror movie Chuky. So when we introduce ourselves a lot of Peruvians have had a good laugh with my companions last name - poor guy. But this week are transfers so we will see what happens...

Anyways, love you guys a lot!

In a moto-taxi, on top of the world, playing soccer on p-day, Josselyn's baptism, and cleaning the font