Lima Love

Awesome stuff going on! All the cousins look so grown up! Also Livs and Will! Meanwhile here in Peru things are getting better. I got a big surprise this last week, I got transferred again! I think it gives me a chance to really enjoy this last part of my mission and work hard until the end. My new area is called Casablanca (white house!) and I´m here with Elder Powell from Brigham City Utah. My first gringo companion. He´s great I got to know him earlier in my mission so it´s like serving with an old friend. He´s going to finish his mission a month before I do so we both have a lot of experience. It´s a unique situation and I´d like to take advantage of it. The only downside is that the percentage of Spanish that I speak during the day has gone way down.

Coming into a new area of course there´s a ton of stuff to get to know. The ward here is pretty decent size, around 150 people are coming to sacrament meeting. We have some great YSA in the ward who are looking to go on missions. We went on divisions this week with two who are named Isaac and Miguel. Isaac has his mission call to Mexico and is leaving on June 18th, he´s a great dude. Miguel was preparing for the mission but went through some difficulties with his family and went inactive a time. He´s now getting ready again to put his papers in so we´re helping him out all we can. There´s also a ton of great leaders here in the ward. We have an Elder´s quorum president who is 25 years old and served in Joshua Coultroups mission - the one in Argentina that´s the most south in the world? That one. The bishop and his cousellors are awesome and there is another companionship of missionaries in the ward who are Elder Webb from Arizona and Elder Monteiro from Brazil. Elder Monteiro recently started his mission and learned Spanish, but at our request he is teaching us a little bit of Portuguese.

Coming in I met a couple investigators the elders already had. A couple of them, after learning a little bit more about them, are going through some difficulties but unfortunately are not willing to go to church on Sunday so we are not going to keep visiting them. But I am learning that it all comes back to love. I love these people. We found this week a man named Jorge, he is 28 years old and lives with his partner and his 6 year old son. He admitted to us when he opened the door that that was the first time he had let people from a church into his house. He has a lot of doubts and a really analitical mind so naturally he was filled with questions, but he accepted to come to church and came on his own. After asking him about it he said he enjoyed the experience and is planning to come next Sunday! Also we have a handful of other people, including there is a family of converts that is repeatedly bringing their 14 year old neighbour to church. I talked with him and he is a funny guy. The struggle is that his family doesn´t express much interest in hearing the gospel. We´re gonna figure out the way to teach his family this week.

Elder Espejo with a mouse we found in our apartment