November 8, 2010
Dear family,
First thing, to clear up my error. I meant Alma 26:12 last week formy scripture of the week so if you were a little confused, it was myfault.Second about the title. Crazy thing here... Stores have alreadystarted setting things up for Christmas. And its weird for me,because the closer we get to Christmas, the warmer it is getting. Itprobably won`t warm up a whole lot more, but it is pretty nice to haveit a little warmer.Sounds like this last week was pretty good at home. Its good to hearthat Dad is finally getting to the end of his busy season. Id say 80hours of work is pretty close to a lot. :) Sounds like the soccerseason was pretty good overall and sounds like Adam had a prettydominant team. Kind of like Team San Luis in the Lima Centralmission. ha ha Im glad to hear that Dad got an opportunity to teachthe High Priests in the ward. Sounds like the garden will be a littlebetter next year. I just have one request... PLANT MORESTRAWBERRIES!!! If you think you have too many, plant more. :) Illjust tell you now that when I get back from my mission I am going towant them every day. :) We are not allowed to eat strawberries herebecause they are hard to clean and they will make us sick, so I reallymiss strawberries and raspberries (which they don´t have) a lot.This week had a few highs and more lows...Lets start with the lows, then we can finish happy. :) None of ourinvestigators are progressing (with the exception of Carmen). Wehaven`t been able to find Jeffrey at home and his family says he hasbeen drinking, which is sad for us. I don`t know how much Ive saidabout Jeffrey, but Jeffrey has had an incredibly difficult life andhas a lot of mistakes in his past, but he wants to change. Its just aslow process that we wish would go a little faster. Milagros didn`tcome to church yesterday so we have to move her baptism back a week tothe 20th so that she can attend church. She has been having problemswith her brother. We aren`t sure about the details, but it makes itdifficult for her to attend church. We hope to show her theimportance of it this week. Other problem is that none of ourinvestigators are coming to church, and we aren`t sure what to doabout it. We call some Sunday morning and they say they are coming,and don`t. We look for some and they don`t answer the door. We arekind of at a difficult spot with this. Because of this we don`t haveany investigators that are really progressing. (Milagros kind of is,and kind of isn`t, we`ll see how this week goes.) If you have anyideas for how we can motivate for church, please let me know. Now the highs!!!First of the world. Funny, interesting, scary tidbits.Interesting first. There is a KPMG office in my mission, really closeto my mission office. When we were going to our Reunion de Cambios(Transfer Meeting) we passed it. Its tall green and has a big KPMGsign at the top. (Hence the knowledge about the building.) I plan ontaking a picture eventually. I don`t have one now though.Funny and slightly scary... I almost died... Well I almost dieeverytime I get in a bus or taxi, because traffic here in Lima isinsane... but this story tops the rest... (until another one comes).We were doing some service for our pensionista (The sister who we payto feed us). And we were taking a quick taxi across our sector. Weneeded to be one street over to the right, but the road coming up wasa one way road travelling to our left. So our taxi driver decided todrive in REVERSE... We drove backwards into oncoming traffic for anentire block. I was in the back seat and watched as more and moreheadlights came towards us. Obviously, we survived, but it was prettyfrightening.Other awesome thing, I ate something weird this week and it wasdelicious... Its called anticucho... and its a kind of meat from theheart of a cow... So I ate cow heart... And it was probably one ofthe best things Ive had since I got here. cool huh? This week we had the baptism of Carmen Lopez, and it was awesome. Thespirit was strong and it was the third family we have completed thatcan now prepare to visit the temple. Her husband Anibal, who wasbaptized in my first week here, bore a really strong testimony that Ididn`t expect from him. He doesn`t talk very much in our lessons, soI didn`t think he would say much, but his testimony was great. Carmenalso bore her testimony and talked about how her heart was opened tothe church. Its interesting, because Carmen was the first one themissionaries talked to, but she wasn`t really interested. First herdaughter Pamela was baptized about 8 months ago and then here husbandwas baptized 6 weeks ago, and now all of their family is baptized...This gave me strength this week, because we had such a hard time withMilagros and Jeffrey. Other highlight is Lourdes. We actuallyhaven`t taught her yet, but we think she is going to be great. Wewere looking for an old investigator and one of our contacts and theyweren`t home so we were going to our next appointment and Lourdesyelled to us in the street and was really excited to talk to us... Inother words, she found us. And we planned to visit her another timebecause she was busy at that moment and we weren`t at her home, so wegot her phone number. We were walking down another street later andpassed a quinta (basically an alley with 10 to 20 small homes in it)and to our surprise, we found Lourdes again. This time in front ofher house. She proceeded to show us which house was hers and she isreally excited to hear about the gospel from us. We plan on visitingher this week, so we will see how it goes.Our Zone meeting was good today too... President Tyler came to observeand wound up teaching us about why Africans couldn`t have thepriesthood until the revelation in the 70s to President Kimball. Ilearned a ton, and now understand a little more about Cain and thecurses that were upon his seed.My scripture of the week is Mosiah 5:15... This ones correct. :) Thisis about enduring to the end and I think it is a great scripture forall members to know. I love you all. I hope that everything continuesto go well. Remember that the church is true, and that we can do allthings through faith in Jesus Christ.Tyler