Commitments, Training Meeting, and Recipes

29 July 2013

This week was actually kind of hard for me. Since I'm still pretty new at this whole missionary thing, I was not expecting a lot of things to happen with my investigators that did. Out of all the investigators we found last week, only one of them is still progressing and excited to hear from us. It made me really sad when the people I had started to care about didn't want to continue to hear about the gospel or keep the commitments. Nora, the picarone vender, has no desire to know if the Book of Mormon is true and is happy with her Bible. She feels that going to church is unnecessary as long as she has faith in Christ. We spent an hour and a half with her trying to explain these things and why they were important, but she still didn't feel any differently. We committed her one more time to read and pray, and we're going to come back to visit her one more time, but she probably won't change the way she feels. It was super sad for me because I couldn't understand why someone would not want to have the blessings that come from reading the Book of Mormon and living the gospel.

On the other hand, Henry is doing awesome! He is totally progressing. This last week, we had a combined lesson with him and another investigator named Marco (that was kind of weird). During the lesson, though, Henry accepted a baptismal date for the 17th! (hesitantly at first, but ok with it before the end). However, Henry heard us make a second appointment with Marco for the next day in the chapel. The next day, Marco didn't show up, but Henry did! He told us he didn't have anything going on and wanted to hear more from us. It was a super great lesson! 

Some of my amigas who come talk to us after they get
out of school when we play soccer at the park on P-Day.

Later that same night, we had English classes for the first time! We had 5 people show up, which is pretty good for not handing out flyers or announcing it more than once in sacrament meeting. They actually knew a lot a English already, and this week we're going to start teaching grammar. Crazy, right? Lots of people here know more English than most of the people we were teaching in New York! (What does that say about the US education system?)

Anyway, back to Henry. We taught him another lesson on Saturday. We were on divisions, so it was just Hermana Solis and I that we supposed to go to his house. We didn't want to go just the two of us, so went to a member's house close by and asked for someone to come with us. They sent out their 21-(I think)-year-old son, Jaime, and at first he kind of didn't want to go. However, once we got into the lesson, he was awesome! If he hadn't already told me he hadn't served a mission, I would have thought he had! It was a great lesson. We talked about baptism and the sacrament, and near the end Jaime mentioned something about the Word of Wisdom. Well, we hadn't taught that yet, and Henry had family coming over, so we left him with a pamphlet on it and told him we'd call him. Well, we called him on Sunday and he told us he'd been reading and praying and felt great, and that even though it was his dad's birthday, he wasn't drinking with his family. Wow, right? We have another cita with him tonight, so hopefully that will go super well too!

Hermanas Training Meeting

Another really great experience I had this week was that we had a Hermanas Training Meeting with the mission president. All the sisters in the mission were there, including Hermana Lind!!! She got here last Wedensday, and it was super cool to see her and Hermana Hyer again. There are 25 sisters in our mission now, and actually more than half of them are North American! That was a surprise to me. Anyway, we learned a lot about contacting people and giving commitments. We practiced giving the baptismal commitment and learned about when we should stop teaching an investigator that isn't progressing in order to spend the Lord's time more wisely. It was incredibly spiritual and I learned a lot! The lunch was prepared by Sister Archibald, and it was an American-style salad and ham sandwhich, and everyone was extremely excited! It was so good! Overall, it was a super fun day!

At the Hermanas Training Meeting, our team came in second place
while trying to build the tallest tower with straws.

I'm getting better at teaching, and if I'm not too tired I can usually participate quite a bit in the lessons. My spanish is not too bad! I actually surprised the mission president during our Sisters Training Meeting by talking with him in spanish and giving a short thought to the sisters. He looked kind of surprised haha! It's totally the spirit, though. Whenever I can feel the spirit I can talk quite a bit and remember lots of words. I love it, and I definitely have a testimony of the gift of tongues!

Last Saturday, the Relief Society held a Pioneer Day celebration to remember the Mormon pioneers. It was kind of interesting, but it made me happy to know it is celebrated at least a little throughout the Church, and not just in Utah. Along those same lines, yesterday and today are the Independence Days for Peru. No really big celebrations in our neighborhood as far as I have seen, although a lot of the roads are blocked off for the parades (although we haven't seen any of the parades). The main thing I have seen is that a lot of the people use the holiday as a reason to get drunk.

Of my MTC roomies, Hermana Jones is still waiting
for her visa in Texas, but Hermana Lind joined
Hermana Hyer and myself in Peru this past week.

I am pretty sure that our apartment is the only one in the mission with an oven. Since I arrived, I've made everyone sizzles a few times and it's been fun! I totally want to try making cupcakes one p-day if I can find all the ingredients. Where we are located, we can't find baking soda or sour cream, which is a problem. On the other hand, it's been kind of fun to see the other girls make things and see how they do it. I have a killer recipe for tres leches now! My favorite food here is aji de gallina (spicy creamed chicken), and their tallerines verdes (noodles with spinach and basil sauce) is super rico too! I'm totally going to buy some recipe books here before I come home!