Mornings, International Lunches, and Lugging Heavy Things

Things are going pretty good here in Lima. Just working hard. My companions are struggling a little bit with obeying the schedule. They were companions in the MTC and have become really good friends, so they want to stay up talking all night. They go to bed late, and then get up late in the morning. It's been a little hard trying to help them. I'll admit, there were days when I first started my mission when I seriously struggled to get out of bed in the morning, and I wasn't always perfect with that. So I prayed and fasted for God's help, and since this last transfer I'm not struggling to get out of bed and even have time to exercise in the morning. So I'm trying to be a good example for my companions. Other than that, we have been doing really well. We've had lots of divisions to get to even more lessons, and yesterday was a little crazy but we got a lot of work done. There are lots of perks to being in a trio!

We also cook lunch for one another. Each person has 2 days during the week to cook, and on Monday for P-Day we buy something to eat. Since we started doing this, I've made chili dogs (Mexican style), fettucini alfredo, pancakes, and soup. My companions have made some really good Chinese food and chicken saltado and wraps. We are loving eating food from different countries, and we're super happy to not be eating rice -- ha ha! In fact, my companions loved the fettucini alfredo so much they asked me to make it again this week. I'm glad they like it -- I learned from the best (love you Mom)!

On the left is Herman McIntosh who is from Panama.
Hermana Cardozo (on the right) is from Argentina.

This Sunday is Stake Conference here in our stake. I'm excited because I will get to hear from another General Authority who is coming to the conference (a Seventy I believe). The downside is that we can't have any baptisms this week. Also, here in Lima they hold their elections on the 4th and 5th of October, and in Peru it is against the law to hold any gatherings of any kind that weekend. So just like last year, there won't be any Church on October 4th and 5th even though it's General Conference! In Peru, they church leaders record Conference and we get to watch it on October 11th and 12th instead. I was super bummed that I would have to watch it a week after, but some of the leaders did invite us over to their homes to watch some of Conference on the 4th and 5th, so I'm super happy about that. The bad thing to all of this is that this means we also can't have any baptisms on the 4th or the 11th of October either -- and not just our Stake, but the whole Mission (and probably all of the missions in Peru)! That's a lot of weeks without any baptisms, but we just have to keep working hard.

Speaking of baptisms, the S. family wasn't baptized this week. They are having a hard time keeping their commitments, but we're still working with them. We hope they will be ready in October. However, we have a baptism still scheduled for the 27th of September for a 9-year-old boy named S. We've been working with his family to reactivate, or rescue them. They started coming to our ward last week, and when they tried to move their records to the new ward, they realized that there was no record of their son's baptism. So now he has to be baptized again and we're going to help him be ready. Also, the P. family has yet to be sealed in the temple! So we're going to rescue this family, baptize S., and then help them be sealed together! We're super excited for them.

On Saturday, we performed some service by helping a family in the ward move to another home, and they had lots of heavy things! I don't think the Elders were very happy about lugging so many things up to the 3rd floor where the new home is, but they did it and got their exercise in for the day! Otherwise a pretty normal week.