Week 3 Letter

Wednesday, June 29, 2016

¡Hola Famlee!

So things have pretty much settled in here at the grand ol’ CCM. I gave Katie the assignment to look that up but it just means MTC in Spanish. Going to the temple is one of my favorite things to do here, and I am so glad that I get to go every week. I don’t know how often I will get to go in Trujillo. BUT! It is in my mission. My Mission President in Trujillo and his wife just got to Peru yesterday. So that is exciting. I will be their first missionary; along with the other 5 going there this transfer. I am way excited. As for the language, the gift of tongues is so real, and I pray every day to receive it. I can understand way more than I can speak but that is just how it goes. I am doing pretty well for knowing how to count to 11 and say aqua before entering the CCM. Haha.

Sunday was so great. I love Sundays here. It started off with my leadership meeting in the morning. That was great. And then I played the piano for sacrament meeting. But then, I got asked to speak in Spanish. We all prepare talks and then they just ask you when they announce it over the pulpit. So I had a really great talk written but I have a serious problem with reading a talk in front of people. I HAVE to look at the audience, which I guess is a good thing but it is way easier to do that in English. My district and the other older district (we all got here at the same time and now there is a new group of younger missionaries) did a musical number that I arranged, Abide with Me tis Eventide. They sang the first 2 versus in Spanish and the last in English. I did as much as I could with the piano part as the 20 minutes of practice allowed me to do. But the leaders said it was the best they had ever heard. They sounded so good singing. The Spirit was so strong. I conducted Relief society in Spanish and played a bunch of hymns for our hymns class. Hermana Raeside always does all the music. She is from Australia, super loud, and I LOVE her. She loves that I will follow her when she leads or does musical numbers. She put together that CES musical number mom and dad heard the other day. For DEVO on Tuesday, I played of course, but then I accompanied some violins and then Hermana Raeside put together the EFY medley for our district to do at the end. It was so powerful! I really loved playing the piano this week. It felt so good. But funny story, in the opening hymn of the devo, my contact ripped….so I played the first musical number with one eye. I was just gonna tough it out for the closing EFY song, but there is no way when something is ripping in your eye so I went and got my glasses. Ya, my eye is still super red. I have run a lot for physical activity with one of my comps and it has been so glorious. I love it. We don’t have physical activity with anyone anymore and the Latinos that we use to play with are all in the field now. And the new Latinos don’t like playing with us. Understandable. Haha. But the runs have been very much appreciated.

Okay, so parable time. Peru has magical cookies called alfajores. It’s like 2 shortbread type cookies covered in powdered sugar and filled with caramel. Once I had one, I wanted to do nothing but share it with EVERYONE I knew. Hey, that sounds like the gospel! Haha. One of my teachers made some for us and will give us the recipe when we leave. She is a pastry chef and I love it. Haha. I went proselyting this week! I went out with my comps and a missionary from the Lima East mission. Holy humbling. The streets are filled with dogs and garbage and people are just so poor! But so nice. I would do the contacts. I would stop people, give them a card, introduce us, talk about the church, invite to church, bear testimony, and hand it over to the missionary to take their information and write out the appointment. So cool! I am so excited! I just forgot about my fear of speaking Spanish and went for it. You really just talk to everyone. I could see all the people in white, and knew that they needed the gospel in their lives. I loved it.

Well, I am out of time, but just know that I love you all. The gospel is so true. The Book of Mormon

is the greatest tool we have. I love using it as my focus in teaching. I love you!

My District