Week 64

Cant believe that clark`s on his way to JAPAN right now and you all are livin` it up in florida at the beach this very second!!! siiick! haha we had a great morning, spent with President and Hna. Marler at this park thing. went zip-lining which was pretty fun!! only 3 soles! this week seriously just fleeew on by!! been working like crazy here in the lovely el carmen. we had a wonderful fhe with the stake president last monday night and he asked each of us and his kids to share our testimonies. wow, I didn`t quite realize it, but my testimony has grown so much! ive grown a ton spiritually. and he also explained their plan for the ward split. it`ll be in about 2 years, but we`re in the beginning stages of it and really need to help the members be truly converted. he said that the stake specifically asked our mission president for hnas to come into the ward. they`ve always just had elders serving in the ward.he said that our ward is the strongest ward in the stake and the best ward in the mission. I totally agree, its by far my absolute favorite ward that I`ve served in thus far! the bishop asked us sat night to give talks and it went really well! I don`t really get nervous anymore, standing in front of loads of people that I still don`t know. you just gotta kill it, like hunter says!

 

Tuesday I got what we call trunky papers, what the mission office sends to get down your home info so they can book a flight home. ugh. it was so strange. I just don`t think about it, psh we`re OPENING an area!! gotta do WORK, son!! hna. manwill is wonderful. we truly are enjoying each day to the fullest!! there`s never a dull moment, always something random. like peruvians always telling us that they speak castillano here. obviously. haha

 

With all the elders in our zone and some of the hnos. from the ward, we`re the only women to play futbol, soccer, with them every Monday, Thursday, and Saturday mornings. i don`t have a talent for it at all, but its so much fun!! 

There`s a family that we visited and are so special. the wife is a little less-active, but is coming back into activity now. the husband was baptised this year and they have the goal of being sealed in November. we visited them and gifted them a magazine cut-out of the salt lake temple to always remember their goal. the wife cried. they are so incredibly humble and wonderful. familia jimenez. love them!! 

I started reading the Book of Mormon again, but this time in Spanish. some of my ultimate mission goals were to serve in the mountains and read the bom cover to cover in Spanish. so I`m working on it!! I`m in 2 Nephi now and my goal is to read 5 pages a day to finish in a few months. its wonderful and im pleasantly surprised by how much I can understand.

 

love you all tons, as you very well know!! ill tell you more next week. swim a ton in the beach for me:) 

Week 63

My last few moments in Otuzco were spent with Amelia, President Artemio´s wife, well now widow. She was so sad. Asked when we´d be coming back. But we´re not, which was so hard to tell someone who just really needs a friend right now. But I explained how the gospel can and will give her strength and comfort. And that the branch members are there for her too. and I talked about how in the Book of Mormon, Mormon knew that he was dying and wrote his last words for his son Moroni. Gave him the best of the best advice. I´ve been thinking a lot about her and hope you all have been also praying for her!!! pleaseeee!! 

So yeah leaving Otuzco was hard, wierd, and kinda good too. I´ll explain it all one day. Arrived in Trujillo and spent the night with the hermanas in California. When we all ate deeeeeeelicious burgers at Gringo Loco, NO ONE told me that I had to be at the chapel earlier than my companion to catch the bus to chimbote. so normal, we ate breakfast the next day with the CA hermanas, loaded all the suitcases up and went to my old chapel for cambios. I  looked for the piece of paper to say chimbote and was a little confused, cause they were all zone names that were in trujillo. soooooo turns out that I missed my bus!! haha whatever. gave me a chance to see some of my old friends from trujillo and catch up with hna. steckler. the elders sent me off on the bus after the transfers little devotional. Suuuper wierd being without a companion for a couple of hours, but I talked to the woman sitting next to me and she told me all about chimbote that I scribbled in my planner.

the zone leaders and my companion picked me up at the terminal and they took my stuff to our new room while we had lunch with the sister training leaders who are in our zone. I was really impressed with the elders, they helped us get all settled in our new area. we´ve got brand new matresses. they found a pensioniesta for us and her mom will wash our clothes. we live with a bunch of members, an elderly couple who crack us up cause they talk to eachother SOOOO loud. haha I´m sure their hearing has gotten pretty bad.

so we´re the very first hermanas to ever serve in the barrio I mean ward El Carmen. Not to sound like I got a big head or anything, but they seriously LOVE us here!!! for real, we´ve been visiting some of the members and they´re SO excited that we´ll be serving them in the ward. I´ve never felt so loved in a ward that I´ve had the blessing of serving in. proof of it, the stake president called us yesterday to invite us to his family´s fhe but we´ve already got 3 fhe teaching appts. haha and this is after our 1st impression of the stake president was when he messed with us on the street and asked if he were JW´s.haha looove it here!!!

our pensioniesta is the RS president and is suuuper nice!! my comp can´t eat rice, bread, or meat so I´m in HEAVEN with all these veggies that we eat every day!!! ahhhh its so wonderful. she made pancakes for us this morning. hna. manwill is awesome, love her. its my first time having a white companion for more than a year and the funny part is that we rarely speak english. so really its not very different at all. but what I LOVE about her is that she loves running too!! ahhh finally!! but murphey´s law, second morning we´re out running and I tripped on an uneven piece of sidewalk and took a nasty fall. a wierd slow-motion kind. so my ankles are pretty swollen, my right one more than my left. so on saturday we went on splits so that I could rest it for awhile. and a huasero..no idea how to spell it...massaged my ankle and it feels a little better. gotta be patient. its just frustrating cause we´ve got WORK to do!!! I wanna walk strong in el porvenir. im sure it´ll be better in a few days. 

 

we´ve been seeing tons of miracles here.members are legit and been getting good references. love you all and more than anything I love my Savior!!! 

ate at gringo loco our last night my last night in trujillo. absolutely delicious. we finally got our polos from the best district ever, la campina. these elders are some of my favorites of the mission!!! 

alexandra, a family that we recently got tight with. 

this is what happens when you give your planner to a little kid in relief society so he´ll stop crying. scribbled all over the bad boy.

Week 62

It’s been a rough morning, to say the least. I`m kinda speechless…or typeless­. O los dos. No se. President Artemio, our beloved branch president here in Otuzco passed away this morning. We just recently visited him with hno. Edgar, the 1<sup>st</sup> counselor Saturday night. We sang a few of his favorite hymns and it was so sad, he had such little energy that he could barely keep his eyes open in his bed. But somehow I could tell that he enjoyed it and the spirit that we brought. His wife, Amelia who isn`t a member sang with us and a few of their daughters that are visiting from Trujillo. There`s a special spirit in his room, full of such love of so many that admire him. And yesterday our branch was visited by the 2<sup>nd</sup> counselor of the mission, Presidente Rojas who pleaded for all the branch members to keep praying for President Artemio and especially his family. Yesterday afternoon Elder Boekweg told us that Hermana Gonzalez and I are BOTH headed out of Otuzco. Which I think is kinda funny cause I barely even told you all about it and now we`re peacing out. Just when I thought that things couldn`t get any crazier or random, they certainly just did!! Anyway so last night and this morning, we were packing up and got a phone call that President died.

We visited his wife and other family members and just held them as they cried. President Artemio looked so peaceful, that he`s finally not suffering in pain anymore. He couldn`t talk or eat and was in such pain constantly. My companion and I are going to print out the pictures that we took when our zone of missionaries went to visit and sing to him. And made a nice gift with a picture of the savior for the funeral since we won`t be here. When we went to give comfort to his family this morning, we saw a ton of the branch members there helping move jugs of water to make space for the funeral service. I`m grateful for the unity and service that these wonderful and humble members have and give.

Ah its so strange, in just a few hours we have to head out and be in Trujillo by 7ish tonight. I`m headed to open an area in Chimbote, zone Chimbote peru. Hna. Manwill will be my companion. Which is funny cause she just finished a transfer being companions with mi hijita, Hermana sosa. We`ll be helping a ward split into 2 and I`ll be in the same zone as elder nelson! Oh Chimbote…I`m excited and nervous! 3^rd time opening an area in the last 2 months ish of my mission. We`ll see how this plays out. Love you tons and am so grateful for the plan of salvation. Wow this life is so beautiful, but so short. I know now more than ever that the Savior lives and is our pathway to our Salvation. Please keep the family Guzman Santos en  in your prayers!! thanks

Week 61

 

It literally just took me 10 minutes to open up my email and the missionary portal to write prez still has this gold spinny circle thing that its loading. Psh at least I hope so! Testing my patience right here yo. Things are good here in Otuzco, hard adjusting from the amazing Santiago de Chuco but its aight. We had a karaoke night with the branch members on Thursday that was pretty fun! And hilarious. My companion and I sang the primary song Child´s Prayer duet. A 9 year old recent convert Anthony has been in the hospital for a week now, poor kid and we´ve been visiting him for a little bit each day. He´s getting so bored just chillin in the hospital. Him and his friends were lighting stuff on fire and he got really badly burned on his hands and on one of his legs. We decorated his hospital room and made these cool magnet things for his bed frame. And have been bringing liahona´s to read and his mom cause she´s always in the hospital too. And our branch president is literally dying of cancer, super sick. Can´t even talk cause it hurts too bad. So all the members of the branch have been asked to visit him cause he doesn´t wanna be alone. So we work more with his 1^st counselor and he´s a wonderful leader. I just feel bad cause he has tons of responsibilities:like the whole branch presidency. 3 in 1. We went to Trujillo for pday last week! It was pretty fun to get out and see a real city again. Got a glimpse of my old district too, they were walking in the plaza de armas when we were headed to McDonald´s to eat lunch. Good pday. Escept the ride to and from Trujillo is so crazy! Tons of fast turns and crazy hills. We´ve been finding a ton of new investigators and have been trying to dig up potential people to teach in the area book from when the elders were working in our area. We saw a bad moto accident the other day. I just gasped. 2 motorcycles ran into eachother as they were turning a corner. Ugh it was so bad!!!

We live in a room next to the other hermanas in our area which is pretty cool, get to see them tons. otuzco is divided into 3 areas: otuzco 1 where we are working, otuzco 2 with the other hermanas and otuzco 3 with the elders.hna. gonzalexz actually served here in otuzco 2 for 8 months, so I don´t know how long she´ll be here. our area is by far the most spread out and generally has lower numbers than the other areas. but whatevs, we´ve seen some pretty incredible miracles so far. the streets are really steep and up-hill and with the change in altitude, phew sometimes its hard to breathe. the majority of the people live in adobe homes with dirt floors. pigs, horses, chicken, and wild dogs roam the streets. everyone´s always headed to the chacra to harvest their potatoes, veggies, and corn. gotta love the people from the chacra, especially when they always just stare at me as we walk by. haha love it. the drunks are worse, but eh I´m used to it.

hope everyone´s doing really well! please tell aunt mary that I got her letter, thanks! and that of course I´ll write her back asap. clark, for real thank you soo very much for your package! psh the oreos, snickers, sour patch kids, and twix are all gone. thank you, thank you!! crazy that it was 4th of july, just was a normal day here. chillly here in the mountains. we have permission to watch 2 of the world cup games as a district, isn´t that cool? I´ve been following it a little bit. and supposedly we´re gonna whip up some classic american cookies together too. fun times! zone conference tomorrow so the other hnas. from huamachuco are gonna crash at our place tonight for the mtng tomorrow.