Monday, March 12, 2018

Pamlona and Pure Miracles

Dear Family and Friends,

Well, let me tell you about last Monday. For lunch we went to the mall and another zone was there all together and so as the caption hints we had a family reunion. Elder Halliday, Elder Limao, Elder Me, and Elder Huanca. What is crazier is that Elder Halliday's trainer is still in the mission so we have 5 generations. That was really fun pics below. We also went shopping and I was in a good mood so I bought Elder Huanca and I some Star Wars shirts, pics also below.

We aren't even to the good part yet. While proselyting at night we were in the house of one of our ,as the kids say, "eternal investigators" but really we are just waiting so they can get married so they can be as the kids say "an eternal family" which will probably happen in June, they already act like members though but you know, you gotta live the commandments. Anyway, so we were teaching them and we are sort of running out of ideas of what to do because they have already listened to every lesson more than 100 times, let me remind you they started investigating last June. Well there we were in the middle of the lesson and the mom stopped us and asked how easy it would be for her kid to be a member of the church so he could go to boys camp. It about threw me out of my chair I just assumed they wanted to get baptized all together. Long confusing story short Jordan, the 12 year old, is going to get baptized here shortly. Along with Alexander and Alfredo who will be baptized this week.

This week we revisited Sara who was an old investigator from Elder Infante and his old companion. She had been taught everything and actually had a baptismal interview but the week leading up to her baptism she saw anti Mormon propaganda and lost it all. She became cold and began contending with us very quickly. We stopped passing by a while ago but we always awkwardly walked by her massage salon because it is on one of the busier streets in our area. This last Wednesday she sought us out said she wanted to talk. Long spiritual story short she said that while she was listening to the missionaries she felt happiness and peace but while she was looking stuff up on the Internet she felt sick, irritable, and miserable. We started from 0 with her with the very basics of prayer and we will go from there.

Yesterday we had a very powerful lesson. We were teaching a man who had assisted a church before but had left it because he stopped believing in God after the death of his 23 year old son. He asked us "In your church do you guys believe in miracles?" we replied of course we do, then he said "I cannot tell you how hard I prayed for my son to live. I had spent hours praying. Why did he die?" Obviously a very delicate and scary situation and he was already in tears before we the account in Alma when the women and children are suffering. Even though we have the spirit with us as we teach doesn't mean we will be able to have an answer to every question and I couldn't tell this man exactly why his son died, but I could tell him that God did know and that God loves him. I left his house feeling pretty good.

I guess one thing I don't talk about a lot but I should is the food here. I eat really good food here and the Peruvians really like to talk about their food, they have all got weird names like Lomo Saltado, Papa la Huancaina, Arroz con pollo (flashback to my farewell) they eat that a lot, they have a dish called noodles with 7 sauces. Let's just say there are a lot of condiments on everything so I wouldn't say I eat the healthiest of things but they are very flavorful. Personally, my favorite would be either Lomo Saltado or Green Noodles. Ok now the negative part about the food, they have something that has a nickname Matagringo (Gringo Killer) it is an olive which I know doesn't sound menacing but it is so different and it doesn't get along with my taste buds at all but the pensionista here gives it to us all the time because she knows we don't like it and wants to teach us to like it. So yes I do willfully eat it and I don't complain even though everyone knows that on the inside I'd rather eat a snail again. So compared to that the tomatoes and onions which I didn't liked before, now don't seem anyway near as bad.
Those of you who read this and remember the cookies that Adrian Porras used to bring to school we also eat those a lot. As far as deserts go I would say my favorite is a simple sweet bread with Manjar Blanco on the inside.
Well now that I think about it I probably should have started out talking about the food and ending off with the spiritual stuff but oh well.  Hope you all have a great week.  

Love,

Elder Craythorne








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