Week 34- Snow...

Dear Friends and Family,

 

So welcome to Puno… we had a mini snowball fight today. I don’t know at what point it snowed, it more rained, but there was slush on the ground. Kind of crazy. The other thing is I still haven’t received my cable to upload pictures, surely next week! Because I really do want to show you how beautiful it is here!

 

So a cute story I heard. There was a little girl who wanted to have her birthday party outside in a park. However, it was rainy season. She told all of her friends and began to pray. She prayed that if it were God’s will, that it wouldn’t rain for her birthday. Well she prayed and she prayed and finally came the day of her birthday. She was so excited, but… it POURED that day. Her friends snickered and made fun of her for praying so much and saying that God hadn’t answered her prayer. She looked at them boldly and said, ‘’No, God did answer my prayer and he said No.’’ This experience taught me a lot about humility and accepting God’s will. We sometimes pray for things that to us seem like a worthy request, but it isn’t God’s will. God answers yes sometimes, and sometimes no. Sometimes it’s a wait a little longer, but God DOES answers prayers. We just need to recognize how God is answering our prayers.

 

Part of my zone... eating ice cream in Puno

Well, this week we had training! With the Assistants and with President! It was AWESOME! Just a few thoughts from what I learned, Puno is known to be a HARD area of the mission. He talked a lot about living what we preach. The gospel of Christ brings happiness and we need to apply that to our own lives if we feel disanimated. Here, we are looking for the chosen investigators, but we need to remember that Christ struggled with this too… Think about the people He chose to be His followers, doubting Thomas, Peter who denied him 3 times, and Judas who betrayed Him. We also talked about what we felt when we took the sacrament. Most said grateful to receive a remission of their sins. He then relayed a story with Elder Holland who had come a little while back to the area to meet with all of the leaders. Elder Holland asked the same thing and after all of the responses, he said that he personally felt HORRIBLE during the sacrament. President Calderon then personalized it and asked me how I would feel if my sister had to die for me to pay for my sins. I would feel horrible. I would feel horrible that someone would have to pay SOOO much for my faults, but that’s how it is and although I do feel horrible that it had to be that way, I am grateful that someone loved me enough to suffer SOO much. President then compared the people here to Goliath… they’re hard to conquer, but then he asked, do you believe that you’re David? It was a really cool reunion. We all left with motivation and having had our spirits lifted.

 

Another fun story I heard that reminded me of what I needed to do. There once was a Penguin who learned how to fly, he thought it was SOOOO cool that he showed ALL of his friends. He taught them how to fly. They flew around all afternoon so excited with what they had learned and at the end of the day, they all walked home. I think a lot of the time, we are like the penguins who failed to apply what they learned.

 

So crazy news here in the mission, transfers are in another week and my companion has transfers for her health which means… I am most likely training. There are 35 new missionaries coming (7 are sisters) and only one elder is going home… which means we are opening 17 new areas… SUPER crazy. It makes me nervous and excited and blessed to be apart of this work that is rapidly going forth.

 

Fun joke of the week. I have no idea why, but I was trying to remember the Spanish word for 'alien'. I couldn’t remember and I was like hm… how do I describe this to my companion. I thought and then asked ‘’Como se llaman los extranjeros verdes de otras planetas’’ (what do you call the green foreigners from other planets) she then laughed and responded ‘’Greengo (gringo) we had a good laugh with that one and then she told me the actual word.

 

So some of the awesome people here. Isaac… we met him in the street, talked to him and then visited his family a week ago. We taught him about families and Joseph Smith and asked if he would pray about what we had taught. He said, No. I won’t pray for something that I don’t believe in. He said, I’m not saying it’s not true, but I won’t pray to know. We left SUPER discouraged. We prayed to know how to help him. We prayed for comfort. We talked about all of the things we could do to help him. Talk about the spirit, prayer, prophets. We decided that was it. We prepared a super legit lesson and then went back. When we got there, we felt that what we had prepared was ALL wrong. We ended up teaching the plan of salvation and that families can be together forever. EXACTLY what he needed. At the end he said that he wanted to grow closer to God again and that he owed it to his mom who had passed away a year ago. He said that he doesn’t know which path his mom wants him to take but that he would pray! WHAT???? Through the spirit, he decided that he was going to pray. Such a difference from before. Hopefully we can continue to help him

 

Then there is Soledad. We couldn’t find ANYONE yesterday and were walking around without any plans because plans A, B and C had already failed. No one was home. We decided to see if Soledad was there (an old investigator that I hadn’t met) Well, she was!!!  We taught her about the plan of salvation too and then her husband who is a less active member came. We talked about the importance of marriage and they said they wanted to get married!!!!! Friday we are going to go back to find out when and how we can help. Here in Salcedo, people can get married SUPER easily, basically you can get married tomorrow if you want! Such a blessing in compared to my other areas.

 

Well, my companion has 7 weeks left in her mission and she is awesome. I learn so much from her and although the work is tough, we are working and the Lord is blessing us! I LOVE LOVE LOVE being a missionary.

 

Thank you so much for all of your prayers. I wish the best.

 

Muna Cuiqui (I love you in Quetchua)

Jujariqui ( I miss you)

Love Always,

Hermana Lang