June 2, 2014

Happy birthday to Kim this week! I hope it is a special day for you!

Well family, we are in June. Here in Peru it doesn`t feel much like it. It should be cooling down, but it`s not. I mentioned how the mosquitoes were bad? The ants aren`t much better and Hermana Ascencio and I have had to have a few battles with them to be able to sleep at night. They like to join us, but more than anything they like to eat while we sleep and we have all the lovely white itchy bumps all over us the next day. They`re cute.

This last week flew by. Honestly, we really didn`t have a ton of success as far as proselyting goes, but we did have our Noche de Tortas activity and it was a huge success. There were 22 people there as invited guests and about 135 assisted. That is about as many, if not more, as we have in church on Sundays! It was a ton of work, but it payed off. The members had a lot of fun and the Bishop was really pleased. It gave a good impression also of the church and how much we value the family as they were able to play, compete, and enjoy time together. Even our recent convert Isaac who is 73 was there with his son enjoying it. I have never seen him smile and laugh so much. We can normally only be out until, at the latest, 9:30, but we got permission to be out until 9:40. We were eeking to getting in by 9:45 I think. It was all kind of crazy. After, our pensionista brought us dinner and cake to our room -- we hadn`t eaten since about 1. We were tired, but it was a fun way to finish this change. 

Last night we received our changes. Hermana Ascencio will go to Casa Grande, Chiclin -- interestingly that at one point this was going to be one of my areas, but for some reason I never got sent there. I will stay here and I will be working with an Hermana Skirvin. I don`t know here super well, but she is a good girl. She`s from Utah, I think, and has to have a year or so on her mission. It`s likely that she will ¨kill me¨ here in this ward. It`ll be fun to work with someone else who has time on the mission and to learn from her and have new experiences.

One of my zone leaders, Elder Cortez, finishes at the same time as me and his companion, Elder Guerra, likes to remind us a lot of how much time we have left. It`s obnoxious, but I feel like this change will be fun and I feel like I`m starting fresh -- I just can`t go back to not speaking any Spanish and not understanding anything. That was the worst haha.

Well, I love you all. Keep being good, keep working hard, keep being strong and firm in the faith. Share the Gospel in every chance you get.

Love Hermana Butterfield