June 30, 2014

Hello family! Happy fourth of July this weekend. Eat some good food and enjoy being outside for me and don´t get too burned. 

The picture is from last Monday. We went to the beach with the Marler's to play baseball and build sandcastles. It was really a fun time. They are so great. We were there as a zone and we got to be there with my old zone -- not that anyone there now was with me when I was there.  Always fun to see good friends though. 

This week was really pretty good. We´ve been having good success with Camila and now her family as well. I know we will see good things come from all the time we have spent there. They are good people and we have had a lot of really good lessons and experiences with them this week.

The Familia Goicochea also had a good experience at the temple. Segundo and Consuelo normally have come to church to bring their daughter Anasofia, but since they got in at four in the morning she wasn´t feeling very well and they came without her! So cool. We are going to have a lesson with them on Wednesday with the bishop. I think we are going to invite them to be baptized again. I feel good about it.

I had to give a talk on Sunday on scripture study. I got really good remarks and comments so I think it went well. I felt really pretty good about it. I was really happy because I actually hadn´t written anything down. I had some ideas and personal experiences and the idea I wanted to get across and it really just flowed out. The bishop called me last night to tell me I hit it right on. He also called to say how happy he was because Luis, a YSA new convert had remarked to him how powerful our lesson had been with Camila that day. Made me feel very good and happy. 

My focus this change really has been the members. I can feel their love now so much more and I really hope that the efforts that have been made will pay off. If anything I am happy with it and I feel so happy here in my ward. 

There was a scripture I really loved in Deuteronomy 4:9. at this moment I can´t remember for the life of me what it says, but it was good enough that I wrote it down. Look it up hehe

Things are good here. I´m happy and working hard. I´m staying focused and loving these fabulous people. 16 months sure has been an interesting time, but it´s a good kind of interesting.

Be good, stay strong, love love love

love, Hermana Butterfield

June 23, 2014

We´re in the last full week of June. Whoa. That´s kinda crazy. I hope that you´re all doing well and that your week was great.

This week was really pretty calm. It was really fun because on Friday we were able to go out proselyting with Hermana Marler for a couple of hours. The coolest part was that she was able to accompany us for a lesson with the Goicochea family. We had planned on teaching them about tithing and fasting because it was something they still needed and they had had questions, but when we went to start I felt like temples was something we should talk about. Our ward has their temple trip this week and I knew that Consuelo was looking at going to accompany her daughter Ana Sofia and just to see the temple and it´s grounds. Come to find out that Segundo, the dad, was also wanting to go and was going to talk to the bishop. It looks like they will be going. Although they won´t be able to enter, they want to go to see it. We asked the ward council to say lots of prayers so that it could be a good spiritual experience for them. We explained that a lot of times people feel that baptism is all that missionaries want people to do. I told them that that wasn´t my goal for them, but them being able to go to the temple to make covenants there was my purpose. They seemed to get it this time. I am really praying that when they come back next week they will be more prepared to make decisions.

Camila also accepted to have her baptismal interview! She accepted a date as well, but sometimes it´s hard to see if she really wants it, or if she is just saying things. We´ll see how her interview goes. We also asked ward counsel for their prayers.

We just keep working trying to find support from the members. We are gaining their confidence slowly, but surely. We may not be seeing fruits yet, but at least hopefully the ward can feel strengthened.

Saturday night there was a stake activity that we went to help at. We basically, as missionaries, took turns teaching parts of the plan of salvation. It was an activity for family history work and a lot of people left really excited about that work. Pretty cool.

All is going well here. We just keep plugging along. I hope you are all doing well. Love you lots!

Love,
Hermana Butterfield

June 16, 2014

Hello!

I hope your father`s day was great! It sounds like it was a good day.

I love the pictures of my nephews. How cute are they? How cool about the tricycle. It`s a nice one too...thanks Carol! It`s so crazy how big they are. They seem like happy chillens....are they? Sometimes I watch kids here and as cute as they are I cringe and hope that my nephews are a bit better behaved haha

Things continue here in the good old ward Gedeon. Hermana Skirvin and I keep working hard. We are trying to gain trust and confidence with the members. I made some little cards for father`s day and we took them to a couple of the men in the ward to wish them a buen dia. We have been visiting a lot of families as well and are hoping that it pays off. We were able to find a few more people this week as well which was great. I`m really hoping that we can get them to progress. 

We talked with Camila about the gospel of Jesus Christ again. We went over faith, repentance, baptism, the gift of the holy ghost and enduring to the end. We invited her to be baptized again. I asked her if she still had desires to be baptized and she said yes, but that she felt like there was still more she needed to know. We`ve taught her everything! Bah! So we went over the baptismal interview  questions. There are a few things we can go back over, but when she realized that she actually knows a lot I think it helped her. I am really hoping and praying that we can get her to progress. 

The familia Goicochea (Segundo and Consuelo) will hopefully start to progress soon as well. They have almost everything, they just don`t want to commit to baptism yet....grrr. I think we are going to invite our ward counsel to pray and fast with us to get them involved and feel the  importance. Hopefully we can see some progress there.

Isaac had an interview with the Bishop this week and he blessed the water in sacrament meeting yesterday. So cool. I love my job.

So crazy story of the week; Hermana Skirvin and I were walking down the road the other day. To one side is the road and to the other there is a big tall ¨wall¨ (actually the side of houses, but it looks and acts more like a great big wall). Anyway, we`re walking and we hear this loud crashing noise behind us. Not an abnormal noise, I thought it was a  guy with his cart  and he had moved something and it was just the things on his cart moving. I glanced around and there is a car speeding towards us. I push Hermana Skirvin and we went running. A lady had been driving and must have been going too fast because she hit this parked car and it went up over the curb fast and spinning hit the wall, bounced off and went back into the street all crashed up. It seemed like everyone was OK and we were just fine. freaked me out for a couple seconds, but everyone was alright. Poor lady that was driving. We still don`t know what actually happened. We didn`t stick around afterwards...we aren`t supposed to. But we`re fine. It was just kind of crazy. Then later that day we saw another accident just in front of us and then that night there was a tremor that was big enough it woke me up. I have been thanking my heavenly father a lot these days for keeping us safe. I know we are definitely watched over and protected.

Well, I love you all so much. Please be good, stay strong, and don`t be easily offended. Love, have patience, read the scriptures, pray, and grow. 

 

Love Hermana Butterfield

June 9, 2014

Another week! Before you think I didn`t remember -- HAPPY FATHER`S DAY on Sunday to Dad, Kyle, and Jake. Thanks for being such good dads to some pretty important people in my life. I`m sad I can`t call, but I`ll be thinking of you and maybe we can arrange something in a couple months hehe

So my new companion is....AWESOME! I love her. Her name is Sister Skirvin. She`s from Alpine, Utah. She actually is from California and her and her sisters´s (she`s a triplet) birth mom is Mexican so everyone expects her to be Latina, but she`s from the States. She has 13 months in the mission. She`s really quiet and she has struggled with the language a bit, but I`m just having a blast with her. She`s a sweet heart. She is passing through some tough things right now, though and I think it would be nice to keep her and I in your prayers. Please do that for me? 

I had a few reality checks this week. My trunky name tag came...I still can`t wear it, but it`s here. I quickly placed it at the bottom of one of my drawers so I don`t have to look at it haha. Right after that, an Elder from the office called to ask me about some things because he was buying our flight tickets...I gave him your cell number dad because I don`t know what the plans are. Hopefully he got a hold of you. President Marler also has called a couple of times to see how my companion and I are doing haha...it`s been interesting, but hopefully that is all behind now and I can just focus. 

We spent the week really trying to get to know more members and ¨gain favor in their eyes¨. I talked to President about that and I just felt like it was necessary. I told him maybe our indicators would be a bit lower, but it`s important that the members feel our love and support and what better time to do it than when you have a new companion. It has been fun visiting more members and I just love them more and more all the time.

Isaac received the Aaronic Priesthood and Jose gave his first talk in Sacrament meeting on Sunday. I hear every so often that the Davila family is one of the strongest families back in Bellamar. Things like that just get me. It makes me so happy and I just want to keep feeling that. It`s interesting the love we gain for people here. They just become a part of you and your experience.

We`ve had a rough while trying to find people to teach. Please send some prayers so that we can find people who want to learn and will find happiness with this message, because truthfully, it is the only message that speaks peace to our spirits. The Lord only gives spiritual commandments -- they are never temporal. He knows us so perfectly and I love Him for that.

I love you all so much. Keep being strong. Keep being good. Make good decisions. Go to church.

Love Hermana Butterfield

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

May 26, 2014

Hello all. 

Well, I´m sitting here and I just realized that tomorrow I hit my 15 months in the mission. We will receive changes next week and then I have 2 changes left. A little overwhelming, but I am just so grateful that for now I still have this time to enjoy serving the Lord in his wonderful work. 

This last Saturday was Isaac´s baptism! After working with him for so long it was such a joy to see him baptized. He asked that the Bishop baptize him and to be honest I couldn´t have thought of anyone better to do it. Our Bishop is awesome and I have loved working with him. We were happy to see quite a few of our members there and especially those of the high priest group in which he will participate. Such a joy to see and such a wonderful experience to see growth in not just one person, but to see an impact on those of his quorum.

We also had interview´s with President Marler on Wednesday. So good. I love that man and his wife and I am so grateful to them and who they are. They are so strong. I didn´t say anything because I feel strange, but their grandson who is 3 passed away on Easter Sunday. Hermana Marler actually went home for a bit to be with their family. I was so impressed to sit with her on Wednesday and listen to her testimony of the Savior and faith. Please hug my nephews for me and let them know how much I love them. It´s interesting the things we pass through in our time on our missions -- and really in our lives. I just love talking with President and I always feel so much better after conversing with him. They truly have taken on the role of parents here in the mission and they love their children.

We are still trying to get things organized for our noche de tortas this Friday. I´m crossing my fingers that everything turns out well and that the members invite their friends and neighbors. It should be really fun and it will be fun to do just before changes.

Funny story of the week: We were with a recent convert, Pedro Pablo. He´s somewhat crazy but always such a treat to talk with him. He was talking about the other missionaries of other churches that come to try to visit him. He talked about the Jehovah´s witnesses and the Catholics -- the two other churches here that are super popular. Anyway, he said he wanted to say to the Catholic missionaries -- If you want me to pray to a MAN, to the pope, to Satan? Just keep walking. Oh shoot. Somewhat really inappropriate, but I almost fell off my chair when he said that. It was so hard not to laugh. I think it´s funnier in Spanish, but it was a funny moment.

Well things are all good here. I hope you´re all doing well and loving life and staying firm. Remember there are always a lot of things to do, but when we put the Savior first, He is who blesses and edifies us the most.

Love you so much!

Love, Hermana Butterfield

May 19, 2014

Well hello, all!

I`m a little shocked that we are now over halfway through May. Can you believe it? whew....So strange.

So this week was a lot better than the last week. It`s always interesting to see the things the Lord likes to teach us and the way he teaches us. But we were able to see a bit more success this week which is always such a blessing.

It was kind of fun because on Wednesday a family of a missionary that served here about 8 years ago came and we were able to eat lunch with them. It was the missionary , his wife, and his in laws. He`s the only one who speaks Spanish so kind of interesting, but  very good kind people and it was fun to see them and share part of their experience.

We are so excited because this week Isaac is getting baptized. FINALLY! He was going to be baptized a couple of months ago, but it didn`t happened. We got back in  contact with in him and he has progressed even better and he is excited for this Saturday as am I. He will have his interview on Wednesday evening. Lots of prayers please.

Camila  still isn`t wanting to make the decision to be baptized. She wants to, but there are a few things holding her back. It`s so hard because I know she knows it`s true, but she just won`t make the decision. As bad as this is it`s even harder because we have changes in two weeks and it`s so hard to leave an area when you have worked so hard with some people and you don`t get to see them make these covenants, however, I understand the Lord has his timing.

We have been trying to plan an activity for our ward to get references. It`ll be in  two weeks just before changes  --- noche de tortas. Translation - cake night. It`ll be just a chance to come play games and have a good competition and they win cakes. I`ve never done one, but I`ve heard a lot of good things. They are normal here and so I`m excited to see how it turns out.

It`s returned to be hot. It had been a bit  cooler for a couple of days, but it has been pretty hot and it just isn`t very fun. We are ready for a cool down and to not have mosquitos again....

 Things are going well here. I hope everyone is well and happy and seeing the tender mercies of the Lord. Have a wonderful  week !

Hermana Butterfield