To leave or not to leave. . .I will find out soon! November 30, 2009

well its so exciting to hear all the fun stuff going on at home!! as much as im jealous i wouldnt rather be there!we find out our changes within the hour so i might be headed out of this little town of otuzco or could stay here for another change. the baptisms didnt go through cuz our one didnt pass her interview but shes getting married in 8 days along with another one of our investigators, we just took all their papers to the municipality and just have to wait 8 days so those two will get baptized and 2 daughters from one family. then we have two kids a little 11 year old girl and 10 year old boy who have recieved the lessons and come to church and activities every week but just never got baptized. have some more with fechas but those others are ones im sure of. suprisingly with two less missionaries and two white guys were having a little more success but the branch lacks so much training and needs to motivate themselves more for the work cuz were doing about everything to help them that we can right now. friday we had a great activity like every friday, but we went to the little corral of our mission leaders and had a fire and shared our experiences relating to the church and the gospel and conversion stories, and it was great, our 2 investigators who are gonna get married and baptized, isabel and rosa, shared theirs as well and it was amazing and felt great to hear their feelings. supposedly the members stayed til 11 at night and a few til 12. there are some amazing people in this branch and i can see how the gospel helps families greatly and am so greatful that my family is all in te church, safe from the world and confusion that the devil lays out to trap us. hope all is well and miss you all. cant wait til Christmas to call home!!!

i just found out im headed to the valley de chicama in the area of paijan en casa grande. supposedly its a hot valley near the coast where they only grow sugar cane. im going to be a TRAINER of a new elder and open a new area with him. how exciting?!

Nov. 16, 2009 So, what do you want to hear? The good news or the Bad news?

so lets just start with the bad news. elder granados who is from my group and started with me here in otuzco leaves this friday to go home in the south part of our mission because he wsas only serving a mini mission to prepare but he reports to the mtc in lima on december 3rd. hes awesome, hes the other brown one in those pictures. also our baptism for marleni fell through once again and she didnt come to church saturday. its sad because i came across her the 2nd night here when i arrived and ive watched her as she realizes the truth and importance of the gospel, but she keeps falling. preach my gospel recommends that you let those kind of investigators go for a short time so we will now. but with great news, last week our zone had interviews and talk about edifying and uplifting...ive never been more grateful for my mission president. wednesday was the multi zone conference with all the elders from trujillo mismo and the surrounding closer areas which includes us and that was also very uplifting and motivating. my companion have been doing all we can to be more obedient and i loved to read the story from nathan halling. what power in obedience we can see through that. we also can see that here as my comp and i have also started fasting every wednesday and saturday. amazing to be able to strenthen your faith, and as we walked backed to our room last night i was commenting to my companion how the love i have for some of our investigators and the Lord is helping me have more faith which we always need to nurture and help grow. he then continued in the subject and told me how much i surprise him more every day with my words and how much more powerful they become. i know that has nothing more but to do with my willingness to rely on the Spirit, and am so thankful for the opportunity i have to be doing this work and have experiences that not always result in baptisms, but result in a stronger testimony for myself. also, i have started to only use the Book of Mormon in contacting and lessons and what greater power it has in testifying. our fast on saturday was to find more families and we came across three amazing families, 2 married, which as i always mention is hard to find. also, one of our investigators, Merli, who is about 27 and has the cutest 5 year old daughter came to the last 2 friday night mission night activities we had and two family home evenings in one week at different members homes. shes great and is reading her BoM. also a young lady about 26 years old with 2 little kids who is married, but husband works in lima, was impacted like no other with our lesson about the Word of Wisdom which surprised me because i never thought about that lesson as being one to touch someones heart but she broke down in tears and said how greatful she is that God gave us that commandment through Joseph Smith and how beautiful it is. anyways, i gotta make it fast, but tonight we have 2 family home evenings and all of our lessons we have planned are actually set in stone and are all of our investigators who are the best ones and are progressing so i cant wait, today should be amazing, but keep us in your prayers! i love and miss all of you! the language is not giving me a problem and i dont even think twice now just to answer your question alex! im so glad to hear your enjoying the uplifting learning in the MTC. hope all remains well! jill and family!!! sorry i cant write back to your email as a whole but ill write a letter. im so surprised by the success of your children always and hope to be able to be as good as a parent when im older to have kids who have their priorities straight as do yours. thanks for that nice little testimony about your halloween activity. it always helps to be shown by others testimonies how our work has helped. dad, thanks always for your uplifting words and caring emails. im so thankful to hear that your being a great grandfather and uncle and showing interest with all of the activities. they love and appreciate it. mom, im glad to hear that youre always thinking of me, because, honestly you are the 1 person constantly on my mind and also first to mention in my prayers. thanks to everyone of my family members who are the greatest examples to me and i wish you could all be in my messenger bag as i do this amazing work. love you all and miss you all!
stay strong and keep me and my companion and our investigators in your prayers. Bily, Fermin, Merli, Eudelia, fernando, silvia, marleni y roberto