The Catholic Grandma

Hey Family,
How's it going everybody? I hope everything is good with you all in house. I'm pretty surprised to hear that it's STILL raining in Salt Lake. That's pretty crazy. When I got here it rained for like a whole month straight everyday and I thought that I would never experience that at home. I was a little distracted while reading mom's email though becuase "I Need you Now" by Lady Antebellum was playing at the internet cafe and of course I listened becuase its the first time I've heard American Country since I've been on my mission. Anyways, this week was pretty interesting becuase I went on splits with two different elders two different days this week. I learned a ton from one of them, my zone leader Elder Vargas. He's a tall, white, Bolivian missionary that people do mistake for a gringo. I really enjoyed working with him and all of the things that he taught me. He goes home in a month.

With Elder Vargas he taught me how to challenge people to be baptized in the street. Just going up to somebody in the street, introducing yourself as a missionary, and then asking them if they will follow Jesus Christ and be baptized like he was baptized is a pretty scary experience at first, but it gets results. You would be very surprised that more than half of the time they accept and they want us to come back and teach them in their house. We found an extremely Catholic 84 year old lady and we helped her with her groceries. We walked to her house which was like a ten minute walk away. We talked to her about the gospel and about baptism. She said her niece is a member and that she actually has a Book of Mormon and has read some of it but wants to die in her tradition of Catholicism. The Book of Mormon that she had was a gift from a member that lives in Salt Lake and it was pretty cool to see that address on a spanish Book of Mormon in Peru. At first I thought she was about 60 from the way she was walking. She was keeping up pretty good with us. I didn't really walk that slow with her, and she wasn't out of breath or anything. She totally didn't have any interest about getting baptized, so we thought it was a little waste of time, but then walked in her 35 year old granddaughter. She was so sad when she walked in. So then we talked to her. Turns out she's almost as Catholic as her grandma but she's been having problems with her family. She says she feels so depressed and detached from her family. She lives with her daughter but her ex husband lives with her son in Lima. She definately needed our help and we offered it to her. She said she felt so much better when we were talking to her about Faith, Repentance, and Baptism. She wants to listen more. It really was a cool experience.

Later that day Elder Vargas got to do Skype with his family becuase it was Mother's Day in Bolivia. Apparently we have permission to do Skype or call. I'm really debating this option for Christmas because even though I love all of you I kind of don't want to see you live until I come home off that plane in a year and a half. You can all talk about that until next week.

If there was something that I really learned this week it was that God prepares each of his children and knows when they are ready to hear the gospel, like Dana (the granddaughter). The grandma took the wrong bus and that's why we found her in that moment and we were willing to help her in that moment, so that eventually lead us to somebody that needed the healing power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in her life. We, as saints, need to be always willing to serve, and always willing to listen to the spirit so that we can help God's children. I hope we can all to that.

Well, time's up this week and I'm grateful for your letters. I'll talk to you all next week.

Elder Child

P.S. The mission is doing good, we baptized 196 people this month, the most in a long long time. Also, I found an original Pat Burrell Phillies jersey in a store this week. It was my size and it was 7 bucks, so of course I bought it . It's not every day you find baseball jerseys in Peru.