La Segunda Navidad

Hi My People,

I pretty much have nothing to say because we talked yesterday and it
seems like you all feel the same, hence the short emails. I could just
end right here and say take luck till next week...... but I decided to
be a good son, turn the other cheek and write a little bit more
extensively. It really was so great to hear all of your voices
yesterday. I was actually really nervous to call you all and I didn't
really know why but I got through it. Its such an interesting emotion
to talk to someone you haven't seen for more than a year. The mission
that we serve makes you really know what it means to want, love, miss,
be sad, happy, tired, and frustrated. But the ups sooooooo out weigh
the downs.

So something spiritual for a change. Probably one of the most
spiritual experiences in all of my time away from home happened
yesterday after church. I was too excited to talk to all of you that
it kind of slipped my mind to tell you all over the phone. So Efrain
got baptized and confirmed last week and he is such a boss!!! He
really is a good friend of mine. We started teaching him with my temp
Leonel. Efrain is his friend and he wanted to know why Leonel changed
so much and why he's so happy. Efrain sells oregano and some other
things, has farms, properties, houses, and actually quite a bit of
money. But he's always tried to remember God in his life. He always
had felt better when he prayed and he prayed a lot in his life, but he
wanted more......... of something. So we gave him that "something". We
taught him frequently for like three weeks and he was going to get
baptized on the 5 of November but then he had to travel to Arequipa
for a couple of weeks. Then he got robbed at gun point along with his
Dad out in the fields. They took his truck and like $10,000 of
merchandise and left them tied up on the side of the road out in the
middle of nowhere. They broke out of the cords and got back home okay.
He passed through a lot of trials but we finally got back in touch
with him. The thing that amazes me was that he never lost his faith
and said that he was alive for a reason. He thanks God for his life
and he says that he can always make more money, he can't live two
lives. So he got baptized last week and this week got ordained to the
aaronic priesthood. He even showed up like 15 minutes early for church
which is odd even for the bishop here in Peru. After the meeting we
talked for a few seconds and he told me how happy he feels in his
life. He says he feels better every day and feels the Spirit stronger
every day. Then with tears in his eyes and thanked me from the bottom
of his heart for helping him. He told me I helped him so much in his
life and wanted to thank me for the things we do as missionaries. I
had to force myself to hold back my own tears and I realized how
important every child of God is for Him.

That was definately the highlight of my week. Even though calling the
family, recieving letters and playing soccer is fun too, those moments
that you can't live through if not only in the mission really are
priceless. I know I was sent here to Moquegua for a reason. I look at
other missionaries sometimes and think that they are more qualified
and know more than I do, but then I realize that our Father in Heaven
knows us all personally and has a plan for each one of us. I'm so
thankful for every day that I have to work in the mission field and
for every second of door contacting, sun burning, rain, sickness,
fights with the comp, rice, heat, small rooms, cold showers and
walking up steep hills because I know I'm blessing the lives of others
and I know that I'm making a difference.

I hope I get the Christmas package this week and that we can keep on
working hard in this area. I wish you all a happy New Year and hope
you can all party like its 1999! Oh, by the way, they DO love New
Year's here. They usually just spend time with the family here on
Christmas but they ALWAYS have huge dance parties for New Years.
They're doing a big party at the church New Year's eve until exactly
12:00 then they are just going to "eat" until 2:00. I hope they come
to church the next day so that the investigators can keep their
commitments!!!

Love,
Con Cariño,
Elder Child

Baptism Pictures

I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas

Hey Familia,
Its so good to hear from all of you this week. I'm so glad that this
week has gone by just fine and that you are all well. Thats kind of a
bummer that theres not that much snow over there in Utah and I'm sure
Christmas won't be really the same without it. Now just imagine it
being 80 degrees outside and you'll know what I'm living with right
now. I actually don't really miss the snow from Utah, or the cold for
that matter. It just really doesn't seem like Christmas without those
weather items, it seems like I should be watching summer baseball
games, go on vacations, swimming, cutting the lawn and working rather
than drink hot chocolate, put up lights, sit by the fire, build snow
men, shovel snow, fight through the bad traffic and decorate a
Christmas tree. The people here have thier own traditions for
Christmas. Every once in a while we find a house that is decorated
with lights and stuff, but its not as wide spread like in the States.
Thier biggest tradition is that of the food! Everybody we talk to asks
us, "Hey, where are you eating on Christmas?" That's pretty much all
they worry about. So what they do here is they have a HUGE dinner
party at midnight and then they open presents and dance and eat and
eat and eat. They usually make turkey. They also eat something called
Paneton, which is kind of like fruitcake but it actually tastes good.
And they drink hot chocolate, probably the only time during the year
that they do that. They spend all the time with the family and more
than anything just party. Its not like home where everybody has
Christmas lists and want a whole bunch of stuff from Santa. Mostly
becuase the people here don't exactly have the money to really do big
Christmas gifts for all their kids. That kind of puts the holidays
into more of a perspective.

Well, enough about what I'm expecting for Christmas and I'll tell you
all about my awesome week! So, last week was kind of difficult just
because of the permission and our baptism falling through. I wasn't
really depressed or anything becuase I knew that we did all we could
to help the situation. So this week we had two baptisms planned. But
on Tuesday we realized we could have a third. We are working with a
family where the step dad is a member, his "wife" that he's not
married to isn't and neither is the ten year old daughter. We're
trying to get them married and baptize the two of them but they are
having difficulty doing that. So we just focused on the girl, Thalia
and she was excited to get baptized. So we taught her and she got
baptized too. We had a baptism service on Saturday and all three got
baptized!! We were so happy to see our work and patience finally pay
off. That's such and indescribable emotion. Efrain asked me to baptize
him and my companion baptized the little girls. Efrain is soo cool!!!
He has such a strong testimony and not that much experience, I know
he'll be a great asset to the growth of the church and that he'll
bring an entire family to the gospel too. He was a reference from
Leonel and was really prepared by the Lord. We are actually really
good friends and he wants to go into business with me. We can open a
Peruvian restaurant in Utah together because he already has experience
with that and I love Peruvian food so I thought that would be
awesome!! Oh, and Karen too. She was the third baptism. Her cousin is
a member and so is her uncle. She gave the best testimony of the
entire meeting (including the Bishop, his councilor, and the other two
baptisms). Her testimony was so good becuase she's only eight but it
seems like she's a grown women with a ton of experience in the church.

So, my Christmas came a little earlier and yes, it was white. We're
hoping to have two baptisms this week. If we can get a permission and
somebody comes back from vacations we could do it. So on the 24th I
will call you all at about 8:00 to 9:00 AM to set up the call on the
25th. We're only going to have sacrament meeting that day too so I
should be able to call at like 11:00 AM your time but we'll have to
see. I'm excited to hear your questions but a little nervous for
everybody to hear my horrible accent that I have now. We have the
Mission Christmas party tomorrow and they are saying that we should
get all the packages that day so I'm hoping that's true. Oh, I'm not
going to use SKYPE so don't worry about it.

Thanks for all your prayers.

Love,

Elder Child

P.S. That's cool to hear about the Jazz game, wish I was there.

Fighting Satan

Hey Familia ¿Què tal? ¿Què dicen parceros?

How's it going everyone? I've decided that I like the question marks
in front of the sentences. I'm not sure what "parceros" will translate
as through google but its a Columbian slang for "dude". I've decided
that I love the way my comp talks with all his slang from Columbia.
He's hilarious and I even took some videos when we were just chilling
out in the room, man I can't wait till I come home to show them to
you.

This week was a pretty hard fight with Satan. I'm not saying he won,
I'm just saying it was a little bit of a harder fight than usual. You
know how I was supposed to have a baptism this week? Yeah, that kind
of didn't happen. So, Marisol is 16 and she told us that her member
cousin was her legal guardian so we thought ya no problema we're
baptising her. But, it turns out that's not the case and her dad is
mad at her for some stuff so he's not giving his permission. It was
kind of a week full of trying to figure out a way to get permission
and work everthing out. It was kind of disappointing but we just have
to be patient in order to see the blessings.

We did get some points against the diablo though because one of our
investigators that was having problems, Efrain, totally said he wants
to get baptized this next week, and he came to church on his own
again. He's really cool and has a strong testimony. He says there's no
way the Book of Mormon isn't true becuase it only teaches good things
and he's seen a ton of blessings in his life since he's read it. He's
a special guy and I know he'll be a great leader in the church and
will raise a good family.

Also, we learned that another investigator that was going to get
baptized but moved away suddenly, just moved back and should be here
for awhile. We're going to see if he can get baptized next week. Also,
there's this little girl that was a reference from some members who is
going to get baptized this weekend too. Things are starting to really
progress here in my area becuase of the support of the members. I've
learned that maybe it sounds cooler if you tell people how many street
contacts and hours of knocking doors your doing, but it's more
effective to just visit member references and coordinate really well
with the ward leaders.

This week I also wrote down a few experiences because I think most
weeks I forget. Some really funny and interesting things happen in the
mish. Well, for starters this week was super cold and unusual!! There
were TWO WHOLE DAYS with clouds outside. That was worth writing down
and I was so excited to see the clouds for a change. Its probably been
a good 9 months since we've had two cloudy days in the same week!!
Supposedly it's going to start raining here but they also told me it
gets cold in Arequipa but that didn't happen.

Another funny experience was when we walked one of our drunk
investigators home. Nelson is in his fifties and his parents are
members. He's got a really bad problem with drinking and we were
supposed to have a lesson with him one day this week. We got there and
he wasn't there so we starting walking to another appointment. We find
him coming up the street so we walk him home. He really loves me, I
don't know why. But he acted like he was going to hit my companion and
even tore off his shirt (but he did it jokingly) and my comp totally
freaked out and started running away!! Hilarious! Nelson was laughing
too.

We were teaching the little girl and my companion was like, "ya, so we
have seven days to do what we want in the week but the eighth day we
have to keep a commandment. There's eight days in every week but
sundays we go to church" I didn't correct him and he just kept going
for a few minutes then I couldn't stop laughing and he realized, he's
an idiot.

Well, that's about it for this week. I love you all so much. Have a
great week and look for a missionary opportunity too.

Sincerely,

Elder Child

Christmas Devotional

Hey Family,

I'm so glad to hear about all of your lives out there in the Northern
Hemisphere. I'm actually a little jealous of the cool lights and
decorations for Christmas along with the snow. I wouldn't want to live
there, but to visit would be nice. I'm going to have to rethink living
with my family after the mish there in Salt Lake. Maybe you guys could
move to St. George, that would be acceptable on my part.

I kind of got carried away with writing to my peeps so I don't have an
eternity to write the family letter, sorry. Let's jump in to the good
stuff. We should be having a baptism this week!!! She's the cousin of
a member. Her name is Marisol and she just moved here two weeks ago.
The member brought her to church and we were like, Hey do you want to
get baptized, and she said of course. No, so it didn't go exactly like
that, but after a couple of visits, she's pretty excited to get
baptized. I don't want to go overboard, but if everything goes
perfectly and they have a testimony, we might have two more
baptisms!!! I'll just be praying really hard along with my companion
for that to go alright.

This past week nothing crazy or out of the ordinary really happened. I
was actually glad for that becuase we were able to do some good work.
We actually had a lot of lessons this week, not a ton of people
totally fell through on thier appointments. I can testify that if we
are diligent, the Lord will bless us. Now, the hard part and the part
that most people forget, is to keep the same level of
work/diligence/humility/

patience when we get blessed with a little bit
of success. I'm really going to focus on that this week.

Oh, so last night was so cool!! Why you might ask? Probably becuase I
got to see and listen to a real prophet of God!!!!! Not a lot of
people get that opportunity so I feel really blessed. Every single
night I thank my Father in Heaven for the home I was born into and for
the Gospel in my life. I can't say for certain that I would accept the
missionaries at my doorstep but God knows why I was raised in the
Church. The Christmas Devotional was really good. I really loved the
stories, the lights, decorations, and of course the cool movie they
showed. We were going to watch it at the church, but we had to go
teach a lesson. We went to the lesson and it turns out that they have
BYU TV on cable so we watched the live feed (8:00 pm our time) of the
Christmas Devotional. The family really liked it and I hope it softens
thier hearts becuase this is a family that has heard the gospel many
times and has family that are members but haven't accepted it yet.
Also, super exciting was that I saw my cousin Scott on tv playing the
trombone!!! I was soo excited and told the family that he is my
cousin!!!

Well, its all good here in Peru and unfortunately my time is gone,
Thank you for your prayers and support back at home.

I know that the Lord is always aware of us.

Love,

Elder Child

Happy 470th Birthday Moquegua!

Hey Family What's Hap Hap Happenin?

It was soo cool to hear about your Thanksgiving weekend and all the
food you ate there. I'm glad you were all together for Thanksgiving
and could enjoy eachothers company. I hope you talked and shared
experiences more than watched T.V. just becuase those moments don't
always last forever but there's always T.V. I actually kind of forgot
about Thanksgiving until an american reminded me on Thursday. I tried
to explain how cool it is to be able to just eat all day, watch
football, decorate the house for Christmas then go shopping on Black
Friday but most latinos just don't understand.

This week was pretty cool. We found some pretty cool people and a
family that has heard the gospel before. The most interesting part was
probably the Birthday Party for Moquegua. They turned 470 this year,
almost as old as mom!! (Hey-oh!!) There were parades on Thursday and
Friday almost all day. We saw a little bit of it but not a ton because
we are still missionaries so the work must go on. I absolutely love
the people here in Peru. I'm trying to learn as much as I can about
the culture here. Just like the states, the people here are different
than in the North or the East of Peru, so I'm trying to learn as much
as possible about every region.

Tuesday was pretty hilarious. Every Tuesday we have a meeting with the
Elders in our District and the District Leader teaches us something.
Our President has said that an Elder has to give a little mini lesson
for 15 minutes, in english. It was my turn this past week and it was
soooo hard to speak correctly in English. It was also pretty funny to
see all the blank stares on the Latinos' faces. Man, you guys are
really going to make fun of me on Christmas but I don't care. I talked
about how we have to teach people so that they understand, not just
teach to teach. It was fitting giving the circumstances.

Well, my testimony grew as always this week. I learned how important
it is to find joy in the journey and to learn from everything that
goes on around you. We actually had fun as a companionship this week.
Not because we goofed off more than usual, but becuase we worked hard
and talked to a ton of people. In the mission, the secret to being
happy is working and testifying to people of this gospel. I recieved
the package that you sent me with the CD. I love THIS IS THE CHRIST by
James E. Faust and really felt the Spirit testify to me the reallity
of the atonement when I read the lines "And how many drops of blood
were spilt for me".

I love the Savior and all the experiences I have been having here in
Peru. I hope you all do your best always and try to do a little more
each day. Be diligent and consistent.

Love,

Elder Child

P.S. So mad about the Utes, but hey there's always next year. Thank
you for the sports pages, they really broke the routine of things. My
comp says hi.