Thchssamy,
This week has been absolutely excellent! I was so scared of my new companion at first cuz he just didn´t talk, but I finally got him talking and now we are GREAT friends. He is the only member in his whole entire family. His mom isn´t even taking missionary lessons and his dad lives in Switzerland with his only brother. Elder Galarza has been an amazing example to me of courage and faith. He doesn´t doubt anything, and he knows that his mom will be baptized one day. I know it, too.
The whole house seems so amazing! I am super stoked that everyone is healthy and happy and that dinner with the Emett family is always a highlight. You wanted to know a little bit more about the apartment we live in? haha. We live above a little store in front of a park. We have our own little private bathroom with about 10 minutes of warm water every morning between the 2 of us. We have a decently big room where we have our beds and a dresser to put our clothes in and a separate room where our study desks are. The floor in concrete and the walls are made of brick with a thin layer of plaster or something. It´s actually a pretty nice house, except for the store below us sells beer and so there are always always drunks partying until 2 or 3 in the morning and it is hard to sleep at times. We don´t have a kitchen or any type of laundy machinery, all that kinds of stuff is in cargo de la familia lopez. The Lopez family is like our family, but Peruvian! They have like 8 kids and 9 grandkids and they are ALL members and they are ALL my favorites. We eat breakfast and dinner there every single day and they do our laundry, too. Their laundry machine is so cool. I think they made it haha. But I basically have my own Peruvian family and I really am happy. I still love you all so much, obviously, but it will be really hard to say goodbye to the familia Lopez.
It´s so crazy that Christmas is just around the river bend. I just barely had Christmas here!!!!!!! But I am going to search for a nativity and send it to you and I am putting together a small package for the family on christmas eve. I don´t want to talk about it now, but closer to christmas time, I will tell you about all the traditions and beliefs and stuff like that.
So, I know I have quite a bit of time in the mission, but I still have A LOT left. I am still learning new things every single day. Something I am learning a lot about is the spirit. I am learning that, as missionaries, we really don´t even have to do a lot. We just need to be obedient, worthy, and know the missionary lessons and the spirit is what converts the people! I want to share an experience with you that I shared with my mission president recently.
"I was bored of making contacts because I didn´t really feel anything. I was just inviting the entire world to church without any success. My last change, we made almost 1000 contacts and from all those contacts, we found 1 person to teach. 1 person. This week, we made 74 contacts and we found 10 people to teach. Including 3 families. Do you know what the difference is? I finally understand that the spirit does the work! In every single contact that we made this week, we testified of Jesus Christ and of the restoration of his gospel. We have seen a change in the area, in the ward, and in ourselves."
The spirit is so much more powerful than we are. This is not OUR work. it is God´s work. And there is no other way to do it than his way. So when I say I am learning so much about the spirit, that´s what I mean. It´s so amazing to meet someone in the street and watch the spirit work with them and change them and help them recognize us as servants of the Lord. I can´t even count how many people I have met for the first time and they have shared their life story with me and cried and cried telling me about past mistakes. When we use the spirit, we are absolutely doing what Christ would do if He were here. I have a stronger testimony of the spirit now than I ever have, and I´m excited to build on these experiences and serve with everything I have for the next 13 months.
So today, we are going to the Lopez family´s house to eat this way peruvian food called Pachamanca. There is this medium-sized hole back behind their house where there is space to put in hot coles and food and cover it up with earth and cook. They call it Pachamanca. All the food (potatoes, meat, chicken, vegetables, and this weird bread) is put in some kind of protective wrap stuff and then down into the hot coles in the hole. Then it is covered up with dirt and it cooks for like 2 or 3 hours of something like that. Then you take it out and eat it and it tastes WAY GOOD!!!! So we are going to her house (as a zone) today to eat Pachamanca and play soccer and we are all pretty stoked. But my companion and I have to leave right now because he had to re-schedule his interview and it´s today at 2 in the mission president´s house which is like an hour or so from here. We are hoping to go right now and have the interview really quick so we can get back to the Lopez house and eat with them haha. So we are going to go travel to the mission president´s house and I am going to ask his wife is she will bake me some cookies haha. There just aren´t any cookies here.
Oh, and guess what!!!??? The sun finally decided to come out! It is going to start getting cold where you are and HOT where I am and I´m totally ready! So my hands aren´t cold right now and that´s why I have been able to write a lot more. Oh yeah and my companion told me something that almost made me cry this morning. I was telling him about my mission and and how it had been and what I wanted to achieve in the next year and what I wanted to teach him in our time together and he told me I was the best companion he could ask for. He is such a good missionary. Well, I love you all. I am loving every second of my mission and I will see you all sooner than you realize.
Love Elder Emett
P.s. I am sending a picture from Yurimaguas. This is a baptism we had in there. I am the big fat white one on the far left and the others are all little skinny dark peruvians. This night was really special. 4 future priesthood holders were baptized by 2 recent converts who had just received the priesthood... and me haha.
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