Pictures

Best Priesthood session of his life!!!

Mammy

It has been a super crazy week! Another family got baptized!!!!! They were so stoked, but not nearly as stoked as I was hahahaha! The guy´s name is Jose and his wife´s name is Lissette. We baptized them two and Elder Walker and Elder Tana (the other two elders in our ward) baptized the other lady there and her daughter (I totes forgot their names hahahaha). That´s the first picture I am sending. The next one is of me in the water with Jose right after I baptized him! Cleanest water ever!!! hahaha. Not! All the water we use here comes straight from the amazon river or straight from water wells and it ALL SMELLS LIKE FFFFFFIIIIISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSHHH

HHHH! But I´m used to it.
Conference was SO GOOD! wow. Conference as a missionary is like 431 times better than it was as a teenager (haha I just realized I´m not a teenager anymore). I actually feel like I understand what they´re trying to tell us and I recognize the scriptures they use and I always get so much from it. Conference is number 1! P.s. that was the best priesthood session of my life! Elder Holland is and has been my favorite for years for his powerful and direct way of speaking and it was just such a good talk that he gave. We watched 4 sessions in english and 1 in spanish.
Yes! I am getting all the packages you are sending so don´t worry! I got both the packages and now I have 2 brand new pairs of pants! Thank you!!!!!! And thanks for the money!!!!!!!!! No.... Easter is not celebrated in Perù.
I sent another picture, too! It´s of the wedding! On the far left side is Jimmy (He is the guy who was driving the moto when the silly car decided to hit us) Then it´s my companion, then the family, then me and another lady named Marly who is our pensionist! Great people!
I wish I had something cool to tell you, but I´m all out of cool stuff and WHAYYY out of time. I love you all! Thanks for everything! Call me!

Elder Emett

Awesome Pictures

Will be going back to Iquitos with his wife!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well, I can´t believe it´s actually your birthday! Today! I remember last year on your birthday I was in the mission, too! haha. How long have I been doing this mission thing anyway????? Doesn´t seem like very long! We had a very good week!! Five of our investigators got baptized!! I totally included a few fotos!!! The first picture is of the four who got baptized in the night. The middle-aged lady is Lisbeth, the two kids are hers, Mateo and Dana. The other young lady´s name is Maribel. Her boyfriend is a member and they have a marriage date set so they were both very happy to get her baptized! The other foto is another guy named Thuachito (the guy who found us and told us he wanted to get baptized haha). He got baptized in the afternoon because he can´t see in the night time to walk back to his house. I also sent another picture of the river here that surrounds the city of Iquitos! It´s so beautiful!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It looks kinda like a swamp haha, but they people really just build their houses on stilts right on the river! Silly people. The other side of the river is 100% amazon rainforest. It´s so much fun to talk to all the locals about all their trips and schinnanigans on the other side of the river. There are so so so many wild animals (especially boas and pythons!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) that they tell us about! It´s super cool! In the river there are tons of fish (some of them up to 40 feet long!), alligators, pirhanas, turtles, and river dolphins. Iquitos is like the 2nd biggest tourist city in all of south america!! But I have never seen anything because I´m so not here to be a tourist!!!! But I will be coming back in a few years with my wife to finally see all the sights hahaha.

I wish I had tons more stuff to say, but everything is just the same here. My shoulder is doing....excellent haha don´t worry about it. We will be going to Lima in about 2 weeks which will be super fun! I will not be eating at Sakura tonight, but I will be enjoying a buffet of rice and chicken like every other night these past 17 months!!! hahaha, I´m not bitter. I love you mom. Happy birthday. See you tomorrow.

Elder Emett

15 baptisms in 3 weeks!

MAAAMMMMHHYYYYYYY!!!!

Another successful week!!!! Finally!!!! Everything is set to go for all the marriages we have been planning on and there will be 15 baptisms in these next three weeks!!!!!!! 4 families!!!!!!!!!!!! We are off the chain stoked and super happy about the work right now! I don´t know if you ever talk to Elder Harris´s mom, but Elder Harris is my best friend!!!!!!!!!!!! He is here in Iquitos, too, and we always talk about how much we love our moms hahah and then we realized that our moms are friends online!! So send her some more messages haha. We got the changes today.... I will be staying! Yes!! And Elder Riquelme will be staying, too! Yes! This is his last change hahaha so I will be his very last companion. We are working very hard and we are having a lot of success together.

My collar bone is doing fine, but I am going to have the doctor look at it because it´s still kinda bothering me. But how is Jake??????? Is he going to have to get surgery or wear a brace or anything??? I sure hope not!!!! My biggest fear ever would be getting sent home before the 2 years are up so I sure hope that Jake gets to stay in the mission! Yes, I did get 1 package from you and the other one is in Lima so I will get it when I go to the April conference! Which reminds me! GENERAL CONFERENCE IN LIKE TWO WEEKS!!!!!!! I´m wayyyyy siked out!!!! I didn´t even really like conference before the mission, but now it is like the coolest thing in the world!! It´s so much fun to take the investigators and recent converts to listen to the prophets, they always get so stoked!!!!

Little bit of bad news. I was totally going to send you some cool pictures that we took by the river, but there is not a USB port on my computer so I will not be sending any pictures today haha. I don´t need anything right now. Everything is just dandy, but my companion is finishing his mission in a few weeks and it would be cool to send him like a sweet t-shirt or a cool hat or some candy or some sweet ties or anything at all, but I would love to give him something from the U.S. to take back to Chile. He has probably been my favorite companion so far haha. We just get along so well it´s stupid. We´ve never even disagreed with eachother even once haha. He´s a true bro.

Don´t worry too much, I´m not homesick, but I am STOKED to see you all again haha. I just got talking to my companion last night and thinking about how long it has really been since I´ve seen you guys and it has been A WHILE!!!!!!!!! My trainer, Elder Orellana is going home tomorrow hahahaha, half of my companions have already finished their missions, and I have over 17 months in the misison, but it has really just felt like 6 or 4 months. I gave a talk on sunday about eternal families and I brought my two favorite things to show everybody, the picture of the whole family that you guys sent me, and my journal that you wrote in when I was a baby. I explained to everyone that what really made me happy was knowing that I had been born into sacred covenants and had the opportunity to make sacred covenants with God so that I could live with my family forever. Everybody was so stoked to see the picture and they all wanted to take it and just stare at it after sacrament meeting haha. I have the best family in the whole world!!!!!!!!!!! And there are 3 of them that I don´t even know yet!!! Again. Not homesick, but super siked to see you all again.

We had a bunch of cool experiences this week! I will tell you 1. So we went down to this place in my area that used to be just mud and wooden houses with palm leaf roofs. All of the houses are built up on stilts, but I never knew why. Now I know why hahahaha. It has rained so much in these past few months that one of the nearby rivers is totally overflown and what used to be mud paths is now a huge body of water!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Everybody has to travel by canoe or just build a ghetto bridge!!! It´s way cool to go tracting down there!!!!! Anywhays, we have a family down there that is going to get married and baptized this month so we went down there to teach them a lesson and when we were leaving their house, a little old man came hobbling across a ghetto bridge and told us that he saw us pass by and that he wants to be mormon too!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! haha. He had his baptismal interview last night and he will be baptized on saturday!!!! The Lord has people prepared in every part of every mission in the entire world. I know it!!!! I know that this is his work and that yes, 19-year-old-boys can do this work!!!! Missions are number 1!!!!!!!!

Elder Emett

Longest email of his mission!

The mom,

Ok, you guys are all right! I suck at writing!! I know I´m super bad with details and stories and fun things to say, but I always sit down at the computer and I just can´t think!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! But, I´m going to try to do way better right now. The weather here NEVER EVER changes. It is ALWAYS blazing burning kill-you-dead hot, or it is raining really really hard. Those are the two seasons that are here in Iquitos. My companion´s name is Elder Riquelme. He is from Santiago, Chile, and we are really really good friends and we work really hard together. All of the marriages that we were planning out are going to be happening this month or at the first of April and we have a family and another person that is going to get baptized next week, then another family on the 24th and another family that will be getting all of their papers ready and will be able to get baptized in the first week of April. We are super stoked and working super hard. I now have 3 changes in my area and I think I am going to be staying for three more hahaha, then I will train for 2 changes to finish out the mission. This week we went to the trainings in Lima and it was super good! The president helped us all get way more excited about the work and we are looking to have some really really good results in March.

I had a great week, and yes mom, I am still in Perú. I haven´t had a lot of problems from the car wreck except for my shoulder. Something happened to my collar bone and I haven´t been able to sleep much since the accident. I´m not exactly sure what happened, but my bone just isn´t in place. It juts out of place when I move my arm in different positions and I have to reach up and push it back into place hahahaha, it´s super stange. But it doesn´t bother me during the day so I´m not even 1% worried about it. Maybe when I´m back in the States we could have a doctor who knows what he´s doing look at it and see if it´s a problem. Yes, every time we go to Lima we have to go in plane and I am doing a lot better with it. Traveling used to make me so sick, but since I have traveled so much by plane now (over 15 times) it just doesn´t affect me anymore which is a HUGE blessing.

Hahah I can´t believe you bought a bed from a yard sale. That´s number 1! Mostly I can´t believe you are already thinking about getting things ready for when I come back. I am SOOOOOOOO far away from coming back. I will be in Perú for at least 7 more months, but thanks for thinking about me haha. You asked me who my friend was that wrote me and said that missions are her best thing hahaha, her name is Hannah Andersen, I don´t know if you know her. She is from our same stake and I met her at the Trek that I went on when I had swine flu haha. But don´t worry, I don´t have any more swine flu.... just tons of parasites.

Michele sent me a few pictures of her daughter Addie. ¡¡¡¡¡¡WOW!!!!! She is so big!!! She´s just a little puffalump!! Does she talk and say words???? She is totally going to be almost 2 when I see her! OH YEAH!!!!! I got one of the packages you sent me with pants, candy, and two big pictures of my family that I don´t recognize anymore hahah. THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!! I love the pictures so much! I don´t recognize the following members of my family: Rebecca- she is like a woman!, Tanner, Kallie, and Matt´s other new daughter, they are all so so so so big and Kallie looks just like all of shellie´s sisters hahaha. I don´t recognize Annie or Payslie anymore and Brigham looks way older than I thought he was. He has a full head of hair!!!! I have NO idea what happened to the family, but you all just look so good and so happy and so so so so so so so so much different. It will be so different, but so nice to see you all again. Don´t worry about me, I haven´t changed much. I´m just super much fatter and I have a HUGE scar from the middle of my forehead to the bottom of my eyebrow, and I can totally grow a moustache now haha (but not really).

I wish I could just share a cool mission story with you all, but there are just too many to just share 1! You will all just have to wait until I get home and then we can share all kinds of stories together with details and all that stuff like that. Just know that I love the mission, I love the church and I have a testimony that grows every single day.

Elder Emett

He loves teaching the gospel!!

Just another manic monday,

This week was so crazy!!!!! We just had tons and tons of stuff to do and tons of lessons to teach on top of that and.... just lots to do. We are going to Lima tomorrow for another conference which will be way fun, then we have a few baptisms on saturday and then the change ends. I wish I could just get on a tighter grip on time and make it slow down A LOT MORE. But it really is a blessing that time is passing fast because that means that I am working, I am happy, and it won´t be long until I get to see you guys again haha. I got talking to my companion this week about mission stuff and how weird it is to be away from the family for two years and then I just got kinda sad and looked at him and said, ¨I miss my mom.¨ haha. It was super funny, but super true. I totally miss you mom. We can spend more time together when I get back. We can go shopping together and eat lunch with dad and do whatever you want to do.

I got the funniest letter from one of my friends this week, she told me that missions are her best thing hahaha. It made me laugh and it made me realize that missions are my best thing. I love my mission so much. I love teaching the gospel to people. I love being around missionaries and other churchy people haha. I think I am going to be a seminary teacher when I grow up.

Thank you for all the love and support and letters. I never have tons of time to write to dad, but he writes me so many letters that I don´t know what to do with them sometimes. Let him know that I am getting every scrap of mail and I treasure every word.

We had a conference with President Blunck this week. He came to Iquitos and taught us a whole bunch about how to teach families and he really helped me out a lot. Even though I have 17 months in the mission, I am learning new things every single day.

Love Elder Emett