Week #29 - No Air (Cerro Verde)

Saludos familia y amigos,

Well before I get started, I will apologize for not sending pics this week, I was really looking forward to do so, but the USB port I have has a body that is too big and cannot connect to this hard drive, so we will try for next week.

Well this week was nice and eventful; we had a wedding and 3 baptisms! Familia Garcia got married on Friday, and Saturday they were baptized. Marisol, the wife, shared her testimony afterward and said she really did feel clean, and that she feels completely different from before. Her husband also shared that he was grateful for the missionaries to pass by. Sunday, Marisol's sister, husband and niece all shared their testimonies. Her sister was extremely happy to see her get baptized and that even though it was hard, that they pushed through and managed to get them closer to Christ. Also, the baptism helped reactivate their mom who has had more than 20 years of not assisting church! It was truly a blessing to see this family come closer together and to get the blessings that the gospel has in store for us.

We also had a baptism for Yuri on Sunday because her boyfriend is leaving to Mexico to work and he wanted to be here to see her baptism. So we held it yesterday and her family was there to watch and they seemed really happy for her. They aren’t members, and while we were waiting for them to change after the baptism I gave an impromptu lesson. There was the non-member family and a few other investigators so I taught a little bit of lesson one, trying to tie it in with the baptism, explaining that this was done with the authority of God, that Christ had the authority, as did his apostles, but when they died it left for a bit, but then Joseph Smith restored the gospel again here on the earth. It felt like it went well and I really hope it did. Some of the investigators we were hoping would go to church didn’t make it, so hopefully we can get them to come this next week. One of them is Victor who lives with his wife (?) at her mother’s house, and most of them are members. He wanted to come and see what our church was like and wanted to receive the lessons, so we are going to keep teaching him. We taught him about the Book of Mormon and he had a lot of questions about it, one of which was if it had inspiring scriptures like the Bible and if we could share our favorites and personal experiences. I used the Bible and BoM with John 16:33 and Alma 7:11-13 explaining that I know that Christ suffered everything and he has a perfect knowledge of everything that we have been through, and because of that he can easily help us through whatever challenges we may face.

We are trying to contact more right now and find another family, so hopefully this week we can find another family. It has been extremely hot down here, but it is so weird, because during the day it’s scorching, then at night and early morning its cold… it’s really throwing me for a loop, haha! Well I have been going everywhere with my Camelback, and now that I have purified water to fill it with I have been using it every day, and people always ask me what the tube is for. Everyone thinks that I have "falta de aire" or no air and that I have an oxygen tank in my backpack haha! Then everyone says its super cool and that its super smart to have water in a backpack like that. Well now that I’m closer to SPS I finally got the letters from everyone, so thanks! Thanks for visiting Hna Arias in the Mesa Visitors Center, she is really nice and very humble, and I know she’s an awesome missionary. Hope everything goes well this next week!

Elder Neher