Week 12 Elder Jones

Hey! this week was great! Still loving it. So I keep forgetting to tell you guys this but  there are 2 languages spoken in my mission-- Kichwa and Spanish.  There are a few old people that only speak Kichwa but pretty much everyone here speaks both Kichwa and Spanish so I'm learning a little bit of Kichwa every day. It`s really, really difficult.  It`s not that important to learn Kichwa, but I am interested in it and want to learn.

Okay, so something really funny about the people here.So you know how when Americans say they can speak Spanish when they really can`t and they just put o at the end of every English word? Peruvians do that too only they put "ation" at the end of every Spanish word. So yea if you`ve ever wondered what English speakers sound like to people who don't speak English, that's what we sound like

Last  preparation day our zone all got Peru Soccer Jerseys and we went into the city where there's a Mormon church with an outdoor soccer court and we played against Elder Baker`s zone who had Colombia jerseys and it was so fun. I hadn`t realized it, but my soccer playing was improved after playing with Mexicans for 6 weeks.

We get to go to the temple this week and I'm really excited to see the Lima temple and to go through a session in Spanish.

So a couple experiences this week. Elder Torres and I were having our weekly planning session and for our goals for the week  I wanted to put 0 for baptized and confirmed because all our investigators either aren't married or don`t have enough church attendances to be baptized this week. But Elder Torres said no. He said that we`re never going to put zero for the week. He said that we needed to have faith that something would work out. So we put 1 and 1 for baptized and confirmed. Later that day, Hermana Katherine called us.  Hermana Katherine has been taking lessons with the missionaries for over a year, and her mom, sisters, brother, and grandmother are all members of the church.  She also has an amazing testimony of the Book of Mormon and the gospel of Jesus Christ, but she couldn`t get baptized because she lives with her boyfriend.  She told us on the phone that she had made the decision to separate from her boyfriend for the safety of her two little boys and that she wanted to be baptized as soon as possible! So now all we need is a baptismal interview with the district leader and she`s ready to be baptized.

Alfredo and Evelin are progressing really well, they keep all their commitments and they have a desire to learn more. The only thing is that it`s difficult for them to attend church because they`re very old and they live on the top of the mountain, making it hard to walk that distance. It`s hard for Elder Torres and I to walk up to their house to meet with them.  But they do want to come to church.

One more thing. We had a meeting downtown this week with our whole mission. It was going to be with Elder Christofferson,  but he had to go back to Utah earlier than expected, so it was with Elder Suarez from the presidency of the Seventy and his wife and Elder C. Scott Grow.  It was really good-- they all gave really good talks. Sister Suarez talked about how if your investigators have trouble with their commitments they're probably going to have trouble with covenants. I feel like I remember Elder C. Scott Grow from General Conference because his face looked really familiar.  I think I remember Dad pointing out that his name is a sentence.  It was a good conference.

The busses are always super packed here and not all the people can reach the bar to hold on to, so there were people holding on to my arms and shoulders and there was a little kid holding on to my leg. It was actually very funny.

Hope you guys have a great week, I'm still really happy and I still really love the people.

Elder Jones