Week 85

Hey guys! Glad to hear that everything is going great for everyone! Sorry to hear about Tyler. That sounds rough, I hope he gets better. This was my last week in Magdalena, it went by so fast. We had a great week.The Bustamante family is doing great as well. They have a daughter who is 22 named María who never wanted to talk to us. She lives apart with her boyfriend and 3 daughters. But something changed this week and she just decided to listen to us all of a sudden, and her boyfriend Paolo was really interested in listening to us. They are the humblest family I have met in Perú. The 5 of them live on the side of the cliff going down into the ocean in a hutt barely big enough to fit one matress. They don´t have light or water. They listened to us this week and they recieved and accepted the message very easily. They´ve had problems as a couple recently and we invited them to pray often together, also to be baptized, but first to be married. They weren´t too fond of the idea to get married, but a couple of days later we came with Hermano Vela. He´s a convert, returned missionary, and recently married. Whenever he goes up to bear his testimony in church he always says that marriage is the best experience that he has ever had in his life. So when we brought him to the lesson with María and Paolo he bore a powerful testimony of marriage and they decided that they are going to get married. There´s a massive marriage for free at the end of the month. So they said that they are going to take advantage of that to get married, and then baptized. But I´m not going to get too excited yet because it´s not the first time that a couple has told us that they´re going to get married, and then end up not doing it. But at least they understand that they need to get married to be happy. So yea they´re progressing and so is the Bustamante family. They have a really hard life, but when we come and we read the scriptures with them or teach something we can feel that something changes and we both leave the lessons edified.

We´re also teaching Hernan, who came to church by himself last week because he was interested in knowing more. He wanted us to give him the lessons for the people getting to know the church. When he presented himself in priesthood last week he said he was "here to serve". We had a lesson with him on friday and he had read the pamphlet about the restoration and he had some really great questions, and we were able to teach the lesson based on them. He understood very well and he wants to be baptized on feburary 6th. He told us that he wasn´t going to be able to go to the stake conference on sunday but the next sunday he would go. We encouraged him to go to the stake conference anyways, and he came! we sat next to him. He really enjoyed the conference and he´s really excited to learn more. On friday we had explained to him about the organization of the ancient church of christ and how he had called and given his authority to12 apostles and seventy to help him preach the gospel to more people. In the stake conference there was an Area seventy that spoke and Hernan really enjoyed his talk. Afterwards Hernan asked us who Elder Calderón was, and we explained to him that just like in ancient times there were seventies called to preach the gospel, today there are as well, and he is one of them. Hernan was really surprized and we can tell that he´s going to progress and be baptized. We´re just waiting for him to tell us that he´s already a member because it seems too good to be true. 

I hope you guys have a great week!

Elder Jones