Week 45: Te Damos Señor Nuestras Graaaa-cias!

 Buenas tardes amigos! I hope you're all doing well. Here's what I did this week:

On Wednesday we met with our friend Dayiro. (Maybe it's Yadiro I don't know they pronounce a lot of letters the same). He's been coming to church since his grandma got back from an extended vacation to Chile. We asked him to be baptized and he accepted, but the only problem is his parents are in Chile so we weren't able to ask them for approval. We also shared a message with his grandpa who also isn't a member. We're going to have to wait till next Wednesday before we can possibly make a call to his parents.

On Thursday we had interviews with Presidente. I helped Presidente Hiatt give a blessing of health to Elder Kennedy who hurt his shoulder. After the interview I was able to talk with Hermana Hiatt for a bit about Christmas, Spanish, and their new granddaughter that was just born. I also had to translate for her and the other Peruano elders.

On Friday I went on exchanges with Elder Lumbre from Esperanza. He did the baptismal interview for Josai and after we did some finding. Here we don't really need to do a lot of street contacting because we can just knock on doors of members from the ward member list and a lot of the time there's someone there we can teach. We knocked on the door of 2 inactive young men and found their mother, Roxana. There was a goat in their living room so that was pretty cool. (The floor was concrete) Their huge dog went to sleep on my feet and that was the opposite of fun. We shared a quick message and after climbed up to the top of the area. It's a lot poorer up there so it's even rarer to see a gringo. We knocked on one door before we had to go down again, but we met some kids who seem really cool and want to learn more. We invited them to church and set up another appointment for Sunday. We went to have another lesson with Ana and her family, but she was sick so we gave her a blessing instead. Our pensionista killed it on the food that day with chicken sandwiches for breakfast, chicharron de pollo for lunch, and papas reinas for dinner. That night we closed the exchange by going to the apartment in Esperanza. Had a good talk with Elder Lumbre about missions.

On Saturday we had the baptism of Josai. We kind of had to prepare the baptism all ourselves last minute because none of the leaders were available that day and we didn't know. Luckily it still turned out alright. I had to direct the service and Elder Macedo baptized. Before the baptism we went to have another lesson with Roxana. We shared the gospel of Jesus Christ and the spirit was strong so I extended the invitation to be baptized on the 17th of December and she accepted! Now we need to work on getting her to church. After that we prepared for the baptism. I gave one of my white shirts for Josai to wear. Only had to roll up the sleeves 5 times. I don't know how this is possible but I accidentally stepped in the water when we were checking it so my right shoe and sock were soaked for a long time. We didn't have as many people show up as we would've liked, especially the primary. Luckily there were a few of the elders quorum cleaning the chapel at the time of the baptism so I asked them to come and show their support. Josai's mother and step father both came. He seemed really happy and I think he's going to enjoy coming to church. Hopefully he'll decide to serve a mission when he gets older. After the baptism we helped clean up the chapel a bit. We then walked the 20 minute walk to pur pensionista before Elder Macedo realized he had the keys to the chapel in his pocket so they couldn't lock it up. We rode a mototaxi back only to find the Relief Society president there with some keys so we really didn't have to rush back. Then we started the 20 minute walk to our pensionista over again -_-

We didn't have as many people come to church as we'd hoped, but Josai was confirmed and he was really happy about it. We also met a man named Agustín who recently moved here from Argentina for work. He was baptized in September so we're going to help him adjust to his new ward and strengthen him in the gospel, although he seems pretty strong already. After church we finally got a lesson with some of the parents of some of the kids from the group of children we've been teaching. We have another lesson with them tomorrow so we'll see where this goes. Sunday night we stopped by a member's house and had a good conversation with hermano Milton about his mission. Our pensionista wasn't able to feed us that night so the family fed us one of the biggest plates of food I've had on the mission. It was delicious, but extremely unhealthy. I only got through about a third of the piece of chicken before looking at it made me sick. It was sooo greasy.

I've also noticed that the Peruanos, when singing "We Thank Thee o God For a Prophet", can't help but do a bit of a slide in their voice when singing "proooo-phet." (Or in Spanish when singing "graaaa-cias.") It's kind of funny. But also the only form of Come Thou Fount they have down here is a version with the words of "Joseph Smith's First Prayer." So whenever they say we're going to sing "La Oracion del Profeta" you never know which version you're going to sing until the piano starts.

That's my week! We had a zone pday today bit didn't have time to write about it so I'll include it in next week's email. I hope you all have a fantastic Thanksgiving!

Elder Jensen

1/5/6/7. Exchange with Elder Lumbre

2/8. Dinner with the Marquinas

3/4. Baptism of Josai