Week 63: Strollin' Through Huanchaco

 Hola amigos! I hope you all had a great week! I know I did!


I forgot to mention that last week José got really close to biting me. He lunged a lot further than I thought he would and knicked my fingers, although it wasn't a full bite. Then it was sitting on the couch and hermana Ángela was sitting on the other side of it. She had José on her shoulder and we were talking with Cirilo and Maria, who had come over to visit. José was looking at me, and I knew exactly what he was thinking. He was planning on jumping and biting me, but couldn't commit himself or was waiting for the right moment. I picked up a pamphlet on the Gospel of Jesus Christ that was close to me just in case. Then out of nowhere he jumped off of her right at my hand, but luckily I used the pamphlet to protect myself and we all had a good laugh. Saved by the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Nayeli is also progressing very well towards baptism. She has 6 or 7 attendances at church and goes to seminary everyday. We finally had the opportunity to have a lesson with her and her mom in person after almost 3 weeks. We were able to talk about baptism and put Nayeli on date for the 8th of April! Hopefully her mom, Maria, will follow soon because she wants to learn and likes the church as well, she just needs to be able to come but works gets in the way. She'll have Sunday free in May so hopefully we can move forward during that month. I also think Bryan is falling for Nayeli, even though he already has like 4 girlfriends.

On Wednesday we had a multizone conference, the first one in 4 months! But we only did it with one other zone, Casalupe, which is fine. We had great trainings and we were fed lunch. It was just the lasagna that we also had last July. It was alright. We got an interesting drink that was blue and they put a gummy shark in it with an umbrella on the straw. Trying to pick up that gummy shark when it was wet was impossible. We also got some chocolate cake afterwards for birthdays. Elder Larkin's birthday is on Wednesday so we got to sing to him that day. Afterwards we went home and later that day decided to pass by Nina. She's an older woman who can talk for a long time. She likes us a lot but it's kind of hard to understand what she wants and believes. I hadn't seen her in a month because she went on an extended vacation to Cajamarca and I didn't know if she had gotten back or not but I felt like we should pass by. She was there and we had a 2 hour long lesson with her. The APs had talked about putting people on date for baptism early and in so doing use that to propel them to complete the other commitments. We explained baptism and the rest of the gospel of Jesus Christ and with the spirit and persistence we were able to put her on date for April 29th. It's more of a goal than anything because she still has a long way to go, but if I practice what I preach and act with faith I know we can work miracles and see conversion! (And with the agency of others). 

On Thursday we had exchanges with Jardines. I brought Elder Guerrero with me to Huanchaco. It turns out that Jair (hermana Ángela's son), actually knew his parents when he served in their ward in Lima during his mission. We had a few good lessons with some people. One of them was a reference named Jovana who has a lot of questions and wants to understand more about our beliefs. She and her husband are already married, which actually gets me excited now when I hear it when we teach a family because of how uncommon it is, whether they have interest or not. Because if they progress, that's one huge problem we don't have to worry about. It was good exchange and we were able to practice teaching in a simple way even when we're tempted to do it the other way. On our way back to the offices on Friday we actually saw Presidente driving away in his car.

On Friday we tried contacting a lot of inactives and gray dots but it seems our list isn't up to date. We actually did a lot of strolling through the beach town part of Huanchaco doing that, so we spent a lot of time close to the ocean. Now that I think aboutbit we actually did that quite a bit this week. I liked it quite a bit, so maybe we'll spend more time down there. We also met Luz, an inactive member who moved from Iquitos after she went inactive so we don't have her membership records. We're helping her come back to church and I think we'll be able to teach her family too. Afterwards wee went to San Francisco with Bryan and had a lesson with Elis. Jimmy came with us too as usual. We were also able to put her on date for the 29th. She has more of a possibility than Nina I think, but she still needs to come to church which can be hard with the distance and having to travel in bus with 2 kids. But it's possible and that's our next step with her.

On Saturday we decided to pass by the house of hermana Lucy Herrera. She's an investigator who lives very close to the chapel. We had a lesson with her a month ago, but all of our other lessons have been canceled. But we decided to pass by and had a great message about the Book of Mormon and the gospel of Jesus Christ. She told us that she had been falling away from the Catholic church recently and that she'd like to learn more and be apart of the Church. She promised to come to church (and she actually followed through) so we'll see where that goes. We also invited hermano Juan to come with us to some lessons which all ended up being canceled so that was fun. We did get to talk to a guy from Chile named Jhony and explain to him a little bit about the Church.

On Sunday we were able to visit some members and went out to see hermana Carol and her mom Marta, who are inactives who we've been teaching. They've been coming to church for the past 3 weeks, which makes me feel so jumpy and happy inside. Seeing an inactive member come back to church is such an amazing feeling there's nothing else like it. Carol's sister, Pamela, is also always there and she has special needs. But seeing her just makes me feel more of the love that God has for her and for me. I felt prompted to talk about the temple with them so we can progress to have them get their recommends. We had an awesome devotional with President that night about how to know if people are ready for baptism and what we should do to prepare them for it. I loved it so much I was smiling the whole time .

That's all for me this week! We're going to keep pushing forward and I'm SOOO excited for General Conference! It's like the World Cup for us missionaries. I hope that you have an absolutely fantastic week!

Elder Jensen

1. A poster I made for a video our mission made
2. Adrian got baptized! He was a kid I found, taught, and put in date while I was in Pueblo Libre. Sad I didn't get to go, but my son got to perform his first baptism
3. Selfies on the ZL's phone
4. Lunch at the conference
5. Zonas Primavera y Casalupe
6. Compañerismo
7. The Punisher
8. Huanchaco










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