Wait...you can make that in a microwave?

Yes, that`s been the golden question.  I`ve found that you can in fact make a lot of things in the microwave, like pancakes and scrambled eggs.  That`s been my life.  It`s also been basically a party everyday here because there are elections this weekend so there is a concert every night in the plaza.  It`s a good time.  Also, because of the elections, we don`t get to watch conference next weekend like the rest of the world.  We have to wait for the next weekend.  That also means we won`t have church for two weeks, which makes it hard to invite people to church.  

  We still haven`t set anymore baptismal dates yet.  We are working on that.  We talk to a lot of people, but they usually aren`t home when we go.  Such is life in South America.  But we are going to find people.  The Lord didn`t send us here to knock on doors, he sent us here to baptize.  So everyone have  a great week, and hopefully I`ll have more to report next week! 

Love you all!

THIS.IS.PERU....BAPTIZE!!!

This week we had a zone conference with our mission president.  And he is the bomb, I´m sorry for all you missionaries reading this because my mission president is the best.  He´s on a Jeffrey R. Holland level awesome.  So we were just being jam packed with the Spirit and how to be awesome.  Basically anytime he talks to us I feel like Pain and Panic from Hercules, "WE ARE WORMS!"  He definitely knows how to motivate, He expects us to baptize, so that´s what we´re going to do. Period.  

We did in fact have our first baptism on Sunday.  And by "our" I mean a baptism that we helped bring about through working with the Spirit, because we couldn´t do anything without the Spirit.  It was really great, Hermana Rios and I sang and I had to play and sing at the same time, and also learn how to transition from one key to another....yeah, I´m pretty cool.  No, but we sang "How Great Thou Art" then transitioned to "I Believe in Christ" then back to the first.  The baptism was really great.  She was happy, we were happy, just a lot of happiness.  I definitely hope to have many more in the future.  But we need to find investigators first....but yeah that was the highlight of this week.  The church is true.  Have a great week!

good call on the first aid kit.  I took a little fall last week while we were running to our apartment.

We were trying to get to our apartment to change and grab a knife to get back to the church because our district/zone bought a cake for two of the elders´ birthdays, and there was a step and I didn´t quite make it.  All the dogs here are friendly, so we never have to run from them. ( I had asked her if they were running from dogs.)

I miss american candy.  I also miss bread.  There is bread here all around, but I haven´t bought any yet, and our pensionista doesn´t give us bread ever.  I have like a loaf of bread, but I miss biscuits and rolls.

We don´t get to watch conference until the next weekend, because its voting weekend this week.  Not that it matters, it will be in Spanish so I won´t understand anything.  But I´m excited. Yeah, I play the piano every week in Sacrament, and they don´t tell me the songs until about 10 to 9, so if I´m lucky I can run through them a couple times.  So far I´ve been able to play the songs fairly well, but I know there are a lot of hymns that I never played so I´m nervous for the day they pick one of those.  I have had to sight read a couple sacrament hymns because I never practiced any of those, but so far so good.  It´s actually pretty amazing, and this has to be a blessing from the Lord.  We have sung a couple songs that I never played before my mission, but for some reason in the MTC, they were stuck in my head so I started to play them, and the first week we sand one and last week another, and yesterday another.  They were "Lead Kindly Light", "The Lord is My Light" and "In Our Lovely Deseret"  And they were songs that I was super familiar with, but they would just get stuck in my head in the MTC so I learned how to play them.  and they aren´t super easy songs, so I wouldn´t have been able to sight read them.  Funny how the Lord works.

Hermana Jenna Ahern

Do you go to any church? No, I`m Catholic.

 That has been the interesting thing this week.  People still aren`t married, but there are also a ton of Catholics here, and also Jehovah`s Witnesses which is weird.  But We will ask people if they go to any chuch and they`ll say, "No, I`m Catholic"  Ummmm..... so does Catholicism not count as a church?  But it`s not very easy to baptize Catholics.  They get hung up on the fact that they`re already baptized, and they can`t get baptized again.  We still haven`t gotten anymore solid investigators, we contact a lot, but when we go visit, they aren`t there.  But we do have a baptism this week, so we are excited about that.  We also contacted a 17-year-old and he gave us this giant foam sign that says BIENVENIDOS. It was a little strange, but nice.  There are also elections going on right now, so there are a lot of rallies which is pretty annoying.  I`ll be happy when that`s over.  We have a training meeting for all the new missionaries, so I got to see everyone I came here with.  It`s the last time we will ever all be together.  It was great, spent the whole day in Lima.  Yup, that`s it, Have a great week!

How my mission turned me into a coffee addict

So there´s this drink in Peru called Ecco, and it basically is exactly like coffee, but not so it´s OK to drink.  It´s like mormon coffee.  So yeah, I´ve been becoming an addict to that...it´s a good time.  We´ve had more lessons this week, but not much to report.  We contact a lot of people, but usually they are home when we go by so it´s a lot of work with not a lot to show.  But we still have our baptismal date set for Esperanza.  She is progressing nicely.  We also have trouble finding people who are actually married.  The #1 most dreaded word here is "convivientes"...it kills your hopes and dreams.  My Spanish is improving...at least I hope so.  People still don´t understand me because, according to my companion, I have a really thick accent.  So I´m working on that.  But I´ve always wanted to have an accent.  The traffic here is like gambling life everytime to walk out the door.  I can´t even describe it.  Lines on the road don´t mean anything, and there aren´t stop signs anywhere.  If you want to get across the street, you bolt it at any space in traffic.  So I´ve answered the age old question of "If your friend ran out in front of a bus, would you do it?"  The answer is, "Yes, and I´ve done it on multiple occasions or I´ll never get across the street"  And the public transportation....yeah, they say it´s bad in New York.  But yesterday, we were chillin on a street corner waiting for an appointment, and two guy came up to me and asked if I could practice the word of God with them.  I´m like, "Uhhh, we´re just waiting for an appointment." They´re like, "well we want to learn more."  I´m like (inside) yesssssss (outside) great, we can teach you.  It was interesting.  My comp was on the phone with the district leader, so I had to do it all.  It was intense.  But yeah,  things are goin good.  Had a lesson with a paranoid schizophrenic...so that was fun.  Love you all.  Have a great week!

 We also visited a castle for p-day last week.

 

I asked about her apartment and the weather:

my apartment is alright.  My companion says it´s not as nice as normal hermanas apartments, so we might be moving.  It´s just chilly everywhere, not super cold.  It´s usually not that windy either.

 District/Zone

 Coastline below the Castle Chancay

 Castillo Chancay

 Jenna found her knight in shining (or not so shining) armour.

 A Titanic Moment - Elders

 Jenna's Titanic Moment

Hermana Rios and Hermana Ahern at the Castle.

Peru, where the 70s came to die.

   Well, what I know about Peru so far.  There are dogs everywhere!  You can`t flush toilet paper down the toilet.  It`s dirty.  The food is super good.  And the winner....nobody speaks English.  Just kidding, I already knew the last one.  But some people that speak a little English will think there being helpful and translate super easy words for me....I`m like yes thank you, but I know what that meant.  But the people are really good.  But there are so many things here that look like they`re from the 70s.  A lot of music.  But they are really weird, like the house aren`t really nice, but they`ll have like iPhones and flat screen TVs.  It`s weird.

   My companion is Hermana Rios.  She is from Panama and has been in the mission for 11 months.  I`m her first child.  She doesn`t speak much English, so it`s been a good time.  We have contacted a lot of people, but nobody is married, so that`s a problem.  We have taught a few lessons, and yesterday we got a baptismal date from an investigator named Esperanza.  That was exciting.  We had a conference the other day with Bishop Davis from the bishopric presidency.  It was good and I got to see Elder Halverson! 

  Our area is called Chancay, it`s not as shabby as other areas and we are really close to the beach.  There is also a castle in our area.  There are only 8 missionaries in our zone.  Our zone and our district are the same.  So that`s pretty fun.  I`m picking up Spanish, but I still have a looooong way to go.  Well yeah...that`s it.  Have a great week!

Hermana Rios & Hermana Ahern

 

September 1, 2014