You guys, today was the COOLEST. Our zone left at 3am this morning to drive 3 hours to Canchaque, waaaay up in the mountains! Perks of living in the desert include massive appreciation for trees and greenery! Once we got to Canchaque we took two pick-up trucks to Pampa Minas, a teeny pueblito even higher up in the mountains. The Elders stood in the back of the pickup and we sisters were inside, it was quite the ride! Then we hiked for about 3 hours and saw a few waterfalls and passed farmland on the hillsides that reminded me of Guatemala! So worth waking up early, and a sweet reward for our hard work contacting these past few weeks! So never fear future Piura missionaries, it´s not ALL desert, haha.
I don´t have a ton of time left, but I tried to send more pictures to compensate!
This week flew by! We had a service project Tuesday morning, 5 Week Reunion with my MTC group at the mission house thursday, ward activity Friday morning, and district meeting Saturday! It made the week seem super duper fast.
Service- we cleaned the street with la familia Gomez, our pensionista family who live on the 1st floor and we live on the 4th. They are seriously the best! They have three kids, one married and 2 in their early 20´s. They are converts to the church and love helping us out teaching lessons! Our street is super cute and clean now, which is ironic because you walk around the corner and it´s back to sand-trash chaos, haha.
Mitchael- he´s progressing greatly! This week we taught him the Plan of Salvation at the church with the Bishop! I´m so glad we had the Bishop there, he explained The Fall super clearly and the Spirit was super strong. I read this week in a talk by Holland that when we´re teaching people the Plan of Salvation, all we´re really doing is bringing back to their remembrance the same plan that they learned in the premortal life! Pretty cool. As the weeks go on, and the more I teach the Plan of Salvation and also Lesson 1, the more I LOVE and am so grateful for my family! Families are so central to this life. I also love the talk Elder Perry gave last conference on families.
Friday we had a ward-stake activity. Youth from several areas in Piura came to our chapel, we divided up into groups, and went to visit less actives! I was paired with a 15 year old girl, Aracsana, from Tumbo Grande. For the first time, I was the for reals leader! Weird not having Hermana Orellana by my side to negotiate with the mototaxi, find directions, and give a lesson! But a really cool experience. We taught a 17 year old girl who´s less active and honestly, I love teaching youth because I´m practically the same age and I feel like I can relate to them well..as opposed to, for example, teaching an adult couple who have been living together for years (not married) the Law of Chastity, haha. That happened this week too.
Sunday we ate with a member family, the Albuquerques. They have 7 kids, 3 recently returned missionaries, and made us Brazilian food! Feijuada and coos coos. Their whole family are converts as of 5 years. Their story is so, so cool. The majority of members that we eat with, (Saturdays and Sundays for lunch) are converts and I love listening to their stories. They are all super willing and happy to help us out with missionary work because it´s had such a huge impact on their lives!
Some random notes-
- I love sunrises here. We are the luckiest to live on the 4th floor and every morning is spectacular out the window.
- This week we had several reverse contacts, aka people contacting US, haha. One man pulled over in his car and asked if we were missionaries and said that he´s having difficulty interpreting the Bible and wants to know if we can help him. We´re gonna visit their family this week! Another woman in a panaderia stopped us as we were walking out the door and started asking us questions and wants us to visit her. I love it when that happens, haha, makes our job easy!
- Also, nothing beats a few warm breads from the tiny panaderias here for 50 centavos, that´s like 15 cents in the US.
Love you all, have a great week!
Hermana Parks
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