Hermana Parks in Peru: Ignacio Merino week 10 - reuniting with a BYU friend, teaching some great investigadores, etc

Gente: here is today's message from Christine. Hna Parks seems to be getting along just fine in Peru. We sent her a Christmas package today (September 7). If it gets to her, we think it will blow her mind. We're blessed to have a missionary from our family serving. El campo blanco esta ya para la siega...

--dad

This week was seriously my favorite week of the mission thus far and FULL of miracles! I wish I could tell you guys every detail and tell you about everyone we´re teaching but alas there is never enough time and too many people to describe! :) Here are a few experiences this week:

Friday we had intercambios. Hna Bazan is an hermana lider so Hna O went to her area, more in the center of Piura and Hna Richan came with me for the day! She´s the Abel´s cousin and lived in the building next to mine at BYU. She´s got 4 weeks in the field and barely knows Spanish but she has the BEST attitude and I love her to death! Last intercambios was full of appts that fell through but Friday was the exact opposite! BEST DAY EVER. Seriously.

We visited la familia Escudero-- at first only Lucia was there with her two little ones, and I felt impressed to teach Plan de Salvacion. We had taught the first half of it about a month ago, so we re-taught the whole thing. Carlos arrived shortly after we began and they both just embraced the whole lesson. They thought the pre-mortal life was so cool that we chose to come to earth as part of God´s plan. They said they had never understood The Fall of Adam and Eve until now. When we got to the kingdoms of glory, I talked about how we have to live the principles of the gospel in order to enter the Celestial kingdom, including baptism. Carlos asked what they needed to do to be baptized! We explained about the priesthood and being baptized in the way that Christ showed us. Their whole family said yes when I invited them to be baptized and they committed to come to church on Sunday! Unfortunately, Carlos had to travel for work and the two little ones got sick so they didn´t make it, but nonetheless we areSO excited forthem. I walked out of thelesson like WHAT JUST HAPPENED. I feel like we aren´t even doing much, they´ve been prepared by The Lord to hear the gospel! Next lesson we´re going to set a baptismal date for October.

Then, we visited Hna Avanell and taught the rest of Lesson 1 and gave her a Book of Mormon! She was SO excited to read it. She says she feels closer to God than she ever has in her life and she reads the things we give her and prays how we taught her to pray (as opposed to the Catholic recitation she used to do). On Sunday she was at church EARLY, reading her Book of Mormon! Seriously the most pilas investigator in the entire world. We visited her last night as well and set a baptismal date for the 19th! SO excited for her. From what she´s expressed, her daughters are a little wary of Mormons and have some false ideas about us but they love us sister missionaries and we´re going to start teaching them this week.

On Tuesday, while knocking on doors, we found a Columbian family who own a restaurant, they´´ve lived here for a year. Their parents were busy but their 16 year old daughter wanted to listen to us so we taught her, Evelin, and her 12 year old sister, Jimena. They are incredible. By far the most mature teenagers I have ever met in my entire life! Super super intelligent and I swear they seem older than me, haha. We did a como comenzar a ensenar and only taught the first two principles because we had to run to another appt but then when we came back on Saturday, they had both read the pamphlet and prayed about it!! We taught them The Restoration and watched the video with them. Afterwards, they expressed to us that they felt like they identified so much with Joseph Smith becausethey´ve been looking for a religion forever and searching for the truth! HOLY GOLDEN INVESTIGATORS. Evelin got sick but Jimena came to church on Sunday! She participated a ton in the classes and told us she loved it! Afterwards she asked when we were going to visit her :) We´re going to give them Books of Mormon tonight!

This week our zone conf was about finding los escogidos. DyC 29:7. We´re finding tons of nuevos investigadores and we´re working on discerning who is truly prepared.

Reasons our ward is super pilas:

A member accompanying us followed us all the way home in his car after the lesson because he didn´t want us to walk alone and we can´t ride with members of the opposite gender. He was totally holding up traffic as he was accompanying us while we were speed walking, haha.

In ward council they had hamburgers this week per Hna O´s request and hand delivered them to our apartment afterwards since council ran late and we had to race home.

Julio Viera is a ward member who´s lived here for 45 years so he knows literally EVERYONE and loves accompanying us during our tocar puertas horas to show us where his friends live and teach them the gospel! So cool to see his excitement for this work.

Random:

I had a head cold this week and it was INFIERNO, like seriously SO hot at the same time. I was like man it stinks to be sick in the summer...and then I remembered it´s winter :) So scared for summer!

WE MET AN ATHEIST THIS WEEK. I´m pretty sure he´s the only one in Peru, so it was an honor :)

Check out the photos of the food we ate. It´s called a Juan because Juan the baptist was decapitated and the banana leaves make it look like a human head on a plate, haha!

Love you all have a great week!

Hermana Parks