Monday, June 27, 2016

Stayin' Alive, Stayin' Alive!

Hola todos!!

I hope that everything has gone well for everyone this week! Here in Peru things are going pretty well! Lots of walking and preachin'! Eric is doing really well! He accepted a baptismal date for July 23! And he already is seeing the blessings of keeping the comandments. He's been without work for a LONG time, but this week he was able to find a possible job! Now we just gotta hit the whole ''keep the sabbath day holy'' deal :) But I'm sure he'll do fine. It's been fun seeing his faith grow even in the little time we've been with him.

Other than that, we're still working with the ward to find some good less-actives and investigators! 
Funny story! We had a big training with our bishop and ward mission leader and ward missionaries in the stake center last night. We were like a group of almost 20 people and we fit everyone into the bishop's van and another car!! The bishop's van didn't have seats in the back, so he took the tiny seats from the nursery and put them in his car for us to sit in!!!! It was SO PACKED! And so funny. One of those ''only in Peru'' moments :) 

But to finish, I've really been thinking about the Savior this week. It caught my eye a while ago in the sacrament prayer how it says that we are to ''always remember him''. Even as a missionary, it can be hard to ALWAYS remember him! Doing small things to remember Christ in the day has helped me find peace and strength this week!

Love you all!!!
Hermana Stephenson

PICS. These are pictures from our cake night activity last week!!! 



Monday, June 20, 2016

Cerro La PAZ!

Hello EVERYONE!!
Another transfer has come and gone! Turns out I'll be staying here in El Carmen with my same companion, Hermana Landazuri, for these last few weeks! It's kind of amazing how fast time is going!

Well, this week was bit of a rough one with a trip to Trujillo for 2 days, a sick companion and a huge ward activity to plan and execute. Needless to say, we didn't get much proselyting  done :( BUT with the few visits we got in this week we were able to find some awesome people!

The first is a guy named Eric. The Elders called us one day with his referral. So we went and knocked on his door and he let us in! He's 45 and was in the army for years, but for some reason decided to leave. Since then he hasn't really had a stable job and feels like he's missing something! We were able to teach a little and he is super excited. He even came to our ward activity and loved it!! We are super excited to see how he is going to progress!

The ward activity we had was a HUGE sucess!! It was kind of funny actually. We had SOOO many problems getting it pulled off in the first place! No one had keys to the church, there wasn't anything to decorate the chapel, we didn't have plates or cups, and a million other things. BUT it alll finally worked out in the end!! Angles were DEFINITELY  ''round about to bear [me] up''! A bunch of members brought cakes and we played games and ate and had a great time! 

Well, my time's up, but just reallY quick a quote from Abraham Lincon that has helped me this week! It goes kinda like this
''people are just about as happy as they make up their minds to be''. It is SOOO true. Life is hard sometimes. But they are hardships given to us by a loving Heavenly Father to help us learn and grow! And we can choose to be happy or grouchy about them :) It's not easy, but that's why the Savior is there to help and guide us!

Looove you all!!
Hermana Stephenson

Pics. We hiked this HUUUGE mountain here in Chimbote called Cerro La Paz and it was AWESOME!!! 
You know Mount. Doom from Lord of the Rings? It was JUST LIKE THAT. No joke.




Monday, June 13, 2016

And the story continues!

Hello everyone!
I hope that all is well and things are going great for you! 
This week was a lot slower than last week, but we were able to visit Rosa Huaman and her little boy with Down Syndrome, John! We went and taught about prophets and the importance of following the prophets. Because Hna. Rosa is from the mountain reigons, she doesn't have too much of an education. BUT a huge blessing is that she can READ!! We were so happy when we were singing hymns (John, LOVES singing!) and she was following along and reading the lyrics! But we still have to go pretty slowly for her to understand. A girl in our ward got baptized on Saturday and we invited Rosa and she said yes! We got to go and have a great time at the church and she got to meet some of the members of our ward. The difficulty Rosa has is that she works in the market on Sunday mornings right when we have church. We are hoping that because she was able to come the chapel and feel the spirit, that it will be easier for her to make the decision to stop working on Sundays. 
Other than that, just a lot of walking and working! We are trying to work with the ward a bit more to find some good less-actives who are ready to come back to church!
To finish, I was reading the confrence talk by Elder Oaks this week entitled 'opposition in all things'. I loved a part where he says ''The Lord [won't] make it EASY, but he will make it POSSIBLE''. We need to have hard things in our lives to be able to grow and to refine us into the kind of people that can live with Heavenly Father and Christ forever! Its not fun a lot of the times, but I've found that if I can see the eternal purposes of the hard  things I go through, it makes it a tad bit easier :) Like it says in D&C 122: 7
...know thou, my son, that all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good.

Keep truckin' along! Love you all!
Hermana Stephenson
I don't know if I sent this picture, but we played futbol like ALL DAY  2 weeks ago for pday! AND I made a SWEET header goal!!!!!! IT WAS SO AWESOME!! I'm getting a lot better :)


JOHN!!!!!! the little squirt. :) Hes's so adorable

Thursday, June 9, 2016

Craaazy Week!

Hellooooooooooooooo todos!

Another crazy week here in Chimbote! We had like a MILLION references from members this week and are working like CRAZY to contact and meet all of them! We are really trying to fill up our teaching pool again, because the investigators and less-actives we were teaching just haven't been progressing like they need too. So we are going to leave them for now and come back in a while to check up on them. Its always pretty sad to stop teaching people, because you really come to love and care for them. But we can't ever force people to progress and have blessings if they don't want them :( 
So we're in a phase where we are just visiting a bunch of new people. 

One family we found is the Huaman family. Rosa is the mom, Richard is 19 and John is 7. John has DOWN SYNDROME AND IS THE CUTEST KID EVER!!!!!!!! He is literaly JUST like Luke, no joke. Just that he speaks Spanish and is a whole lot skinnier :) He sat down and even ran into the back room to drag his older brother out to come and listen! And he LOOVES singing hymns. It was just the most amazing lesson. We got to teach them about prayer and they are SUPER excited to go to church (THANK GOODNESS. We have a hard time getting people to come to church here.....) and ready to learn. Please keep them in your prayers!!

Also a cool experience: the other day I prayed in the morning to just be able to find and help someone. Maybe bring a smile to someone's face or lift them up a bit. But as we went though the day we really couldn't find ANYONE! Then we decided to go stop by a less-active named Flor. She lives out in the fields in this little hut. Not even a house really, just  a hut made of woven plant leaves or something. We shout for her (cuse there really isn't a door) and she comes out and looks super worried. Apparently her oldest son had had a high fever for about a day and her husband had been out working so she couldn't take him to the hospital because she couldn't leave her other small kids alone. She invited us in and her 13 year old is just laying on the bed. In Peru people don't know how to lower a fever or anything without medication. Its really sad how messed up and whaked up medicine is here. So I began to put wet cloths on his head and neck and torso to help cool him down, then kept changing them every once and a while to keep them cool. We were there for a while, but eventually, his fever began to come down! I told her to keep doing it and she thanked us and was so happy that Heavenly Father had sent us to help her. And it was so cool how my prayer was able to be answered! Its true, that if we are willing, the Lord will make us instruments in his hands! 

Love you all and enjoy the pictures from the temple (AGAIN!). We went as a zone today! That's why I didn't write :) 

Hermana Stephenson

Look what I found--Crossfit Pervian style!!!