Peru!!

Well, I´m here in Peru!!  It was awesome to get to see my old comp Hermana Weller and some friends from the MTC on the flight from Atlanta to Lima.  We got here pretty late Monday night and the first night we stayed in a hotel close to the mission office.  We had training with President Ardila all day on Tuesday and it was amazing.  President Ardila is a great teacher and our mission really is organized so well.  The motto so to speak is that we baptize and confirm weekly, which is awesome!  There are so so many people here ready to receive the Gospel!  We also got our areas that morning, which, because of the mission split, determine which mission we will be in. I am in....Vitarte!  aka still in Lima East!!  Only two out of the five of us in our group are staying here and the rest are in the Huancayo Mission.  The rest of the mission will find out where they´re going to be a week from now when we have the next transfer.  I´m so excited to be here because the temple is in our mission and we are having apostles come to our mission this year!  They had Elder Bednar in April, and in July Elder Christofferson is coming for a celebration of 100 stakes in Peru (kinda like a temple dedication).  Later this year, we are supposed to have Elder Holland and Elder Cook come too :)

Cool sidenote... so Dad, President Ardila didn´t know I´m your daughter until our interview... he was so amazed that without foreknowledge, I was the only Hermana to stay in Lima East!  It was really cool. I told him how I went to a mission reunion at President Mickelson´s house in Idaho.  (For everyone else who is probably confused reading this, mi padre and my mission president served in the same mission in Colombia!  Small world!)

So I am in Vitarte, outside of the city of Lima, in an area/ward called Alameda.  Funny, huh?  And the name of the other ward that meets in our building is called San Fransisco.  Looks like I didn´t go that far away after all!  Haha. Alameda is in more of an industrial area, so that means less bug bites :)  It´s winter here, so it´s not super hot.  In fact, during the day it´s a perfect temperature, a lot like California.  At night it drops to about 45 degrees at the very lowest.  My favorite thing about Alameda is the PEOPLE!  This is a blessed area because the people here are truly truly ready to receive the gospel.  Right now, we have TEN people with baptismal dates and plans to baptize for the next 4 or 5 weeks!  On Sunday night, a brother and sister were baptized, so I got to have my first baptisms in the mish!  Even though they weren´t really mine, it was waaaaay cool!

Oh and I should probably mention my companions :)

I am in a trio again!!

My trainer is Hermana Aguayo, she has 10 and a half months in the mission and is from Chile. She the BEST!! Seriously, we get along so well because she likes to joke and have fun and she plays tricks on me (or tries to!).  She and Hermana Killian had me convinced once that I needed to read the Book of Mormon in Quechua every day... haha.

Hermana Killian is my gringa companion, she´s from Vegas and has 2 months more than me.  She was in the Lima MTC before the visa madness began!  I met her brother in the MTC and he gave me a note to give her if I ever saw her in the mission... totally awesome that she ended up being my first companion!

Both of my companions are very obedient but also like to laugh and have fun, just like me!

Peru is very different and I´ve learned a lot so far.  Spanish is coming along well! The people are very humble and nice, and their communities are very different than anywhere I´ve been.  The food also is very different, but good.We have a pencion who cooks for us and she is amazing!

I don´t have time for much else, but I´m safe and happy here!  I love you all and hope to be able to write more next time!

con mucho amor,

Hermana Bledsoe