Ser Mormón es ser feliz!

Wow, first of all congrats to Sadie for making it into the choir for the General Relief Society Broadcast! I will definitely be looking for you from here in Perú!  Glad to hear from you guys at home too and that things are going well there!

So this week has been just a whirlwind of WORK!  We are just rushing to appointments all the time and receiving a lot of references... the trick is helping them to actually progress! Haha.  The people of my cerro are so humble and awesome and totally worth hiking a ton to visit.  A lot people believe our message and want to be baptized, but a lot of what is holding people back is keeping the commandments.  One of the things is that almost every couple lives together without being married, and we have yet to get another couple to show their faith and make that step like Yessica and Edgar.  But we have faith and are hoping to see this testimony and belief reflected in their actions.

Speaking of Yessica and Edgar, we are now teaching Yessica´s older sister (who is 21 years old) Viki, who is amazing! She told us that she has seen such a great change in her sister and her brother-in-law and wants to change as well.  In our first lesson, we shared a beautiful moment with her as we asked her to be baptized and she responded in tears, "SI."  I felt prompted to set a date during all of the hugs and tears and she has agreed to set the goal of October 12!  I am so happy for her and also really happy to see that the Gospel really has changed the lives of Edgar and Yessica for the better.

I have really felt with this calling and more responsibilty of being a senior companion and trainer the hand of the Lord in all that I do and am so grateful for this opportunity to learn and grow as a missionary and as a person.  I´m a lot more bold and have learned to follow the Spirit more than ever... it´s hard to describe everything rapidly in the limited time I have, but I´m definitely counting my blessings! :)

Love yall! Cuidense muuucho!

Hermana Bledsoe

With the Fernandez-Baca family gettin´ready for the wedding!

 The Sisters of Zone San Luis (It´s weird to write that in English!)

 Juanes!  It´s weird but good! It´s rice with some chicken wrapped in like a palm tree leaf thingy...haha

 We went to a baptism that our district leader had... all of us with their convert, Kenny.

Everyone gathered around to eat Juanes in P-day (a typical dish from the provinces)!

Fe en cada paso.

So I sent some pics from last Monday when we went to La Punta in Callao for P-Day! It was way fun/exhausting.  I love my zone!

Tuesday was CAMBIOS! And Hermana Pardo got switched out of the area and I am... TRAINING!! And freaking out... Haha.  It´s such a huge responsibility being senior companion and a trainer, and I´m learning a lot.

My new companion is Hermana Sassetti from Santa Fe, Argentina. She has a strong Argentinian accent so sometimes I can´t understand her, but she is really focused and has a lot of enthusiasm!  She turned 20 this week so Hermana Lupita made her a huge chocolate cake and we had to scarf peices of it down really quickly between appointments... she learned as I did that birthdays in the mission are quite different!  We are still scaling our cerro every day and Hermana Sassetti is getting used to that and all of the changes in culture coming from Argentina.

Elisama still hasn´t talked to her mom about getting permission, but we have asked our bishop if he would visit their family because the mom is only there at night past 9 and we can´t be out late.  Hopefully we can all come together and make this baptism happen this week!  We did, however, go with her and her cousin, Jhordy, to visit the temple and she LOVED it! It was a really sweet experience and motivated her more to get the courage to talk to her mom about joining the church... so we´ll see what happens this week!

I´m learning more and more how much missionaries are needed- to teach the gospel, visit less actives, and help build up the church wherever we are serving.  People really appreciate when we visit them and I´m grateful for the opportunity that I have every day to help fulfill a need of someone who is going through a hard time or needs more of the Spirit in their life. Just enjoying every second!

Hasta Luego!

Hermana Bledsoe :)

Only some of the stairs we scale every day...my legs are hard as rocks after 6 weeks! Haha.

 typical plaque pic

 Atop of the cerro again

  my comp and a menos activo!

 We found a ton of plátanos (bananas) and had to take a pic!  Such a gringo thing to do :)

 LA PLAYA! :)

 Playing in a boat.

 La Punta!

 Some of our zone who all went to La Punta!

 Da beach! So pretty and peaceful.

 Everyone smushed in a bus on the way home!

 Mi Lima en la nochecita :)

Todo lo puedo en Cristo que me fortaclece.

Hey yall!

First of all, I´m glad to finally hear from you Sadie and how you´re enjoying the MTC!  Where are you living?  Where is your classroom? I actually miss it there a bit, it´s an amazing place and the Spirit is abundant when you´re in tune with it.  Your companionship sounds a lot like mine was with Hermana Weller... she was the crier and I was the one whipping out the Spanish.  So if you and I were mission companions, we would rock it! Haha. We would just have to speak Sportuguese :)  I was always the only Hermana in my district not crying when we had testimony meetings, and it kinda bothered me because I knew I was feeling the Spirit, it just doesn´t always manifest itself in that way.  After about 5 months now, I cry all the freaking time! Haha.  

So this week was the last week before transfers and so we´ve been continuing working hard to finish it off.  We have a handful of investigators that attend church every week, but have different challenges keeping them from being baptized.  One of them is Elisama, a sixteen year old girl whose cousin is a recent convert in our ward.  She comes to church every Sunday and all of the youth activities. She studies English a lot and loves to talk with me in English!  But I try not to do that too much because Hermana Pardo gets annoyed... haha. Elisama´s mom is super Catholic and we are working on getting her permission so that she can be baptized this Saturday!

We also ran into Carlos the other day... it was the first time we´d seen him since my birthday and I was a bit nervous.  Turns out that he wants us to come back and teach him again and that he wants to be baptized!  He just doesn´t want to be pressured into quitting smoking.  We´ve had only one lesson with him since, and we taught him about how the power of the Atonement can help him do all things (Phillipians 4:13) through its enabling power, or grace.  It was amazing to hear in the closing prayer when he asked for strength to improve. He knows that this is the truth and we are praying for him to be able to leave this behind for good.

Hermana Lupita, our pensionista, went out of town this last week, so her husband Alejandro has been cooking for us.  It´s kinda funny because right now they´re like our parents... when mom´s gone we can eat whatever we want and we watch church movies like 17 Miracles during our meals hahaha. 

Not much else exciting has been happening.  The mission gave everyone these messenger bags that make us look like Jehovahs Witnesses, but that has actually given us more opportunities to talk to people because they come up to us and ask if we´re "Testigos." Hahaha. We put in a lot of work this transfer and taught a total of about 90 lessons total to investigators and about 30 to less actives because they´re super important too, I´ve learned.  This work is amazing and I´m so glad to be a part of it!

Ciao!

Hermana Bledsoe

Little news today!!

Enjoy the pics! I´m well and having a great time!