"La Semana Santa"

Feliz Pascua a todos!  

This past week here in Perú was something called "La Semana Santa" or "The Holy Week", which is a huge Catholic tradition so of course everyone was out partying during their time off from work and it was a bit harder to find the people that we normally visit. Not to mention there were more drunks in the streets. Haha. But despite all of that, we were able to have a pretty successful week!  Seriously so much is falling into place. 

We should be having a baptism this Saturday because a young woman that has been investigating for a few months now --and has been hot and cold about baptism-- finally told us this last week that she wants to be baptized this Saturday and the YW in the ward are helping out a lot with keeping her enthusiasm and everything.  We also have been working with our bishop with a young part-member family where the husband isn´t a member and the parents aren´t married either.  They now have a wedding date for the 9th of May and the husband accepted a baptismal date for the 10th last night! There are more potentials for these next couple of weeks but I´m just in shock because I havent been in an area like this since I first got to Perú.  We are finding and teaching a bunch and there are so many prepared people here.  In all of my other areas we have had to work extremely extremely hard to get a baptism and here it is still work, but just very different.  I´m super grateful that I am with an awesome companion and that we are starting to have some success.

Even with all of that, probably the best moment of my week was last night.  A few days ago while we were eating breakfast I was reading a talk about women and had the prompting to share a quote from it with my pensionista, Hermana Elizabeth. I felt weird just being like, "hey, listen to this...!" randomly in front of everyone and kinda chickened out.  I felt bad for not following the prompting but later I wrote the quote out really cute on a little note and gave it to her last night after dinner.  It was something SUPER simple, but brought tears to her eyes and she gave me a big hug.  She didn´t say much but I knew it meant a lot to her.  Her daughter is also on a mission in Ecuador and she actually has the same time as I do in the mission and her family is less active.  They have a lot of challenges in their family and I know that she loves having four sister missionaries in her house every day.  She cooks for and takes care of us plus her own four kids that live at home with her and her husband.  I just wanted her to know that we appreciate her.  Like I said, it was super simple and made me realize that you don´t always have to go out of your way much to find people that you can help, sometimes what Heavely Father needs most for you to do is right in front of you.

I love hearing from you guys so much, especially from Sadie in Brazil! I´m so happy to know that the Lord is watching over everyone and that He blesses us so much.  

Con mucho cariño,

Hermana Bledsoe

¿Sabes que you know what?

For pday we went to Matucana again!

Rainbow by the waterfall

Last p-day in Chacla!

Empezando Abril...

SALUDOS! 

So this week was pretty good.  We have a rule in our mission that we can only attend conference if we bring a less active, investigator, or recent convert to the sessions and we really wanted to go so we made it a goal to invite everyone possible and make it possible that we could attend all four of the general sessions.  It was hard, but in the end, we did it! It was amazing to get to go both Saturday and Sunday and enjoy every moment.  On the mission, conference is like Christmas!  It was not only good for us, but for the people we brought.  David had to work Sunday but he came to both sessions Saturday and was there taking notes and loved it.  We also found out during the session in the afternoon on Saturday that one of our eternal investigators decided to be baptized! Finally!  So we are preparing her for that and I can't help but feel so blessed and grateful to my Heavenly Father for all of this.  I recieved a lot of personal guidance and also guidance for the area.  One thing that I learned was about follow-up.  What Elder Ballard said about that is so true and I love how he followed up with us about the invitations that he had made.  In the mission we invite others to come unto Christ in general but we almost always extend other specific invitations that need that follow up after or else nothing will come of it.

My time is up...LOVE YALL!

Hermana Bledsoe

In our zone meeting we celebrated for those who reached one year with a cake!  Elder Kent and Elder Tolman (who were in the Provo MTC at the same as me but in other districts), me, Elder Pineda (my zone leader who was just there, he has like 18 months) and Elder Choquehuanca (who is from the Lima Central Mission originally).

Zona Chaclacayo por la ultima vez!

our neighbor friends and their cousins

Hermana Natty and Hermana Edith after conference!

Lunch in between sessions with the Gonzales Family... they are SO cool!..and yes we ate on the ping pong table haha

Our last FHE in the Roman´s home-- here I´m with almost all of my converts from Chaclacayo (even little Tracy! haha)

...Un año!

Well this week was crazyyyyy but it ended well! 

So this last Monday for P-day we went as a zone to a part of our zone called Pariachi and played sports (soccer and volleyball) with the zone Vitarte.  We first ate completos (again) and when we got down to the fields the Elders from Vitarte told us that the Sisters had been there but got tired of waiting for us to finish eating and left! So that was kind of a bummer because our plan was to play volleyball as Sisters while the Elders played soccer (we have a rule that Elders and Sisters cant play soccer together).  But it was still way fun to relax and play around a bit.  

Tuesday we had a district meeting in the morning and at noon the Hermanas Capacitadoras (Sister Training Leaders) came because we had to do exchanges until the next day.  It was way cool because I stayed in Chacla with Hermana Phillips and Hermana Avendaño went to Santa Anita with Hermana Rodriguez.  Hermana Phillips is super down to earth and we got along super well.  We had some great lessons that day, a member treated us to ice cream sundaes, and later that night we got to chat in English and it was fun, kinda felt like having a sleepover haha.  I learned a lot from her and overall the exchange went very well and helped our area a lot.  

The rest of the week we have been doing a lot of "cleaning" of our area book. We have been visiting some people that simply don't progress and carefully decided to put them as "antiguos" for now and spend time visiting other people and finding.  We have to explain to them how this works as well so that they know why we have stopped visiting them.  They will always be there for future missionaries, but right now just isnt their time.  So with all of that we have had to start from scratch visiting members and contacting.  Its been a bit difficult (because everyone is Catholic or basically too busy for God) but not impossible to find the prepared ones.  We have been having some successes in that and in working with members so were just pressing forward with that.

Friday night we had a lesson with an investigator named David that had a date for this weekend of General Conference. We told him that he'd have to be confirmed the next Sunday after conference and he didn't want to wait that long so long story short, by the end of the lesson he had decided to be baptized this Sunday! He still needed his interview but wouldn't be in Chaclacayo until Sunday morning. We had a crazy morning yesterday waiting for him to arrive from Lima, have his interview, and be baptized with the other two people that the Elders baptized that same morning... I was praying so hard that he would show up and on time. Sure enough, he came and was quickly interviewed, baptized, and confirmed! I know that this is the Lords work and he makes everything possible if we have faith in Him. That experience was such a testimony to me of that and that He answers the fervent prayers of His humble servants.  We are super happy to see David baptized and a member of the church. We met him in the street with his friend who is less active, but it wasnt until about a month later that he asked us to visit him that we started teaching him. He had never really been to a church before but took to reading the Book of Mormon like no other!  He is such a cool person and Im so grateful that I got to teach him.

So yeah all's well that ends well! I love being a part of this work! Love yall!

Hermana Bledsoe