Libertadores - Week 11

Until the Last Moment

Yesterday, immediately after the Sunday meetings at church, we had a baptismal service. Ten days ago we were searching for former investigators and we found Ericka. And yesterday she was able to make a sacred covenant with God to keep His commandments until the end. It was the most spiritual baptismal service I have had until now in my mission.

But it wont be the last!

I have loved my mission. This is my last week, but my commitment is to work harder until the last moment.

Love you guys.

Elder Harris

Ericka's Baptism

Last Zone Conference

Last P Day

Libertadores - Week 10

Follow Assignments

I've learned that no matter how much we think we know, we keep on learning everyday, for example this week I learned two new words in Spanish.

to shred - deshilachar

to blackmail - chantajear

One experience we had was the ward had given us an assignment to visit the Mori family. This is the second time they have asked us to visit them, so I honestly wasn't that excited about visiting them again. But we went, and when we got there we noticed that the mom of the family was talking to a young man. When she saw us she said Elders this is my nephew, he has come from Huanuco and he will be living with us now. Wow. We taught him right then and he was very receptive. My companion shared Mosiah 13 about the Atonement and asked him how he felt by reading it. He responded that he felt like Christ did a whole lot for him, but he wasn't doing much for Christ. It was a really humble answer.

We also had a huge miracle. Last week we were looking for former investigators and we found a part member family. One of the daughters is member, the parents are not married, and there is one daughter of 19 years named Erika. We taught them and put a baptismal date with Erika for the 23rd of June. We have visited them also with the Young Single Adult Leaders and she is really excited to be baptized.

Our Kitchen

Selfie with the Bricks

Our ward mission leader let us borrow his guitar

Libertadores - Week 9

Enjoying the Mission

I don't know if anyone remembers, but when I was in the MTC I wrote about how I hated the huge, purple, acid tasting olives they have here, and about how they always hide them in the food so you don't know you are eating them until the taste already fills your mouth. Yes, those olives. Well noooooow my companion and I go through a packet every other week. They're so good.

So a few weeks ago we received a referral to visit a part member family, the only one who lacks baptism is the oldest son of 26 years. We have tried looking for him a ton but he is never home. But on Wednesday we were out in the street contacting with a huge cardboard Book of Mormon that we painted and we saw him walking his dog heading toward his house, so we thought THIS IS OUR CHANCE. We started walking with him and talking about soccer (it's the best break the ice subject here) when we got to his house he let us in and we taught him the Restoration. He had the Book of Mormon in his hand and he said he would read and pray to know if it was true, then he paused for a moment, looked up and said, "But you know what, I feel that it IS true." It was awesome.

Yesterday we were walking down the street singing hymns to people and we sang a hymn to a lady who was heading to work. She told us where her house was and she told us to go their right now because her son was there and he wanted to talk to us. So we went and a middle aged man let us in his house, he is a former investigator with church attendances. Right off the bat he told us that baptism was the way that we needed to follow Christ and he accepted a baptismal date without blinking. But we asked him what he felt he lacked in his life and he said the ability to make decisions. It seems like he was ready to be baptized beforehand but he lacked the will to make the decision. It was a real miracle finding him.

Saturday morning we were filling the baptismal font (there is nothing better than filling the baptismal font when you are a missionary) and we received a text message from the zone leaders saying President wants us all to move our schedule so that we can all be out working right now, the studies should be postponed until after lunch. And they promised us that we would have success by following these instructions. So we quickly finished filling and went to visit a recent convert. As we were walking we saw a guy standing on a street corner with a bunch of suitcases, so we went to talk with him. He addressed us as "Elderes" and told us that he had just barely arrived from Venezuela and was looking for an apartment. He also told us that his daughter had been baptized Mormon last week and that his wife and all his kids are members of the church. I asked him what he lacked to be member of the church and he said "I need to read more." We gave him our number and we are going to look for him to teach him once he gets settled in and finds work. It was a huge miracle and I know that it came by following President's inspiration.

Pictures: Baptism of the sisters in our district, they are from Venezuela. Drying the white clothes on our roof

Elder Harris

Libertadores - Week 8

Conviction and Sincerity

Fun fact about my mission is there are only two Mexicans in our mission and they are companions haha. They are also in our zone and today as a zone we ate COMPLETOS.

Saturday was one of those days where we were walking all day long talking with everyone but there were a ton of rejects. At 8:00 we looked at our planners and saw that we had an appointment on the other side of our area. At least 10 minutes walking. We were so tired, but we remembered that it was a good contact so we went for it, and we were able to find a married couple to teach. They weren't that receptive, they actually didn't accept a baptismal date, but after we left I felt like wow that was a lot of work just to have two nuevos. But it was worth it, nothing is better than teaching the Restoration.

Yesterday one of our recent converts gave a talk in sacrament meeting about prayer and fasting, and I'm not lying I felt like I was listening to general conference. It was so good, I felt so happy that he had taken time to prepare his talk so well, and the room was filled with the spirit when he bore his firm testimony with conviction and with sincerity.

It's the only picture I took this week.

Elder Harris

Congrats to Abby for graduating from High School and

Congrats to Chandler for being assigned to the PERU LIMA SOUTH MISSION

Libertadores - Week 7

Zona El Trebol

Libertadores - Week 6

Sprint to the End

The best thing that happened this week was the baptism we had. It was a cool experience because Joao (the convert of Elder Chalampuento, my trainer) baptized his sister Alicia. It was amazing to see the changes that Alicia had made in her conversion. Actually she had made all the changes before I got here, I just arrived and we found her ready. She is getting along well with the JAS and we are hoping to see more progress with her and her family.

I had some good pictures to send but my camera isn't working, sorry.

It was good talking to my family. I think the best part of the week was asking my mom to say the opening prayer and the signal was cut off, so I didn't hear a thing. But they told me afterward that she cried through the whole prayer. So I'm sure it was a spiritual experience for everyone who was there. But I'm really grateful for my mom, she has helped me through a lot of struggles in my life. I'm pretty sure if she was a missionary she would baptize more than Ammon. She showed me the example of how to do the work of salvation before my mission and I often find myself sharing experiences of things that my mom has done here on the mission. She is the best. LOVE YOU MOM.

Until next week,

Elder Harris

Libertadores - Week 5

Pollada o Apollada?

This week we taught a lot of interesting people with lots of diverse beliefs. It's a little harder helping those kind of people but we are striving. But of all the few people we taught I think the best experience was going with the former bishop to one of his referrals. Her husband had passed away a few years ago, and she still felt pained because of his absence. We testified of the blessings of the restoration, the knowledge we have of the plan of salvation, and at the end the member suggested that we sing God Be With You Until We Meet Again, and it was really spiritual. It was actually a lot of work getting that referral, and then getting the member to accompany us to visit her was another story. But all that work paid off when we were able to teach her, and we are praying that she will progress.

One goal we made for this week was to not waste time when we are leaving the apartment, because a few times we left late to proselyte, and the next day I read this stripture.

Alma 60:22 "Yea, will ye sit in idleness while ye are surrounded with thousands of those, yea, and tens of thousands, who do also sit in idleness, while there are thousands round about in the borders of the land who are falling by the sword, yea, wounded and bleeding?"

Reading this helped me repent and now we are leaving the apartment earlier and with more fire.

We also had zone conference this week and President Stauffer instructed us about how we minister as missionaries. How we minister to investigators, members, and other missionaries.

One teaching of President Stauffer that is always emphasized in every meeting is THE LORD BLESSES MISSIONARIES WHO WORK. President Stauffer always tells us all the blessings he has had in his life and says that all of it was thanks to the work that he dedicated as a missionary.

Thanks everyone

Elder Harris