Los Alamos - Week 11

Elder Harris y Elder Viera - Los Alamos - Ventanilla

Abajo es el bautismo de Pedro Arancibia y Mayra Rodriguez, tambien en la foto es su hijo Marcos que se bautizó hace una semana. A ellos les encontramos por una referencia de un miembro.

The Baptism of Pedro Arancibia and Mayra Rodriguez, also in the photo is his son Marcos who was baptized a week ago. We found them through a reference from a member.  

 En las escaleras es la familia Leyva (Hugo y Matilde). Les encontramos por un contacto en la calle (¡20 contactos funciona!)

On the stairs is the Leyva family (Hugo and Matilde). We found them street contacting (20 contacts works!)

Picture with our Elders Quorum President Hermano Guti

A picture of how Elder Viera feels about this week

Los Alamos - Week 10

La Pascua

Bueno, aqui estamos.

My dad asked me how they celebrate Easter in Peru, so I guess I will answer. Here they call it Holy Week. And I've heard some interesting stuff, one of my investigators was really bothered on Friday because people were listening to music. She told us that after 3 pm you can't listen to music to respect the death of Jesus. And she also told us that on Friday and Saturday the only type of meat that you can eat is fish. I don't know if everyone celebrates it like that, but she did. Also, Friday is like a national holiday or something so very few people work (which helped us find more people to teach) but it also made the bus system raise their prices because less people were using the buses. I haven't seen anything commercialized about the easter bunny or anything like that. But one member did give us a chocolate easter egg.

This week we had interviews with President, and on Saturday we had another baptism of Marcos. He is super shy, but he has a good heart. I'm really happy that the young single adults in our ward have really accepted him into their group and made him feel at home, because he really needs some good friends, and the YSA in our ward always has activities like volleyball and other stuff planning during the week, so it will be good.

One experience I had this week was with a new person that we found yesterday. The thought came into my head to use the example of a cobrador (money collector person) in a bus to explain the priesthood. Because he has the authority to collect money, and no one else can do it. And then it tied right in to the great apostasy because if their aren't money collectors the bus business shuts down. But after a certain time, when the bus business hires another money collector, they can start picking up passengers again. It worked out really good because the guy, Jorge, works as a cobrador. I know that thought came from the Spirit and I'm glad I listened. He committed to be baptized.

For this Saturday we have another baptism.

Today for P-day we played soccer and after ate pizza as a district.

Congratulations to Uncle Nate for getting married.

Thanks everyone,

Elder Jarom Riley Harris

Marcos Arancibia tiene 25 años y tiene muchas ganas para seguir a Cristo entonces se bautizó. Le encontramos por una referencia de un miembro.

Los Alamos - Week 9

Empezando el mes en blanco

So we already had fast and testimony meeting the Sunday before conference, but they told us that this Sunday (the 9th) there was going to be a special fast for the country of Peru to help the people that are suffering from the floods. It was really good to be able to fast again.

I hope everyone has seen the videos that the church has for Easter Principe de Paz (It's even better in Spanish). Our President asked us to watch the video before every teaching opportunity we have this week.  The church always makes good videos. 

So from the picture of the baptism, the oldest boy is a convert, the other two are baptisms of the ward (meaning the Bishop interviewed them) but he asked us to baptize them all together. Their names are Benjamin, Enos, and Naomi. Yes, Enos from the Book of Mormon. 

We have a baptism this Saturday of a 25 year old guy named Marcos. He is really excited, he has been able to find a lot of friendship in the church because there are a ton of young single adults in my ward.

Have a great week.

Elder Harris

My breakfast of an empanada de carne and an alfajor

Los Alamos - Week 8

La Gran Luz de Conferencia General

Yeah so this week was was General Conference. And after 10 hours of listening to pure inspiration one usually feels pretty good. I was really happy because some really good investigators that are a family were able to attend and listen to the voice of Thomas S. Monson. And I felt like there were a lot of talks directed to investigators so that was good as well. I listened to it all in English with the other gringos in the zone, Elder Canfield from Alpine, Utah and Elder Bryce from Mesa, Arizona. All three of us are training Latinos. And in the other district in the zone is Angamos. They are straight Latinos because Angamos is the dangerous part of Ventanilla. But it doesn't make a lot of sense because one of them is from Argentina and he looks just like an American until you talk to him.

We have a baptism on Saturday of another 9 year old. My area is full of part member families. His name is Benjamin and he and his brothers have been coming to our English class. It's the best thing in the world teaching kids, because if they have gone to primary all their life like Benjamin, they already know everything. In reality they understand better than most of our adult investigators.

We put the goal of temple sealing with the Obregon family that got baptized last week. If everything works out right, we should be able to be there in their sealing in one year from now.

Have a great week everyone. Congrats to the people who got mission calls this week, remember Elder Bednars talk about the call and the assignment.

Elder Jarra