Week 38 - Sarita, Faith, and Cuiy (Guinea Pigs)

Buenos Dias!!!!

This has been another awesome week here in El Milagro. This week we have been continuing to working a lot with our investigator Sarita Malaver. She is super cool, and this past monday we had an awesome family home evening in her house. We invited all of the young adults from the ward here in El Milagro and with a group of about 12 people we watched a short movie about the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It was rad. To make it even better after the video we had a little testimony meeting where everyone had the opportunity to share their testimony about the restoration and about Jesus Christ. Just about everyone shared their testimony, even all of the young adults who nearly never come to church. On top of that, at the very end, Sarita shared her testimony about Jesus Christ and how she found the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the misisonaries at exactly the right time in her life when she needed his help the most. It is trully awesome to see some grow their testimony. It just goes to show that everyone has a testimony of something. Your testimony is what you believe and know to be true. Although many might not have the best relationship with their Heavenly Father, everyone atleast knows, feels, or believes in something, and what we need to do is hold onto that something until it begins to grow into something more. In the Book of Mormon there is an awesome scripture in Alma that talks about this very idea. In Alma 32 it says, "27 But behold, if ye will awake and arouse your faculties, even to an experiment upon my words, and exercise a particle of faith, yea, even if ye can no more than desire to believe, let this desire work in you, even until ye believe in a manner that ye can give place for a portion of my words."All we have to do is act upon what we believe or atleast the desire we have to believe and whatever testimony that one has, whether it be big or small, will grow into something awesome.  

In other news this week on friday my companion and I decided to try and be a little adventurous and decided to see if we could run from Milagro all the way to the beach. Supposedly my companion had walked it before in a couple of hours so we thought if we got up early we would be able to run it in no time. Well we left our room before the sun came up and we ran for about an hour and a half over sand dunes and through chicken coups until arriving to the beach. it was awesome. I think the first time I have been to the ocean in a while. Well this same day in the afternoon we had a surprise service and ended up helping our Frank's family and Gian's family, both of who are young men who in Frank's case is a recent convert and in Gian's case is preparing for baptism. We helped both families carry bricks from the street to the second and thirds stories of their respective houses. In total we ended up, between Elder Alcarraz and I, moving well over 2000 bricks in just a couple of hours. It was super fun, but to say the least we were a little dead that day afterwards. It was all worth it though to help out these families, and we even got to enjoy a nice bbq with Frank's family on sunday. 

This past saturday I also had the privilege of eating cuiy (aka guinea pig) for my first time since arriving here in Peru. It is a super famous and common food from the mountains here in Peru and it was actually really good. 

Well Milagro is still awesome and we are seeing lots of milagros here in Milagro. 

Love,

Elder Vassau

Week 37 - Sarita & Eternal Families

Buenos Dias!

This has been another great week here in El Milagro. This week we have been teaching a single mom name Sarita. She is 22 and super cool. This week we taught her about the plan of salvation and how she can be together with her daughter for eternity. It is an amazing blessing that our Heavenly Father has given us, and knowing that the relationships we have hear on this earth have no end it makes us want to treat those we know and those in our family just a little bit better .

Last night in the bishop's house we had an awesome missionary night where we invited a bunch of people, played some games, and taught a super cool message about baptism and the gift of the Holy Ghost. We were a little worried at first because at the hour nobody was there, but I think we had forgotten that everyone here runs on peruvian time so they all showed up fashionable an hour late as usual. It was super cool we played some games where everyone had to draw what "God" was drawing while listening to the Holy Ghost and we did a little demonstration about the baptism of water and fire to be forgiven of our sins. We literally lit a piece of paper on fire to clean a little stick figure of all of his sins. It was super fun. To make it even better my best bud Roy, a young 7 year old in a wheel chair that I met a couple of weeks ago, was able to come. The activity was a blast and Roy enjoyed it almost as much as the wheel chair races we do with him. 

In other news today we went to the Huaca del Sol and luna. It was awesome. It is an old native temple from the moche civilization that lived here in Peru. We read and saw tons of cool artifacts and murals about all of the ceremonies and ritual sacrificies and such. Pretty sweet stuff. Makes me a little glad that in these days we have the restored Gospel of Jesus Christ so that we are not lost in the confusion of trying to figure out how to follow God. Although Jesus did suffer and die so that we could be forgiven of everything and one day return to our Heavenly Father's presence; ritual battles, sacrificing the loser, decapitating him, drinking his blood, then chopping him up into little pieces to feed to the condors is not something that our Heavenly Father has us missionaries teaching now adays as this Moche civilization did. Hahahahahaha. 

Well all is well here in El Milagro with Elder Alcarraz. Until Next week. 

Love,

Elder Vassau

Week 36 - More Diana, Mariachi's, Spiders and Our Old Friend

Buenos Dias!

This was another awesome week here in el Milagro with Elder Alcarraz. This week we have been continuing the drama with Diana Loyaga. After being locked in her house for two days she was feeling like the whole world was against her. Her family thinks she is crazy and her boyfriend of 6 years left her. Well with nearly all those that she knows beginning to pile up against her Diana decided to backtrack a little bit. She knew that if she sacrificed her happiness and postpones her desire to be baptized that everyone around her will be a little calmer and a little happier. She cares more that everyone else is content and is willing to sacrifice herself for it. Well she got back together with her abusive boyfriend who convinced her to go visit with three different pastors this week. These pastors amongst other things have been attempting to convince her that her answers that she has received all come from the devil 👿 and that she is surrounding by demons that have been playing with her weak spiritual mind (I think they might be talking about us...😈👹👺💀👻). Well despite the extreme opposition and no longer being welcomed in her home we have been teaching her all week in a member's house. Although she has backtracked she knows she cannot deny her testimony that these things are true. We decided that it would be a good idea to teach her more about the Holy Ghost, so we explained the nature of the Godhead and also what the fruits of the spirit are. She knows that the things she felt and the answers she received come from God and although she has gone backwards a little bit so that those around her are happy, she still knows that these things are true. She cannot deny her testimony nor the answers from the Holy Ghost. She refuses to turn in her pamphlets nor her Book of Mormon to her pastors, and she even surprised us by sneaking out of her house and coming to church. It was awesome. Hopefully she will begin putting her own happiness in front of the happiness of her those around her so that she will make the difficult decision to leave him and her family and get baptized. Although she knows that her getting baptized will cause a lot of problems in her family I think deep down she knows this is not only the decision that will help her but also will help her family gain eternal happiness in the long run. She just needs to make this decisions looking up to her Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ and not looking at everyone around her who want to pull her back and cut her wings. Keep on praying for Diana because she is going to overcome these obstacles soon. 😁

Well on another note, this past Saturday was our lovely pensionista Lila's birthday. She has always talked about her childhood dream to have a personal mariachi band for her birthday, so we put some things together, pulled some strings, and set up a surprise party complete with a mariachi band. To make it even better (or worse depending on how you look at it) purposefully no one said happy birthday to her until her surprise party, other than her family of course. She had thought everyone had forgotten about it and was down in the dumps. When we jumped out and surprised her and the mariachi began singing to her she literally could not hold back the tears and was crying in joy for almost 30-45 minutes straight. It was awesome. 

Well Milagro keeps on being awesome and I know we are going to be seeing lots of miracles this transfer.

Love,

Elder Vassau

Week 35 - Lifelong Friendships, Elder Nunez back to Argentina & Diana Loyaga

Buenos Dias!

This has been a crazy and awesome week here in El Milagro. This week we almost had the baptism of Diana Loyaga. She is an awesome investigator who I have told quite a few stories about. Well this was the week of her baptismal date, and she was more than ready but she still had to overcome the challenge of her mentally abusive boyfriend and her family not wanting her to get baptized. She is 24 and so legally the family is not a major problem and we believed that if she could get past the problems of leaving her old church behind and working everything out with her boyfriend that everything would be alright. Well... it almost worked out perfectly. She has received so many answers that the church is true that she knows everything is true and she wants to be baptized, the problem is that she has been dating a mentally abusive controlling boyfriend for 6 years who through constant insults has reached the point where she cannot make a decision without his approval, and he does not approve of her getting baptized in another church. Despite her being incredibly unhappy and being absolutely controlled by him she has grown to just accept that this is what she deserves and so they had plans to get married. In very soft terms he told her that if she gets baptized they are done for and he would rather marry a bunch of other horrible things before marrying her. So this is what we had to work with. Thursday Diana had a lesson which finished with her deciding to accept the baptismal interview which she passed with flying colors, but then Friday she got a little discouraged for some of the things her boyfriend was saying to her. All throughout the day Friday we spent on the phone with her trying to help her find the strength to stand up to her boyfriend and most of the morning Saturday we were doing the same. Although as missionaries we are not really responsible to be metling in her relationships we are here to help her to come unto Christ, and by us helping her gain the courage to come unto Christ she knew taking care of the other part is a necessary step. It seemed like it was almost futile until our pensionista decided to have a girl to girl talk explaining how she deserves better and how she should put God ahead of an abuse boyfriend. Well despite lots of tears Diana called her boyfriend and said she was getting baptized no matter what. He broke up with her over the phone following by immediately insulting her and deleting her from every social media he has, but she was still determined to get baptized as soon as possible. We quickly rushed to get everything at the chapel ready while she got changed and then we were just waiting. Although the baptism was spontaneous members began to show up and we were just waiting and waiting. We called her and she said she was waiting for her sisters, so we decided to wait some more. We continued to wait and she still did not arrive so we went to go call her and in that exact moment we got a call from an unknown number. We quickly answered it, and it was her mom and she was not too happy with us. She told us we are liars and that she regrets ever opening her doors to us. Believe it or not, just days before she had invited us over and we enjoyed a lovely lunch with the whole family. Apparently Diana's parents got home and went ballistic and freaked out. They thought she was going crazy for getting baptized too fast and for breaking up with her longtime boyfriend who has a wedding, house, and car waiting for her. It seems they were not too worried about her actual happiness though. Although she is an adult, they decided to lock her in the house so she physically could not leave. Although she had her phone and called to talk to us and has all the intention in the world to get baptized, she physically cannot leave her house to get baptized. This is the situation we are now in. She overcame one obstacle and another presents itself, but as Elder Uceda taught us, we should expect opposition, and this I hope will only help her grow her testimony. Although she did not get baptized I am still so incredibly happy to see the change that has started in her, to see her breaking out of her shell to start making decisions for her own happiness. Hopefully she will get baptized one of these days this week.

This week in my personal studies I read Alma 32:27 ''But behold, if ye will awake and arouse your faculties, even to an experiment upon my words, and exercise a particle of faith, yea, even if ye can no more than desire to believe, let this desire work in you, even until ye believe in a manner that ye can give place for a portion of my words. ''. Diana has experimented upon his words and is now trying to exercise her faith and act. Although she has received tons of opposition from every which way she is now taking the necessary steps to follow Christ and the things that she knows will make her happy. Recently in a conference address Elder Uceda, a general authority and church leader from Peru, taught us that we should always expect opposition especially when they stakes are at their highest. Right now the stakes are at their highest for Diana so please pray for her so that he family will calm down a little bit and that those around her will allow her to be happy.

This week was Elder Nuñez' last week here in the mission and by Tuesday afternoon Elder Nuñez will be landing in Buenos Aires, finishing his two yearlong mission. I have absolutely loved my time here with Elder Nuñez' and I have not only learned so much from him about how to be a missionary and disciple of Christ, but I have also gained a lifelong best friend. Today I met up with my new companion Elder Alcarraz from Apurimac, Peru, who also is going to be finishing his mission after this transfer. Looks like I might be here in El Milagro for a little time more. Great things are going to happy these next few weeks and keep Milagro in your prayers so we can continue to see some miracles.