Day 371

Family & Friends,

 

Well hello yalls back home!!! i am sorry im not writing mon anymore but i will probably be writing one of the days closer to the weekend like fri or sat because those are the days we have less stuff going on in the office.  i do have some cool experiences to share with you this week but will get to that in a sec. :) here are some of the photos from a place called "Saqsaywaman" it is a place on top of one of the mountains here in cusco (qosqo in quechua) it has some the biggest stones used in its construction out of any of the ruins in perú!!! we went there about a week ago at 5:30 in the morning. why 5:30 in the mroning you might ask.  well that is because the cusqueños (the people from cusco) have a secret that if you go super early in the morning you dont have to pay which a great sum of money (like 65 soles which would be like $30) but the coolest part wasnt that we didnt have to pay but that we were able to be up on top of the mountain overlooking cusco when the sun came up.  what a cool experience it was to be able stand on top an ancient inca fortress overlooking a city that probably once was an ancient nephite or lamanite city and then thinking that maybe an old nephite/lamanite prophet/missionary came to preach them gospel and also came over this same hill and looked upon this ancient city like we were doing.  i love the book of mormon and its teachings.  everytime we go to ruins i love to think about what would the nephites or lamanite be doing in this same place only a few hundred years ago.  the other experience that we had this week is the following:

 

we were in church sunday talking to a few of the members and investigators to see when we could pass by when Sister Elsa Rueda from our ward asked if we could stop by to give a blessing to her sister that has breast cancer (that doesnt live in our area).  but of course (with permission) we said we would stop by the following day which would be Mon. so we stopped by and she happened to be changing our her deadbolt on the door becaus ethe other one wasn´t working very well.  well she also got stuck trying to change out a part and could figure out how to put it back together i offered to help (because you all know i love tools and fixing stuff haha but not just for that reason) and in like 5-10 min i had it working just fine.  she was very suprised and asked how i knew how to work on doors haha i told her that i hadnt worked on a lot of doors before but just that i like tools haha anyways so we went to her sisters house talked a little about the blessing of the sick, read a couple of scripures and then we gave her the blessing.  now because i told that this was a cool experience you are probably thinking that with our blessing we cured her cancer or something.  but really we are going to stop by next week and see how she is doing but until now we dont know yet.  the cool experience part actually comes after we left her house.  remember that i said her (the lady with cancer´s) house is outside of our area.  so we were walking along the main back to our area when we ran into a couple that had a little girl their arms.  they stopped us and said they were from Arequipa (south end of perú) but that they were living within the boundries of our area!!! they begged us to stop by and said that they had been sealed in the temple but they had fallen away from the church.  that same day they decided they wanted to get active again and they prayed for help and guess what happened?  thats right!! they ran into us!!!  we set an appointment for Wed. and started walking back to the area pondering on what had just happened.  to sum it up we went to their house showed them the video about John Rowe Moyle called Only a Stonecutter if you remember he had a calling to be stone cutter working on the salt lake temple but he lived in a place that is now called alpine utah (which in google maps says it would take 10 hours and 38 mins to walk) so every mon at 2:00 am he would wake up and start walking to be able to get to the temple with all the other workers at 8 in the morning.  he would come back fri night late and the following day would be his only day to work around the farm.  well as the story goes he was milking a cow one day and it kicked him in the leg and broke it wide open.  the only option was to amputate.  they cut off his leg with a saw and hoped that it wouldnt get infected.  well 6 months later it wasnt infected and started working on making a wooden leg that he could use to walk.  well after he started walking again to the ppoint when he could also do almost all the normal day tasks he started packing and his wife asked him

     "where are you going."

he told her "i am going to salt lake."

she then said "why do you need to go to salt lake?"

     "because if you remember right i have a calling i need to fullfill." 

     "but there is plenty of work you can do here for the lords kingdom"  she told him. "you are only a stone cutter im sure there are plenty in salt lake that can handle the work"

     "But its MY calling my love"

gives her a kiss and he walks out of the house and heads to salt lake.

(i belive this video is in youtube you should watch it)

this story everytime i watch it gives me strength to press on even in the most difficult of times.  we explained to them about enduring to the end and that they need to magnify their callings (the hunsband told us that he had recently recieved a new calling but wasnt keeping up on it very well) they were super happy we had stopped by and that they had found us.  they told us that felt they had recieved like spiritual kickstart and in the final prayer the husband said that "from this day on we keep the sabath day and we will go to church every sunday and from this point on there wont be any excuses to do what we know to be right" well from this expereince i have felt a hapiness helping this family that feels just like the feeling when somebody says they want to be baptized.  i know a lot of missionaries focuse on the baptisms but our goal is to invite others to come unto christ by helping them recieve the restored gospel through faith, repentence, baptism by immersion, recieving the holy ghost, and enduring to the end. and if they so happen to be on the last step (enduring to the end) if we can help them understand better that step and help complete it we are fullfilling our purpose as missionaries.

i would just like to finish this huge letter (to make up for some of the other short ones) withmy testimony that I KNOW that this church (the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints) is the same church that jesus christ himself established when he was here on the earth.  I KNOW that The Book Of Mormon is the word of god and was written specifically for us in these latter days and it conatains answers to the things we want to know or solutions to the problems that we might have. I LOVE YOU ALL and hope you are all feeling the happiness that comes when when we keep the commandments and follow the will of the Father. Until next week