Life Change is Hard

Sometimes things change in our lives because of life changes. Sometimes we change things in our lives in an attempt to improve our life situation. However it happens, willfully or circumstantially, change can be hard! We see our missionary assignment as helping people with change. When someone chooses to follow Christ (repent) and join His restored church they need to change their life. Did I say change is hard? There are new habits to learn like going to church, studying the scriptures, health codes, serving others, and even a new vocabulary (free agency, Stake Center, Primary etc...). 

We have started to meet the people who have joined the church in the last year. We are going to help them start making friends in the Ward, accept callings, and go to the Temple. There are some great resources that the church has created to help new members take control of this change process. (https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/my-covenant-path?lang=eng) This change is easier when you have a friend in the church. We don't know how we're going to do it yet, but we hope we can help the new members make friends.

This past week we spent much of our time tracking down new members. Sometimes we were successful, often we were not. When we were successful in finding someone at home we had a great experience. We gave a lesson to a family with 3 young boys about the faith of the prophet Nephi and building a boat. (good job Hermana Borup) We shared a lesson about helping others find the light of Christ. We also were given a wonderful lesson on world politics which included something about Russia, China, and the United States, oh yeah, and taxes, budget, and the economy. We realized that sometimes having a limited Spanish vocabulary can be an advantage!

One of our miracles (missionaries are taught to seek, look for, and expect miracles) since we have been here is the miracle of the piano. Hermana Borup has played the piano her whole life. I love it when she practices at home. She has always had a fear of playing in front of others especially playing accompaniment for church meetings. The first week we were here she was asked to play for a baptismal service. She now has played for several Baptismal services and she says she is not nervous at all. The other Ward that meets in our building wants her to start playing for their Sacrament meeting and she's probably going to do it.

We went to the Temple this week. The new Temple in Lima is called the Los Olivos Temple (https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/temples/details/lima-peru-los-olivos-temple?lang=eng) It is just 3 miles away. It is a piece of heaven in a busy world. As a side note, the Hermana that issued clothes did not believe anyone could have a size 12 shoe. She really didn't want to give me big enough shoes.

I got to use some physical therapy knowledge this week. An Elder had an injured wrist. The doctor told him to get some physical therapy. The mission nurse asked if I could help. As it worked out he had a very common wrist injury that I can treat. Since he lives 6 miles away and it could take up to an hour and a half to get there, I taught his companion how to do a cool little mobilization over the phone. It turns out that when I called him the next day he was all better. (Miracle 2)

This seems to be long enough for this blog post. It's well beyond the attention span of most of you who will be reading this. I want to close by describing our experience so far in the area we have been assigned. We see people wherever we are walking. People walk here. It's not for exercise, they are just going somewhere. We have been coming home anywhere from 8-10 at night. The streets are still full of people walking about. We're not sure when it slows down but it's not before 10. One of the best experiences is running into someone who is a member of the church. They see us coming because we're caucasian and have nametags. We see them coming because they have a light and a smile. The Gospel of Jesus Christ changes lives. He gives you a light and a smile that makes you different. It's so fun to help people experience that change in their lives.



Typical view around the Lima Area

More view

I included this picture for anyone who has served a mission in a Latin American Country. Ecco is the LDS hot beverage of choice.

More Baptisms THe Hermanas know how to teach!


This a a family we met with this week. They are really fun!

The electricians in Peru and in the Dominican Republic go to the same school.

A little of the local cuisine

A very Handsome couple

How long has this car been there? You can't tell by the amount of dust because there is dust on everything.

Temple day

50 cents worth of tangerines.

$6 worth of restaurant food.

We went to a break-the-fast meal at a senior couple's house near the area office. This is not what it looks like near our house.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Image
 4-6-25 On their way to Machu Picchu One of the great things about being a Senior Missionary is that family can come and visit. This week was filled with a lot of activities with McKenzie and her family, and most of those were out of our Mission. (another advantage of being a Senior Missionary) Our part of town isn’t the most glamorous part of town, but it is “our” part of town. We didn’t choose to serve here in this little part of Lima. All the places we did “pick” were nothing like the Peru LIma North Mission. but we are so grateful that we have the chance to serve here in our little way. That being said, other than a moto taxi ride to the office and an introduction to our little local markets, we spent most of our time with them showing them the sites of Lima, which are ALL outside of our mission.  McKenzie and Luke are not idle travelers. We did about 3 times the number of tourist things with them that we would normally try ourselves. I will point out some of the highlight...
Read more
Image
4-13-25 A view from one of the missionaries' houses.  I’m not sure if I have mentioned this or not (I’m not going to go back and look), but a few weeks ago, we were called to teach English Connect to the youth of our Ward. It has been fun to meet with the youth each week and help them do something that can change their lives. We have between 8 and 12 people show up each week. They have all levels of English ability, but everyone is learning something. One of the young men is someone we had not seen at church, or at least don’t remember seeing him. His name is Marlon. It is easy to see that he is well-liked by the other youth, especially the girls. His English is ok and his attitude is better. This week, we found out why we have never seen him in our Ward. We were invited to his baptism. He doesn’t live in our War,d but many of his friends do. He was being taught by the Elders in his Ward (Deseret). One of the things we have noticed about many of the new members is how eager they ar...
Read more
Image
Off to do house inspections with Elder Napa For the week ending Jan 12, 2025 Everything seems to be getting  back to normal after Christmas and New Years. If there is such a thing as normal. Maybe there isn’t a normal as a Senior Missionary in Lima Peru. We still call missionaries to encourage and invite them to be consistent and effective in language study. This week we started a new task, inspecting missionary apartments. The goal is to do several each week so every 2 transfers (a transfer is 6 weeks) all the apartments can be inspected. The primary purpose of the inspections as we see it is to make sure the apartments are safe and have everything that the missionaries need to be healthy and happy. With over 70 houses things break every week. Some missionaries are really good about letting us know about those things and  others seem to be unaware.  The second reason to do the inspections is to encourage the missionaries to keep their apartments clean. Remember the missi...
Read more