Our 13-year-old friend showed up with a brand-new suit. He borrowed my name tag
I don't know if I have seen this type of flower before

Together We’re Fluent


We took a language test and if you add our scores together,  we are more than fluent. I think that’s the way it works, right? The mission leaders (President and Hermana Manly) asked us to help them motivate and keep track of language learning for the missionaries. This involves encouraging missionaries to have a language study plan, follow it, and take the competency test regularly. The Native English speakers of course are learning Spanish and the native Spanish speakers should be learning English. Learning a second language can change lives especially when a native Spanish speaker learns English. Learning English will greatly increase their ability to support their family and serve in the church. Their challenge is that they aren’t using English all day long. It’s hard to stay motivated. The Spanish learners tend to stop studying the language once they get to the point of being competent. They hear and speak Spanish all day long, the last thing they want to do is spend another hour every day studying it. We are excited to do what we can to help both.


As part of the new assignment, we took a language competency test to know what the missionaries will experience when they take the test. We took it in English ( If you have any questions about English you should ask me not Hermana Borup, I’m just saying) and in Spanish (If you have any questions in Spanish you should ask both of us or probably someone else). The tests were not easy in English or Spanish. Lynette had some technical difficulties when she took the Spanish test the first time, so they gave her a chance to take it again. It was so hard she didn’t want to. But you know her, she is not afraid of hard things. 


Every weekend our mission is filled with Baptisms. The weekend before a transfer is extra full. The chance of a missionary changing to a new area motivates investigating friends to ponder harder on the decision to get baptized. It’s still amazing to us that such a large percentage of the new members are young adult age. It really creates an excitement.


We have been working with a young family that we just love to spend time with. They struggle to make ends meet. I mean struggle!. This week we got a call from the mother and asked if we could come over and talk. Something bad happened and she needed to talk in person. Did I mention our Spanish isn’t really good? Well on the phone it’s even worse. We went to her house (since together we are fluent) and found out that the father was in jail! He drives his car for a living and apparently, the car he purchased had some fines associated with it that he didn't know about. When he was randomly pulled over the police checked the registration and found the back fines.  When he couldn’t pay them they impounded the car and put him in jail. The mother told us it would be the equivalent to $400 to get him out of jail. We wanted so badly to just pay the fine. The thought of him staying overnight, away from his family in a cold dirty jail was horrible. Then we felt led to call the Elder’s quorum President. He than called the Relief Society President. Within 10 minutes a member of the Relief Society Presidency was there. She just took over! She was just what they needed!  We’re not sure how but the next day he was out of jail, back with his family and back working. Sometimes, the poor just can’t get a break and when they do get one it’s a bad break. When the Relief Society sister got there, everything just seemd to change. The feeling of despair just changed to a feeling of love and hope. What an amazing power that sister had as she carried with her love and hope. But more specifically the love and hope that comes from our Savior. It’s real!


We love you all!


Hermana Y Elder Borup



I have seen this type of flower and they are very tricky

Bes tshoe shine ever! $ 0.75

Chicharron $2.50 I had already eaten some

I little hamburger stand on the street around the corner from our house.

That is what a $2 hamburger should look like.

I think this is an old honda minibike, or at least a knockoff

Los Olivos Temple grounds, a big contrast to the surrounding area.

On the way to the far end of our mission. 

24 new missionaries need a place to stay. We're hanging curtains in one of the new houses

Every weekend is filled with baptisms. Most are between 18 and 30 years old.

Looking up the street from our chapel

I think this should be the official tree of the mission.


Transfers are this week. we have to say goodbye to 2 of these sisters

Being a weatherman here is probably the easiest job in the world. You look at the weather today and then just copy it. 

 

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