AYUKITANCA!!!

Ayukitanca!!!

That's "Hola" in Quechua (which is "Hello" in English), the Inca language. I bought a Book of Mormon in Quechua hoy dia so Ill be learning a bit of it now. It's a lot more difficult learning a language like this than Spanish, but there are people in my area that speak it, so I'll give it a good hard go.

I'm writing today Tuesday because we went to the Temple and today's our Pday for today. The temple was great. I love the temple. As far as I'm concerned the Dengue was a blessing that the Lord's given me in the mission, because now I can go all the time.

We've been working, working, working.... and one day we were walking down the street on the border of our area when someone ran by. His arm was all bloody. Somebody was throwing rocks at him and his friend from behind us so we were in the middle of the fight....but I pulled my companion into a side street really quick so we waited until everything settled down. The crazy thing is that the guy with the wounded arm came back looking for his attackers with a handmade gun on his motorcycle in the same minute. It was crazy but we ran to a safe place out of harms way.

We've started finding a bunch of good families to teach. Thomas the really old guy has been having problems understanding everything. They didn't come to church... even though they said they would. The good thing though is that a bunch of new people we've never met came, and so we'll be teaching them during the week.

I know the mission to me feels normal now, but maybe you'd like to know how it all is. I hate being in the street. That's how we find people sometimes but it's not effective nor the best way to spend our time. I like to have lessons every hour. If plan A fails, we have plan B. Every night I look up the directions (direcciones is really a "false friend" in English - it means "address" - he's just writing a bit of "Spaenglish") of investigators, future investigators, members, etc. to visit. It might seem a like a waste of time to some people, but I like to put plan C's too. That way we have a lesson every hour, in a perfect world, and we're in the houses more that the streets. Even the house of a member is better. We pump 'em up, be their friends, wash the dishes, and tell them that we're not going to stop washing until they give us a reference. I find it usually works cause they always hate when I wash the dishes. Every day at lunch we eat with the members of the Church. I'll tell them something like this: Hermano, do you like games? We're going to play a game. I'm going to write 5 names here in my agenda of people you know who aren't members. They hesitate, because usually they think I'm asking to visit 5 people. Then I explain, no it's part of the game. Then they give me five names. Then I say: Okay gracias hermano, now we're going to pray and we'd like you to pray for which one of these we can visit. It works every time.

I love the scriptures. My new favorite scripture is 3 Nephi 5:13. HE AQUI, SOY DISCIPULO DE JESUCRISTO, EL HIJO DE DIOS. HE SIDO LLAMADO POR EL PARA DECLARAR SU PALABRA ENTRE LOS DE SU PUBLO, A FIN DE QUE ALCANCEN LAVIDA ETERNA.

I can't even begin to describe how that one verse has impacted the misión that I'm serving in right now. It is who I have to be. I've been extremely blessed in ways I can't even describe. I honestly feel sorry for the people that reject what we have to say, but then again I have a lot of work to do, because either they rejected the message or we failed to do our part. One or the other.

I understand most everyone that reads the Blog are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints... but I also heard not everyone. For those who AREN'T members of the Church:

"God is our Heavenly Father. We are His children. He weeps with us when we suffer and rejoices when we do what is right. He wants to communicate with us, and we can communicate with Him through sincere prayer. He has given us this experience on the earth so we can learn and grow. We can show our love for Him through our choices and our obedience to His commandments." (Preach My Gospel, pp. 1)

Padres, gracias por sus emails. Creo que voy a recibir mi paquete esta semana. De verdad estoy muy feliz y les quiero bastante. Tambien voy a enviarles un paquete hoy dia con cartas y fotos!?

Elder Layton