Obviously I Feel Extremely Blessed

Dearest Family and Friends,


This place is extremely hmmm, interesting. Normally here in Peru there are only Peruvians. Once in a while we run into someone from Chile or Columbia…but that`s it!!! But here in Barranca that's a different story. So maybe you remember where I was always hoping to go on my mission? That`s right…. JAPAN! It turns out that apart from the Peruvians there's also Japanese people here. I've run into several already and we have an appointment on Tuesday with a Japanese person and a member is going to introduce us. I feel like I`m supposed to be here and I get to be with my two favorite people in the whole world, apart from Gringos.

This week we found a family! WE visited a recent convert named Jerson and his parents recently got married. They accepted a baptism date for this 24th of April!!! Their names are Walter and Lupe. They awesome!!! Yesterday we watch the Joseph Smith movie with them and they invited us to eat lunch with them after church! They could feel the spirit so strongly during the movie and it helped them visualize better what we had taught and helped them feel encouraged for their baptism. The district is doing well. I say district because here we're not in a stake. We're branches!!! We pension in the house of the District President with two other missionaries in our zone too which is awesome… All the members are really strong because they have to be because the branches are really small and many have more than one calling. 30-40 active members… but the church building is huge and awesome! They were happy to hear someone play the piano for the first time. Sister Olga is our pension and is the best….

So I have to tell you the most marvelous thing. You may think that I`m eating chicken and rice everyday with the occasional suri, guinea pig, or potato….but IM NOT!!! Every single day I eat…..da da da da da daaaaa………..PIZZZZZZZZZAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!! it's a miracle. So, if I stay here for the last 3 months of my mission which is probable I will continue eating pizza from Sister Olga's and President Gonzalez's Pizzeria every night. She also is the first Peruvian in history that knows how to make things like French toast. Hallelujah.

Obviously I feel extremely blessed. I'm more worried about the area and the zone. We're doing tons of extra creative things to help the District grow like making copies of all the Progress forms of all the missionaries to give to President Gonzalez (who is a extremely inspired man btw) so he can see the investigators of every branch. We're also making a Branch Mission Plan with them this week to put goals, plans of action, an activities to help the members take part in the missionary work. Soon we can be wards and have a patriarch I'm sure of it!!! I was thinking about how to help the less active members to come to church yesterday so we talked with the branch president and every Sunday we're going to invite all the members to go out in the morning to pass by houses of less actives before church starts. That should help a ton. If you have more ideas I would love to hear about what you're doing in the states!

Well the air is clean and I can see the stars at night! I don't see the big dipper though… J I'm in South America. I'd love to hear how you`re all doing and how the mission`s going with Nate and Bryan.
Love,

Elder Layton