Branch President: Found

The biggest news of the week
is that we found a Branch President that will stay here in the branch
with the members! That means the area will probably stay open for the
next long while. We’ve been talking to President Zobrist, but nothing
is for sure yet. This member is our branch mission lider right now and
wasn’t called to be branch
president sooner because he and his wife were only planning on staying
here for a few months to work. But they’ve been talking about it and
they’ve decided to stay Continue reading

Branch Conference

We had our Branch Conference this
week! We’ve been worrying a lot about getting everything set up and
ready for the conference. We wanted it to be really good and uplifting
for the members. On Friday, we had permission to set up a screen and
projector in the main plaza and show the Church’s Bible Videos. We
focused on Jesus Christ and His teachings. A lot of people stuck
around watching the videos. While they were watching, we handed out
invitations to the conference and explained that we were going Continue reading

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Mother’s Day!

This week was Mother’s Day! That means I
got to call home! The internet here in Chivay is terrible, though, so we
talked with our mission president and got permission to come here to
Arequipa and Skype home in the offices. After our Church meetings in
Chivay, we got on a bus and made the 3 hour trip here to Arequipa. It was
great to be able to talk with the family, see them, and share Mother’s Day
together.

During the week, we had a Zone Conference with the rest of the missionaries
in our Zone, Continue reading

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First Baptisms in Almost a Year

We had 2 baptisms
this week! And by “we,” I mean, the Branch. They were investigators
from the other 2 Elders here, but the Branch now has 2 new members. A
mom and her son were baptized in one of the natural hot spring pools
here in Colca Canyon. It’s called the Calera. We normally baptize in
the river, but they asked to do it in the hot springs instead. We had
a pool reserved for the baptisms, but it was being used when we got
there, so we asked to use a different pool and baptized with people
chilling Continue reading