Monday, January 4, 2016

New Years Eve Fireworks and First Baptism

¿Cómo estan ustedes? It's been a good week here in Mi Perú! I found out that for new years, the fireworks are even MORE crazy than Christmas. They also have this interesting tradition of getting an old pair of clothes and stuffing it full of other old clothes, to make a ''doll'' of all your old clothes from the year. Then for new years, at midnight, they light it on fire!! There is another tradition that if you wear yellow, you'll have more luck during the year. So the markets were selling yellow shirts, pants, underwear, you name it. And if you eat 12 grapes at midnight, you'll have more luck too. I could go on and on haha. I really love the people here.

So from reading Sister Smith's letter I found out they actually speak a lot of English there. I don't think I've talked about our Spanish here, but it's totally different! We only speak Spanish all the time. It's standard for north Americans to always have a Latino companion, so I speak Spanish all day with him. And when I'm helping him with English during Language study and other times, I speak basic words and in a Latino accent so he can understand me, so my English is slowly deteriorating. In all our meetings we speak Spanish so that everyone can understand. Our mission president said he wants the north americans to speak Spanish so that the Latinos don't feel like we're excluding them or hiding anything. I've realized I'm being blessed with the gift of tongues and the gift of interpretation of tongues because of how quickly I'm moving along with my Spanish. Every North American missionary I talk to is blown away that I've only been in the field for a month. That being said, my Spanish isn't perfect and it's still super hard to understand certain accents or people that talk slurred or really fast.

Usually when we contact people we initiate by saying ''Hi how are you?, How's it going, How's your day? It's really hot today isn't it? How was your new years? With your family right? There's a lot of fireworks every year right? Well it's really nice meeting you and your family. I can tell that you guys are very nice. We as missionaries share a really great message about Jesus Christ and families, can we share it with your family sometime?'' Of course all in Spanish though :)

Virginia is the first baptism in Mi Perú in several months

Well I don't have more time, but we had my first baptism last Saturday. I'm really excited to see the fruits of our efforts. I'm learning that the power of prayer is real. Like it says in Alma 32 (I think) that we should pray for everything, our friends, our enemies, our crops in the fields, etc.

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