4th of July

 Happy 4th of July

I actually forgot it was 4th of July until my Peruvian companion reminded me this morning.

Today to celebrate our holiday p-day we got together as a zone and played futbolito, volleyball, and ate "completos" (a Chilean food...)

It was the best week this past week we've had in a while. We have some new families in our teaching pool, and one of them came to church last Sunday. We have a new mission president as of 2 days ago which is a pretty big change, but from what we've heard from our leaders already is that he is awesome.

Last Tuesday, as we were waking up to the alarm going off on our cell phone, I picked it up, having forgotten that it was plugged in on our mesita charging (I just woke up...) and it fell and broke. And it was a Nokia indestructible brick phone! It's only a little inconvenient that now whenever we want to call we have to look for a public payphone. I'm still figuring out the spiritual lesson I'm supposed to learn from this experience.

The weather this last week has gotten a little warmer, which is strange because we are in the middle of winter.

I tried a new kind of food from our pensionista, chanfainita. Because it sounds like chaufa, which is fried rice with chicken, I thought I'd love it. All I can say it is nothing like chaufa, unless the recipe was changed to include cow lung and cow heart. It was good.

We were teaching a family the other day and the father was expressing his concerns for his recently lost job and his rebelious 12-year-old daughter and how he can improve his family. He was asking us for counsel, and it was a really great opportunity to bear my testimony of the blessings of living the gospel of Jesus Christ. I am so grateful to have grown up in a family active in His gospel and now I have a perfect knowledge of those blessings.

I love you all very much.
Have an awesome week

 PERÚ 

Elder Evan Smith