Week 70

Happy Thanksgiving.  Peru, unfortunately didn't have a president that freed the Slaves and officially established a day of thanks as a holiday...S/O to Abe. 

One of the sisters in our ward that studied at BYU invited us over to eat Thanksgiving dinner on Saturday. The only way we got permission to go was by taking an investigator, her husband is from Venezuela and lived in Florida and Missouri for most of his adolescence so we just spoke to them in English the whole time. It was super cool. They didn't have turkey nor stuffing, but she made us good chicken and mashed yams and delicious rolls and whatnot so I couldn't complain. 

On Tuesday this week we had a meeting with our district leaders to present to them all of our new ideas and talk about the zone. One problem that we have been having is that they don't really take on all of the responsibility that they have. Elder Fagg and I spent two full morning just racking our brains for thing we could do to help the zone out and I think we have come up with a good plan. They seemed excited to work after we finished presenting everything and then on Wednesday we presented it all to the zone, and it turned out well. 

Practically every other morning we have been out looking for a place to live. Where we live is so expensive and we couldn't find anything. The financial secretary gave a price range under like 800 soles and we were finding things around like 1500. But then Saturday, at the last minute, we found this place literally up the street from where we live that is only 900 because it is on the 5th floor haha but it is really nice and we couldn't get all the paperwork and payments done today so we will have to move on Wednesday. But it is even nicer than where we are living right now. 

We went to the office on Thursday for Jhoise`s interview with president. The good news about that was that Elder Fagg had two packages waiting for him there haha so we got to bring them home. They were those ones from like the website where you order the stuff here in Lima and the people put it together, but they were better than nothing. So Jhoise passed her interview and got baptized on Saturday! It was a pretty cool baptism...let's just say she had done some pretty serious stuff in her life and she was so excited to be clean and forgiven. She bore her testimony afterward and it was super powerful, I think she will be a solid convert. 

On Sunday we went to Ward council and it was all good. We came with a plan where a couple that we are teaching is going to cook a bunch of stuff and then the ward is going to buy it from them so that they can pay for their wedding because they want to get married. Afterward, we had called a reference that we had received and he told us to meet him by the university that is in our area on Sunday morning. So we went and he was a super nice guy, he was 25 I think. But he started explaining to us all of his beliefs and whatnot and it was kinda weird. He told us all about how he had come to the conclusion that God didn't exist that only 'Good and Bad' existed and all this stuff and we were super confused because it didn't really make sense.  He is a super good guy and like wants us to be his friend but he doesn't  really want to progress in the gospel, from what it looks like. 

Today, as far as prep-day, we didn't do anything. We went to Pizza Hut, I bought a backpack at the legit Nike store that is in our area but nothing else. Everything is going well. We have zone conference tomorrow and then we are going to move on Wednesday and then we will have Leadership Council on Friday, so ya that's fun. 

I would tell you all of the things that I'm grateful for but it would take too long, just know that I'm a grateful guy and that I'm excited for Christmas now. 

--

Elder Mortenson

These are my homies here in the ward, the missionaries that just barely got home.

And this is us at Jhoise`s baptism. The sun was kinda in my eyes if you cant tell...