Week 71

Sorry I forgot to tell you guys that I was going to the temple on Monday and to write me Wednesday instead. Next week I won't have prep-day until Thursday because of our Christmas activity. 

It was a long week. To start out with, on Tuesday we had a multi-zone meeting. It was pretty good. They explained a lot of good things to the missionaries like inviting investigators to baptisms and whatnot so I think it will help out the mission a lot. 

On Wednesday and Thursday we had to move. We went to the other multi-zone conference on Wednesday morning and also got all of the money and stuff for our new apartment, and then went and payed the Leaser and started moving in because we had to be out of our old place by the First of Dec. We pretty much lost 2 days of proselyting, unfortunately. Even though we moved right up the street it took forever because we just carried practically everything we own to the new place. I'll send you some videos of it because we live on the fourth floor but there are these little tiny spiral stairs at the top and we couldn't get our beds and whatnot up them so we had to take them up the "Peruvian way", with rope and man-power! hahaha and we got Miguel, one of the members, to help us out. And we are all settled in now. 

On Friday we had leadership council. We talked about some of the new rules that there are in our mission. We can now only listen to hymns, but we can eat with members and investigators now, so that is cool! We had a huge debate on if the missionaries would have to ask permission or not and decided that they did but that we, as zone leaders, would be the ones to give it. Elder Fagg and I got invited to some member's house and they gave us turkey and then that night they brought us turkey sandwiches, so that was awesome! They also told us that we could skype at their house and she invited us to dinner on Christmas! Another thing was that Aaron Garate, my old companion, came to our leadership council for some reason. He came to go to the temple and his girlfriend came with him, so we met her too. He took us to breakfast on Thursday morning as well, so it was cool. 

Sunday we finally got a new pension (The person that cooks meals for the missionaries)! It is a member from Venezuela. It is awesome to eat some different food other than the normal Peruvian menu. The Venezuelan's are so funny! We also got to go to the Christmas Devotional on Sunday. 

Monday we didn't do anything, and yesterday we just had district meeting and a meeting with President Amato and the stake president about the activity that he is doing this month. It was just about following up and whatnot with the members. 

But today we went to the temple, it was so nice! There are so many activities with Christmas coming up and all.  It seems pretty stressful, but I guess I am getting used to always feeling that way. I'm excited to receive the package you sent and to talk to you on Christmas. 

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Elder Mortenson