Marriages Made Easier

Dear Family,                                                                                          

Thanks for the package downlow. I´ll save it in my USB drive for the next time I want to send a package, possibly at the end of the mission. The tie was for dad and the bag is for Kolby, unless it looks like a purse (then its Melissa’s birthday present with the earrings) The hoodie yes was a hat haha, chuyo is a half quechua word that means that kind of hat, still don’t get the chance to use that word too often here in Lima. Yep I got the package last week, and Elder Oliva loved the chocolate eggs haha. There aren’t really mated milk balls here so it was a welcome treat and they hadn’t melted! Thanks soooo much for the pants and shirts, much needed! 

Iqueña means she’s from the city of Ica. The majority of Limeños aren’t really from Lima, they are from all different parts of Peru and moved to Lima to look for better economic opportunities or to escape the terrorism years and years ago that was a little more prevalent where there wasn’t as much communication between pueblos.

Sorry I cut the email off. What happened was that I was doing the informs at the same time, waiting for Elder Oliva to finish with the written informs, and it turns out that I had been doing the same inform as he was doing, so I had to go back and do it from the start again. No biggy but it ate up any hope of a regular internet time. 

Turns out that Reyna and Gustavo probably won´t be getting married this month after all. We are still working on the birth certificate but everything has a period for the municipality to finish working on it, and then the marriage has a period of time that you have to open the expediente before having the ceremony. 

Another big piece of news about marriages that I´m not sure I’ve told you yet is that before, if we wanted a birth certificate from anywhere outside of Lima, we had to pass the information to the records secretary and he would figure out a way to get it sent to the mission offices from another part of Peru. Well, as of this last month, they gave us full permission to zone leaders to go ahead and use all the means of internet necessary to find the certificates. That means that the general protocol for looking for the certificates will be: look for where they are from, send an email or call the closest ward to the city center in wherever they are from, and ask for them to go to the archives and look up the certificate to get it sent fastest. This cuts the time spent waiting by at least half, and we should be able to help a lot more people get married and ready for baptism.

What’s going on now is that the people are super excited to be baptized and so we start helping them to get their papers together to get married. Then, we find out it will take a while, but we continue teaching and helping them come to church and learn about the gospel. At the end of it all, they get discouraged having to wait so long for their birth certificates and end up stopping their investigation.

It´s super tough to see that happen over and over again, and so it creates a huge pressure to get the papers together the fastest possible.

Anyway, I absolutely loved conference. I started out really excited to hear it, and when it started with Elder Holland, he got me pumped up. I felt like the whole conference was directed towards missionaries and members trying to be missionaries. Two other major themes for me were obedience and temple covenants. I think it’s amazing how each and every one of us can go into conference with different needs but we all come out of it feeling as though the central theme of conference was exactly what we needed. 

It´s a little like the Atonement. We might think at different phases of life that the atonement is working more on specific things. Sometimes, it’s the active mistakes that we make, when a real repentance is necessary to become spiritually clean.

At others, it takes on a fortifying role as we seek to become more and more righteous, smoothing out the chinks in our armor if you will. At still others, the atonement takes the form of our spiritual comforter, which lifts us up when we are downtrodden, and helps us to overcome trials that seem just too hard. Whatever the application, the atonement is infinitely powerful to right what feels wrong in life. What are the ways in which you are currently using the atonement in your life? What´s something you´d like to learn more about in regards to the atonement?

On the home stretch tonight, answering a few questions: The seminary teachers are all volunteers in this ward, but often they are called to teach the course. They give a lot of their time and lots of times look for a companion to help them go out and pick up the youth for the early morning seminary. 

A Happy Happy birthday to Melis this Sunday, I´ll probably mention it again Monday, but enjoy being 15 and not dating, and driving, and being a teenager still, and not dating! I love you sis, you´re beautiful, remember your value before God, and make every decision this year based on your divine potential and goals. You´re awesome!

I love you all and hope that you all listened to conference, they’re inspired words from men chosen by  God himself to guide his people. Choose what you need to leave behind and just do it. Choose something to do better and just do it. Be valiant in your righteous decisions!

Love,

Elder Nelson