How Great Will Be Your Joy: Beatriz sets a date!

Christmas Tree full of love!

Dear Family,

What a great way to spend Christmas, even though it never really felt like Christmas with he climate and the lack of traditions. I definitely will be looking to make a mission tradition the next year :) Wow that’s a lot of crazy changes that are going on at home. I guess I miss things that are going on, but at the same time I know that there’s a lot of things that I will be able to catch up on and if I wasn´t here, a lot of things wouldn’t change in the same way.

Advice for Kolby is that he start to leave behind electronics, not really as a part of conditioning for the mission, but more because I´ve seen that Satan uses every opening to attack pre-missionaries, even if they are completely righteous and clean, spending too much time disconnected from other people even doing good things can start to damage our ability to communicate effectively with our Father. I also wrote him a letter that ought to get there about February by the time I´m done writing a couple more to put in the envelope.

I love sweets, but I´m a lot more careful about what I eat now, because I have been able to see missionaries that get ulcers from all of the soda or gastritis from all of the fried foods (that’s the preferred method to cook things here ) and I´ve also seen how in the first time in 4 years since I started high school really, I gained 15 pounds in a year. That’s a healthy amount, I won’t lie there, but it’s a lot more than I normally gain in a year, so I am more careful with what I put into this missionary machine :) I welcome sweets though...don’t take that for that I don’t eat them...I just eat an apple right afterwards :)

Sister missionaries have definitely changed or they send the good ones here to Peru. There still are problems for sure, but that’s normal for an elder or a sister really. The sisters I have been able to meet and work with (inviting to my area to teach single sisters or single mothers) have been really respectful of that I am younger than one and older than the other, and also of the line between appropriate and inappropriate missionary behavior. That more than anything could be the next problem down the pike: inappropriate missionary relations, but I haven´t seen it in my zone yet. We´ll hit 30 percent sisters in the mission by the next transfer I think and thats where it will stay for a while.

Zona Comas!

Surprise delivery of fudge!

Next transfers are 12 de Enero (January) and I don’t know if I will go or not. It´s a swing transfer, either I go or I don´t now that I’ve been here for 3 transfers. Really though this week the big news is that Beatriz, who got married a little bit ago accepted a baptismal date! She had been a little iffy because her parents are both really Catholic, but she came to church even though her less active husband didn’t for a futbol game. As she was walking home with her kids she said a prayer out loud in the street "Padre mio, realmente esta es lo que quieres para mi? Esta es la iglesia que tu guies?" ("My Father, this is really what you want for me?”) She said all day in church she felt great and had felt like that before today but finally it hit her...something still and peaceful, and soft deep inside just said "yes". We read about Elias and the still small voice and then Heavenly Father presenting Jesus Christ in the Americas and she told us that she was certain, she wants to get baptized. Then we asked her to prepare for the 11 of January and she said yes. She has known for a long time and finally she is taking action. I feel proud of her, happy for her decision and really for the goal she already has to make it to the temple with Slander.

Other than that it’s been a crazy week with a ton of fireworks, that’s the big Christmas thing as well as New Year’s, fireworks in every neighborhood, and not really pretty ones for the most part, just loud dynamite types.. jaja.

Zona Comas...Merry Christmas!

I love you all, hope you had an incredible Christmas, and a prosperous New Years. Make your resolutions and stick to them. Choose things spiritually as well as temporally to better in your daily lives, then make goals to achieve and plans to meet your goals. When you do everything you can, the Savior steps in to finish the rest, as long as your purpose is righteousness.

Love,

Elder Nelson