Today I took the most Northern-Lima picture ever! All the little boxes explain why.
This week I only have a few things to mention, such as an earthquake (A little one, but still a little stronger than the others I’ve experienced!), a cool investigator, and a trip to the Granja Villa. I’ll start with the investigator, because that’s always exiting. (Maybe not as much for you guys, but I’m pumped!)
His name’s Marcelino, and he’s the only memeber of his family that’s not a member of the Church because he’s Catholic. However, the rest of the family (his wife and his son, Julio) don’t go to church, so he hasn’t had much contact with missionaries or the Church. Anyway, we started teaching them last week, hoping to help the family start coming to church again and to teach Marcelino. Well, we taugh Lesson 1 — about prophets, the church that Jesus Christ founded, what happened to the church after Christ’s death, why there are so many churches, and how the church of Christ was restored by Joseph Smith — and he paid attention and asked questions but it didn’t really seem like he cared a whole lot.
Well, Wednesday comes around and we go to visit them again, and he and Julio, his son, were waiting for us! Marcelino had felt something when we taught (The Spirit, obviously!) and was excited to learn more, and Julio had started reading the Book of Mormon and had already progressed 14 chapters! About a week before we told Julio that if he reads the Book of Mormon cover-to-cover in 6 weeks we’ll buy him pìzza, but he didn’t really care a whole lot. Then he prayed, felt the Spirit, and started to read! Then, on Sunday, they came to church! Awesome!
The earthquake wasn’t much, but the Granja Villa was AWESOME! Here I am with my district:
It was a little expensive (40 Sols) to get in, but it was TOTALLY worth it because it’s basically a little amusement park and everything is free once you enter (Except for the overpriced food, of course). They didn’t have roller coasters, but they did have…
Bumper cars:
Flying swing things:
Interesting animals in a little nature park:
And a few other short but fun rides. The best part was, we went on a Monday in the afternoon, so NOBODY else was there — just the 22 of us in our zone — and the operators let us do everything over and over again! We were in the bumper cars for 30 minutes straight because there was no one else!
My only problem: I forgot a change of shorts, so I had to use my dress pants, which, when combined with my jacket, t-shirt, tennis shoes, and gloves, I looked like someone from a boxing/workout class:
My companion hummed the theme from “Rocky” a few times throughout the day when he saw me!
So I’m all good down here in Peru, and I’ll keep you all posted about any other cool stuff that happens! ¡Chao!
— Elder Schroeder