April 4, 2016

Hola familia,

I am glad to hear that everything is going well back home. You are lucky that you get to have spring break. I would love to get a break. I wish I could have been there to see Bev. Hopefully she can come for my homecoming. It would be fun to see her and catch up on all that has happened. Even though your week was super busy and hectic that is the best. It seems to me that the busiest weeks are the most memorable. Just like this week was.

I will start with the best part and then go back to the rest of the week. On Thursday, Linda and Miguel got married and baptized. The marriage almost fell through and didn't happen. On Wednesday afternoon we still didn't have Miguel's birth certificate. We had been searching for it for almost 3 weeks. We finally got a hold of the guy who had sent it and he told us that it had gotten lost in the mail and that he would have to send another. I about died when I heard that. I thought that they weren't going to be able to get married. We started making a few calls and pulling a few strings. We managed to find a bus that was going to travel all night and come to Lima. We payed another 25 soles and had the birth certificate overnighted to us. It got to us at 8 in the morning and the marriage was at 11. Nothing like waiting till the last minute. After all the paper work was sorted out we had the marriage. It was very personal and very cool. The family really enjoyed it. I might add that this was the trunkiest wedding that I have been to. Afterwards we had the baptism that night. Elder Nielson came to the marriage but couldn't get permission to come to the baptism. Since he wasn't there I baptized both of them and confirmed them too. They were both very happy. Afterwards we went to the reception that the ward set up. It was small, maybe 30 people, but they made the family feel really welcomed. Their marriage and baptism was one of the best experiences of my whole mission.

We are working with Linda's mom, Alicia. She has gone to church a couple times and should be baptized at the end of this month. She is really sweet and has seen a change in her family and wants that change too. We are also working with Fatima's daughter, Koriama. She is 15 and the only one who has not been baptized in the family. She now has gone to church three times but still doesn't have the desire to get baptized. We are going to work with her this week and hopefully put a baptismal date with her. We also got a couple sweet references this week from an active family. Two of their kids aren't members but have more than 4 attendences to church. I thought they were already members. We are going to attack those two so that they can get baptized too. We are seeing a lot of small miracles in the area and zone. We are teaching a few families that we want to marry, but they aren't progressing yet.

Conference was amazing. Since next week here in Peru is Presidental elections, there will be no church next week. Due to that, saturday conference counted as one attendence and Sunday as another so we can help investigators progress and get baptized. The zone had good success and brought a lot of people to both conferences. I have never seen so many investigators come to conference.

I really liked conference. When President Monson announced that there was going to be another temple here in Lima, everyone gasped and started whispering. I am so glad that I have been able to help the church grow so much here that they are going to build another temple. Not that many missionaries can say that they have helped the church grow so much that they built another temple. That is amazing.

My favorite talks were from Uchtdorf about humbling ourselves. I also liked the one from the Young mens Presidency. He talked about how we can be the best leaders and followers. It really helped me out in the situation that I am in being a new zone leader and training two new zone leaders and having every district leader be new also. It helped me out a lot.

I feel even more tired being in a trio. I thought I would be able to rest more but we just work even harder. We are trying to do almost 2 work visits every day. We are running all over the place and working super hard. My companions are really cool and we get along great. We are always talking and joking around. I thought we did that a lot when we were just two, but now with three of us in the same room it is even worse.

Love you lots,
Elder Isaacson