Esto es Guerra (This is War) - Elder Jake Avery

Written by Elder Jacob Avery, serving in the Peru Lima West Mission of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, speaking Spanish.

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This week was finally exciting! We had lots and lots of lessons, but we only scheduled two baptismal dates for May 3rd :( I wanted 84. The baptisms we scheduled are two sisters. One is 18 and the other is 24. It's sad because we've tried so many times to speak with the rest of their family, but their siblings are all older and married. Religion is something so far from their minds. Their dad is never home and not very interested either. Frankly, I think he's gonna listen one of these days.

Elder Uceda, the Area Seventy, changed our baptismal requirement from attending Sacrament Meeting two times to three times. This doesn't really affect me because I'm pretty scared to baptize someone after only having them attend church two times anyway. Some missionaries got pretty upset though. I'm just glad he changed it because our biggest problem here is inactive converts.

It's really cool that you got to have so many missionary experiences this week. Sometimes people are so preoccupied in their own little worlds that it takes hearing about a tragedy to make them think about what's really important. I'm so convinced that the Lord is hastening His work in all parts of the world. I remember talking to a French tourist the other week, and he was so shocked, ''There're Mormon's out here!!??'' Oh hi...um, yes. He told us that with the Word of Wisdom and Law of Chastity, we probably won't have much success. We will though.

We did ''Combate'' as a ward activity. It's a Peruvian television program where a bunch of buff, scandalously dressed men and a bunch of skinny, even more so scandalously dressed women compete in party games. Party games like take a washer off a long screw, stack jumbo blocks, obstacle courses; stuff you see in pre-school but in this show they take it really seriously and cause a lot of drama. It's so popular that they made a spin off called ''Esto es Guerra'' (This is War) where they do the exact same thing. Anyway, we took all the appropriate aspects of the show and made it into a ward activity. We had a lot of fun. We had two investigators there, and we got a huge number from our area in Sacrament Meeting the next day because of it. Sadly, I didn't bring my camera. You'll have to check out my companion's Facebook to see if he sent pictures home.

The area started a Book of Mormon challenge for Family Home Evening that starts tonight. We're supposed to read the Book of Mormon every day by ourselves for 15 minutes, and with our families everyday for 15 minutes. I gave a talk (sermon) about it yesterday in church, and basically relieved 9 months of stress in 10 minutes. I explained that the Caras Ward will face the same end as the Nephites if we don't start teaching our kids to read the scriptures. Well....something to that effect.

Well, that was my week in a nutshell. I hope you guys have a really good week. I love you guys and we'll see each other in a month or so! :) (Elder Avery is planning to Skype with our family on Mother's Day.)

Elder Avery

Until All People Have a Chance to Accept the Gospel (April 7, 2014)

Happy Easter from Peru (April 21, 2014)