Merry Christmas from Peru! - 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.

(**Note to reader: Clicking on highlighted words will link to additional information. Clicking on photos will enlarge them. Some names are omitted for privacy.)

I'm calling the 25th at 2:00 Peruvian time!

I'm always scared to write about my week because it brings up a lot of less uplifting things that happened during the week. Maybe I'm just a pessimist, a happy pessimist :P

Elders Calderon and Avery

We had companion exchanges and I stayed in my area but got a new companion! That was very exciting for me. My new companion is Elder Calderon from Equador. He's been out for about 3 months. He's very spiritual, very thoughtful, very smart and, best of all, is ready to work and keep up the momentum in our area. Sadly he was sick for two days this week, and now that you guys know the steps of curing illness in South America, you can understand how just the concept of being sick is stressful. I was able to read Jesus the Christ and listen to hours of Christmas music.

We've found new investigators! Yes! One is J**. He lost his faith in God when his wife (partner really) left with his kid. He's committed to praying about and to reading the Restoration pamphlet (yes, occasionally we need to take a step back from starting with the Book of Mormon). The other is a family! R** and F** with their little girl (who's name escapes me). Mom goes to a different church but Dad doesn't, so we're trying to use the missionary discussions to pull the family together.

We're baptizing Hermana T** on Saturday, if everything goes as planned. She's 69 years old and is being very good and very obedient. I'm so proud of her for passing her baptismal interview. She doesn't remember very well or read, so she was really nervous that she wouldn't pass. But we practiced, and prayed for her, and tada!

Hi Dad,

Yes, we had the B** and C** families at the Christmas party. Haha, no Christmas program. Dad, there's nobody but me that can function the electric piano because the other lady that knows how to do it needs to lead the music.

Some of my MTC friends were at our Zone Christmas
Party, including my MTC companion, Elder Larsen.

I was craving Amish friendship bread the other day. For Christmas they eat something called panettone. It's okay, but it's not cookies, brownies, or ice cream. We had a multi-zone Christmas party with the Mission President. We ate ham, potatoes and corn (I loved it!!), then ice cream sundaes afterwards. I left happy!

I don't have any more time to write, but we will TALK tomorrow !!!!! :)

A Day at the Beach...Missionary Style (December 17, 2013)

Happy New Year from Peru (December 30, 2013)