Week 40

May 16, 2016

WHOOO week 40, so this week was pretty cool... it went by SUPER FAST!

So we have been teaching a less active named Karina who is super cute and always happy to see us.  She always gives us food (which is the best part hahaha) but she just doesn't have quite enough faith to stop working on Sundays. We´ve been trying to focus on keeping the Sabbath day holy so she can go to church.  We´ll see how it goes.  Her son is named Cesar and he just recently turned eight.  He could very well get baptized, so we´re trying to really focus on Karina so that not only can she return to church but so she can help her son get baptized.  The funny part of this story is that we met Karina and Cesar when we first came to Shilcayo, like our first night (almost three months ago) and from that moment until this past Monday, we thought Cesar´s name was Lozano! We saw him on the street all the time and we´d shout "Heyyyy!!! Lozano!! whats up!" We'd talk to his mom and ask "How's Lozano?"!! This past Monday, we had a family home evening with them and Cesar told us his name was actually Cesar and his last name is Lozano!! We were so embarrassed!!! and now when one of us says something about Cesar, the other one of us gets confused and asks who's Cesar?  hahahaha. Anyways, the story gets better... 

Remember Yudith? The investigator who we didn't think would be that interested, but then came to church and is reading the Book of Mormon? Well we also learned this week that her name is Ludith! with an L!!! The funny part is that I wrote on a pamphlet "Yudith" and asked if that's how you spell her name, and she said yes! but it's not! hahahaha.  So now we´re a little self conscious about our ability to know people´s names.

Meli and her grandkids keep coming to church. Meli even put on her nicest shirt this Sunday and it was so cute! We took a picture with her. She´s still listening to her grandkids read the Book of Mormon to her. She says she feels that this is the true church, because her life has changed a lot since we started visiting her and since she started going to church. She says shes always going to go to church ...but she doesn't want to get baptized. She keeps saying "one day, one day" and so we´re really struggling with helping her understand the importance of getting baptized now, rather than later. If anyone has any tips that would be cool!

Meli is the lady standing next to me.  She looks so happy!  I love it!

With Yetti, who is super cute!  She is 18 and the only active member in her family. She hadn't been coming lately so we went to visit her ... and she came the next Sunday!  :)

Funny stories (besides the name mixups)

We were in a motokar going back to our area and it ran out of gas in the middle of the street! So he had us get out, then he tipped the motokar on its side, put it back upright, had us get on, and then it started again!!! hahahaha  He then went straight to the gas station, but we were just in shock that tipping over your motokar actually works when you're out of gas! hahaha

Another motokar passed by us the other day and there was a turtle tied to the backseat.. but this turtle apparently didn't like the ride cause he was about to walk off the motokar.  The driver just put his hand back and pushed the turtle back further into the motokar! He just acted so natural about it and we were just confused!

Miracle of the week: yesterday night we were super hungry because our dinner was really small and we really wanted to eat something.  We couldn't buy anything since it was Sunday. Anyways, we walked past this lady who sells on the street and is kinda our friend.   We started talking to her like we usually do and she said, "I want to give you guys cutacho!" (which is like our favorite food here, it's like a ball of peanut butter, mashed fried bananas, and I don't know what else, but it's super good).  So she gave us both cutacho and we were so happy!! Even though we didn't pray for food, God saw we needed some and gave it to us!   :) 

So that was my week!!! Hope everything is SUPER DE DUPER back at home!!

I'll talk to you all next week!!

Hermana Gurney

Week 39

May 9, 2016

HAPPY MOTHER´S DAY!!!!!

My beautiful area!

Yes, they do celebrate Mother´s Day in Peru.  There are not any different traditions. Everything is pretty normal.

So this week was pretty fun.  The highlight was of course skyping my family, but there was lots of other cool things!! 

We were teaching a recent convert named Shantal (I think ive talked about her before.. she´s 10 and the only member and doesn´t like reading her Book of Mormon or going to church, so we´re not quite sure why she got baptized).   We were talking about the importance of prayer. The thing with her is she listens to us because were sometimes funny, but at the same time ... she doesn't really listen.  So we were like "its really important to always pray.. do you remember to pray Shantal?" and she responds "si, hermana" and so I asked her "Are you praying right now?" and she responded "si hermana".  She then stood up, went into her room, grabbed a dress, and changed.  The thing is we don't get annoyed with her because she is only 10.  Every lesson with her is just hilarious. We walk out of the house and we just die laughing hahhahaa. 

Lizbeth this week accepted a baptismal date, which was awesome, but then we had to talk to her about marriage because she´s not married. She talked to her husband and he doesn't want to get married, so thats our biggest obstacle with her right now.  She hasn't come to church either, so we need to go visit her today and find out what's happening. She´s literally the sweetest, so I know everything will work out.

Judith didn't come to church yesterday... even though her cousin (our old pensionista Noria) passed by. Apparently she was a little busy with Mother's Day or something like that. We´re going to go visit her this week again too to find out why.

Did I tell you guys about Meli? the grandma that is raising her three grandkids? She came to church again with her husband. She says she really likes our visits and feels more peace and less worry in her life now that we´ve been visiting her and she has been going to church. I'm glad to know she has felt the spirit. Her only problem is her husband. Her husband listens to us and comes to church but that's only when he's here. He lives in their farm and only comes to Tarapoto every once in a while.  We have to talk to them about marriage too.  I know he´s felt the spirit because he loves coming to church. so that will be our focus this week- teaching about marriage! hahaha

I hope everything is going well at home! Love you guys!!

Hermana Gurney

With Yvonne ... an awesome member that we are working with!

PIZZA!!

Week 38

May 2, 2016


So this week I was reading in Enos, first chapter and twenty fifth verse, which says "And it came to pass that I began to be old".  Never did any passage of scripture come with more power to the heart of man that this did at this time to mine. It seemed to enter with great force into every feeling of my heart. I reflected on it again and again, knowing that if any person was becoming old, I was. HA!  Thanks for all the birthday wishes!

So tradition in Peru for birthdays--- they smash an egg on your head. Lots of people told me they were going to bring an egg to church yesterday and egg me, but no one did! Thank goodness because I didn't want to have to wash my hair again!!!

My sweet pensionista bought a cake and made a special lunch for us on my birthday.  Here they sing "Happy Birthday" and they sing it in English, but they don't really know what they're saying! It's hilarious. My pensionista wrote happy birthday on my cake, and spelled my name right (WHOOO!) but spelled birthday wrong! haha!

Happy Birthday to me!  Thanks for cupcakes Mom!  

This week Hermana Velazquez went to Lima for her visa with another Hermana in our zone, so Hermana Arteaga (the other hermana's companion) came with me to work in Shilcayo. It was awesome! She's not quite as used to the hills as Hermana Velazquez, so we did walk a little slower than I would have liked, but it's all good!! The best part is, that Hermana Velazquez bought us Dunkin Donuts in the airport in Lima, so we had a nice little treat for when she came home :)

This week we met this elderly lady that we contacted on the street named Yudith. When we contacted her, the house smelled bad and she looked a little mean.  When she told us to come in and teach her, we were just planning on teaching a quick lesson and then leaving, so that we wouldn't get a headache. We started out teaching and she told us how she's catholic and she can't get baptized again.  She has a friend who's Mormon who told her lots of bad things about the church.  We nicely explained the restoration, proper authority, and cleared up all the doubts her other friend gave her.  We didn't think we made much of a difference, but apparently it did.  At the end, she told us to come back because she would think about being baptized the right way to save her soul! She even came to church with us yesterday! It turns out her cousin is our old pensionista! How crazy... we should have had more faith from the beginning that she would change!

My beautiful area!

So that was my week.. pretty cool!

Talk to you next week!!!

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!
Hermana Gurney

Week 37

April 25, 2016

Wow April is already coming to an end, and I feel like it just started yesterday!! Where did the time go??

So this week was super UNEVENTFUL ... literally no one in the zone had transfers except for two missionaries. So I am still here in Tarapoto, getting to almost 6 months in this lovely part of Peru and I am still with the lovely Hermana Velazquez. Sorry if anyone was looking forward to any crazy changes.

Still with the lovely Hermana Velazquez!  The selfie is with Ariana, a member of our ward and super cute!

So this week we learned something about our pensionista´s daughter... apparently she and another member, Elena, went to get their future reads.  The fortune teller told Elena all these nice, happy things about her future life, but told Angely (our pensionista´s daughter) that she had a very sad future.    Apparently that scared Angely enough that she started coming to church EVERY WEEK, without lacking a day! HA!

Our twelve year old investigator, Raul, constantly saves the day! He lives on this street where literally everyone is a member or an investigator.   There's no inbetween. There are two recent children converts that have stopped coming to church.  Raul has taken the initiative (without our suggestion) to go and make sure these two converts are awake so that they can start getting ready for church. THEN, he goes and passes by one of the families we´re teaching and brings their kids to church.  (We are trying to work with their grandma Meli (who is raising them) so that she with come to church WITH her grandkids.)  So Raul brings his little sister and these two kids to church. The best part is they get there EARLY too.  Our most faithful investigators are four children!  We took a picture with them this week.

Our four faithful children!!  The two boys on the left are Jhol and Alex, the grandchildren of our investigator.  The girl in the middle is Raul's sister.  The boy with the Book of Mormon is Raul!  The other little girl in pink is the YW's President's daughter.  

The best news of the week is our new investigator we found- Lizbeth. SHE IS SO COOL!!! She's actually the sister of one of my investigators back in Partido Alto! Fun little connections. She is looking for peace in her home and we know that the gospel is going to help her. She originally told us that she works on Sunday mornings, selling food in the market because that's the day that you gain the most money.  After we taught her a little bit about putting God first and the Sabbath, she decided to go to the market on Saturday and came to church with us yesterday!!! She did get there late but we were SO happy to see her!!!! She came with her 7 year old boy who just sat quietly throughout the entire meeting! She also told us she has never been baptized and wants to find a church for her and her sons to get baptized in!!! We´re going to go visit her today and were going to talk to her about maybe a date for baptism...  I know she´s going to be so willing to make changes in her life!!!!

So yeah, that's my week, hope everything is SUPER DE DUPER at home, talk to you all in MAY!

Hermana Gurney

Week 36

April 18, 2016

So this week was SUPER STRESSFUL

We had Raiza´s baptism planned for this past Thursday at 10:00 in the morning. Everything was good ... the speakers were going to be there, we had just enough priesthood holders, ... everything was golden. Monday night we are told us that President Gomez and his wife were coming to Tarapoto to have a zone meeting, and we needed to be there Thursday morning from 9 until 1.  We had to call everyone again and move the baptism to Friday morning at 10. Everyone moved things around in their schedules and it all worked out to be Friday.

Thursday after the meeting with Presidente Gomez, Sister Gomez told all the hermanas that we had a meeting Friday morning from 8 to 11!! So we went and talked to Presidente about our baptism being scheduled that day, and he was like "well, Hermana Gomez prepared this whole talk for you guys, could you move your baptism to 11?" So were like, okay, well see what we can do. 

We call EVERYONE again, they can all do it, and it's great...until three hours later when one of the speakers and the guy who was supposed to baptize Raiza call us and tell us that they won't be able to make it at 11.  So we went to visit Raiza and her family and ask if it would be okay if someone else baptized her, but she was kinda shy and didn't really like the idea of someone she doesn't know baptizing her. Thursday night we called everyone AGAIN and scheduled the baptism for SATURDAY morning at 10. Whew!  It turned out all right!  Raiza´s dad, who doesn't want much with the church, and her grandparents were able to come.  It was a really good experience. Her grandparents aren't members and they said that every time they're in Tarapoto (which is like once a month) that they will come to church with Raiza. That was pretty awesome!!

My previous companion, Hermana Inca, basically made my dress.  I picked out the fabric.
She cut it out and hired someone to sew it!

I don't know if I told you about it, but we moved a few weeks ago, and now were living with our pensionista and it's awesome. Her name is Janeth and she is HILARIOUS... she made peanut butter the other day which was pretty awesome.  When she told us she was like "so I made butter.... of peanuts. It's like you take peanuts and mush them together and it becomes this butter. It's called peanut butter. Lots of people here put it on bread and eat it. What crazy things they have here in the jungle!"  We didn't have the heart to tell her that we all know what peanut butter is and that they even sell it in the stores here.  

So yeah, basically that was my week! Tonight is transfers, which is going to be crazy! I'll let you know next week if I'm still in Tarapoto!! 

Hope you all have a fun week!! Talk to you soon!!!

Hermana Gurney

(cool scripture of the week- Romans 1:30- apparently disobeying your parents is just as bad of a sin as some other things!)

Week 35! Whooo!!!

April 11, 2016

So this week was Peruvian elections!  That means that everything closes on Sunday and everyone has to go vote in the morning. It's illegal to have meetings or anything that could prevent people from voting.  There's also a fine here, so if you don't vote you have to pay 80 soles. To make it worse, if you're from Lima but living in Tarapoto ... you have to go to Lima to vote. So lots of people went travelling this weekend so they could go vote. Some people decided it was cheaper to just pay the fine and stayed home though. So all this means that there was no church yesterday! It was super weird not having church... especially when we invited people to come.  We were like "every Sunday at 9!" and then were like wait, this week there won't be church! hahaha!

They also announced this week that the elections were a tie??, so everyone has to go vote AGAIN in June. So in June there will be another Sunday full of travel and no church! 

Do you remember Piere Jeffembert Hilderbrandt Melendez? I think I wrote about him cause he's hilarious and his name is awesome.  Anyways, this week he got his mission call! He's going to Colombia Bogota North, and leaves in July! It was super funny cause we went to go visit him and his family.  When we showed up, his mission call had just come and all his friends were over.  So he opened it with us there! It was cool.. we took a picture! 

We met this sweet older woman named Esperanza de Jesus Luna ... which literally means Hope of Jesus Moon.  She is the sweetest! She doesn't really understand much... we asked her if she had any questions about Joseph Smith and she asked "So are we all going to resurrect when we die?" and there was a few other random questions.  But she really is the cutest. She promised to come with us to church next week and wants us to keep visiting her.  We don't really know if she in interested just for our company or because she really wants to get to know the church.

This week we have a baptism!!! Remember those cute little girls I took a picture with last week? The 9 year old, Raiza, is going to get baptized. No one in her family is a member.  Her mom really wants to get baptized and can't because she is not married.  We really think that if her husband comes to Raiza's baptism, it will soften his heart. We´re super stoked. 

Also this sweet less active Luzdina told us that since we started visiting her it helped her realize the importance of going to church before everything. She used to travel to her farm on the weekends to make sure things are going well, but now she says she'll never go to her farm on Sundays because her first commitment is God. It made us super happy to hear that she wants to make these changes!

So yeah, that's my week, hope everything is going super de-duper at home!!

Love,

Hermana Gurney

(No pictures this week ... the computer wouldn't recognize her camera)

Week 34

April 4, 2016

So yesterday, they called me at 5:00  in the afternoon and told me I had an emergency transfer to PULCALLPA!  So I had to pack up my bags super fast, run to the airport, and now I'm here in Pulcallpa!

APRIL FOOLS!!

Hahaha ... but actually in all honesty, my zone leaders did call me on April Fool's Day and tell me I had emergency transfers and I almost died of a heart attack!  I didn't want to leave Shilcayo!!

I did move this week.  We changed pensionistas so we moved to live with her.  We're now living a lot closer to everyone in our area.  It's a better change. We live with Janet and her family.  They are members but don't always attend.  I think having us live there is really going to help them.  

So this week was cool. It was General Conference! It was a super fun weekend..I got to watch almost all of it in English! The first half of the first session was in Spanish, but that's okay, because the majority was in English! It's kinda funny in that when I didn't understand Spanish, I watched it all in Spanish, but now that I understand Spanish ... I watched it all in English! hahaha

Anyways ... it was awesome, I loved conference!  I wish we had it every weekend! You just learn so much! 

We also all shouted for joy when they announced the new temple in Lima Peru!!!! That is going to be so awesome!!!!  When they said "quito" Ecuador, we all thought they said Iquitos, which would have been cool, but that's okay, Lima is just as awesome!

So a funny story from this week ... we were walking next to a river, which kinda had a little bit of a slope to lead down to it.  We were just walking on the road next to it and we walked past an elderly lady and said "buenas dias!!!" She looked at us and basically said "I'm going to go to the bathroom".   My comp and I looked at each other and we were just like "okay?" and we just kept walking.  Then we heard a scream, we turned around and the lady had apparently tried to walk down to the river, but fell down the slope! Luckily there were two men right there who ran down to help her up!  It's kinda bad but we thought it was pretty funny!    

We have been working with a woman named Vanessa.  She has been an investigator since August or September, basically my whole mission! haha  She is so strong! She brings her two daughters to church every Sunday, she reads her Book of Mormon every day, she always prays, and has a stronger testimony than many of the members.  Anyways, she hasn't been baptized cause she isn't married. She wants to get married but her husband doesn't want to. We've tried teaching him, but he rarely listens to us and doesn't really want anything with the church. So we prayed and fasted to know how to help this family.  Last Tuesday we went to visit them and the mom told us,  "I was thinking about how to help soften my husbands heart, and I want my daughter to get baptized". Her daughter is 9 but it is usually best to baptize kids with their parents, so we were a little hesitant.  Vanessa feels like if her daughter gets baptized, her husband will attend, and he will feel the spirit there. Her daughter will then have the Gift of the Holy Ghost and will be able to bring that gift to their home. Her daughter's name is Raiza, and is the cutest little girl ever. She also really wants to get baptized and has told us that she prayed and felt that the church was true! So not this Saturday, but the next, Raiza is going to get baptized!  We prayed a lot about it and we feel this will really help her family progress!! Lets hope everything works out logistically!

Vanessa and her cute daughters!

Last Pday we visited El Castillo de Lamas ... (pictures below).  We were told that a member of the church in the Aeropuerto branch decided he wanted to build a castle... so he told all the other members he was going to go by a farm that everyone could help him buy, and it would be like a branch farm. Everyone would be able to have all the fruit and stuff that is grown there. So all the members pitched in and gave him some money for this farm... but then he took all the money and built a castle. Then he moved and stopped going to church.  It actually caused this huge problem in the Aeropuerto branch but it's all solved now.  I'm actually not sure if that's true, but that's the story everyone tells!

So that was my week! Hope everything is going well at home!

Love you tons!!

Hermana Gurney