hola mi familia!

thanks for all the emails this week. it has been wondie! i also received like sooo many letters this week. yay!! they are oh so encouraging. and i miss everyone soooo much, that when i receive a letter it is just the most greatest thing in the whole world. hahah i dont know how to describe my feelings, i suppose.

so last pday we went to this place called larco mar. you guys. you MUST look up pictrues. it is the prettiest place. and it is a mall, too, with many american things about it, and that made me so happy. familiarity is really great at times hahaaha. i would have taken pics of it, but my camera died. saad. but we apparently go back a lot, so it´s all good. i will have plenty of pics to come from that place. soooooooo pretty.

haha so i will start off with some happenings this week. not exactly spiritual...

-we were in this house of a lady this week who kept asking us to pray that she would be able to ¨bañarme¨ which means to wash yourself. i was thinking the whole time that noooo really? i must not be understanding this right. but then after the lesson, i asked hna c if that was what she was saying, and she said yes! hahhaahahahah i hesitated telling you guys this story, because in reality, it is pretty sad. haha but that was just sooo weird and i couldnt stop laughing. great. now you guys all think im rude. and it might not even be that funny to you. but trust me. it wassssssssss.

-so hna.c and i get along really well and she tells me a lot of stories. the problem is, is that she tells me stories that she thinks are really funny, but i just DONT. hahahah my fake laugh is just getting faker, i feel. shes going to catch on that i dont think her stories are funny. uh oh dopey.

-i ate my first LEGIT tamale the other day. from off da streets. it was wrapped in this thick green leaf thing (mabes corn? no se) and tied with these planty strings hahaha thats a really terrible description. but it was sooooo goooooood. and fun to eat. and i didnt even get sick after hahah so that is good.

-my rash is getting better! but bad news--it is from my synthetic garments. booooo it is becasue i sweat(ew) so much whilst walking soooooo i can only wear the other kind during summer. boooooooooo. but at least it is better, right? and it isnt fungus or bed bugs.

-you guys should look up a peruano dog. one of our investigators owns  one and it was cute, but at first disturbing. i thought it was really sick and was afraid to touch it hahaha but it is basically a hairless dog. like sphinx´s? is that the name. and he was really nice to me. but they look pretty weird.

-everyone is sooooooooo giving here. they give my comp and i stuff allll the time. sylvia always gives us these delicous choco-coconut bars and suckers. and bread. fernando bought us inca kolas. reynaldo bought us tamales. and olvia and jorge always give us really nice treats and bread.

-also, i dont know if i ever told you this, but after my clothes are washed every week, they hang on a clothesline. hahaha can you believe it? it is kind of cute  ahhah. but sometimes i miss the efficency of dryers.

-also, there is porno EVERYWHERE here. it is so gross. i feel bad for the elders.

now it is time for the investigators!!

-reynaldo--hna c and i hadnt been able to find him for this wholleeeee last week and we were sooo frustrated. he had missed church the past 2 sundays because he had forgotten, and he just needed to come this week and we were praying sooo hard for that. and our zone had a fast for all of our investigators on friday. and then on saturday. tah dah! we found reynaldo, and he finally came to church on sunday and rmembered and everything! yay!!

-crystal--crystal is the granddaughter of nicolas(the old man i love), and she sat in on one of our lessons one time with nicolas. she is 18 and her mom died a few years ago. anyway, she really wanted to learn more and she is sooo sincere. anyway, this past week, we invited her to be baptized, and she wants to! she soaks up every lesson like a sponge. it is sooo great.

-ariha--this guy is soooo cool. he is 22 and a different set of missionaries were teaching him, but hna c said that they put a lot of pressure on him to be baptized, and that kind of scared him off. we had been trying to contact him these past few weeks, and then finalllly we did!! and he is great. he is super good at the guitar, and when he found out i was from alabama, he played sweet home alabama! hahahha and i sang along. all alone. hahah can you guys believe i sang along? i mean, it isnt that big of a deal, but before, i would have neverrrr done that.  it was so fun and great. and then he came to church yestrerday, too! yayyyy!! so i feel really good about teaching him.

--and sylvia-- she is improviing sooooo much!! she loves to research about the chruch and she loves all the hymns we sing with her. her heart is really sofeting. at first, she didnt believe in jesus christ, but last night, she said that she DID after we talked with her about the atonement and why it happened. yayyyyy!!! she is still not so sure about God´s love for her, so mabes pray for her to feel his love for her.

-antoni--man. i was so sad last night. his situation just makes me so sad. he was in a coma for 15 years of his life, and he came out of it only a couple of years ago, and he is like 40 ish. mannn isnt that the saddest?? i was just really sad about that. but he also is unsure about God´s love for him. which makes sense because that would be really hard to reason why 15 years of your life were taken from you. so we are praying for the same thing with him as with sylvia.

okay family fam. you guys are allll sooooo great. i love each of your emails and letters sooo much. keep being great!

con amor,

me

i hope you enjoy! here are some random little pics of around the town i am in. and hugo´s baptism. love all of you mucho!

jillbo

fam damily!

yayyyyyyyyyyyyyy. i am writing to all of you again! this week has flown by! does time go as fast for you guys as it does for me??

it is soo crazy.

okay, so first off, thanks to all who wrote me this week. i love each of your cartas soooo much. woops! i mean letters. i cant even speak spanish very well, but because i talk in it all the time, sometimes words get mixed up in my brain. yikes.

so, the point of my story last week about the lady with the  rooster was that after i took a picture of she and her rooster, we asked her again if she would be interested in listenng to more of our message, and she said yes! so my southern charm worked on her hahaha and now we are teaching her! she is oh so interesting you guys. mannn. her name is sylvia and she is free lance writer and she is super smart. but she is also very strange. but that is why we love her. hahaha so she has 7 other chickens as pets. and they just roam throughout her house hahaha. and during one of the lessons, while i was talking, she just got up and but this black chicken in my lap (right now lia is saying, why you gotta make it bout race?). and so i just held it like a kitten and pet it like a kitten. but chickens arent kittens. hahah it was sooo strange. but i loved it. she has a lot of strange beliefs, and she is kind of angry at God for the pains in the world, but her heart is softening and it is really cool to see. i hope we continue to progress with her.

got rashes? i do i do. yeah. i just have these patches of red bumps on my torso and they kiiiiiillllllllll i called the pres´s wife and asked her what they could be and she said that it is either a fungus(eeek!) bed bugs(eeek!) or an allergic reaction. and then as i further described it to her, and showed it to a few members in the ward, they told me that it was probs an allergic reaction (phewwww) but it kiiillllsssss and itches. what the?? im taking some kind of allergy medicine for it. but no one really knows what to do soooooo... hopefully it will go away soon?

i had my first baptism on friday night!! it was hugo and he is just THE COOLEST ever. man. he is the 17 year old one, and he is sooo cool. ive only known him for just under 2 weeks, but ive seen him change so much. i felt bad on friday because he showed up a couple of minutes late and told us that he had hadsome probs getting out of his house because his family is nootttt for him getting baptized. but he came and his baptism was great! all of the youth were there, and they were all super welcoming and opening to him. and one of the youth baptized him. ahhh man. it was just the greatest. and for sunday, me and hna c bought him a shirt a tie for his confirmation because he didnt have one. and he looked so nice in it. hugo is great. during lessons, if i understand something, he never believes me! and he is like, what did i just say. tell me. because sometimes i dont understand anything. but believe it or not, hugo, the gift of tongues does work. hahaha

nicolas is my other fave. he is just so great. i dont have much time so that is all i will say about him. he is getting baptized this saturday.

pray for our other investigatiors. there are 2 that are struggling. they need all the prayers they can get.

oh! and we had a tremor (i think that is what they are called. not quite an earthquake...) anyway, it was sooooo scary to me! i hated it hahaha evreything was shaking and it was the middle of the night so, i was evern more confused. anwyay. me no likey. but kind of it was cool. hahaha i dont knmow...

okay, well, thanks so much for everything family! you gusy are the best! i pray for you guys all the time and i hope you are all doing well! i love hearing from you every weeek! it is my fave.

mucho mucho amor,

hermana jill

en mi corazon, tu viviras

hahah like my subject line? it is from the tarzan soundtrack that my comp has in espanol. chevere, no??  hahah oh man disney songs in spanish are the best. also, we can listen to cartoon soundtracks and such. . . soooo can you guys send me cds with those kinds of songs?? annnnnd other church songs? the ipod i brought has verrrryyyy few. please and thank you are the magic words (barney songs. no--dont send me those, please).

soooo my first week in the field. this is nuts you guys! im actually here!!! can you believe it?? so did you guys receive last weeks email--like the full on-- or no? i hope you did, but my email says that it didnt send. . . soooo i dont know

ok, where to start where to start...

i am such a rollercoaster of emotions here. i am learning patience and faith sooooooo much. so much. man. i knew nothing about patience with myself before the mission. and faith. hahaha i have to rely on the lord 100% here. it is really hard, but it is the best thing i have ever done.

so, im growing to really love this place. the weather is kind of like san fran, except minus the rain. never rain. just cool and breezy. perfect missionary weather.

i think im just going to start typing stuff from my journal. i dont know what else to do hahah there is SO much to say.

okay. just kidding. not yet.

our investigators--

--reynaldo- he is 48 i believe. and he lives next to the ocean. he sleeps on cardboard boxes on the grass on the hill up from his house (hole in the wall). that is where we usually find him. he is really hard to teach because 1) i think he has adult ADD and, 2) he lacks education and therefore lacks confidence when we teach him. before me, they had been teaching him for 2 months, and he cant quite get down how to pray. he just laughs haha it´s pretty funny, but also frustrating. i think he understands, but it sometimes hard to tell. haha probs b-c i dont always fully understand hahaha. but he is progressing.

--hugo-- love this boy. he is 17, and mannnn it just surprises me soo much how much faith he has. it surprises me everytime people accept our message because it teaches things so different from the way the world lives. the people´s faith is so strong. anyway, hugo is getting baptized this saturday, and i am super excited for it. this is only the 3rd week of his lessons. yayyy!

--juan carlos--he is 19 and is getting baptized this weekend, too. he is similar to hugo. so much dang faith. something funny happened while we were teaching him. so the word for a dead fish is pescado, and the word for sin is pecado. anway, i said, ¨jesucristo morio por nuestros pescados¨ jesus died for our dead fish. hahahhaha man i got the strangest look from him. thankfully i caught myself right away and changed it. and then we all laughed because im learning spanish haha oh man.

there are sooo many more investigators ( we teach all the time!) but, those are all that i will share with you right now. oh, and there is an 86 year old man getting baptized this weekend. he is sooooo funny and cool. and he likes to say things to me in englsih hahah it´s pretty funny and fun.

magdalena del mar is like one of the richest parts of town, but you guys, there is still SOO MUCH poverty. oh man. i will have to write letters with more details of everything i see.

oh, so everyone gives kisses on cheeks here, right? well yesterday, i got kissed on the cheek my a boy! uh oh dopey! it was an accident. i didnt know how to stop it. so it just happened. hahahaaha oh man im so awkward. my companion laughed at me.

the other day when me and hna carazas(whom i love, by the way. ive lucked out with THE BEST comps ever so far.) were contacting, we were talking to this lady who had a couple of grocery bags hanging from her arms, and then this backpack type of thing hanging from her neck. and we were just chatting, and then all of the sudden, she is like, oh, look at my new pet, and she opens up the bag around her neck, and out pops a little baby rooster´s head. hahahahha i was sooo shocked. and she was petting him like i would pet a little kitten. and so then, hna carazas asked if we could come visit her and see her somemore and she said that she didnt think so, and then i said, heyyy can i take a picture of you and your new little friend? and she said yes ( i said wow. hahah remember that country song?') and so i wanted her to leave the little guy in the bag so i could document exactly what i saw. but she took him out, like any good owner would do, right?, and she posed for me. i have the picture, and im going to try to send it to youg guys today. hahaha anway sooo funny. looovveeedd it!!

okay you guys, im going to end it here today. you gusy are THE BEST in the whole world. i miss you a ton, but it is getting easier to function. i just have to focus on the people, not myself. thank you for all the emails. they are my fave every week. i look forward to them like nothing else.

i love you all so much. if you are ever prompted to say something to someone about the gospel. DO it. heavenly father will put the words in your mouth. it´s true. tha´s the only way i speak here hahaha

love you all a lot. thanks for all the prayers!

love,

hna jilly pants

letter from Jill to the family

Letter written by Jill on 1/20/2012:

Okay, so here is the story I was going to share over email, but I ran out of time. It is from the Saturday we proselyted. This is from my journal the night after proselyting:

"The only real lesson we taught was to this man, Alfonzo. When we approached his door, I wasn't even sure if it was a house or not. There was a piece of plywood, with a rigid top and bottom --- it wasn't enclosed. The piece of plywood connected two crumbly, brick walls, and it kind of looked like it was an alleyway. Hermano Vega knocked on the plywood, and it really was a door. This was a home with no roof and no walls. Alfonzo, this little Peruvian man wearing green, dirty Nike shorts and a dirty red polo shirt answered the door. His head had all of its hair --- dusty, gray hair. And as he spoke, we saw he didn't have his two front teeth and was missing quite a few others. He said he wanted to hear our message, but we didn't go into his house. Instead, he and his wife brought out an old wooden bench and a stool for us to sit on, and we taught him outside of his house on the matted dirt that served as his outside floor, as well as his inside floor. There was really loud music being played right next door, so we had to talk really loudly. He had his Bible in hand the whole time. He and his wife told us that he had been sick for a long time with a stomach cancer of sorts. He told us that he has a friend who told him that he was sick because of his sins, and this was God's punishment for him. But his friend said that if he came to his church, they could heal him. So Alfonzo has started going to his friend's church, and he thinks he likes it. Also, he said that he feels better since going there. He also said that in Jeremiah (I can't remember the chapter or the verse), it described his situation perfectly. He showed it to us, but I couldn't understand it. Go figure. Actually, he showed us a lot of verses from the Old and New Testaments --- this man knows the Bible really well. He has a very strong testimony of God and Jesus Christ, though he thinks they are the same person. We didn't touch on that this time, but Hermana Yupanqui took it away, talking about how we have prophets on the Earth again today after the apostasy, and we have the authority from God to heal the sick, just as Christ did.

"He said that he was sick because his own life was going through an apostasy. It was really sad to see him blaming himself for his afflictions. I told him that Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ loved him so much. He knows they love him. I introduced the Book of Mormon to him and told him that it is another testament of Jesus Christ, and it is about the people in the Americas and that it supports and testifies of the Bible. Hermano Vega jumped in and helped explain this better --- the Bible being from Jerusalem and that God hasn't revealed any more accounts yet, but he has given us the Book of Mormon. I opened up to Alma 7:11 and explained to Alfonzo that Christ knows his pains and that he loves him very much. I bore my testimony of this and the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon. Then I had him read the second to last paragraph of the introduction that extends an invitation for him to read the Book of Mormon. He was extremely grateful, and he gave the best, gappy, missing teeth smile I've ever seen. I just wanted to hug him so bad. Abrazos, por favor.

"I wanted to share the picture in the front of the Book of Mormon of Christ visiting the Americas, but then right as I was going to, Hermano Vega did! The Spirit was telling us both to do that. That was really cool. And then I told him he could read about it in 3 Nephi 11, and Hermano Vega marked it for him so he could read it later. He was the sweetest, most humble, open-hearted person I have ever met. He's in my mission, and I so badly want to go visit him again this week. But, alas, I am still in el CCM. That's what the other missionaries are for. Maybe I can go visit him in three weeks. They better take care of him until then!"

So, that was my experience. We talked to a lot of other people, but that lesson, or rather, talking with/getting to know Alfonzo took an hour and a half to two hours, so we didn't have a ton of time left.

But man --- guys, this got me so excited to get out into the field. Also, being an American makes a lot of people want to talk to us, so that is an advantage, too. Haha, thank you, America.

This past Wednesday we also went on a tour of the city, and that was just really cool. Vague description, I know. One of the Elders was SO excited to see a McDonald's, and practically inhaled a Big Mac and fries and McFlurry. Dang, boy. Haha, it was pretty funny.

Well, I love you mucho! I wish you could be here with me and experience everything I am experiencing. Also, I am ready to leave the CCM. It's time to put what we've learned to REAL use.

Con Mucho Amor,

Jill Bill

what theeeeeeeeee

los siento, familia.
i just typed out a huge long email, but now i dont have anymore time.
sooooo sorry. i think im going to cry.
im in peru. im safe. im trying to be happy right at this moment, but
im very frustrated. for some reason the email addresses  arent
remembered in my email, so can you guys send this shrot little thing
to the sibs i didnt send it to?
my companion is great. my apt is crappy.
please pray for me to be happy haha. but seriously. i love it but it
is dang hard. thanks for the emails and letters! my pday is on mondays
now, so i will write you guys for real next monday!
con mucho amor
hna fleming

Last Week in CCM

family!! this is my last week!!! yayy!!

thank you all for my letters and emails and such!! yayyyyyy!!!! love them all.

so the biggest news for this week is that i have a kankle. apparently the bugs here loooveeee american blood. and 3 of them attacked my ankle, and it swelled up and so this week, my ankle has been the butt of every joke, i feel. ha. great. oh, and for some reason i thought it would be a good idea to teach my latina hermana, hna andres, the word, kankle, but she thought i said king kong--so now she calls me king kong. great. haha it is actually pretty funny. the swelling has gone down a lot, so that is good.

there is an elder here that calls me penniscilin(spelling)  because my last name is fleming. ahah he is from mexico and he thinks my great grandfather invented it. haha its pretty funny.

i gave a talk in spanish this past sunday. that was interesting. hahah actually, i dont think i did too shabby.

we go proselyting again on saturday!!! yayyy!!! i am sooooo excited! pray that hna andres and i get into a lot of doors. i am soooo excited!!

this morning i went to immigrations, so i am here for real. here to stay for a nice 16 more months. isnt that crazy i have been here for 2 months?? it has flown.

next time you hear from me i will be in the field. crazy.

something i am working on is putting my heart on the line. loving so much that i make myself vulnerable. this is soooo important. i challenge all of you to love the people around you more. even if there is a risk of getting hurt, love.

my district is great as always, and i am going to miss those that arent in my mission. 

okay, well i love you guys sooo much! i cant wait to have more time on pdays to write you!

you are the best!

con mucho amor,

jill

p.s. thanks for all the prayers for the gift of tongues. thheyre helping!