We. Aw. Feh-muh-leee.

buenaaasssss dias!!

 another week in the mission peru lima central. you guys, tomorrow are changes! but me and my companion are still together in magdalena for another change. this is her last change, and then she will return to her home in 6 weeks. isnt that just sooooooooooooooo crazy that another 6 weeks has gone by?? i cant believe it. this change has been sooo fast. so there are 2 north americans in my zone who are going home on wednesday who have ended their missions, one sister and one elder. anyway, i cant lie--all of their talk about home and being in america kind of made me die a little inside. hahaha but seriously. i mean, the mission is great, and i am really enjoying it. but i have grown to loveeeeeeee america sooo much. hahah i feel i am more patriotic now than i ever have been in my whole life. oh, since my comp has had a lot of medical issues, we´ve had to go to the clinic a lot, and here they have the standardized health care, or obama care or whatever it is called. and i have seen how terrrriiible it would be if we had that in america! eeeek! basically the way that we are treated at DMVs or those type of places is how patients are treated at the doctor! it is sooo terrible. yikes yikes. bad news at black rock.

i mean, seriously, i love being here and all the experiences i am having and the people i am meeting and learning to love. it is all really great. but i dont think it is a bad thing to have my appreciation for my own country increase, right?

and of course, seeing how excited the missionaries are about going home makes me miss you guys SOOO much. this is how it will be every change, probs. because people go home every change. oh well. i just can think about it too much, right? right.

okay. sorry about the rambling up yonder. haha

this week has been good, but hard. my beloved fernando is being worked on quiiiiite hard by the adversary, you guys. he was all gung ho about getting baptized this past saturday and he felt good and i fasted for him again. but when we went to visit him friday night, his heart was soooo hard. never has it been like this. it made me want to cry. he has always been wayyy sincere and great. but satan has a hold on him for a bit. i think maybe that hna c and i have focused in too much on him this change. and we have neglected some others. so we are going to leave him for a bit just pray for him, and then we will visit him in like a week and see how he´s doing. but he´ll be baptized eventually.

and then we visited syliva who we hadnt seen in a while because she has been really busy, and when we saw here she had gotten into allllll sorts of anti mormon stuff. and she was convinced that we had been fooled this whole time. im still learning patience and how to react in these situations, and i may or may not have said something along the lines of ´´we have brains, sylvia. we´re not dumb.´´

isnt that soooo terrible??? hahaha oh man. but my comp gave me the look to shut up, so i did. and then i just bore my testimony because i realized that the things she wwas saying were out of love. she was trying to save us. hahaha poor little thing. she is very confused. we will visit her again, but i dont know whats going to happen with her.

and then my cute little 85 year old nicolas. ohhhh man. he is just my fave. i seriously love that old man so much. the evangelistas have captured him with their modern music. dang it. truth be told, there is an evangelist church across the street from our apartments, and their music is pretty cool sometimes. hahah. butttttt for sacrament meeting, it is soooo important to have reverent music because that meeting is sacred and we need to be able to feel the delicate promptings of the spirit. we tried to explain this to him, and tried to remind him of the testimony that he was gaining from our lessons a month or so back. and he is cool with hearing the lessons again. he needs a better understanding of the authority of God on the earth, and how thaattt is the difference between other churches and this church. The church is organized in the exact manner that Jesus Christ organized the chruch. So that is what we are going to teach him.

  okay, this is all for this week. i hope that this email isnt totallllly boring for you guys. i feel like it was a lot information this week. uh oh, dopey. but i have attached some pictures for you guys, so hopefully that will make up for any borringness.

there are pics from larcomar and then a pic of our zone, taken juuuust this morning. yay!! so you guys get to see what i look like, today!!

i love and miss you all sooooooooooooooo much! Remember that you belong to the ONLY church with allll the truth that is available right now. it is suchhhhh a blessing and we MUST share it with everyone.

woah. that was intense. heh but serioulsy, our lives are what they are because of the gospel. we have soooo many answers to questions that others dont have, because of the gospel.

i love you all a bunch!

love,

hna jill

¡que verguenza!

family!!! it´s soooo great to be writing to all of you this week.  yayyyy!! it is great to write to you guys everyweek. my fave. i wish i had a longer time to tell you guys every little thing that happens throughout everyweek.

 right now the internet place i am in is playing the song Heaven. "im finding it hard to believe, we´re in heavennnnn" hahah good times. it reminds me of DDR MAX 2!!!

 okay, so first and foremost, the subject line means "how embarrassing!" because of something i have now done 2 times and everytime after i am equally as embarrassed. so this past week when we were eating with our pensionista, she fixed us chicken and rice(wooooo. this is a daily meal here. but i cant complain because our pensionista is actually a reallllllllllly great cook and the chicken is always marinated in different delicous sauces. mm!!) but there is always soooo much rice, and it is always a bit of a carb overload. so we were talking after the meal, and she was telling us a nice long, personal story (side note: now Lady in Red is playing as i type. im lucky!!!) and i guess i was reallllllllllllllllllly tired because as she was talking to us, my eyes started to drift closed. and i was thinking, NO. not again(this happened with a different lady a couple of weeks ago, too). and i was fighting the urge to just pass out asleep right there at her dining room table. and i thought i was doing a pretty good job, too. i was shifting around a lot, changing my posistion, and here and there i would try to rest my face on my hand, at different angles, trying to hide my eyes, because i COULD NOT control them. they kept shutting! so finally, we left and hna carazas was like, " you were like a drunk man in there!" apparently it was verrrrrry noticeable that i was fading in and out, and apparently my body was like swaying back and forth hahahahahha how embarrassing, right??? hahahah oh man! what will i do?? sometimes i am just sooooo tired and my body takes over. it is like little kids at the dinner table who pass out in their plate of food. that´s going to be me one day. . .

 dad--you gave a talk yesterday? so did i!!!! yay! we twins! only i talked about the premortal life and the war in heaven and how the war continues on today and that is why we have to share the gospel, because satan and his angel´s are fighting against the progression of the church. truth be told, before my talk, i thought i was going to pee in my skirt, i was soooo nervous. but i think i did alright.and everyone in the ward was really nice to me and told me how much i have improved on my spanish and not to worry, "we could understand everything. and you even talked fast in some places!" hhahahha oh man. but isnt that nice of them to say those things? i thought so.

so, lia just wrote me this week and randomly told me how much she hated tomatoes. and usually i wouuld agree with her--ive never been a big tomatoe fan myself. but peru has changed my opinion completely! so our pensionista hna muñante will fix these little salads for us sometimes that are just plates of fresh avocado, tomatoe, and cucumber. and all she does to season them is puts fresh-squeezed lime juice and salt on them, and boom bam baby! i like tomatoes! and raw avocado! it is soooo great! i love it so much that i can wait for hna muñante to fix it again, so ive started fixing it for myself in our casa. LOOOVE IT!

sorry this email hasnt been very spiritually-focused. i hope you guys arent disappointed.

 there are actually so many people to telll you guys about, but once again, i will just focus on fernando isaac. so this week he had his interview with pres. tyler and it went really well and he got approved to be baptized. but he is still going through the repentance process and is working toward forgiving his brother and exwife. what happened was like a year or so ago, his brother and his wife had an affair (messed up i know.) and he has never been able to forgive them really. (duuuhhh. that would suck soooo bad. think about how hard that would be? and he has a little girl, and his wife gets to keep her, so he never gets to see her anymore). so yeah. and he knows baptism is a big step and has a really good understandng of this step he is taking, and he just wants to get rid of these negative feelings before getting baptized. so this week we taught him about forgiveness and he receicved a blessing of comfort and it was really great. he still wasnt baptized, but we are praying that he will be baptized this satruday. can you guys pray for him to feel comfort and at peace with himself? that is what he needs to feel righ tnow.

okay woowwww. this email is long. i dont think im going to have time to respond specifically to emails this week because i am going to attach some pictures, too. but know that i LOVED each of your emails soooooooo much!! i love hearing about all of your lives. it is my fave. i will try to send out some letters in a week or 2. life is crazy on the mission, but its sooooo great!

i love you all SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much and miss you SOOOOOOOOO MUCH. you are all the greatest.

love, hna jill frances

holllllllah!!

it is soooo great to write you this week. yay! thanks to all of you for my wondie emails and letters i receive. and yes, i still receive dearelders, and they are just as good as real letters, but easier... so why not send them, right?? right. dey da besssst.

soooooooo, i successfullly received  my WONDERFUL box from the padres. YAYYYYYYY!! the excitement i felt is oh so undescribable. and i loved seeing the envy on the other missionaries faces...mwhaha!! they all spite me for my letters because since they all have more meses then me, they dont get letters or packages very often. and they keep telling me, just wait hna fleming. your still fresh on the mission. but one day, the mail will run dry.
so i say, let's prove them wrong. who's with me???
hah. ok. that was enough dorkiness for this letter.
but yeah, iLOVED the box sooooo much. the shoes are great!! i was expecting them to be ugly and comfy, but they are cute and comfy!! yay! and i loved the cd of songs and my cuteeeeeee cute shirt!! and my peeps(mmmmmmmmmmm!!) and chex mix. i was the happiest receiving all of these things. yay!! so thank you so so so so so much!

the weather down here is starting to cool off, and i am actually soooo excited for fall and winter. it doesnt ever get superrrr cold here, but just like 50 ish. just nippy enough for little sweaters. and it is much more pleasant to walk in. this whole week i havent sweat very much while walking! yay!!
so, i feel that the language is coming a long miraculously. no, i am not fluent. but i can understand most everything that people say and this week i feel like i crossed a barrier of sorts with talking. hna c and i did a lot of contacting, so i had to talk a lot more. the last time we had a week devoted to finding new people to teach and contacting a lot was at the beginning of my time on the field, so i got to see the improvement i have made a lot more clearly. and it has given me a lot of confidence and appreciation for how much i have leanred in only 4 months or so. isnt that so crazy? ???? and to seal the deal,  when i was waiting for  a computer to open up just now, this guy from the states started talking to me in English, and i shared part of the restauracion with him, and i kept saying words in spanish on accident. hahahaha it was a really weird feeling. but i liked it because it has given me more hope. YAY!! so thanks sooooooo much for all the prayers for the language. they are all really really helping.
so another miracle of this week is for our wondie Fernando Isaac. so he has been having a lot of doubts about his baptism even still. everytime that we asked him how he was feeling about his baptism, he never really showed excitement, and he was still really unsure. so this week, i fasted for him(hna c cant because of her gastritis, which is better by the way. so thanks for those prayers, too) to have his testimony strengthened and to feel better about his baptism. and the next day he felt reallllllllllly confident about his baptism and said that he prayed about it a lot, and he feels waaayyyy more relaxed about the decision. isnt that soooooo great?? fasting is realllllly powerful. anyway, so then he had his baptism interview with our District Leader, who is really great, and they talked together for over an hour! and then after the interview, we found out that he was going to have to wait for another week to be baptized because he has a few more things to repent of and he needs to forgive himself, too. but he is doing soooo great! and yesterday at church i talked to him, and he told me that he LOVED talking with the DL, Elder mendoza, during his interview, and that he loved how humble he was and that he wants to study more about the gospel so that he can be like elder mendoza. isnt that so great??? im so grateful for e. mendoza. seriously. And fernando is so teachable and sooooo sincere, you guys. he is just the greatest.

thanks for a lllllll for your prayers for him. keep praying for him this week, too. he needs them.
we have other investigators, but i will start telling you about them next week, after the baptism with fernando. he's my fave!

well, i love you guys sooooooooooooo much!! thanks for being so great all the time!
love your fave missionary in peru (in the World, let's get real) (also,  yes, i just said "let's get real")

Feliz Pasqua!

familyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy. oh how i missed you guys this holiday season. . . it didnt even feel like Easter. Maybe it is because I am in the Big city and there is less humility. I dont know why. But nothing was that big of a deal. They have the "Semana Santa" or holy week...but it pretty much doesnt mean anything haha except for everyone is out of school and work on Friday and a lot of the little stores are closed.  And everyone vacations so no one is home to contact. And yes pops, everyone parties. it is just another grand excuse to have a kegger hahaha the drunks were a riot. yikes yikes. they scarey, k? hahahha que mas, que mas... Oh, one plus side was that there was WAYYY less noise. HOLLAR.  i like quite, and since a lot of people left the city or were suffering from hangovers, no one was in the street. so it was free from loud horns honking and such. mmm mmm! so, the family that lives beneath us (they are a part member family and we rent our room from them) had us over for lunch on saturday, and hna carazas and i helped prepare the lunch. it was really fun! but you'll never believe what i ate. dun, dun, DUNNNN. so, i was asking what everything was, and then we got to this meat and they told me the name, but i didnt know what it was. and they said, oh, it is just a part of a cow. and then i asked what part, and they WOULDNT tell me. they said, "just eat it. its good. doont worry about anything else." Coma, no mas. hahaha so i was a bit worried. . . but i tried it, and it was SOOOO good. so so so tasty. so i was like, "it's good. nowwww will you tell me what it is??" but they made me finish my plate before telling me. anyway, i ate the KIDNEY of a cowwwwwwww. never would i have thought i would like the kidney of a cow. but it was sooo good. when they first told me what it was, i thought they said it was the bladder and was pretty grossed out. hahahahah so when i realized that it was the kidney, it wasnt as bad. but still, it's pretty weird, eh? haha so this week we had a REALLY great lesson with our investigator, Fernando Isaac. I just love that little guy (literally, and affectionally). We had a lesson at this member family's home, and it was so nice to have a setting where the Spirit was already there super strong. It made teaching so much more effortless, and the lesson was reallly really great. Fernanado has had a lot of doubts about baptism and comitting to a date. But at the end of this lesson, we committed him to this upcoming saturday. wooo! So if you guys want, pray that his testimony strengthens this week, and we can get him into the water this saturday. He needs allllll the prayers he can get. We have been trying to find new people to teach. This week we have been struggling with that, so starting tomorrow, we are going to start trying some new things. if we're not teaching, it is hard to feel the purpose of missionary life. So, something that I have been learning SOOO much about myself is that i am dannnnnggeeeddd prideful. soooo danged prideful! hahahah it is riduculous. i hate being corrected by people and i hate not knowing what is going on. I hate being wrong. Mom, Dad, is that how I was as a kid? I feel like it was. This week I have struggled with having nice thoughts about a lot of people and I have been sooooo wrapped up in myself and in doing things in spite of people that are around me that are getting on my nerves. hahahahah so christlike, right? so this morning i studied pride and it is my goal this week to be more humble when I am corrected on things that I do and say wrong(it happens EVERY day. multiple times). i was studying our of Alma 5 and this chapter is just perfect for me. i love studying the scriptures in Spanish because i have to read it much more carefully in order to understand everything, and i get sooo much more out of every verse. it is just wondie. well fam--thanks again, and always, for always writing emails and letters to me. every week. its great to hear from each of you and to remember my family a million miles away still loves me even though i cant see thier faces and hear their voices. *tear you guys are the best! i love you all sooooooooo much!!!

 love, hna. me

also, when i said i love that little guy about fernanando, literallly and affectionally, i was referring to his size, not that i literally love him... hahah oh dear.

here are the pics from the baptism of anabel! enjoy! 

here are some pics of Chancay last pday. the elder is one of my little friends, elder lopez. he likes to practice his english with me. he is great. the pics of the cooking include some pics of the kidney..mmmm! and me cutting open a potato(sooo interesting!) ok. g2g

bye!

jill

it is april!!!! my 4 months is on the 7th!!

Greeeeeetings from lima, peru. oh man i am sooooo tired and oh so so so burnt. it's ridiculous. rihdikoolus. like harry potter would say it.  today for pday we went to chancay again, but this time we pretty much just hung out at the beach and played in the water... but not really, because we arent supposed to. we have to act like little kids act when they are at the beach for the first time--stick our toes in, but then run from the waves because, oh no! what if they swallow us! but it was really fun. i think that the beaches here are very similar to california(not that i would know, ive never been to a beach in cali) but the water is cold and the waves are huuuuuge and there are pretty, hugeee rocks that look perfect and beautiful. i really loved being there today. it was one of my favorite pdays, i think. i have pics, but i dont have the connector thing today, so i cant send them this time. sad pants. but next week. promiiisssee. but i got really burnt. ooops. oh well. now i can look forward to all the peruvians this week telling me that my face is red. wooo! "whhhatttt?? really??" that is what i will reply.

okay, so this week has been great. hey! conference was this weekend! wooo!! how did all of you like it?? to be quite honest, i didnt get a toonnnnnnn out of it because well, i had to watch it in SPANISH. boo hoo hoo!! i could understand a lot of sentences and words, and the ideas. but it just wasnt the same. whhahhhhhh. i was quite sad on saturday, because they had a separte room to watch it in english, but the signal was messed up or something, so we couldnt watch it in english. and this is like the first conference in my life where i was just craaavving it. as a missionary, i dont know. it is just different. it definitely made me appreciate conference in english, with their propio voices. hahaha wooops. i mean their own voices. (i ask myself, yes, my spanish is defintley improving. but it is nowherrreee close to fluent, so why do words pop out in spanish? hahaha oh man) anyway. yeah, i felt that it was karma of sorts because in the past, i was like, "cool. conference." but i never really was superrrrr excited. and then the first conf. where i am SUPER excited about it, bam. it is hard to understand. so, i will always be excited about conference from now on. hopefully by the next one i will understand everything if the english tv doesnt work. hah.

but we had our investigator fernando isaac come to the priesthood session and the 2 sessions on sunday. isnt that so great?? he was SO excited about them. fernando was supposed to be baptized a week ago, but he got scared and chickened out because of some of the doubts he was having. but we went to his house on saturday night before the conference and brought him to the priesthood session, and afterward, he was SOO excited. when we asked him how he liked the conferences, he said, " they were excellent. when are the next ones?" isnt that great? so, i feel that he is back on the path for baptism. yay! he is a reallllly great guy. haha and he always tries to talk to me in english. hahah but it is soooo terrible.

on thursday, we had the baptism of anabel--the miracle investigador. it was so great! i cant wait to send you guys pictures from it. she is just the sweetest and nicest and i love her. she is the first investigator that i feel reallllllly close to because she is fluent in english, too, so we have a definite friendship. and her baptism was beautiful, and she invited ALL of her friends to the baptism(who arent members) and we are now teaching a few of them!!! im excited about having her accompany us to teach people in the future, because she is super strong already. woo!!

my companion has gastritis and a bacteria in her stomach, and she has been way sick. :(  the work has been a bit slower, but she is from cusco, and apparently cuscanians are known for their hard work(or soemthing? that is what ive heard) so she pushes through it. but as incompassionate as this may sound, it is really slowing down the work, annnnd dat not good. so if you guys want to pray for hna. carazas to get better, that would be cool. thanks my hunnies(like a gangster fromt he 90s would say it)

so something REALLy gross that happened this week. i mean REALLY gross. for me. haha was that the other morning, i went into the kitchen, and we have our brooms and mops in one corner of our tiny little kitchen, and one of our mops is one of those nasty wig mops, or something. like the most unsanitary kind of mop, the kind janitors use. anyway, i saw this thing sticking out of it. anway, it ended up being a MUSHROOM that had grown OUT OF THE MOP. rooted in the nasty mop hair. SO GROSSSSSS. i know. it drove me to gag over the toilet. hahah mabes a bit on the dramatic side, but whatevs. hahahha

oh man. peruuuuu.

FAMILy. i love you all SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much and miss you all SOOOOOOOOOOO much. more than you know. i probably say these exact same words in every email, but they are always true. i have pics of each of you on my desk, looking at me during my study time. hahaha at the beginning of my time in the field, i couldnt look at pics of the family without bawling. yes, it is true. rick, did that ever happen to you? or just to me because im a girl? anyway, i dont bawl anymore. and the pics are more of a motivation when i am feeling homesick or feeling discouraged. so, yay! hahah but i really do miss each of you A LOT. but being amissionary is great!! it is really fun and i love most of it all the time. hhaaha

i hope you are all safe and sound in your houses. no one die. i pray for that everyday hahaha but seriously. i do.

so, i never really took this seriously when people said it to me before, because i was a scaredy cat. but im going to say it to all of you now, and i hope you take it seriously--you guys have GOT  to share this gospel with everyone. if you have fear, than just study the lessons in preach my gospel, and that will help you with what to say. if i can do it in spanish, you guys can do it in english. wooo!! tengan fe haha

i love you all and i hope you are doing great. as always, thanks for all the letters and emails. they make my weeks wondie!

love,

hna jill