Week 38: Baby It's Cold Outside

Hey Everyone! 

Life continues to treat me well here as a missionary in Peru! The weather is getting colder which is a bummer. :( The perfect climate is changing and its starting be gray and overcast everyday. I miss the sun. But there's still sunshine in my soul today!!! Haha! We had a pretty successful week and although we weren't able to set any baptismal dates, we have some great potentials for May! We found a lot of new people this week too so we'll see how that goes.

I don't have much time today—but here are some quick highlights of the week: 

• We found a GREAT new investigator named Carlos! He's a friend of Eliu (who just got baptized 2 weeks ago), and Eliu was the reference from Billy (who got baptized in December), and Billy was a reference from Brayan (who also got baptized in December). So basically what we got going on is a big chain of friends that are sharing the gospel with each other and it is super awesome!! They all hang out together and support each other in church activities and it just puts a smile on my face! I am SO happy to be able to teach them and help grow this web of gospel ties. 
• We did a work visit with the zone leaders, and I got to go with Elder Varney (my pal from the MTC)!!! It was awesome and a good time to work with my pal again. 
• We held an activity night in the church on Thursday and we had about 30 people come! (Which is a huge success compared to the last one we had where only 2 people came). Haha, we are trying hard to help members get excited about missionary work. 
• I FOUND ROOTBEER!! I haven't partaken of the heavenly beverage for about 9 months but I found it last p-day in a store with American products! It was a little tender mercy. :) 

Well, time continues to go by super fast and I love being a missionary! Lost of lessons to learn and improvements to make! And most importantly, taking care of the Lord's vineyard and doing His work! I definitely feel privileged!!! 

Also...some great points of study and learning this week have been from: 

1 Corinthians 13; Alma 42; Ether 12; and "Beware of Pride" by Pres. Benson! 

These are some of the BEST teaching of prophets that I have ever read or listened to. They have really helped me develop Christlike attributes and help me to find true happiness! I hope you folks give them a read! 

Have a killer week!

-Elder Hale

A cone ALWAYS makes for a happy missionary! :)

Just another killer shot of my area (in the foreground) and the rest of Lima in the background.

The work visit with Elder Varney and drinking rootbeer!

Week 37: We Flooded the Church!

Hey Everyone!! 

Things are going good here! We had transfers this week but my comp and I both stayed here in Magnolias! I was a little bummed at first that I have to stay with Elder Onofre, but he is actually stepped it up a notch and is working harder and acting more normal. :) It's for sure a tender mercy. We did have somethin crazy happen this week though...Elder Turley (the blonde haired Elder thats often in my pics) went home this week! He got super super sick and his body started acting crazy so they made him go home. It was a bummer cuz he was a good pal and a great missionary! 

But some good news is that we had a baptism for Juan Carlos on Saturday! He is awesome. He knew the church was true since our first lesson with him. When we asked him if he prayed to know if the Book of Mormon is true he said, "why do I have to ask if I already know its true? I've felt it since the first time Ive read it." His parents are still timid about being baptized. They believe the church is true but don't think they are "ready" for baptism. Juan Carlos is a great example for his family and I hope that they follow his example in the following weeks! 

While we were filling up the font, we went to buy refreshments for the baptism and we had to stand in line forever so it took longer than we thought and when we got to the chapel the font was overflowing!! We felt SOOOO stupid but we cleaned it up as fast as we could with brooms and mops. We got it almost all cleaned up by the time that people came. :) Hahaha. 

We found a few great new investigators this week and hopefully next Monday we'll have some new baptismal dates to report! We also had 11 investigators this week at church!!! It was a little miracle for sure! The youth in the ward are getting super excited about taking their friends to church! 

Also I bought some SWEET shoes as an early birthday present to myself this week! They only cost 75 soles (20 dollars)! I'll send you folks a nice pic of em. 

Well...I hope you all have a good week! This church is true and God loves us SOO MUCH! That's why he made the perfect Plan of Salvation for us! I know that we can return to live in his presence again as eternal families. I sure love my fam and am grateful for the opportunity to be with loved ones for eternity. Thanks for all your support and all your emails and letters. :)

-Elder Hale

Just another killer sunset by "Elder Hale Photography"

The best 75 soles I've ever spent!! I feel like a missionary version of Tim McGraw 

with these bad boys on. The guys in my district are jealous of 'em!

Elder Turley right before he left to catch his flight! :/

Looks like some guy took an English class for a couple 

months and thought he was qualified to make this poster! 

If you play eye spy you'll be able to catch some funny errors.

When we accidentally kind of flooded the church.

The Tello family and Juan Carlos ready for his baptism. :)

Anotha one.

Week 36: Another good week of building Zion!

Hey Everyone!!

I hope y'all had a good week and are enjoying all the great conference messages we received last week! This week for us was pretty good!! Nothing too out of the ordinary! We did have the Baptism for Eliu this week though and it was great!! So...a little background about him is that he is an 18 year old that we found through one of our recent converts that's his age! His family are all members of different religions! (His mom is one of the Pastors or leaders for her Evangelic church, and his older brother is a strong member in some different type of Christian church, and his dad is Catholic, I think). Anyways, he has super confused as to what is the truth and he was instantly interested and learning more about prophets, apostles and the Book of Mormon! He has been waking up at 5 am to go to seminary EVERYDAY since we met him! And he's been going to mission prep classes!! He got baptized on Saturday and it was awesome! He is going to be a future bishop or something someday!

And this Saturday we will have Juan Carlos's baptism! He is part of the Tello family that I've talked about a few times. The whole family believes that the church is true and comes to church but the parents don't believe that they should be baptized so soon, and don't think their daughters should either, so they are deciding to wait a little longer! But Juan Carlos is ready and really wants to be baptized now! Haha, so he will get baptized Saturday! He is such a champ! I love that guy. He loveees listening to the Book of Mormon on his phone while he sits at work. He always tells us about what's going on with Lehi and Nephi in the chapters that he's in. 

Transfers are tomorrow! But we don't get the calls until tonight so we don't know what'll happen! I want to stay here in Magnolias but with a different comp. Haha. I have made peace with it and put up with him but I prefer to have a happier, humble-er, more obedient companion! We will see what happens! 

Well, you guys have a good week! Read the Book of Mormon! It will turn a frown upside down and will fill your life with light and direction! I love Jesus Christ and I love His Church!! I love being a missionary!

Love you guys

-Elder Hale

Doing service this week, painting walls and mixing cement

Your boi Elder Hale playing the piano at Eliu's baptism!!

Eliu's baptism! (he is the bigger guy on the right)

Week 35: 8 Months ?!?

Hey Everyone! 

I hope you are all doing great! We had a great week down here! It went by fast!...too fast actually! There was so much that happened this week that we didn't have much time for finding new people. :/ Also, I hit 8 months in the mission this week...kind of crazy!

Well, here's the scoop this week...

Monday—just a classic, relaxing p-day consisting of fried chicken and ice cream!

Tuesday—district meeting and got to do a baptismal interview for some Elders in the district! 

Wednesday—we spent the whole afternoon inviting people to a missionary activity night that we had later that night!! But NOBODY showed up! Only 3 people...and they were members....hahaha, it was a big bummer and awkward. We were going to watch Joseph Smith, Prophet of the Restoration but only 3 people came.

Thursday—we had zone conference, which was good! President shared some GREAT ideas how to find new people! 

Friday—we had some good lessons and found a great new couple! We were walking down the street and passed this couple sitting down and I got a feeling to turn around a I said to him "sorry to interrupt but, do you like to read?" it sparked a conversation and I mentioned the Book of Mormon and he was super interested, he invited us to his house to learn more. He promised to read it and to pray and ask if it is true! Things just clicked so fast with him! It was awesome. 

Saturday—CONFERENCE! I got to listen in English for the morning and afternoon sessions so that was cool! The afternoon sesh was my fav! There are some real good talks in that one!

Sunday—more CONFERENCE!! Today I listened in Spanish with our investigators and they loved it! We had 7 people come! I was super thankful! 

I am so happy and feel so blessed that we live in a time where we have prophets and apostles with the power of revelation and the Priesthood keys restored on the earth! AANNDD we get to listen to them every 6 months! Sometimes we forget how much of a blessing that is in and of itself! 

Well, this week should be a good one! Eliu's baptism is on Saturday and the Tello Fam should be coming up real soon! I don't have time right now so I'll tell you all about them next week! :)

Have a good week everyone!

-Elder Hale

Grubbin on some good ole fried chicken last P-day! 

I NEVER miss an opportunity to get my paws on a cone!!!!!

Service we did for our investigators this week! They made me wear a cowboy 

hat/sombrero so that I wouldn't get sunburnt. It made me reminisce on the good ole times.

Me drowning out my sorrows of our unsuccessful activity night with Oreos and milk! Hahaha!

Me wearing my "special occasion tie" to kick off the conference weekend. 

Also, Elder Ramirez by my side (he was my trainer and now he's in my district, haha.)

Testing out the self timer on my camera.

A guy with a TROUT TIE at conference this weekend! 

HOW funnny!! It made me miss my fishies back in the Provo River, haha.

Week 34: Howdy Ya'll!

Hey everyone!!

I hope everyone over the in the U S of A is having a fantastic Monday! BTW I'm sorry that I didn't write last week, I have to fill out some reports for my district these days so I have less time to write. :/ But these last weeks have been great! And super busy! Peru has had some crazy flooding and landslide problems lately but Lima hasn't been effected too much. Last week we didn't have water for 5 days but thats about it. No flooding or landslides here. :)

Well, this week I was able to learn a lesson about love and service. Over the past few weeks my companion and I haven't been too united, there have been arguments, disagreements and a lot of awkward silences. He has a lot of hate issues and passive aggressive tendencies. It's a little hard to get along and to get to be his friend because he just doesn't talk to you. This Saturday, after a disagreement, I was waiting on my comp to get ready so that we could leave and I thought to read a few scriptures as I waited. I randomly turned to a page and found myself in Matthew chapter 5. I read verse 44 which says "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, be good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you." I've read that verse like 50 times but It was kind of a slap to the face at the moment! I realized that we weren't going to get to any conclusion if I continued to keep trying to be "right" or "win the argument". So I just let it go and started to do whatever I could the rest of the day to serve him and make him happy. And it worked!!! Not only did he start to be nice to me and stop ignoring me but I felt healed of the bitterness that I felt and felt love toward him! The healing power of the Atonement of Jesus Christ is marvelous. His Atonement has the power the literally change people!! I am so grateful for Jesus's sacrifice for us so that we have an opportunity to CHANGE. I'm also grateful that I have Elder Onofre as my companion right now because he is helping me to change and to learn life lessons. Even though he chaps my hides sometimes, I am grateful that I am here with him right now! 

I love the mission and I love serving the Lord and building Zion! See you next week folks! Have a good one! 

-Elder Hale

I made french toast for the first time in my 

life the other day! And I did pretty good too!!

We did service the other day for an old lady who cant walk. 

I have never ever seen a dirtier house in my life! 

Tons of trash everywhere! It was pretty sad.

This is me yesterday with the tie that Kyle bought us for Fast Sundays!

Week 33: Peru Flooding

(Jarett didn't send a group email or pictures this week, so below are excerpts from the letter he sent me.)

I am alive and doing well!! It's true that Peru is in some crazy circumstances but we are chuggin along!:) We haven't had water since Wednesday! (But it finally came this morning so we're all good.) All of Lima has been scrambling all over the place looking for every drop of water that they can—it's pretty crazy!

My new place has a good roof so we have kept dry:) There have been landslides here in Lima, but not close to my area though. But by my old area in Comas, there was a huge one that destroyed a school! I've seen the news about huge flooding in Northern Peru though! Bridges collapsing, streets turning into rivers, and landslides! Crazy crazy!

Today I'm gonna go to lunch with the other Elders in my ward, Elder Turley, and Elder Ramirez. (Yes, Elder Ramirez, the same guy that trained me! haha! We are in the same place again and I am his district leader.) I feel bad for Elder Turley. Then we are gonna go shopping, then I'll listen to some conference talks and chill in the apartment!

-Elder Hale

Week 32: Sadly, Still a Super Sweaty Semana

HELLO Everyone!

Beloved friends and family, que tal? We had a very good week down here in the ward of Magnolias in Inpedendencia Peru! It was super hot though! I don't know why it isn't starting to turn into fall yet. I am sure ready for it. And it will sure make climbing up these mountains a lot easier! Haha, well this week we had some fun and good events! Like our activity night on Tuesday! We watched some videos about the BoM, gave a short message, then played some Book of Mormon based games that were super fun and then we had popcorn and juice! It was a great way to soften the hearts of a few investigators that are a little timid and resistant! We had a few leadership meetings and zone/district meetings this week that were great but took away a little time from finding and teaching people. This week we spent a lot of time with members trying to build confidence and trying to get some referrals! The members here are pretty un-supportive so we are doing our best to change that, We also spent a lot of time this week with our top investigators that are struggling a little bit. We didn't have as much time as we would've liked to find new people. 

BUT Saturday night we had a great experience! We were walking down the street and we saw a couple sitting down on some stairs, we walked past them but then I felt like I needed to turn around and talk to them so we went back and introduced ourselves and then he introduced himself and said "well this is my girlfriend, we want to get married and we want to join a church too, lets go to my house for a few minutes to talk." It was awesome!!! The lesson was GREAT, the Spirit was strong and they recognized it too. They appeared GOLDEN. But they promised to come to church they next day but didn't come!! I was heartbroken. We are going to go tonight to find out what happened with them, 

There is more stuff that I wanna say but my thoughts are super unorganized and I don't have time! Haha, but I do wanna say that I love the mission and and very grateful for all your guys's love and support! Have a good week

-Elder Hale

I stood in line for 25 mins to buy this egg, and it repaid 

me by falling out of its package and exploding on the 

ground right when we got home, what a bummer.

This was one of the best buys I made last P-day! 

Super delicious vanilla flavored milk and even 

BETTER is that is has Chewbacca on it!

ALSO  another great buy! I finally found Mountain Dew! Haven't had it in 7 months! 

They didn't have any diet Mountain Dew but hey, beggars cant be choosers!! 

I like to mix it with OJ in the mornin! Yumbelievable taste treat for sure.