Share the Gospel with Someone

Hello family!!                                                      

Well another week just flew by... Holy smokes it is so crazy that we are already in week 5 of my time here in Zarumilla.

This week was hard to get visits... I don't know why. Our recent converts were all magically absent this week so we couldn't visit them, but on the other hand this week we started to really work well with our Ward Mission Leader. He has quite a few months as the Ward Mission Leader but it took until this week for us to realize how willing he is to leave and teach with us! So every Thursday he goes out with us and also Sundays he is starting to take his wife with him when we go out to visit. He has a huge desire to share when he knows and feels, and in some of the visits he set the vibe spectacularly and hopefully this week we will see some real progress thanks to his efforts!

So this week we also decided that we are going to really hit the ground harder on Investigators. We have 9 families/couples/people who we are teaching, and we've just got to get inviting to baptism and pave the road! About half of them need to get married first, that is Satan's favorite hurtle here it seems, but we've got plans to invite 5 people to a baptismal date this week. Zarumilla needs strong convert baptisms. So we are searching.

As for the marriage we have been working with a couple, they don't have the money right now. So that has put an obstacle in the process, they totally want to be baptized!! But now it looks like S will be leaving to live in Lima to work for a few months, he still isn't too sure, but that's the news with them. And another investigator, J, totally wants to get married, but her boyfriend isn't sure (after 13 years living together, people here always say they aren't sure... it's frustrating. haha) so we are now working with him, the deal with him is that he is only home from working in Ecuador on Sundays. But we are working on it!

Also our district is getting better slowly but surely with contacting. Here in Peru it is very easy to have visits planned for your whole day and just go from visit A to visit B to visit C and overlook the basic need to just spread the gospel with everyone in the street! So we are working on that, we are setting goals and the fruits are already coming!

My birthday was fun! A less active family invited me and my companion to come eat cake. I thought it was like they'll whip up a little cake, we will eat a slice and share a message and leave. But no, they got Soda and dishes full of candies and a big cake and invited a couple friends and they sang happy birthday, pushed my face in the cake, and it was awesome!! They were so so nice. Then we shared a message with them and they gave us half the cake to take home! (I then shared it in the District Meeting the next day).

But to start out the day I was a little skeptical about how the day would go. Until 7:30 it was a totally normal day with lots of visits that didn't fall through and the only comment from my companion being "In Cuzco we don't have birthdays." But then having that sweet family share a little something was such a wonderful treat! :)

Well the work is progressing. I am working hard to improve the relationship between the ward and the missionaries, it looks like there has been a bit of a barrier and we need to break it. But things are going well now, I love the leaders here, they love to work and are really dedicated!

The temple in Ecuador is like 5 or 6 hours from here in Bus so it is really close!! (Well, for our mission it is) and we are working hard to get ALL the less actives going to the temple prep classes and we are also getting involved in the family history efforts!

If you guys have not yet indexed, check it out! THAT is a massive load of help for family history.

Well, all is well here!! Thank you all for the Happy Birthday wishes!! All is going well for me and Elder Corpona here in Zarumilla 1! I hope you all had a good week and shared the gospel with someone! And I wish you all a great week this week with the invitation to share the gospel with someone!

Love you all!!

Elder Collin Russell

Happy Birthday Collin!

Hello family of mine!!

Thank you all for the birthday wishes, I will be honest I am looking forward to trying out those cakes you bake in a cup! I think Elder Corpona and I will be treasuring that. And the Hostess cup cakes are in the freezer getting as cold as you can get in Tumbes. They arrived with the box smashed to a half inch thick, but they will be delicious nonetheless. :)

So last P Day we actually went to Manglares, which I can't really explain, other than lots of trees next to a river. But we got some fun district photos I will be sure to send off.

Today we went to a beach in Zorritos, and that was a blast. We played Football for like 2 hours (And I am talking about FOOTBALL. not Soccer, but American Football. It was stellar. I used my Russell athletics to score a touchdown too.) We got some fun photos there too! So mom, you will be receiving a great treat for my birthday if they all load in time... haha

Aaaaaand.. So I opened the frisbee present before my actual birthday. I was so excited to try it out with the multi zone activity! And I was like yeah I will go play football then it is frisbee time. I come back from Football and a couple Anonymous members of my district came up to me. They were not playing Football with us, but playing with my frisbee. And what happened was, a bad throw and it landed in the sand. And before one of the Elders could run to it in time, a great wave flew in and took the frisbee to the big blue. It was like when Martin Harris came to Joseph Smith after losing the 116 pages. But the ways of God cannot be spoiled, and you wonderful parents received the revelation to send two. I have now vowed I am never bringing my frisbee to the beach again. Only in fields without big wave problems. I am so, so sorry I lost that thing even BEFORE my birthday came around!! But it was still a real fun day.

As for what kind of cake to eat... I will let you all choose between Angel Food Cake with strawberry sauce and such or a Banana Cream Pie. I miss Strawberries (In the mission we aren't allowed to eat them...)  and I have grown to love bananas a lot. But enjoy!! (I told him that WE would celebrate his birthday by eating a dessert of his choice :)  Here, a very loving less active family has invited us to cake Wednesday night. So that will be a fun time.

We got a Family History training Tuesday morning for the Zone (the stake, or at least our ward, has a temple trip planned for the 21-23 of November, so we gotta get them ready!) and then a ward baptism in the afternoon. We gotta fill the font and invite everyone we can, especially our investigators, so they can check out the baptism! We are in the limits of the Guayaquil, Ecuador temple, it is much closer than Lima, so that is pretty cool!

I hope all is well back home! I am so excited for you all about the Ogden Temple opening!! Take advantage of that!! Here they have the chance like once or twice a year to go if they can raise enough money. We truly are blessed, aren't we? Take advantage of that blessing!!!

Here we've got great plans for the week. We have figured out that we can easily hit high goals if we set them right daily. We are working to have 6 lessons a day at least: 1 investigator with a member present, 1 recent convert, 3 less actives, and 1 family of new investigators. And we can easily do it. So off to work we are!! Here in Zarumilla we just seriously need to keep talking to everyone so we can find those golden families. They are out there, we just need to look and follow the Lord´s promptings.

Well, I love you all!! Have a great week!! Make it a good one!! And be a missionary! :)

La iglesia es verdadera! El evangelio de Jesucristo está restaurado gracias al profeta José Smith. Thomas S. Monson es un profeta de Dios hoy en día. Por medio de Bautismo podemos ser limpio de pecado. Y si perseveramos hasta el fin, podemos recibir la vida eterna. Obediencia trae bendiciones y la gracia de Dios nos ayudará cada vez que pedimos. Jesucristo vive, y vendrá para salvarnos, pero necesitamos prepararnos. Entonces, ¡Prepárense!

Hasta la próxima lunes,

Con mucho amor y felicidad,

Elder Collin Russell

Wake the Sleeping Dragon

Good morning to you all!! 

I am writing so terribly early today, they allowed my companion and I to start P-day early because I have to travel to Piura for a District Leader Training, I leave at 3. And starting at 10:30 we have a zone activity to go to Aguas Verdes (we went last week as a district! haha) so they can check it out. We have an awesome zone.

We had zone conference this week and WOAH our Zone leaders ROCK. They are Elder Bradshaw from Alpine Utah and Elder Romero from Las Vegas Nevada. They hammered us, this zone of 7 companionships hasn't had a baptism for the last 3 transfers (18 weeks) and that is not acceptable. They told us the story about Pearl Harbor. The Japanese said that the United States was the sleeping dragon of World War 2 until Pearl Harbor woke them up. So we are "dropping a bomb" on Puyango to wake up the sleeping dragon of the Peru Piura Mission. We now have the goal of baptisms every week starting now. And so we are off to work!! But I left that conference so pumped, and now Elder Corpona and I are really getting our heads back on straight and talking to everyone. We need to be better with contacting, and really what our district needs is new investigators. So we gotta work hard and we will wake the sleeping dragon!

We've got some super awesome stuff going on here in Zarumilla 1. We have a young couple working on getting married so they can get baptized. They are S and S. The problem with them is finances, it will take a good deal to figure out the money it seems. But also in September, Zarumilla has a holiday for the foundation of Zarumilla or something like that, where matrimony is free! You just gotta get all the paperwork, and that costs a bit. So we are working hard with them!

Then we've got H. Seriously he is one of the investigators with the most sincere heart that I have ever taught. He started out not even believing in God, but now through the power of prayer he believes and feels peace!! We taught the Restoration and we told him if he would read the Book of Mormon and pray, and if he found it to be true he said he would be baptized! He is a investigator that takes it step by step, he still won't accept coming to church, but his testimony is growing step by step and it is so cool to see!! His wife and daughter are less actives and he has always supported them going to church and is always urging them to get active again.

Yes, I will explain that, the culture here about church attendance: With the Catholic background everyone has, church is something you attend every once and a while. Here it is very very common to have a recent convert that falls away after 6 months. When people become active again it is sometimes just for a month or 2. We are fighting culture in so many ways here. We had the 1st councilor from the Miraflores stake in Piura (happens by chance he attended Tambo Grande my last week there) and gave amazing talks about giving our focus to God. So with church attendance commitments, that is what we are working with.

Another great investigator we have is J. He and his wife have been accepting our visits and accept everything. They come to church, pray, read, said they will be baptized, awesome! The thing is his wife left for Cajamarca for a time since her mother is sick. We don't know when she will be getting back, so that is something we will have to see how it goes.

But things are going well!! A super fun district!

OH!! And yes, I did receive the packages!!! The 1st one I even received my first day in Zarumilla!! So don't worry, THANK YOU!!! I actually already opened them.... My district was SO THRILLED to eat Reeses.

Love you all!

Elder Collin Russell

A trip to the border...

Iguanas and Frogs

Hello dearest family!!                                                                                  

Zarumilla is awesome!! I have a couple fun stories to tell, but first, I gotta answer some of Mom's questions. haha (I gave him a hard time last week about never answering any of the questions I ask… he did a good job at redeeming himself this week :)

How is the ward there? 

Great!! Sunday we had 123 members in attendance!! WOAH! The Bishop is great and have 2 active and supportive councilors, The ward mission leader I still have not visited with, but I have heard he is great.

And the members? 

There are over 700!! And the majority live in my area! But there are tons of inactives... But those who are active are awesome!

Are the missionaries having good success in that area?

The missionary work has been a little slow here... The last baptism was in June and in the district there is only 1 with a baptismal date so far. We have 3 companionships for the ward! We just gotta get better at finding the golden investigators.

Do you have a new Pensionista?

Yes we do! She also does our laundry and we are renting an annex of her house, so they are pretty much our family. haha The family is super awesome

What is her name? 

Hermana Teo. Teo is short for Teodora. She lives with her husband Maximo and her children. I really don't know for sure how many she has, the majority have already moved out, but Anita is always there, she is 11.

Will you be eating food that is much different than what you have eaten in the past or is it basically the same stuff? 

It is basically the same, but MASSIVE Plates. Like today we got soup (I am starting to eat soup and enjoy it... Peru is making me crazy! haha) then a platter full of rice beans and chicken, then a salad plate of avocado and cucumbers. I am going to get fat.

What is the landscape like there -- dry? green?

Rather dry, the grass seems to grow dead here. But there are also lots of green from banana plants and we have a Mango tree outside our apartment.

How about the temperature?

Holy smokes I almost DIED this week from the heat. and it is winter!! It was seriously killer. They say here is gets up to 40 degrees Celsius in the summer. But today was nice. It felt like an overcast September day (I used a sweater! hahaha)

What is your apartment like?

I will send pictures. But today I need to clean it. I don't think they have cleaned that bathroom. EVER. (Mom says, YIKES!) So that is my P Day activity.

What kind of neighborhood do you live in?

It’s nice. But we live 3 houses down from a bar constantly playing music very loudly. But the people are all nice.

What is your companion like?

I love him! Today we were shopping and he picked up a pack of those eyeliner pencils and was like "I think I will use these to mark my scriptures." I was like "Umm.... That’s makeup!!!" He was like "Oh..." then bought them. haha

But he is awesome at using the scriptures and is very humble. A great guy, loves to study English and be obedient. And he is teaching me Quechua!! He is from Cuzco and has 6 months in the mission.

What is his family situation?

I am not quite sure, but they are converts. He was baptized when he was 9 years old.

Is he willing to work and be obedient?

YES! We need to learn to be a little better in teaching with clarity and power, but he is teaching me a lot about how to use the scriptures especially in teaching.

ARE YOU HAPPY?

VERY MUCH SO!! :)

Ok so about the title. hahaha This is like my first time with a creative title!

Iguana. On my last day in Tambo Grande, we were walking away from a visit, and another less active young woman we have been teaching called us over. She told me her family had just received a little Iguana and they wanted to give it to me as a GIFT to remember them by!!!!! I have pictures to send. So tempting but I had to say no.

Frogs. 2 things. My companion is terrified of them!!! And there are quite a good number of them here! And also we are teaching a super super Catholic investigator who is kinda crazy in his theories. He believes the Catholic church and the LDS church are the same. He told us he received his answer that this church is true because he had a dream about a white frog. He said the white color had to mean purity, so he took it to be his answer. So... I don't know quite how to work with that... But when he told us that, I was like I HAVE to send that one home. I found it quite interesting!! haha

Well today for P Day we went up to a place called Aguas Verdes, it is the northern part of Zarumilla. Where the yellow line stops running on the road, you know you are in Ecuador!! Don’t worry though, we didn't cross. Sorry, I promise to send the pictures tomorrow!!

Thanks for all the emails and your support!! 

Love you all!! The church is true!!

Elder Collin Russell