It was so great talking with you all! It is great to see you all doing so well! It reminded me a bit how much I miss Teddy and his hair (our dog, whose hair is always somewhere! :), but I'll be home before long and I can start murmuring about that again. And love the photos!! A White Christmas!!! What a blessing. Today we had a water balloon fight. I would say we are living on opposite sides of the world or something. :) And I had totally forgotten what was in those gifts! haha but thanks for the photos to remind me. I got a laugh out of what I gave Logan. I am sure I was filled with great ideas with that kit...
Well, answers!
What has been your favorite thing about Christmas in Peru this year?
I love Paneton. And here the people are always inviting us to eat Paneton. Also this year I actually made Chocolatada (Hot chocolate, but different. I got to melt the chocolate bar myself to make the drink! It was a fun experience.) And the music. Here there are other types of Christmas songs too, and all Christmas music gets me excited. :)
What is your favorite thing about the area you are working in now?
Right now we are working on the Directory. There are lots of people that have moved away so we are really cleaning it up to make the directory list more helpful and effective. And in the process we are finding less actives with quality doubts to answer and help back to church and also finding SUPER less actives (like 20+ years) and that gives us lots of work to do. I just like having big projects and having to work constantly.
As for A, she says she still believes that it is all true, but she is going to take time away from the church for a while... So we are just focusing on helping her family right now with this drama and hopefully we can get her back. Crazy how Satan works. She is just enbarrassed, but she still talks to us and everything, so we are gonna help her get over this and continue to teach her.
But good note!!!! There is a RM here in the ward with like 2 months back home. He is the only member in his whole family. And now he is going to town on getting all of his family into the church!! So we are teaching the family of his oldest brother who is super awesome!! So hopefully we can get them committed to baptism this week or two. We have hit it off really well and real quick with the whole family, the 2 we visited Saturday went to church the next day, so hopefully that will all work out well!!
Also at church a woman with a young girl showed up. She is from another ward in the stake, and the girl is her niece who lives in Los Polverines, which is a closed area since 5 weeks which now pertains to our ward but the missionary area of another ward (yeah, its confusing, hopefully we can clean up that kink.) But the lady there said that we should visit that family "there are 4 baptisms there" she said to us. it was like "Ok!" so hopefully we can figure out how to help that family and see if they really would like to be baptized. another goal for the week.
It has been fun lately to see the Nicodemus scenes. A "Nicodemus" is a street contact that comes to US. They are awesome. Like P, who went to a member in his neightborhood asking if we could visit him. We passed by and was asking about what he needs to do to be baptized. Can't really complain with those situations. Recently miracles are popping up and hopefully this week we get some sight of baptismal dates. They are super powerful miracles and I hope and pray we can take Godly care of them. Pray that we receive revelation to handle all these people as they need to be and help them make it to baptism.
This last week I gave a talk in Sacrament Meeting. I gave them the 6 steps of discovering who in their lives they can introduce to the Gospel. Here it is easy since like 80% of the people are converts. But my goal for this week is to edit and apply it to a Utah setting. Hopefully I can get that to you guys by next week. Deal? :)
Also today I was starting to reflect about the inner peace we feel when we do what's right. You find situations where you stand alone no matter where you are. But just follow what is right. Be obedient. And whatever happens, you can feel that inner peace. My goal to help me enhance that inner peace is be better in street contacting. You guys gotta do follow up for that on me, alright? :)
For New Years there is a ward activity starting at 1am. We are the only people not invited. haha But New Years is like over there -- stay up until midnight then fireworks. But here they make like scarecrow dolls and burn them in the streets too. But I will be enjoying the night sleeping in my bed. haha
Well, I love you all!! The church is true! Talk to you next year!!
Elder Russell
Ward Christmas Party
Christmas Multi-Zone Conference
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