YES YOU CAN!

Well hello family!!

Well, this week has been interesting... a real bummer for me was the fact we had NO time to really get down to work. Tuesday morning we traveled to Piura for District leader training until 3 in the afternoon. So we helped the Elders in Piura until 6 when a group of us USA missionaries had to go to Lima again. The good part about that is we now are 100% legal and good to go! haha we now have cards saying we are allowed to be here for longer amounts of time. The only thing is we have to renew them yearly. But at least there is a YEAR without having to worry a thing about that stuff! WHEW! SO that was until Wednesday night. So we spent the night with the zone leaders then in the morning there was District meeting THEN FINALLY we were back in Tambo Grande Thursday afternoon. So I was rather bummed that like half the week was outside of our area...

And it showed. We started Church Sunday with 7 people there. Elder Plata and I. The Branch President and his wife and daughter. Victor, the old pretty much blind man we bring to church every week. And a worker here visiting from Chiclayo. So that pretty much killed me. With last week ending with 59 in attendance super awesome, then this week ending up with 25... man. I had to give a talk because the other person didn't show up, and I gave a talk about the law of sacrifice.

I got rather emotional. I talked about when the rich man came to Jesus and told him what he needed to do to gain Eternal Life. Jesus told him to sell everything and "take up the cross". I explained that that means we give up worldly things and set all else aside to keep the commandments of God. I told them yeah we can say "I can't" "I’m tired" and so on but the truth is YES YOU CAN. That is the promise of 1 Nephi 3:7. I told them I think that is the most well known scripture in the church but do we really apply it? I explained we have 320 members and look at how few of us are in attendance. I don’t know if they understood me, sometimes my words just don’t come out right, but I hope they learned a little more about how the law of sacrifice still applies to us.

So the plans to find a bunch of new investigators and invite everyone to baptism now are going to be a little less. We are going to do some serious visiting to these members this week. This Branch just needs to understand dedication so we just gotta get out there and teach them. Pray for the Tambo Grande branch!

But today has been a fun P Day! We had a big multi zone activity with like 4 zones and we played a soccer tournament as zones! Us missionaries from Zone Alrarrobos made it to the final round then me and Elder Plata had to go since we've got to write home, go shopping, AND still make it back to Tambo Grande in time. But I am sure we won. :)

And then we went to eat at CHILI'S!! Yep! It exists here!! And finally we went there and I let my companion finally try out the most Americanized Burger in Piura. And they were good!! That restaurant was a little bubble of a home feeling. haha and we ordered that side of cinnamon apple and Elder Plata really liked that. haha so we are having fun times.

Well we couldn't really get that much new ground with our investigators this week, L told us that tomorrow he is going to tell us when we plans to get baptized. And so we'll work for that day! We really need to help him realize that keeping the Sabbath day holy means not working. He just hasn't quite gotten that yet, it's a little frustrating!! And FINALLY after 2 weeks of trying we have gotten a hold of H and J again... they have kinda walked off the face of the earth, so Sunday night we finally caught them home! H is working constantly until like 4 am every day, J got sick, turns out they STILL haven't put in their marriage papers... man... so right now in Tambo Grande we are kinda back to square one. They also just don't seem to get church attendance either... we're working on it.

But we just gotta keep working super hard!! It looks like I probably won't have any baptisms here in Tambo Grande, but I can't let that get me down. Now the plan is to prepare baptisms to be set for every weekend of August that the new missionary coming can enjoy his stay. :) And we gotta charge the batteries of this ward. The activities we have are FILLED! But at the most important thing we are starting to fail a little...

I hope all is well back home! It sounds like the festivities just keep rolling by and you are all having a blast!! :)

Mom, today I got the packages!!!! I opened one up to peek in while I was in Chili's, and THANK YOU!!!! I am super excited to read all these histories, listen to the music, eat the snacks, etc!!! You are one stellar mother! :)

Well, the church is true!! I am being humbled and purified and I still got a reeeeaallll long ways to go, but I am just trying always to keep plugging on! Just keep Enduring to the End you guys, Eternal Life is work!! :)

Keep up all the good work! :)

Elder Collin Russell

There's a Chili's in Piura!

A side of cinnamon apples :)