10 January 2011

Dear Family,

Wow did my letter from November really just get there??? Tha'ts ridiculous. I'm sending another today.. my second. Y'all can expect it around June I guess. It should actually be faster... it was waiting in the house of the Zone Leaders for about a month I think (frustration).

Eric, I laughed reading your Dear Elder I got this week. Mom, Christmas here definitely was different than yours. Did they do a lot for New Years too?

Right so my new companion is Elder Hernandez. He is from Guatemala. Speaks ridiculously way fast. I understand about 50 percent of his sentences, although almost 100 percent of the sentences of people from Peru.

He is also way, way prepared which makes sense, since I have only 2.16 transfers in the mission. Before his mission he was second counselor of the Elders Quorum, Ward mission leader (I think..) and was going out with the missionaries every day. He has three plans to work with the ward. We have started to implement the first, having a big activity with a different orginization each week. This week is Young Men. Tomorrow we are gunna split up with about 10 of them and go proselyte the whole area.

Elder Hernandez is really excited to start having success with these plans, which they were doing in his ward before and had a lot of success. The others are that we have a 4 or so families each week with whom we visit their friends, family and neighbors who aren't members. And the last is similar to this one and the first, working with organizations to receive lots of references. His plans are basically the plans I had but much more developed!

I am still in the same area, Augusto Freyre of the Hunter area slash stake in the city of Arequipa, Peru. We are about the most southern end of the city and valley before the hills start back up again. At night we get a great view of millions of street lights all throughout Arequipa stretching far, far, far away, and in the day, the imposing triple threat of the three Volcanoes that head Arequipa. (Only one is active... the missionaries will be visiting the other two)

New responsibilities are.. everything. Before, basically Elder Orihuela did everything. Now I have a companion who doesn't necessarily know what we need to do. It's hard, but interesting. He is learning fast. Also, he's learning how to speak more like a Peruvian so I can understand him.

We are starting to work with the Ward (see the three plans). We met with the bishop (who was an assitant to the president in his time) and he burned us a little for not having worked with the ward the past 12 weeks, but he is gunna help us change all that. Apparently about 24 weeks ago, work with the ward more or less stopped. I am glad they were doing a lot before. ╩It's gunna be more easy to start up again than start brand new with them.

Next week we have talks in church again.

This week we have worked a lot harder than any of the weeks before, but still nos falta mucho [we lack much]. There are 7 people who have a date to be baptised, but... since none of them went to church yesterday... we shall see. I hope they can.

Miracle: Miguel. Miguel is a joven [young man] of 14 years old. We met with him in the store of a member and set a date to go to his house. There we talked with them and they really knew for themselves ( his parents too) that they should be baptised. Our next visit he had read all of the Restoration pamphlet, answered the questions in the back, had found a Book of Mormon in his house, and was way way excited to keep learning. He is awesome! I hope we don't do anything wrong with him.

Miracle: Shan. Shan was a contact in the Mansion area. In the contact he agreed that if he received an answer to his prayer if he should be baptised, he would do it the 22 of January. Second visit we found out yes he recieved his answer and that basically his life has changed way for the better since his prayer.

Miracle.. ah don't have time

Love Elder Johnson.