Week 42 - "That was Quick" June 20 - June 26 (Trujillo)

Jonah is about to have a change in Mission Presidents. He will truly miss President and Sister Marler. He was able to spend a few days with the Marlers during their final week. They had a couple conferences and went to the temple a few times. They have been a great inspiration to him. We will miss Sis. Marler's blog where we were able to see additional pictures of Jonah.  

Well...another week came and went. This past week has been incredible, full of miracles and also work. We've had some incredible blessings in this last week that I would've loved to have taken pictures of but my camera has been acting up jaja. I think it's from when I fell at the beach and the sand got in it. I'm gonna fix it though, don't worry Mom. (Sorry, I love you!) Anyway, it's been an awesome week.

On Wednesday, we had our multi-zone meeting! They are always so great. You get to enter into President's vision for just a few moments and really see what he wants for the whole mission. We talked a lot about the temple during that meeting....which we then followed up with a temple trip! The best part about temple trips here in the Central Zone is that it only takes 7 minutes to get there. I love the temple!!! The Trujillo temple here is just incredible. So beautiful. But inside, there's something super special. To me, even more than the temples back at home. I think it might be because I understand a little better now what it means to go to the temple and what a blessing it is to have one so close. I understand the blessings we receive by going inside and making promises with God. The gospel is the best thing that will ever happen to us, and the temple is the fullness of the gospel, wrapped up into a building 7 minutes from our room. I love life a lot right now jaja. Here's a fun little page that tells more information about temples: http://www.ldschurchtemples.com/

Anyway, two days later, we had our mission-wide leader training called Concilio. It was kinda sad, but super great, just because President and Sister Marler are heading out really soon ya. It's kind of weird to think about because President Marble, our new mission president, will be my president for a longer time than President Marler. I'm sad to see President Marler go, but I'm so grateful for what they've done for me. They've literally changed my life. I'm not coming back home the same way I was before. I'm still in a huge process of changing, but I really feel different. President Marble is going to be so great. We're so excited to welcome them here, and start getting to work. It's gonna be A LOT of work, but that's the fun part. But yeah, in this meeting, we got to go to the temple again!!! That's where I took that picture with President, there's also another one though with President and Sister Marler both, I'll try to send it today. The temple is the bomb, just check out the page.

So that was basically my week, going to the temple a bunch and teaching the gente about Jesucristo. You couldn't really ask for more di? Jaja alright, I love you all a bunch, and I hope you have a wonderful week. It'll be an even better week if you go to the temple! I love you all more than Fruity Pebbles!!

Elder Babbel and Elder Marshall

Central Zone

At a Meeting

Piano lessons paid off!

With President Marler

 

Week 41 - "Divine Placement" June 13 - June 19 (Trujillo)

Another super duper week for Jonah. He did have a little Peruvian cultural experience. In Peru, nursing mothers feed their niños whenever they want (during lessons, church, meetings or lunch) He said only the gringos get embarrassed.  He has another inspirational story below. We love this kid!

Hey, so this last week has been a week of miracles. A really super great week. We've been learning a lot about something we like to call divine placement. It's a really interesting concept and it's super true. I've seen it a load of times here on the mission, and I'm convinced that it happens for our entire lives here. Divine placement means a lot of things and it requires a lot things as well. It requires a knowledge of the truth. It requires charity and compassion. It requires obedience. And it requires faith. This last week, Elder Marshall and I have been divinely placed into the paths of other people on several occasions. And it's just been so incredible. 

This last week, we were talking to a lady that was in the church (13th of June), and she happened to be an old investiagator that had been taught all of the lessons, and had attended church for about 6 months.Her name is Yolanda :]She sat right next to us in our 2nd hour class, and then we find out that she's just the most wonderful person ever. We set up an appointment to visit them on that Wednesday thinking that it would be a great lesson. We got to the lesson, find out that she has been waiting to be baptized for several months, but nobody would talk to her about it. So we invited her to be baptized that same Saturday (2 days ago) and she said yes. This last week we had a baptism with a person that we had almost never met, but is just an incredible person. She had been patiently waiting the blessings of God for a long time, and was divinely placed into the seat next to us last Sunday. Now, she has started the journey towards eternal life. That was super cool.

Later on last week, we were looking through a list of references of people and happened to see a name that was on the same street that we were on. We both felt moved to visit the person, and we did. She was sitting outside of her house, and so we began talking to her. She had just happened to have been robbed years of savings that same day only 5 hours before. We told her we were messangers of God and that He had placed us there to help her and bring her a message of peace. She invited us into her house and only had time to sing Señor te necesito and say a prayer, but it was one of the most spiritual moments of my mission. She started to cry and was really moved by everything. She understood that we really are messangers of God, and that she needs to listen to us. It was another awesome moment.

So that's my spiritual thought of the day. When you're doing the right things and you're called of God, chance doesn't exist. Everyone is placed where they need to be when they need to be there.

This last week has been a blast! We are working super hard here and also having a great time. We just went to a beautiful beach this morning with President and Sister Marler and it was soooo great! I'll send pictures in a sec. I love you all so much!! Have a great week! Read your scriptures and say your prayers everyday or we can't be friends. Just kidding, we can still be friends. But you should still do those things. They're good for you. Okay yeah love ya bye

Week 40 - "Super bacan" June 6 - June 12 (Trujillo)

I don't think Jonah ever thought he would be involved in weddings while in Peru.   Apparently it is very expensive to get married and in order to be baptized a couple must first be married.  Jonah says that this makes it difficult for families to join the church.  So now he is helping to organize "matrimonios masivos"(massive weddings).  Many couples can be married civilly at the same time and this makes it much cheaper.  Also "super bacan" means super awesome not super bacon.

Hey so sorry dudes and dudettes last week we had a lot to do so I didn't get an email off like normal, but I'm here now and things are a little less crazy! Wujuuu! So these last two weeks have been incredible. I can't believe it's already been two weeks with Elder Marshall, time is just flying by. Way too fast. We've been keeping ourselves super duper busy and we've had a lot of things to do in the zone. It's possible that in these last two weeks, I've learned more about life and how to live and love better and just be happier, than in any other time in my life. I feel like I probably say that every time I write, but every week is just more and more incredible. In these past days I've been able to really forget about myself. That's probably the greatest thing about serving a mission. The only stress you will or at least should ever have, is the spiritual and temporal well-being of other people. That's just the greatest feeling ever. Not to even worry about what's going to happen to you, just what's going to happen to the people you love and serve. Plus, we don't have to do homework. I hate homework jaja.

But anyway, we've had some great experiences these past two weeks. There's a couple that we've been teaching, Maria and Fernando, and they've been investigating the church for quite a while now, probably about 5 or 6 months. They've been working on getting married this whole time and it's been just kinda tough to get them excited about marriage. But thanks to my grandparents, who are celebrating their 50th year anniversary together, we were able to animate them! They are going to be married on the 16th of July and possibly will be baptized that same night. It should be a wonderful day! Thanks Grandma and Grandpa!

Also, this last week we were walking down the street and saw this guy selling some cuy food. He has this bike with a trailer in the back filled with alfalfa and he just rides around to the people that need to feed their cuyes. So anyway, he has this shirt on with a picture of tater-tots..which was kinda interesting because tater-tots don't exist here....it's really sad I know. But we talk to him for a sec, and we asked him if we could see his shirt...and it turned out to be a NAPOLEAN DYNAMITE SHIRT!!!!!!11!!11 It was so sweet! It said, ''gimme your tots, I'm freakin starving''. Definitely a highlight of the week. Too bad we couldn't teach the dude, but hey, he made my day so that's what counts.

We've also had a bunch of cool lessons throughout the week, including one that we had to do spanish charades because she's deaf, and they were all really great. We've been playing a bunch of futbol and basketball lately, and more often with the investigadores as well. I'm so happy! Loving life! Plus, Peru beat Brazil so the whole country is going insane. We only know because everyone was screaming their heads off last night and clapping and just volviendo locos. So yeah, in your face Dad, Brazil stinks jaja. Peruuuuuuu1!!!!!!

Okeydokey, I love you guys a bunch. Look for the pictures! Do great things with your lives! Read your scriptures and say your prayers every day! I love you!!!! 

Jonah fell asleep during lunch!

Zone Activity

Matching Ties - Unity

Breakfast Burrito and Oreo Banana Milkshakes - Old El Paso in Peru 

There's this lady named Hermana Paty in our ward and she is incredible!!!! She's 35, 2 and half feet tall, and has the biggest heart you could ever imagine. And she painted these!! She's incredible! My new best friend 

Week 39 - "?" May 30 - June 5 (Trujillo)

Today's letter from Jonah is a mash-up of shorter emails to both Leslie and I.  He said he was so busy he didn't have time to write a longer email to everyone.   Jonah now has a new companion, Elder Marshall.  He was a former Assistant to the President (AP), and is now a zone leader for the last 6 weeks of his mission.  Jonah is very excited to work with Elder Marshall and they are already having some great success.

It is not as hot here as it is in Idaho. It's actually been really nice here. Just humid, but I'm basically used to that already.  Everything is going great! Super busy super exciting! Elder Marshall is a miracle worker. We've had so much success in this last week. Super great. He's so excited in every moment, and never let's any moment pass by. We talk to so many people it's insane. But it works! 
I'm loving my time with him. He's an incredible person and so fun to be around. He's really changing a lot of things around here and where ever he goes. We've been doing a ton of unplanned service, and it really helps! I'm so happy right now and it's just from serving people all the time. So much fun. This last week we found 12 new people to teach, which was more than we found the whole last month, so yeah we're really busy with that. The ward is great! A bunch of college students because we have the 2 biggest universities in Trujillo in our area. The bishop is an old abogado (lawyer) and he's super funny. I'll take some pictures with him sometime. I'm getting used to less sleep..jaja we're so busy with all this stuff. We help the sisters a ton every week, this last week we had to go buy a few of them muebles (furniture) and frazadas (blankets) and then take it to them. I'm in charge of the zone fund which is really stressful because it's a lot of money.  By the way, this week was great. We had a zone training that we did and we've been crazy busy with teaching and helping the zone. I'm super happy. Maybe happier than I've ever been on my mission. I'm just serving people all the time and we just talk to so many great people every day. Today we're going to play basketball with an investigator for a little while and then clean our room, eat some dinner at a random restaurant and then visit some people. We'll probably be in bed at around 11 or 11.30 because we're still super backed up on zone stuff. Super fun though, I love being busy all the time :)

Johani, the cutest girl you will ever meet. Very literally.

Johani

I don't really know, just in a taxi - jaja

Waffles!!!!!!  This was fantastic, o my heavens.  They were incredible. Ice cream bananas and waffles. So good. And it was 3 bucks

A Colombian dish called arepes.  that little dish is melted cheese.  Super delish.

Now a few pictures from last week -

Week 38 - "Woahhhh" May 23 - May 29 (Trujillo)

It is now winter in Peru.  Trujillo, nicknamed the city of "everlasting spring"has been quite nice as far as temperature goes.  Jonah finds this quite fortunate as he says that he has not had a hot day in a while and in fact a few chilly days.  By now you can probably guess how Jonah will start his weekly letter...  It has been Crazy and Great!

Hello everybody! So I had probably one of the craziest and greatest weeks of my entire mission this past week! It started off nice and smooth, with the arrival of aother missionary from a different zone. He came over to our zone a week before cambios, and lived with me and Elder Price for the whole week. His name is Elder Cogollo and he's from Colombia. He was actually trained By Elder Price, so that was pretty cool. Then, on Wednesday, we had Concilio! Which is always fantastic! That's the meeting with all of the zone leaders in the whole mission, and we just get training from the assistants and President for a day. It was super great! That's when I found out who would be my new companion. As you may have known, Elder Price is going home after 2 years here in Peru. I had such a stinkin great time with Elder Price, seriously went by so fast. Good luck out there Elder Price!! I love you!! So...my new companion is....Elder Marshall!! He was an Assistant for about the last year and is incredible. He is probably the best missionary in the mission. And he's my companion. I'm going to have a BLAST with him during this next transfer. I'm going to be learning a ton. Like a ton a ton. It'll be pretty crazy. We aso learned a lot about planning. It might surprise some of you, especially you mom, that I know how to plan super well now. And I'm actually super pumped when I have a plan, and I get way more done. So that's kinda funny, because I never planned for anything before my mission jajaja. But yeah, then afterwards, we went to the beach!! And we played a whole bunch of sports and it was super beautfiul and we had some great weather. It's not even hot, it's just nice and tibio. But yeah, then Elder Price and I left early to go to the temple! It was so great!! We went with our recent converts (Antonio, Ronald, and Sandra), and they did baptisms and then we confirmed them. And the best part was that everyone brought names! I brought 15 names, Ronald brought 5 (one of them was his dad), and Sandra and Antonio brought a couple each. SO AWESOME!!! Probably one of the coolest experiiences I've ever had and ever will have. Then the rest of the week was basicaly getting Elder Price ready to go home. He got into the mission home on Sunday night and will be flying home this afternoon. We'll see you later Elder Price!! Okay, so that was basically it! Sorry I'm kinda busy and apurado so I'll talk to you all later!! I love you all so much!!!!!

Leadership Council on the beach!

Sister Pineda singing and Jonah playing the piano at a Leadership Meeting