Tres Mil Papas (Three Thousand Potatoes): Week 97 - "hello" - July 9

Jonah celebrated his 20th Birthday this week. Send him a great birthday wish - jonah.babbel@myldsmail.net

We love to hear his wonderful stories and find it hard to believe that he will be telling us some of the stories in person pretty soon. He has only one transfer left in a few weeks so we will see where he will spend the last weeks of his Mission.

Hello!! So this has been such an incredible week!! We found some pretty incredible people and we're super pumped to be able to teach them and see how they progress. Almost all of the investigators are doing really well and we are helping several people to be baptized for the end of this month and the start of August. It's been a great week of hard work and special experiences.

Here are few different stories of things that happened this past week. Hope you enjoy them!

We had an interchange with Elder Rios and Elder Parkinson, and it was wonderful! With Elder Rios, we found someone that is currently having an identical conversion story as he did. Elder Rios was baptized in about a month after talking with live missionaries on mormon.org The story of María Paz started about 3 weeks ago when Elder McKamey and I contacted someone outside of their home and offered to unload the things in their car. They seemed impressed and accepted, and later he invited us to sit down in his home and we taught him the Restoration. It was a good lesson and he seemed reasonably interested so we planned a day to come back. The next night, we received a referral of someone that had looked on mormon.org and had asked to receive the missionaries and also wanted a Book of Mormon. Eagerly, we went to contact the referral, to find that it was the girlfriend of the young man we had contacted the other day. She was so interested in what we shared with her boyfriend that she wanted us to visit her and her whole family of 5. We have only been able to teach her so far due to the family's schedule, and we did that with Elder Rios this Wednesday. She accepted to be baptized on the 6th of August, but mentioned that she would be going to Cajamarca this weekend, but quickly committed to going to church with her family while in Baños del Inca, my first ward!! We are excited to meet the rest of the family next Wednesday.

While with Elder Latimer, we had two appointments and they had both fallen through, so we started talking to the neighbors. Elder Latimer had served in Primavera for one transfer and remembered that he had taught someone close by to where we were. Interestingly enough, as soon as he said that, two cars pulled in front of us, the drivers got out yelling at one another, and it looked like they were going to fight, so we quickly got away from the scene, forgetting what Elder Latimer had just said. A couple minutes later, I remembered that he had mentioned that and so we decided to go and knock the door. When we got to the door, we figured that for some reason all of this was happening, and so we knocked the door, I was fairly disappointed that no one was there. But that was when lady passed by, stopped, looked at us, and almost kept walking, but we stopped her asked if she lived in the house that we had just knocked. She said no, but then asked us ''If I live around the corner, what chapel do I need to go to?'' That's when our eyes lit up.

It turns out that she had investigated the Church for more than a year and was finally going to be baptized, but something happened in the family and she moved away for about 3 months. 2 weeks ago, she moved to Primavera searching to resolve the family problem and be baptized. We taught her outside of her house and learned that she has an incredible testimony of the Book of Mormon, the Church, and all of the commandments. She had already paid tithing for several months before we met her that day and had a miraculous experience due to it. She eagerly accepted a baptismal date for the 23rd of this month and is also excited to share the gospel with her father, who is not a member yet. So many different things happened that day so that we could find her, and I know that not a single one of them was a coincidence. God prepares His children and He puts us where we need to be to find them.

Alright, well, not a lot of time to write, but I sure do love you all!! I love being here and am excited to continue to work hard! Have a wonderful week! Love you!

Us with a family of investigators the secretaries are teaching. They invited us over for lunch and to play some board games. They are so great! The dad is getting baptized the 29th, and hopefully the rest of the family soon.