I Have Grown a Foot or Two: Week 12: Weddings the Peruvian Way

Familia y Amigos!

This week was great and filled with some pretty good memories! These past few weeks I've been studying the gospels so I can finish by Christmas and I've had a few things stick out to me... I'm amazed by the miracles of Christ and how they are always a second witness to the divinity of His nature or to a greater teaching. I love the miracle and teaching of the paralytic man that was lowered down from the roof by his 4 friends so Christ could heal him. But the first thing Christ did wasn't heal him, He forgave his sins. But because the doubts of His authority to forgive sins and make others clean by Pharisees or doubters in the room, he told the man to "take up his bed" as a 2nd witness of his divinity and authority to forgive sins. The same goes with the woman with the blood disease. Also, all of the miracles have one common background, and it's that all that he heals have FAITH. I love the leper when he says "If thou WILT, thou canst make me clean." not, "If thou CANST, or CAN, thou canst make me clean.". The leper wasn't asking for a sign or a miracle, he already knew the true divinity of the Savior and his ability to heal and love. In some way or another, we are all lepers! We all have need of something in our lives right now, whether it be a stronger testimony of the Atonement, financial help, comfort, love, charity, whatever it may be,we need to ask in FAITH and BELIEVE that we will RECIEVE like the leper did. The leper is a great example of faith to me and I hope to follow his example and not ask the Savior if he can help me, but rather if he will help me. Because He always can, you just need to ask if He will. Anyways, that's my spiritual thought for the week.

The most spiritual experience this week though was definitely the baptism of Yesena Payco. On Friday, we married Yesena and Osmar and it was a jolly ol' time. And then on Saturday we baptized Yesena and it was just awesome. Osmar was already a member and he bore his testimony after the baptism and it was so strong, the Spirit was there in full swing. He bore his testimony about how this is the first big step towards them becoming an eternal family a year from now and that he knows this church is true and that he is being blessed by it. It's moments like those that make all the hard work worth it, they are great examples to me of what a humble person really is like and how great of a blessing this gospel really is.

On Friday there were actually quite a few marriages because of missionaries, including Elder Johnson and his companion! So I got to hang our with Elder Johnson, from my district in the CCM, for quite a bit. It was great getting to catch up with him and how he's doing. He's about an hour and a half away from where I am, he's in San Juan... easily the sketchiest parte de la mision. There's just a lot of gang activity and stuff going on there. Anyways, he had a kinda crazy story... Some guy ran into him and his companion, he was drunk, and told them that he wanted to change his life and so he handed them a bunch drugs he had haha. Anyways, they end up teaching the guy and one night he told them that he had to flee the area the next morning because the previous night he was in a pretty nasty fight and people were after him. But the next morning they saw him so they just thought it was a lie. But the day after that his wife came up to E. Johnson and his companion and asked if they'd seen "Johnny" anywhere... yeah, they haven't seen him since haha. Well, that's North Lima Peru for ya...

We also had a service project on Miercoles (Wednesday, sorry, I'm trying to manage the spanglish), and it was crazy. It was in Jardines, another area in our zone which is all super steep stairs, and someone had tons and tons of sand at the top of this long section or stairs and they needed to carry it down... oh boy, was it hard! All they had to carry it down was 5 gallon buckets and bags. We ended up carrying the sand down for almost 2 hours and we were all dead after it! I wish I had had my camera to take some pictures of the process haha, it was crazy. Me and Elder Pauro got back to our room and could barely move but it was all good.

Another kinda funny thing that happened... One day this past week, I don't remember which one, but we were at Pilars house. One thing you have to understand about her house is that it's super dirty. Think about the dirtiest, dustiest place you've been in and you're half way there. Anyways, we were teaching her, and one of her many cats drug this dead rat out from inside one of her shoes and she freaked out! It was pretty funny, it was ironic because she couldn't believe that there could possibly be rats in her house... haha. She wouldn't even get down from off her bed and she told us to come back later... good times in Lima Peru.

Well, I hope you're all doing well and I think that's all!

Love

Elder Potter

Osmar & Yesena Wedding Baptism