Hola Familia! I had another good week.

This is me because I didn't take a lot of photos this week and it lets you know that I am still alive.

Yesterday we had a conference for this region of Peru that was awesome. We were able to hear from Elder Bednar and Elder Scott. It was a really uplifting conference. I didn't know that Elder Scott could speak Spanish, but his Spanish was really good. We were able to bring investigators to the conference which was great. I was a little bit stomach sick this week, I dont know what's going on maybe something I ate so they have me on medication for that, no worries.

 

We taught a daughter and mother this week that are really struggling with their family splitting apart due to a divorce. We taught them the Plan of Salvation and they were so full of joy. Especially the mother. They told us that they have never heard of such a joyful message, they knew we must have a purpose to life but they never knew what it was and they didn't understand the real purpose of the sacrifice of our Savior for us. They both came to the conference and loved it. I really hope the best for each of them.

Funny things that happened this week consisted of getting soaked by the rain as usual, praying to have space in our stomachs to be able to eat whatever it was that they were feeding us and getting stopped in the street and asked for an interview. They assumed I spoke English and needed someone who spoke English to do an interview on camera for them. They asked me basic questions like what is your name, where are you from, what is your work and what do you like about your job. This was my response. My name is Hermana Rhoten, from the United States. Right now I am working as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints teaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. I love helping people change their lives and turn to the Savior. I don't really know where it will get used but it was pretty sweet. 

I'm going to take a good chunk of this letter and write to my sister Marissa and advice I wish I would have known as she is preparing to serve a mission. I am including it in this letter because it is advice that I would give to anyone who is preparing to serve a mission at this time. 

So Marissa,

If I were home right now we would convince mom that we were going to bed, wait for her to walk down to the bottom of the stairs and walk into each others room like always and talk about everything. I would tell you everything I wish I would have known and done to prepare for a mission. But I'm not home and I don't have much time or space to write you so I will include the things that I think are the most important. As far as physical things go I have learned from the Peruvian people that you really don't need much to live, a pair of clothes, food, water and something over your head. Everything else you can live without and life goes on. As far as knowledge I could tell you to study Preach My Gospel and the scriptures and memorize them and that would be great but really you will get here and learn from the Spirit what you really need to know for specific people so don't worry to much about that. Just continue to study. So I have come to a conclusion that the best advice that I could give you and the thing I wish I would have done is prepared myself a little bit more spiritually.

From all the scripture study that I have done I have found three attributes that lead to spiritual power and help from the Lord. I realized that what I wish I would have known is the practical application of these three things. 

The first one is faith. Faith is the act of having confidence in the Lord. When it comes down to it, it is nothing more than living a righteous life. You increase it by praying, studying the scriptures and keeping the commandments. Every time you work towards a righteous goal you exercise this faith. The thing I wish I would have known about faith is that it is something that should affect your actions a lot. The missionaries that pray in faith to ask what door to knock is the one that receives the miracle. Trust that God can do all good things for you according to your faith. 

The second is humility. When you arrive on your mission and put on your plaque not a lot changes. You are still you with a plaque learning how to do missionary things. That is going to be incredibly frustrating to you as it was for me. As it still is for me. You have the idea of the missionary you want to be but you are you. There are two ways missionaries change this. You are either humble and change through repentance or the Lord gives you trials to do it. I have learned that repentance is a better option. Learn how to repent. Everyday. Elder Bednar taught that members of the church don't use repentance like they should. They are really good at changing habits but that isn't repentance. Repentance involves using prayer and the Atonement of Jesus Christ not just changing the habit. This will help you change the things you want to change and be the person you want to become.

The last one is obedience. But its not just obedience like you follow rules obedience. There is an important difference between living by laws and principles. A law of God is any commandment and a principle is anything that is given with a promise. We all initially start out living by laws and then change to living by principles. If you live by laws you wont really change you will just do what you are told. You have to be obedient for principle. Your homework is to learn how to switch to living by principle. Study it out in the scriptures and look for examples of how people change to live by principles. If you can't figure it out pray like Enos all day and all night. :) 

If you can learn to apply these things you will be a powerful missionary. The Lord will be with you and you will have lots of miracles. Work on that. If you aren't perfect then you are human. God still loves you. I love you and know you will be a good missionary. 

Sending my love to all of you and hope you have a great week. I know this is the work of God and that this is His gospel and church. Have a great week. 

Hermana Rhoten

Our mission is never boring....

I'm excited to hear where Marissa is going this week! I sent her my guesses Georgia and Brazil. This week was not normal. I'm starting to wonder what a normal week is like. Hermana Henderson was accompanying us for a day this week and she said something that is really true. "This mission is never boring". I really am never bored here.

Moving

We moved into our new home. Its huge. It has one big room and three small ones. We have a room, the hermanas del tambo tiene un room and the huge one will be for all the bunk beds when the hermanas come. We have started dancing in there in the morning to EFY music for exercise. I'm learning some traditional Bolivian dances. I mean why not, I live with two Bolivians. When we got to our house we didn't have a shower head so the Elders came over to install one for hot water! The funny thing though is that they installed it wrong and water entered into the electrical part and fried it. We were getting electrocuted so we were showering out of buckets from the sink all week. I actually prefer the bucket if it is going to be freezing anyways. They installed a new one and now we have hot water! Awesome.

Our mission president wanted us to get more people to come to baptisms.  Looks like successes to me.

There is another baptism, possibly two this week. We have such good investigators right now. We started teaching a woman that is progressing really fast this week.  She prayed about the Book of Mormon to know if it was true and had a dream where she saw Jesus Christ and kind of a vision of the restoration. She feels like that was an answer to her prayer and is sure that the church is true. She says that she feels like the gospel came to her at the right time of her life and she is excited for her baptism in a few weeks.

Hermana Orellano is leaving.

We celebrated Hermana Soliz and Hermana Orellanas one year marks this week. And then right after we found out that there are transfers for Hermana Orellana. She leaves today to Huanuco. It was really hard for her to hear that because she has been in this area for more than five months. She was one of the first people that I met when I got here to Huancayo and we will miss her for sure. Hermana Procell will be with a mini missionary for two weeks until transfers. We are really tired today because we had a missionary stay with us last night that had to leave at 4:30 am so sorry if none of this is making sense. 

Studying on the roof for last time before we moved.

Like I said earlier we were with Hermana Henderson for a day this week. In the time we were with her nothing went according to plan. Even better than that we had a talent show planned for that night with all three of the wards together. We got there late to set up and when we opened up the church we realized that it was flooded with water! There was about an inch of water through out the entire first floor of the church, in the chapel, hallways and rooms. We all grabbed brooms and mops and started pushing the water out the door to get it cleaned up as quickly as possible so it wouldn't ruin the floors. All of our shoes were soaked. What happened is that we never ever have water in this church and someone had turned on the sink to see if there was water in the bathroom and didn't turn it off. The drain was plugged and when we had water it ran for days. We ended up starting the activity really late because of other complications but a lot of people showed up and it turned out alright in the end.

working hard to get rid of the flood

Tenga un bien semana. 

Con mucho amor,

Hermana Rhoten

Hola Familia!

This week was a long crazy week. My companion is the leader of the hermanas and we got a call this week saying we needed to find a new place to live that could fit ten or more hermanas. We are going to have a lot more hermanas coming and they will need a place to be before they are sent off to their areas. So we are moving today. All of our stuff is packed up and we are spending our pday moving. The elders really weren't too happy about it. We are going to try and finish quickly so that we can do something fun too. 

Some of my favorite kids

A lot of this week was spent looking for a place to live. Whenever we had an appointment fall through we would look for apartments because we had to find a place to be by this week. We had some fun adventures while looking for apartments. We thought we were following a reference from Elders for an apartment and we ended up walking out into the middle of nowhere land Huancayo. There we found the city of dogs. I have never seen so many dogs in my life. There were hundreds and hundreds, on top of buildings and just everywhere. We ended up finding a place to be on Thursday. It is huge but it really isn't very nice. At least its painted though, most of the places we looked at were concrete walls or didn't have floors. We will be living there with the other two hermanas of Tambo and the ten beds for when hermanas come. We are sad to leave our other home but it will be better because it is a lot closer to the pensionistas house. We usually have to walk twenty minutes or take a moto.

inside a moto with one of our moto driver friends

After pday in the rain with my district

It rained a ton again this week. It always is sunny for part of the day first and then it rains out of nowhere. On Monday we played volleyball with my district and got soaked. It was fun though. I was team captain and we won both times. I usually hate volleyball because I always get smacked in the face but I am getting a lot better. One night this week it was pouring rain and we had an umbrella from a family who lent it to us and it broke because it was raining so hard. We rain to a moto but couldn't get the umbrella to close and were in a hurry so we shoved the open broken umbrella into the moto just drenched. The moto driver thought it was so funny. All we were thinking was that the Elders are going to kill us for being late for informes. I don't remember the word for that in English either. When we call and give our numbers for the week. Haha. 

I couldn't resist. Look at this baby so cute.

We had a great zone conference this week on humility. My goal for this month is to develop better humility and to line up my will with the Lords.

I am super excited to tell you about the miracle we had this week with meeting our goal for the month. At the beginning of the month we had prayed to know what our goal should be with a number in mind and we both felt very strongly that it should be another number. We were scared a little because it was a high number for our area. This week we were lacking two baptisms to meet our goal. We fasted to know who they should be.

Jessica after her baptism

Jessica's baptism

One of them was Jessica but the other person we thought it was fell through. We were disappointed that we didn't meet the goal. We got a call on Thursday night from our district leader to say that the other hermanas had been teaching someone that was in our ward boundaries and he was ready for baptism just in time for the end of the month. We ended up completing our goal. I know that God had a plan for this area and he knows more than we do. This is his work and not ours.

Joel's baptism

Have a good week!

Hermana Rhoten

Hola Familia!

This week was a good week as usual. We taught a lot of lessons, it was the highest week of lessons in my mission so far. We have investigators that are progressing pretty fast and we should have a baptism each week this month. 

One of my favorite investigators is an older lady who never learned how to read. She lost both of her parents when she was seven years old and spent her childhood searching for food and clothes for her three younger siblings on the outskirts of Huancayo without family. She learned to make clothes and worked as a very young girl. She told us that she has always believed in God and she remembers praying with all of her little siblings as a little girl asking for him to help them find food and he was always there with them. We felt that we could promise her that if she tried to open her Book of Mormon everyday she could learn to read. We have been teaching her letters and stories from the Book of Mormon along with the lessons. 

We are starting to feel like we know everyone in this city. I have heard when you are in an area for awhile it gets to be that way. It probably helps that we stand out. But we walk down the street and it seems like we always are running into people we know. We also know where about everyone lives. When Hermana Soliz goes out of town and I have divisions I feel like I can explain more than the members who have lived here their whole lives can. This street is the ex husband of that member who is now dating a less active member who used to live on this street, the next door neighbors have a scary dog, the next street over is a woman we taught three times named with three kids...etc.

One person we always seem to run into is a moto driver named Jesus. We see him everywhere. He was one of the first people that we taught when we got here and the past two weeks he started progressing really fast. He started calling us and reminding us of our appointments. One of the saddest moments of this week was his phone call to my companion saying that he is in love with me. Basically he is a snake, and we think his intentions aren't real. We decided to let the elders teach him and baptize him if he wanted still but when they called him he didn't show up to their appointment.This has happened to us twice before but it was really sad because we felt like he was really progressing and he was so close to his baptism date.

With transfers Hermana Orellana got a new companion. It is Hermana Procell, one of my first companions from the MTC. Its so fun to have her here and to be able to talk with her at every meal. She had a tough first week in Huancayo though, she got bit by a dog, had to stuff pig in her underwear and was pretty sick from food. I have to explain that we have really strict rules in this mission about what we can and can't eat and pig is something we can't eat. The pensionistas follow strict guidelines to make sure that food is clean but every Sunday we eat at members homes for one meal just to be with them and strengthen our relationships. Sometimes members forget our rules and we don't want to make them feel bad so we have to find a way around it like stuffing it in our clothes and bags when they aren't looking. I usually have space in my bag and just wash it later. Anyways its been fun to have her here and help each other figure out words in Spanish.

Hermana Soliz and I have just been really happy this week. We feel like we are so blessed. We had one little miracle this week that showed us Gods love for us. We were walking down a dark dirt street at about 8:30pm completely exhausted from the day. Our last appointment fell through and we were trying to contact for the last hour but no one was out in the streets. We passed by a little tienda or store and my companion said ¨I really want a chocolate right now. I was like yea me too. But we didn't have any money so we went our way. As we were walking down the street about ten minutes later we heard someone yelling our name running down the street. It was a member of our ward and he called for us to come back. He told us that he wanted to buy us some chocolate and took us to a store and bought some for us. It was something little but we know that the Lord was walking beside us, he knows who we are and how we are feeling and that he loves us. We call it our miracle chocolate. 

I have a testimony that God lives and that Jesus Christ is my savior. He loves us unconditionally. We can always turn to him.

Tenga un bien semana!

Hermana Rhoten

Hola familia! This week was really good. We taught a ton of lessons and worked really hard.

This was taken at the Johnson's house

 I don't really know what to say about this week so I will just write my list of happy moments from this week.

Tuesday we got a phone call that said we have cambios. The word in English is transfers, I asked someone else who spoke English. We have cambios de cama or transfers of beds. Meaning we get to stay in Huancayo for another 6 weeks. My companion and I were so happy. 

This is a girl that I love who was baptized.

We got a cell phone this week! My companion is one of the new leaders of hermanas so we get a cell phone. Its really exciting because I am so sick of pay phones and phone cards. It makes the work so much easier when you can contact people.

We had an activity this week and we had a lot of investigators come. Like 10. But the best moment was watching little Fran who was baptized only two weeks ago inviting one of them to come to church with him on Sunday. It was really sweet.

At the Johnson's house

I lost my camera this week for a day. I looked everywhere and went to all the places we had been. Finally that night when we got to our apartment and I fell on my knees and prayed that God would help me found it. I found it 2 minutes later deep inside one of my tennis shoes. I´m not sure why it was there or how I felt to look there so I know that it was an answer from heaven.

The little boy that we are teaching that I told you about last week whose mom was drunk is getting baptized and he is so excited. My favorite moment with him this week was his prayer. He loves to pray, and he told us that he always talks to god. He started out by saying, Good afternoon Heavenly Father, and his prayer was like a real conversation with him not something he had learned. He prayed that the things he would learn might bless future generations and because we told him he could ask anything he wanted he asked God why so many people are divided in their beliefs about him. We proceeded to teach him about the apostasy and the restoration and how we newly have prophets and apostles on the earth. He was so excited. 

Just your average everyday soup with chicken legs

These things are berries in the clear hair gel type jello.  They are pretty good.

We have been visiting a less active member who hasn't come to church for about four years. He is about our age and all of his family is inactive. The first couple times we just went and talked with him at his work and didn't share anything. He is an amazing guitar player and writes his own music. We invited him to participate in a talent show and he said maybe. One day this week we called him and said we were nearby and asked if we could visit him. He said yes. We came over and were there for too long but after awhile he opened up to us about everything. He told us he was happy where he was and he wasn't going to go back to church but he hoped that we wouldn't think less of him. He said he had been talked to by so many missionaries and none of them had changed his mind. We asked him why he had let us in. He said I don't know, Ive never met missionaries like you. In the end we didn't ever tell him he needed to come to church but we did invite him to pray and after fighting it, he did. He made two of my happy moments this week. Watching him kneel on the ground and pray for the first time in a long time was one. The second was watching him and his whole family walk in through the back of the chapel and sit down at church. It was a huge miracle. 

This is the less active who came to church. 

The most dangerous play toys I have ever been on.

Last week for pday we went to a sports facility and just had fun while all the Elders played soccer. Hermana Gale and I found two baseball gloves and a baseball. We played catch for about three hours. I was so happy with a baseball and glove. I wish I would have brought one because it was really stress relieving and they are super hard to find in Peru.

I don't remember if I have talked about Pamela or not in one of my previous letters but if not I will tell you anyways. She is one of the very first people that I met here in Peru. She is a little girl that we taught with her brother. Her parents are always drunk and they beat her. The first time that we went to take her to church she went to ask her mother and we heard her mother screaming at her and hitting her in the background. She came back out and quietly told us she couldn't go. She turned around to go back in the house and we realized she was crying. We hugged her for a long time, wiped away her tears and told her to be strong. Every time we walk down her street she runs to us and wraps her arm around our necks. She is such a sweet little girl. This week we found out that she has been going to church with a teenager that takes her for some time and that she might be able to get baptized. It was the highlight of my week. I hope that she can. 

Above and below pictures are both at the Johnson's house.

I have to go but I hope all of you know that I have a testimony of this work. I know without a doubt that God lives and that Jesus Christ is my Savior. 

Hope you have a great week.

Hermana Rhoten

 

Note from Miranda's mom: The Johnson's are a family that Miranda is teaching. She talked about them a few weeks ago.  Their home is a museum of all sorts of jungle animal skins and they have real parrots too.  It is like a real museum that people pay to go and look at things.

This week was a good week. We have cambios this week on Tuesday.

I really don't remember the word in English sorry. Its where we might switch areas and companions. We find out Tuesday night what the plan is. My companion and I are really hoping that we don't change because we love this area and are working well together. I feel like I haven't seen her much this week because we had two divisions this week where I was with another sister for two days. After each division I felt really confident. Each of those two days we had high numbers, our lessons went great, my Spanish was functioning and one of them we had 6 new investigators with a baptism date. It was really exciting. Hermana Soliz is like a proud mother because she was my trainer.

It rained every day this week. After about day three I gave up on hair and makeup. It always started out looking sunny but then it would randomly start pouring rain in the middle of the day. One day it showered and we got soaked to our underwear. If you can imagine us running the streets, just drenched that about sums up my week. We have really great investigators that lent us clothes so we could still teach without going to our apartment because it is really far.

We found a really great family of five kids this week and taught them the first lesson. They were so excited especially the father. It was one of the best first lessons of my mission. I hope I stay in this area to teach them a little longer.

Two zones of sisters in Huancayo

I had a really bad week of men this week. I got asked on two dates, asked if I was interested in marriage, called baby, precious, love, all sorts of stuff, and a 35 year old man invited me over to his house but he didn't want my companion to come. He said he would make me dinner. All of them say they will come to church and want to know where it is. My companion and I have started including in our prayers that we will be able to discern between those people who really want to hear the gospel and be able to avoid those who have other motives. I know that I have been protected by the Lord many times. 

On the mountain last Pday

My Spanish is getting a lot better. I'm starting to think in Spanish and dream in Spanish. I had one last night. It is a weird sensation that I can't explain to anyone who has never learned a language before. I occasionally make mistakes though. My worst one I think was one time when we were at an investigators home talking about an experience and I wanted to say that I was embarrassed. Estaba embarazosa. But there are two words that are really close in Spanish, embarazosa which means embarrased and embarazada which means pregnant. I used the second one and told them that I was pregnant. Luckily my companion was there to explain otherwise it would have been a whole lot more embarrasing. :)

One night this week we were contacting near a park and a really drunk lady came up to us and practically threw herself on us. She was crying saying that she wanted to change and she wanted us to pray for her. So we prayed for her in the park. She told us that she wanted us to meet her son and told us her address. To be honest she was really drunk and we didn't think much of it but the next day we were waiting for the Elders to show up to one of our appointments with us and as we were waiting we realized we were on the street of the drunk lady. We somehow remembered the address and found the home. It looked like a little barn more than a home. But we knocked and a boy who was about ten years old answered. We started teaching him. He was the most intelligent ten year old boy I have probably ever met. We asked him questions like if he knew how Jesus was baptized. He said yea, first john the baptist was teaching the people and then he said another man would come who was better than him and then Jesus searched for him to baptize him....It was a lot more detail than that and he was quoting scriptures. We asked him if he knew of any prophets and he went on for like 15 minutes about prophets of the bible. He said he loved to read so we said great we have a book for you. He was excited about what we taught him and I am excited to go back and teach him. It was a miracle of the Lord to be  guided to his home.

We have a really nice apartment. Its super nice. One of the nicest I have seen here. Its about 200 soles a month or 70 dollars.

I'm doing great. Love you all. Hope you have a great week.

Con amor,

Hermana Rhoten

The only two gringas in Huancayo

Me and my cake

Hola familia! This week was awesome. I really had a really great week. We are emailing late today because we hiked a mountain with president and his wife for a special p day. We found out during it that it is their 36 wedding anniversary today. How cute is that! It was a pretty good hike, we were at high altitude so it was hard to breathe a little but I was fine. There were a bunch of llamas and we hiked until we got to a glacier. It was really fun and everyone had a good time.

Llamas in the middle of the road today.

This is where we were at today.

We had the baptisms and confirmations of my favorite family this week. I can't really express in words how much I love them. They are like family to me. They have been my companion and I happy thought for several weeks because they have just brought us so much joy. The best part about it is that we as missionaries didn't do anything. They were prepared by the Lord to receive the gospel. We didn't have a single trial while teaching them. We would teach them a commandment and they would say okay, we will change. They asked us how our church does tithing before we even mentioned anything about it because they wanted to pay it.They bore their testimonies on Sunday and the father said that all he wants to do is travel the world and share this message of the gospel and how much it has changed his life. The baptisms and confirmations were really special. One of the highlights of my mission. The confirmation of the parents was great but what was really special was the blessing and confirmation of their 10 year old son. The spirit was so strong and he was told he will be a powerful instrument in the hands of the Lord. I hope that I can go to the temple with them in a year when they are sealed as a family. I will get down on my knees and beg president if I have to.

The family that we baptized this week on my birthday.

America at her baptism I wish i could have captured her face. It was the most beautiful thing i have seen. She kept saying how beautiful she felt inside.

I felt super loved on my birthday. We still taught lessons and worked hard but everyone here spoiled me. My pensionista made me hamburgers and it was the best Peruvian hamburger I have had. After that we went to the family we baptized to teach them or so I thought and they made us a second lunch and bought me a cake. It was really sweet of them. In the evening we went to the bishops house for a meeting and he bought me a cake too. They turned out the lights, covered me with stuff and cracked an egg on my head. I have to pause for a second and tell you that the bishop was an army guy and is kind of like a drill sergeant. I have always been a little bit scared of him. But this night he and his family went around the table individually and told us how much they loved us and the good that we have done for this ward. They said they haven't loved missionaries as much as us since the ones that had baptized them. I think it was good for my companion and I both to hear these things. We contacted with egg in my hair up until the very last minute that night.

This is me covered in stuff on my birthday with the bishops family. I felt super loved.

This is me on my birthday.

I had all sorts of stuff on my clothes so we decided to wash them. I didn't tell my companion that I have never washed my clothes in a bucket with a board before but I didn't think it would be that bad. I started washing them and my companion being her blunt self said, Oh dear, you are never going to find a husband until you learn how to wash clothes. So she taught me. There is actually a lot of technique to it. You put it on the board and go up and down with the scrubber  and then you rub the two parts of clothes until you cover the whole thing and rinse out all the soap really good or it will be as stiff as a rock. By the end I was really getting the hang of it. Now I should be able to find a husband someday. lol 

My companion and I on the bus

On Thursday this week we were in a taxi and right in front of us there was a collision between a motocycle and a taxi. I saw the two men on the motocycle fly in the air and hit the ground hard. Without thinking I opened up the door of the taxi and ran to the man who was lifeless in the middle of the street. I quickly found a pulse and checked for breathing. My companion was talking with someone to call for help. I opened up his clothes and he started to breath normal. I stabilized his head with my Book of Mormon and got blood all over but not important. I knew it was important for him to stay concious so I tried my best to talk to him and get him to talk back. I told him I was a missionary and that I was here to help him and that everything would be alright. I did my best to keep him stabilized until help came.When we left my companion was like how did you know what to do. I said to be honest I didn't, I don't know where that came from. 

The next day I found myself in a situation where we had contacted a man who was suffering of sadness. He had lost his father suddenly a month ago and was really sad. I found myself saying almost the same words to this man. I told him we were missionaries and here to help. I didn't know what to say to him but words came. 

I have learned that in the fight of mortality that all we really need to do is have the will to act and be obedient. I understand a little better now what Nephi meant when he said he was guided by the spirit not knowing beforehand the things that he should do. I know that in Gods work he helps us to know what to do and say when we need it. I have seen it time and time again, even this week. 

I love you all, hope that you have a great week. 

Hermana Rhoten