the mission really is life changing hey?

hi dad and family. hows it going? i miss you all very much. this week i'm not going to lie i was a little unfocused. it sucks. i have no idea why. so last night i poured my heart out to god asking for help. i guess its normal to get unfocused once in a while but i don't like it. its incredibly hard to teach with the spirit and its hard to enjoy the mission. so i fasted and have been trying hard to get my focus back and its back. its hard when you are constantly hearing the problems of other people and doing things to satisfy there needs all the time. you literally have no time to think for yourself, at times its overwhelming. but the mission is worth it. its amazing to be able to help others. i was reading in doctrine and covenants section 11. its funny cause i just opened my scriptures and started reading. it was an answer to my prayers. it reminded me why i'm here. as i read i pretended that god was there saying it to me. it helped me remember my purpose and that i have been called to the work. i remembered the promises i will receive when i ask in faith. i asked him in faith to help me get my focus back and i know he definitely helped me with that. with all the new changes in the mission for the way we teach its overwhelming. but thanks to my heavenly father i am super excited for this coming week and  to go out and teach more people. 

                     we have been finding lots of new investigators. its great! we've got about 5 baptisms coming up. one this coming weekend so we are happy that we have a few new families to teach! we have been pushing ourselves to contact more people and had faith that if we really tried to find people we would and that's exactly whats happening. now we are trying to help them come to church, pray, and read their book of mormon. the mission really is life changing hey? definitely nothing i expected. i knew it would be hard but its hard every single day! haha but if it wasn't hard what would i learn? i really am honored to be serving in iquitos though because its such a unique mission. its very different from other missions but i guess every mission has its own thing that makes it unique.

     so we were teaching a new investigator and he is pretty awesome. he is a concerned dad who had psoriasis pretty bad and is suffering other things to. we felt the spirit strongly with him. the president of the mission has really been encouraging the mission to teach the book of mormon the first lesson we teach the investigators. so we were explaining the restoration and blah blah and then we started teaching the book of mormon with the spirit very strong. the whole entire lesson had been super silent but then this group of adults outside started laughing really loud. one woman in particular. and they were speaking vulgar and really were distracting us. i was thinking to myself, i am going to ask them to laugh somewhere else because why do they have to laugh in front of THIS house... but then i thought to myself ok stop letting your latina attitude take place... what would jesus do. so i cancelled my bad thoughts because i knew very well that it was Satan that wanted me to not have the spirit with me and to not teach this man about the book of mormon. so we simply ignored them and kept teaching and it was wonderful and he started crying cause he was so happy we visited him and he's got a lot of problems and has been seeking help. the doctors say that he needs to let go of a lot of stress that he has to help get rid of his psoriasis. and he says that our visit helped him for the first time not feel stress. so ya we were happy about that!

     this saturday we have a baptism! i'm stoked. her name is marcela. she is 13 and is the one i talked about in the last email. she has been going to church for two years and no one knew she wasn't baptized!!!! so she loves us a lot. she always calls us for help and just to tell us how excited she is for her baptism! haha i try and take good care of her cause i only think of how i would want someone to treat vicky if she was the only convert in her family. 

       i just had a funny memory. i remember a long time ago when we were at church in beazer (cardston) and we were in primary singing book of mormon stories and the part that said "FREE!!!" tennyson yelled it out loud and put one arm up and stood up and was all embarrassed!!!!! HAHAHAHAHAAAA tell that guy to EMAIL ME!!!!!!!!!!

     i cant believe that its another pday dad! seriously time FLIES! i get sad when i come out of a good lesson and feel like time is going by too fast. sometimes i feel like even 2 years isn't long enough to convert the people that need conversion. which is everybody! when i get home i'm going to keep being a missionary in other ways like always giving the missionaries references. and always going out with them (cause i know i'll miss teaching and i'll miss the mission life a lot!) haha and i'll always feed the missionaries and be nice to them! lol well i gotta run. love ya so much.

       thank you for all you do for me. i love you. thank you for your support. i really hope that one day i can repay you. when i get home i'm going to go to school for a speech pathologist or get into law or medicine. i don't care if its harder than being a missionary i know i can do it even if it is a million years of schooling. xoxoxox