Called to Serve: Peruvian Style: 2nd Week

Hola Familia!

So I have a lot of stuff to write you and not a lot of time! This week was absolutely full of surprises and adventures. Let me start with Saturday. Saturday we got to go street proselyting for the first time! They split all of the missionaries up into groups and then sent us all to different cities. I was in the group that got sent to the city that was farthest away. We went to a little town called Cieneguilla and we had some really great experiences. There are a lot of North Americans here at the CCM so they werent able to pair everyone up with a Latino. I was with one of my roommates who is from Utah and speaks less spanish than I do. We get on this bus and start driving away, the thing about Lima is that the nicest part of the city is right in the middle and as you get further away, it gets more and more ghetto, run down, and poor. We were sitting on the bus in silence as we drove through these cities and observed the living conditions of these people. They have huge ravines full of garbage and everything is really dirty. We got to our little town and got off the bus and they had a couple members there that were going to help us talk to people. The only bad news was that there were more missionaries that members so not everyone got to be with a teacher, including me and my companion. We got off the bus on this little dirt road, they gave us some Book of Mormons and some pamphlets, put us with our companions and told us to start knocking! Me and my companion were a little freaked out for about 5 minutes because we didnt have a teacher, we had no idea where we were, and we were going out to preach the gospel to random people in broken down houses in a language that we didnt know! We walked down the street, said a quick prayer, took a deep breath and started knocking. There were only dirt roads in this town so it was way dirty. The houses in this little town were really close together so it was really easy to go from door to door but the houses also looked like 4th graders had built them. Some doors were just made out of straight plywood and sometimes we didnt even know if it was door we were knocking on. There are so many stray dogs and chickens running around everywhere so it smelt really bad. Me and my American companion looked a little out of place. We knocked on a couple of doors and talked to a few people and then we felt that we needed to got knock on this blue door down the street. We walked over and a little old lady opened the door. She probably came up to my shoulder in height and we had to crouch to get through her door. We started sharing our message with her and she was very polite and listening and then I started bearing my testimony to hear about how the gospel can bless families. She immediately burst into tears and told us that she had been having some major family problems. We were both able to testify again about the gospel and I invited her to come to church the next day and she said that she wanted to! She couldnt read so I wasnt able to give her a Book of Mormon but it was still really cool. My favorite person that we met on Saturday was Emilio. We knocked on his door and he answered and you could see that he had a bunch of little kids inside. We felt like we needed to talk about the Book of Mormon and so I handed it to him and asked him to read the introduction and the invitation to read the BOM at the end of the introduction. At the end of the intro on the front page there is a scripture reference to Moroni 10:3-5. He was really interested as he was reading the intro and when he finished he pointed at the scripture and asked me if he could read it. I quickly found the scripture for him and as he was reading it, something in his face changed. It wasnt something drastic but after he finished he looked up and smiled at me with one of the most sincere smiles that I have ever seen and just started nodding his head. I asked him if he would read the BOM and come to church on Sunday and he said he wanted to and that he wanted to bring all of his kids! It was really great. When we walked back by his house ten minutes later, he came out to check on something and he still had the book cradled in his arms. We talked to 10 people total on Saturday and were able to hand out BOMs and pamphlets to a lot of receptive people. This city may have the most humble, poor places I have ever seen but we needed to be there.

So yesterday was a really scary day for us. My companion woke up really sick and I wasnt feeling super great either and even though I probably could have gone to class, I really felt that I needed to stay with her. She was throwing up all day and about 5:00 pm she went into the bathroom and the next thing I know, I hear another sister missionary running down the hall screaming " Im gonna go get help!" I ran in to the bathroom and found her laying on the floor and she was deathly white. She had passed out while she was throwing up and hit her head on the cement bathroom floor. I was sitting there stroking her head and talking to her and then President and Hermana Cardon came in and said that she was probably really dehydrated and that we needed to get her to a clinic for an IV fast. We carried her downstairs and got her into a wheelchair. She was so limp and frail and her eyes were glazed over and her face had no color. I was a little shaken up by it Im not gonna lie. The elders in our district gave her a blessing and then we went to the clinic. She has a phobia of needles and she was screaming and crying as they were trying to put the IV in. The stress on everyones faces was apparent. They got it in and we were able to bring her home last night but she was still really weak. Im happy to say though that she is doing much much better today and hopefully whatever she had is gone.

So our lovely roommates left for their missions this morning. I am going to miss them so much because we have gotten really close to them but I know they are going to do amazing things. I love my companion, I love my district and overall I really do love the CCM. Some days are really long but they are always full of laughs and love and it is really great! That is all I have time for this week, talk to you all later!

Love,

Hermana Allphin