Hermana Stone: Peru, Lima North Mission: TRANSFERS!

Familia!

Soooo this week was crazy! First of all, thank you so much for the package. AND FLOWERS. AND CAKE. You know me so well. It was a little bit of a miracle that she could find us. After internet last week we all met up in a park to say who has cambios and as you know, I got changed! I am now in the area of San Felipe and it could not be more different than Los Angeles. Sometimes I feel like I am walking the streets of California or something. My comp Hermana Gomez was laughing so hard because when I arrived I kept saying things like "Wow there's grass!" "The buildings are so pretty!" "Do you see these flowers?" "This tree is in the shape of a bird!" It's seriously gorgeous. The people are a little hard though. Everyone works a lot and are obsessed with plata aka money! We keep running into the problem that when we try to contact people and share our message they tell us that they are content with their life, that they respect what we're doing, but we should focus our efforts in finding people who don't have a concept of God or aren't happy. I want to tell them to stop being prideful and that they're not as happy as they can be but I think that's a little looked down on. Also, my new area is super small! When we're contacting only about 2 people in every 10 live in our area. And only 1/2 of that will listen to us. But we're smiling and laughing and working our tails off. I know that there's someone here that God is preparing, we just have to find them. It reminds me of the scripture that says something like "Many are contacted and few are chosen" or something like that ;)

My new companion is named Hermana Gomez and is from Mexico too! I love the Mexicans haha She is really sweet, has a beautiful singing voice, and we are from the same group of the CCM. This is kind of hard because we both feel super inexperienced and unprepared but I guess that's part of the fun. Our house is part of the house of some members. They are named Yuri y George (Yoyi) and are soooo cool. They always invite us over for a minute at the end of the day for bread and cheese and tea. They do all of the laundry for this part of the mission. Over 100 missionaries! For service we helped fold white shirts for 2 hours. I actually love folding laundry because we can just talk and have fun! My new zone is cool. My Zone Leaders (a trio) are all hipsters and I think we'll get along well. I am getting to know my new area pretty well. We did get lost in a different city on accident the other day but after asking about 4 people for directions we found our way back from Lucyana to San Felipe haha

This week we had a really interesting experience. We are teaching a woman named Brenda whose husband is a gringo! He doesn't speak any Spanish and I, with Elder Pond one of the zone leaders, was able to teach him in English. It was so weird because, obviously I have a testimony in English, but I learned the lessons, the scriptures, and a testimony in Spanish. He also is an athiest and it was interesting trying to explain God and Jesus Christ to someone who has no belief in either. I don't think that he is going to accept our message, but I can only hope that he will support his wife in learning more. It was a good experience for me to really share what I believe. In English nonetheless! We are working hard to find new people to teach and trying to drag people to church which starts at 8 am. It's a little rough but we have faith haha Our ward is small- regularly there are 80-90 people that attend. We have to teach the classes if the teachers don't show up. Yesterday we had to teach gospel principles and I was like.... uhhhh I can teach the Restoration.... we ended up reading a lot of scriptures and word for word from the manual haha next week we'll be better prepared. Thanks again for the love, the prayers, the flowers (seriously, lo maximo!!) Stay sweet,

Savannah