Week 37

Hey, how are you doing?  This week was cool, Sunday has come to be a bit of a depressing day, when all the people we have taught during the week and have invited to church don´t show up, but I have come to learn to be a liitle more content.  I'm tired of leaving a house and thinking "wow that was awesome", and then after that they don't progress.   I've come to learn not to be too trusting in what people tell me, because they can say what ever they want but if they don't show up Sunday it shows where we're really at.   Anyway, where there are downs there are ups also.  We met a few people this week that look promising, we worked more with the less active members,
some of the which actually came to church this week so that was sweet!  I feel sometimes that even though a lot of the people don't progress to baptism, for the least, there are usually better off then before, as far as being happy and more unity in the family and things like that.  At the same time it's just like WWWHHHYYYYY!   I've come to realize that if I don't teach someone like they're 5 years old, they have no idea what's happening.   I find way cool scriptures, think of cool ways to explain things, but in the end the majority don't get it.  (For example Me:" Brother Quispe, the gospel of Jesus Christ has been restored, the word restore means, to bring back something exactly as
it was before. Can you tell me what the word restore means?" Bro. Quispe: " Ummmm.... I.... I think it´s kind of like the faith, you know, follow the path of God, and read the bible."   Usually I hear that several times a day, so I'm always looking for the most miniscule ways to explain things.  Everything is going good, and I hope you guys have a great week.   I'll talk to you then. LOVE YOUR SON, Aaron (Elder Barrett) 

HI, this week was good.   Last night was awesome because my golden family is progressing well, and last night we went to visit them and they had some family over, so we took it as an opportunity to teach everyone, and at the end, the dad bore his testimony of the church and the book of mormon and that we have a prophet to his family.  That was so awesome because they are still not baptized, which should be happening soon.  There is just something we have to take care of first, we always worked a lot more with the less active member this week too, which was good.   We got one of the families to come to the district conference this week, which was sweet.   We blessed a baby yesterday too, that was only 2 days old.  We were at a less active members house, and their friends showed up with the new baby, and the dad said: these are the missionarys that have the authority of God and they can bless your baby, so that was a great experience.   It's pretty nice how much people look up to us and trust us.   Last Sunday another dad came up to us with his baby, and told us his baby is sick but he isn't able to bless it, so he asked us to. We are hoping we can get some baptisms, it´s just that nobody is married, or they look like a promising investigator but then they don't progress. We're out looking everyday for new people to teach.  There is a lot of work to do here and it needs to be balanced between the ton of less active, the retencion, and finding new people.   Out of time again, hope you guys have a great week, love you

Week 34

HI, hope you guys had a great new years eve and day. Here they burned a dummy which is a tradition here, so that was fun. It´s pretty crazy that it's 2012.  Wow, that is crazy Kyle is coming down to go to school, it seems like not to long ago I said good bye to him in the kitchen for his mission - that´s awesome!   Please say hi to them for me.  So this week was pretty cool.  I got a new companion, he´s really cool!  He is my first companion that is from Peru!  We met a pretty cool lady tracting that let us in her house, pretty much the most intelligent person (not trying to be mean) I've been able to teach so far.  She's a psychologist that works at the hospital - one of the few people that actually read the pamplets we hand out, but like all the cool people we meet to teach she is only home for the weekends every two weeks.  We did teach another lady last night that has very graphic dreams about the end of the world, so all in all, a
balanced week, ha ha.   I didn't even know people had dreams like that ( or at least so detailed) till I came to Peru.   It was kind of a tuff week to tract after Christmas and New Years Eve because the streets were
almost completely empty (because everyone is completely wasted), but that's why we're here to teach the word of wisdom.  Well that's what has been happening so far - hoping to see some of our people progressing.  It's pretty easy to get into the house here but after that not much
progression.  I'm out of time, love you, and hope you have a good week!, hasta la proxima

Week 31 - Amazon Jungle

Hi Mom, Thanks for the recipe! Oh my gosh! I´m sorry about Trace, I hope that passes without hurting him too much.  Yeah, thanks for asking - no, I don´t have a bug net.  Some rooms do, ours does not, but when you live in the Amazon Jungle, it´s kind of how it goes, I guess.  This week was awesome! We had a baptism, which was the crowning part, and today we went into the amazon jungle for p-day, which was awesome.  Tomorrow we have our Christmas dinner with the mission president.  It doesn´t really feel like christmas, when your in the jungle, ha ha. Man, when it rains here, IT RAINS.  Part of our sector gets flooded out, too.  Our pants aways have mud on them, and there is pretty much no point in polishing the shoes because it only lasts for a few hours until they look like they haven´t been shined in a few weeks.  Within one day my white shirts are brown.  As far as the other stuff, the people that were progressing stopped, so that is always really sad, but were always finding new people to teach. So I´m about 4 hours from Brazil and Bolivia, and in that space they are still finding groups of people that haven´t had contact with "civilization" so that is pretty crazy.  Has it been snowing back home yet? Anyway, once again I´m out of time, but I love you guys.  Here are some pics of the adventure, and Marcelina, the sister we baptized. Talk to you next week!  Oh yeah, so apparently I can call you Christmas Eve to plan the time I´ll call you Christmas and I get up to an hour or so to talk to you guys, as I have been told so that will be pretty sweet!