Hello!
So I guess y'all wanna hear about my birthday :) It was good. It was one that I definitely won't forget. Well, we woke up, ate breakfast, and then we spent the whole morning trying to plan over a bunch of noise that was going on in the Plaza de Armas. But it was good. Hna Risso and Hna Machuca both called me, and it absolutely made my day! Then we went to eat lunch. It was good! I sent pics of what Gema and Neal "made" for me. Hna Kelly also made me a cake, which was really good. It was just the cake part, but in my opinion, that's better than the frosting here. Then we took my cake back to our room, we went and bought ice cream, oreos, and a milky way (it cost 3 soles, so it wasn't too bad) and then we had a "chick flick afternoon" by watching Legacy on our little dvd player that now all of the missionaries have to watch instructional dvds (but don't worry-since it's a church movie, we can watch it too). It was great. Then we went to the cemetary. It was actually pretty cool. Their cemetaries here are different than the other cemetaries in the states. They have a bunch of cement cubbies, that are all above ground, and they just kind of slide the coffin in there, and they close it with a slab of cement. I was thinking that it would be really interesting to see how the resurrection works, a bunch of people trying to break out of cement walls, but then I remembered that we put people in the ground, and somehow they are going to come up out of the ground...the resurrection will be a pretty awesome event, I think.
In the cemetary, we gave talks about the Atonement and the Plan of Salvation. It was actually really cool. I love feeling like the Spirit is just putting words into my mouth. Because I'm pretty sure that he does that a lot, actually. It's so cool to see how the Spirit works.
After our talks, we went, tried to talk to a few people, but soon it got late, and we went to eat. We went out to eat, chicken and fries. It was overall, I think, a pretty succesful birthday. I hope you enjoyed the pictures I sent!
I'm still waiting on the packages, maybe next week they'll come? We'll see. They've at least made it to Peru though which is the longest part.
So the highlight of my week has been our one investigator, Brenda. She's really trying to turn her life around. She's had problems with almost every aspect of the word of wisdom throughout her life. Right now she's just trying to quit smoking. The other stuff isn't a huge problem now. But on Thursday we gave her the pamphlet about the word of wisdom, and when we went back Saturday, she said that she loved it! She went to go smoke, but the something told her to go and pick up the word of wisdom book and start reading it. At first it didn't really grab her attention, but something told her to keep on reading. And she did. And as she read, she really started to like it. She said it just made sense, that her body is a temple, and that she really should treat it with respect. She's down to a cigarette every 2 or 3 days now and she's trying to do better. She has a little 9 year old girl too, and she's wanting to quit for her too. I love the gospel!! And then we invited her to church on Sunday. She said she was going to try and go, but she wasn't going to promise it. But we told her there were classes for her daughter, and this gave her more of an incentive to come. So we were there, Sunday morning, waiting for them, and they didn't come and didn't come. Finally, at the end of Sacrament meeting, we saw them outside the door! I just about cried! Afterwards we went to Gospel principles, and it was a good experience too! The teacher said just what she needed to hear, and he didn't even know it! Brenda participated in the lesson and everything too. She said she loved it. Then we had our 5th Sunday lesson, which included the branch president talking half the time about not taking things that you find in the chapel that aren't yours, and tithing settlement. I think for Brenda the first class was more interesting. But she said she loved it all. And she just really feels good! She's amazing. We just need to keep working with her, helping her and her daughter to really feel at home here, and see the blessings that the gospel will bring in her life.
Well, that was basically the happiness of my week. I love being a missionary! It really doesn't seem like I gave my farwell talk a year ago, that I've been gone for a year. But I love it. Every moment that's been hard has just helped strenghten my testimony even more. I love you all so much! I know that the church is true!
Hna Williams
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