Hello! I can't believe you're doing stuff for me already, like housing and stuff. I know where Victoria's Place is. I used to walk past it all the time last year...it looks like a good place though. I'm not sure what I'll be doing for Spring/summer, but I can see myself staying in Provo a lot easier than I can see myself coming home. I love you guys so much, but I think after a mission, coming and living at home would be kind of hard. But hey, that's more than a year away. But you can go ahead and sign me up for a year I guess. That's a bummer about the pell grant. I almost made it. I asked President about if I could go on and sign up for classes, but he hasn't responded to me yet. I'm thinking that I'll ask him again and then next week see if I can go on. I know I can go on, I just need permission. Oh, and my companion is Hna Captain-from Arizona, but she was also an El Ed major at BYU, but she told me that the program changed last year. So I think it would be really good to go on and look at all that I need to do in the program. She told me she'd help me out with it though.
So results of the transfers....I left Guadalupe, which was about an hour and a half south of Chiclayo and I got changed to Jaen, which is about 6 1/2 hours northeast of Chiclayo! So much for staying in Chiclayo to be able to go and say goodbye to my old areas. It's probably very likely that I will end my mission here. I'm in Hna Machuca's old area, with Hna Captain, who is my "granddaughter" in the mission. I trained Hna Machuca, and Hna Machuca trained her! So that's pretty fun. And she definitely got the traits from her "grandma" in that she is the first companion (and probably only companion) that's taller than me! She's actually built kind of like Laura. She's tall, like 5'11" and she's skinny. Except where Laura is white and blonde, she's a little darker and has brown hair. I'll send you a picture of her! She's an awesomely hard worker, which is great, because I want to end my mission working harder than I ever have before.
So my new area is called Morro Solar, and it's part of a city called Jaèn. It's so green and pretty here! It rains a lot here too, which makes sense. I kind of reminds me of Waterton in a way. Like the Peruvian version of Waterton. And it kind of does feel like we're camping. It's super hot, and it can get humid sometimes, but hey, I just have to survive it for 12 more weeks and then I can come back and not have to worry about heat! Well...okay, maybe I will, but at least we believe in air conditioning :) the fan has become my best friend in the last 3 months or so (it was still super hot in Guadalupe too.) But that's sort of become my motto-"can I live with/without it for 12 more weeks?" I'm in the process of trying to give away a bunch of my stuff that way I don't have to lug it all back to the states. I'm excited to leave a bunch of it here. I gave the "forget-me-not" statue to Brenda as a birthday present. I left her a bunch of stuff, including my quad. I figured there's a better chance of me getting another copy of scriptures in english than there is for her, and I think she needs it more. I left her a bunch of other stuff too. I didn't end up making my gingerbread house. I didn't have time for it, and I didn't have room in my suitcase. :( So I gave it to Hna Case, and she was really excited to put it together. I told her to take pictures. If the elders would've gotten me my boxes sooner I would've been able to do it, but...well, what can you do?
So you get to talk about me this week! What a fabulous topic!! :) You know I love you guys. I'm not exactly sure what you want to talk about about me. You could pick an experience from one of my letters...This week was really cool, in that I was getting to know a bunch of investigators. It's so cool to see how the spirit works through us. That definitely is something that I'm learning how to recognize, how the Spirit works with me. I've felt the Spirit as I testify of things that are true. Like yesterday, we were teaching a man named Jose. He had some doubts about why we keep sunday as the sabbath day, and about how God, Jesus and the holy ghost were 3 different people. He thought they were all one. And so we pulled out some scriptures, and we showed him in the Bible where it talks about how the apostles gathered on the first day to partake of the bread, and we read the vision of Stephen, and how he saw Jesus on the right hand of God (I mean really, it's there in the Bible! Can you really get anymore obvious than that!? They're definitely distinct people!) But at the end, the thing that really helped more than anything I think is that we testified that we knew that these things were true. We challenged him to pray and ask God if the things we taught were true. I love being able to do that. It's like when I was little, I would go in and see Cameron eating a cookie, and I would say "What are you doing?!? You know you're not supposed to be eating a cookie!" And then he would say "Mom told me I could." "Na-uh...(insert emporers new groove clip here) and then he would tell me "Go ask Mom." And there it is. The test. To go ask Mom. And Mom will tell me the truth. Because I know that Mom doesn't lie. And it's the same with God. I love being able to tell people if they don't believe us to ask God. Because I know that God will respond to them if they ask and they really want to know. We also had another investigator, Estefanny. She started to read the Book of Mormon, and she got to 1 Nephi 4, and she couldn't accept that God would tell someone (Nephi) to kill someone (Laban). We explained so many different things, that God did it to help others know the truth, but at the end, we just told her she would have to ask God, if what was written there in the Book of Mormon was true. I guess we'll find out the next time we visit her what her answer was. And she said that that was what she would have to do, because she really didn't buy any of the other stuff we told her. But the beautiful thing is I know that if she asks God he will give her an answer.
This week though has been kind of hectic! It has seemed SO long! I pretty much threw all of my stuff in my suitcases Monday night, and Tuesday morning, we headed out with my 3 suitcases, and 2 suitcases of Hna Aracca (the only other sister than had changes in our zone) Our zone leaders had told us that our bus left from Guadalupe at 8:15 am, so we got there, and the people there told us our ticket was for 8:15 PM. I was NOT a happy hermana that day. I pretty much wanted to strangle elders, because I had stressed out so much to get ready. But it was good, because Wednesday morning, I got to see Hna Machuca and Hna Amelia for the first time in 4 1/2 months, and I was SO incredibly happy! Hopefully they just stay there in Chiclayo so I can say goodbye to them before I head back to the states. Our bus left at 2 in the afternoon, and we made it to Jaen about 8:30-ish at night. I'm excited to work here.
Well, HAPPY VALENTINES DAY!!! Even though I'm super far away, I love you all SO much! And I'm so glad that the Lord has given me this time to work as a missionary, to love these people with all of my heart! Keep on loving everyone, in spite of all their weaknesses!
Love you!
Hermana Williams
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