Week 61

Well I did not have transfers, and one of my companions did not get transfered so that is a success haha! I am with Elder Davila. Elder Davila has 2 months on the mission, and is from Lima, Peru. Since he is still in his first 12 weeks, I will be training him. Elder Brown got a new companion, Elder Blanco from Bolivia. We had a really good week! We had 6 people we are teaching at church and all of them are being prepared to get baptized. Nancy, Brigit, and Michael came. They will be getting baptized this Sunday, so I am really excited for that! Baptisms and conference this weekend! It should be a really good weekend!

We are also teaching Rosa. She is really cool. We met her this last Wednesday, and she accpeted a baptismal date, on the first contact. We taught her a couple times and she continues to get more and more excited. She went to church, and it turns out just about the entire branch knows her! They are probably kicking themselves, for not inviting her sooner. 

Sandra also was at the church. She brought 3 of her 4 kids aswell, so that was really cool. She has been taught by the missionaries a bunch of times, but this time, she is ready to get baptized. Her kids are all really cool too. She has 3 boys and a girl. Santiago is 3 years old. Diego is 8. Anderson is 12 and her daughter Carolyn is 17. I think we will be able to baptize the three kids that are old enough.  Sandra is getting ready to be baptized the 10th of October. (the next week.)

A member had a huge turtle, so we decided to take pictures. I think it is a aligator snapping turtle or something, but it can break wood boards with its mouth. (we tested it out. haha) 

Well that was my week. It was a great one! I hope that everyone has a great week this week, and can find time to watch conference. It is going to by great!

Love, Elder Sorensen

              Local Wildlife

Week 60

Well my companion had transfers this week..... Yep I have now had 6 companions in 6 weeks. It has been pretty crazy haha. Right now I am in a trio with Elder Brown and Elder Davila.  Elder Brown is from Layton, Utah he has 1 year on the mission.  Elder Davila is from Lima Peru and has 6 weeks on the mission. 

We have had a pretty good week, and it ended in a baptism!!! I was not planning on ending with a baptism, but it happened!  It was a really cool one and the spirit was super strong! She really had a change of heart and really wanted to be baptized. Her name is Jessica. She is a counciler for the town of Arenillas, so that is pretty cool!   We also have 7 other people that we are preparing to get baptized.  There are 5 who want to be baptized the 3rd of October, so that should be a good day! We will have Conference and 5 baptisms! The patience here in Arenillas is now paying off! We are finding a lot of cool people, that really want to find the truth. We did have a tough start here but little by little it is picking up. We are having an awesome time here and the work is moving!  We had 125 people at church so that was awesome! If we can keep it this high for 3 more months or so, they will be building a chaple here- so that should be pretty cool!  I hope that everyone has a great week, and I am looking forward to my week!

Love, Elder Sorensen

 

                             These bananas will end up in the United States.

                                    This is their current church

      View of the city from the church

                 $1.00 Pineapple

        Service with a smile!  

         Painting a house.

Week 59

Well another week down in Arenillas! It has been a week of work! We worked really hard talking to sooooo many people. We tracted for just about the entire week without success. The people are definitley a bit more hard to teach here, but at least the listen haha. It had been a long week here until Saturday. We found a lady that finally accepted a baptismal date! She went to the church a lot of times like 5 months ago, but her husband would not let her get baptized, but this last week she talked to her husband and he told her she can get baptized and then we found her! It was pretty cool. She was able to go to church as well, so that was sweet! I sent a district picture of us. I am District leader here. There are 6 missionaries. It is pretty cool because we have 6 missionaries in just one branch. We have met some pretty cool people but they just dont accept! It gets on our nerves for a bit, but it is ok. We can only invite the people to come to Christ. We cant make them do it. Well that is it for the week. It was just a week full of work. We met Sandra who will be getting baptized on October 10th, and we willl talk to her 3 kids to see if they want to be baptized aswell. I hope everyone has a great week!

Love, Elder Sorensen

Week 58

Well it has been an exciting week! And some more news...... I got transferred! I am now in a city that is called Arenillas! My companion is Elder Fuentes from Argentina. This city is pretty cool. The streets into all of the city is dirt and only the main street is concrete. I got transferred Thursday, so I have only been here for like 3 days, but I like it a lot! I am pretty close to Piñas. It is like 2 hours away, but that is pretty close to Piñas,  because there is not much around here.

 We don't have anyone ready to be baptized yet, but we are teaching alot of people.

 The Church here is pretty cool, because they don't have a chapel yet, so we meet in a broken down school.  They don't have a baptismal font so, we will be baptizing in a river!  It is pretty cool! 

I dont have much more to say about the sector, I am still learning about it and all, but it has been pretty cool.  A weird story I have. I was giving a lesson and a bee flew into my mouth and down my throat. Luckily I don't think it stung me. It got stuck there for a bit untill I finally got it out! It was pretty intense haha. Oh andI Don't have pictures because the memory card got a virus and I lost my pictures..... :(

 So I will be buying a new card this week. I hope everyone has a great week!

Love, Elder Sorensen

Week 57

Well another great week here in Diamante! Some more news my companion Elder Perez well ya he had transfers........ haha.  So ya I am now with Elder Gomez from Utah. I was only with Elder Perez for one week  haha.  In this mission we have can have transfers every week and so we really dont know when they happen. We have had a good time here though. We got Juliana baptized and had a great Stake Conference. We ended up getting the rest of Juliana´s family to church, so that was really cool. I will send pictures of the baptism next week, because this computer does not want to read my memory card. We have been working hard to find some other people, but have not had a ton of success finding people to teach this week. We talked with a bunch, but they all did not want to listen to us. 

Right now we have Anibal and Kati who are the siblings of Juliana who are getting ready to be baptized  September 19th  and they are doing really good. I think their mom will be having her baby this week as well. So they are pretty excited there.

We also have the Tapia family who is getting ready for their baptisms September 25th. They are excited and we just have to talk with them more, to find out a couple of problems that they may have. 

Everything else is going really well here. I am still excited to work and we may be baptizing Justin this week, so that should be good! I hope that everyone has a great week! 

Love, Elder Sorensen

Week 56

Well  we had quite a good week! It was a good time! I have a new companion it is Elder Perez. He is also from Peru. This is now the third companion from Peru that I have had. haha We worked really hard and we also completed our goal of 56 baptismal invites in the week! Some people accepted and went to church and we ended up having 5 investigators with baptismal dates at church. We also found a family as we were contacting that went to church! I always thought that just talking to everyone on the street would never work, but it finally did! I will talk about them a little later.

We had the baptism of Joseph! It was really cool. His mom who is a less active member went to the baptism and to church Sunday to see him recieve the Holy Ghost. We also talked to his dad who is not a member and he told us that he is glad that his son is taking this step and that his son is an example for him. 

Also the daughter of Esperanza went to church. She has gone to church 3 times now and will be getting baptized this Saturday! So we will be having a nother baptism this Saturday. It will be the third Saturday in a row with baptisms. 

Now to the family that we found. It is the T family. They are super cool. It is the dad Mario. The Wife Mayra and their 3 kids. Leandro is 11 and the others are too young to be baptized. We found them Thursday night  went we were just inviting pèople to be baptized. We talked to the dad and after a while the wife came and then the son. We ended up inviting them to be baptized September 26th and the accepted it. We have had some really good lessons with them and they ended up going to church on Sunday. It was cool to see them there and they really liked it and said they will be back this next week! 

Well that was the week! I am super excited to keep working here in Diamante. The people here are ready to hear the gospel and a lot of them are accepting the gospel. It is cool to see that the Lord is preparing all of these people! I hope that everyone has a great week! It will be stake conference here for us this coming week!

Love, Elder Sorensen

Week 55

Well another week has gone by and it has been a great time here in Diamante. We have been super busy teaching everyone and have been finding a lot of new people to teach.  Jordy did end up getting baptized and it was a lot of fun. There was quite a bit of young men there and he was super excited to have all that support. His mom ended up going to and it was cool to see her there supporting him.  

We also were able to find a less active mom who has a bunch of kids that are not members. We talked to her Saturday night and she told us she would go the next day. When we passed by for her in the morning she was all ready to go with one of her daughters. The two of them went and enjoyed church a lot. That night we passed by to teach her and her daughter and we found two other kids that she has and taught them. We had a really good lesson and in the end the 3 kids accepted baptismal dates. The will be getting baptized the September 19th. It should be a cool baptism. The mom is pregnant right now and I think next month she will be having her kid aswell. Should be a pretty cool month for them! As we left the meeting the mom (Esperanza) told us that she really liked the church and she wants to go every week now.

Joseph also went to church and will be getting baptized this week. He is really excited for his baptism and is really smart. When we follow up on the stuff that we have taught him, he remembers it all. His mom told us that she will be at his baptism and aswell as when he recieves the holy ghost the next day, so that should be cool. Hopefully it can get her going to church again. 

The other people that had to go did not get to church so we just have the one baptism this week but the next week, we could have a lot. This week we have the baptism for Joseph. The next week we have the baptism for Justin and for Jordan and maybe for Elizabeth. And the 19th the kids of Esperanza.

It was a pretty good week, and we are ready to work hard again. It is awesome to see the work coming together and see how happy everyone is to receive the gospel. I hope everyone has a great week!

Love, Elder Sorensen