Starting to get hot?

Alrighty Folks,

I hope all is well back home! I love and miss you all and I hope that everybody had a chance to feel the Spirit more than once this week. 

This week was amazing. Here in Iquitos, we are in the tail end of the rainy season so its starting to get really hot. The river is still rising and there are parts of our area that we cant get to because the bridges haven't been built yet. We have about 3 months before we will be able to get to every part of the area without using bridges. 

My companion Hermana Bautista and I have changed our focus. We are working more with less actives and new members.  We are also focusing more on getting people to church. We have been sending up a lot prayers. This week we walked into a completely packed chapel. We had 178 people! In our ward we have 2 sets of missionaries. Together we brought 22 less active members, 10 new members, and 11 investigadores!  When Elder C. Scott Grow was here he promised us that if we worked with the less actives we wold have more baptisms. We are truly seeing the blessings of this promise.

Well thats all for this week. Take care and lots of love!

Notes from dad:  Haley didn't have the bad Dengue Fever (the one where your eyes bleed).  She just had the not so good one (102 fever and aches and chills).  Thanks for all your prayers!  She is finally a temporary Peruvian.  She flew to Lima last week to get all of her paperwork finished.  While she was there, she got to enjoy some Dunkin Donuts and Papa John's Pizza...little bits of Heaven in the Peruvian Jungle!

Quick Update from Peru.

Elder C. Scott Grow and Sister Rhonda Grow

Hey everybody! 

Well this week was pretty awesome. We got visited by Elder C. Scott Grow and his wife Sister Grow. It’s always a blessing to be able to listen to a General Authority. I was thinking a lot about the mission language during his training. Elder Grow served his mission in Mexico almost 50 years ago, his Spanish is still really, really good. He works with his Spanish every day, not only teaching but he is also helping with the new Spanish translation of the Book of Mormon. There is a part in Preach My Gospel that says that we should always keep up our language skills. It says that the Lord has invested a lot in us and we don't know His plans for our language. It’s really true. We are blessed with the gift of tongues here and we should not waste that blessing. I feel really blessed to be here on m mission and to have the opportunity to preach the Word.

I was asked this week if it was easy to lose focus. I told them no because all I do is focus. It’s hard to forget when you try to live what you preach. 

Also this week our investigator Jhoyla got baptized. She bore her testimony and said that she would always be happy now because she was a member of the church. It was so sweet. 

Thank you all for your letters! I enjoy reading from all of you! I hope you all have a wonderful week!

Love from the Amazon

Haley

PS.  Also I got Dengue this week. Dont worry. I'm alright. Im doing much better now. I hope that you guys will continue to have a great week. Tell everybody hi for me! 

Punching dogs and falling coconuts...but it's all good.

Life here is good…still deathly hot and humid.  Sweatin’ out the toxins.  My comp had to go to Lima for visa papers on Friday. She said that it was hotter in Lima and it was almost unbearable. I’m grateful to be here in the jungle.

Ringworm is good. [note from dad:  Haley got ringworm from a dog named Panterra.  Gross!]  It’s all cleared up and I just have the marks now.

Life is good. My comp and I are working really hard to get families. Right now we don´t have very many.

The teaching is always good. We are on a high right now. We just gotta stay up there.

So, this week a dog tried to bite me and I literally punched it in the face. I felt really bad but it’s a really mean dog. Every time we walk by, the stupid thing chases us.  That dog doesn't bark at us anymore…which is really nice.

Also, my work bag ripped so we took it to a lady that fixes shoes. She fixed my bag up real nice for a dollar! [note from dad:  That’s just a little of the Virginian/Texan hick coming out of her]

...and I got hit with a coconut. We were teaching outside under the tree because it was hot. Well, its coconut season...one fell and it hit my arm…but it was a little one so it wasn't too bad. We ate the coconut too. It was really, really good.

I am going to cut my hair. It’s hot and it gets tangled really easy. It is time to cut it. Not too short though.

We started teaching this lady named Kelly. She's married but her husband lives with a prostitute [note from dad:  I guess it is as expensive to get a divorce as it is to get married] She has 4 kids and a testimony that is unshakable. This is her time. She was introduced to the church as a little kid but never got baptized and never really went to church. Well she was given a Book of Mormon but later in life she threw it away. When we talked to her about it she said that she had never been more repentant for throwing something away. She told us that at the time she felt that she shouldn't throw it away but didn´t listen to her feelings. Well we gave her a new one and she started reading it right away. We invited her to get baptized. She said that she would but that she was scared. Turns out that she has a mental illness that causes a compulsion to pull out and eat her hair. She was embarrassed because she would have to take out her hair piece in order to get baptized. We assured her that everything would be ok and now she is getting baptized on the 15th! It’s super great!

Love from the Amazon!

Haley