Guess What? Our Bathroom Works! - 10/14/13

My group when I arrived in the Piura Mission

My last photo with the other companionship in our apartment

Me with an elder from my district at the CCM

My first district in the field

Los cuatro de nuestro cuarto

Guess what? Our bathroom works! Not even joking. Our bathroom works! It's a miracle! I haven't had to use the plunger in like 8 days! You have no idea how much better you feel about going to the bathroom when you don't have to stress if it's gonna work when you flush it or not! hahaha but for real.

It has been a great week here in Piura. The weather is continuing to heat up and the mosquitos are getting thicker and thicker. And I am understanding more and more and I am growing to love Piura more and more. It's starting to feel like home. I'm starting to know my way around the city. I really do love it here.

On Tuesday this past week we went to meet with our investigator and talk about Conference. Before, we decided that we were going to bear our testimonies and then challenge him to be baptized. We went to his house and had a pretty good lesson with him about the ordinance of baptism and then bore our testimonies and challenged him to be baptized and guess what!? He accepted the invitation! He is planning on being baptized this coming Sunday right after our meetings! We are going to have it on Sunday so that many of the members will stay for it. Especially the ones his age so he can meet some of the people in the ward that he can be friends with. As President Hinckley said, every member needs a friend in church. We're going to talk to a lot of the people his age this week and personally invite them to the baptism! I'm so excited! It's so cool to see how far he's come from when I arrived. When I arrived he really didn't even have a testimony at all. It's so cool to see how he has been able feel of the Spirit's influence in his life as he is now preparing for baptism!

This week the other companionship in our apartment left. It was pretty sad when they left. We had all grown to be good friends. Our apartment is super quiet. It's weird walking into their room now and having it be completely empty! It's kind of nice though because now we have a ton more room for our stuff and have 2 refrigerators and 2 microwaves to use for this transfer. This week we spent almost an entire day getting to know their area, their investigators, and the members in their area. Their area is huge! Every time I'm there I feel super lost. I'm sure it will get better as I familiarize myself more with it. We were walking our first night there and we came to this lake. We have a lake in our ward boundaries. Whodda thunk that we had a lake in our ward. I sure didn't know that before! It's kind of nice having new people to talk to, and new doors to knock on. Even though we have to walk a ton I really think that it is going to be a great change.

Saturday night was some kind of holiday for kids. I think it is called Dia del niños. I thought about how McKay always talked about how there is a Mothers day and a Fathers day and how there should be a children's day. McKay, you should move to Piura. They have a day for that here! The whole day there were parties everywhere with little 6 to 12 year old kids running around screaming and music pounding. Saturday night we were walking back to our room and the music kept on getting louder and louder and louder and louder and when we finally turned onto our street we saw that there was this giant party in our street right underneath our room. There were probably like 200 people there. Little kids, teenagers, adults, EVERYONE! There were even porta-potties! This party was huge! At like 9:30 pm all of the little kids started to leave, but the adults didn't leave. They just brought out the crates of alcohol and started drinking and dancing. I was lying in bed thinking about how there was no way I was going to be able to sleep with the music pounding and then finally I heard the rain start. First time it has rained while I've been here. It had kind of sprinkled for a little bit on another day but it wasn't really rain. This was really rain. It started down pouring. I was so happy! Within about 15 minutes they had to turn off the music and everyone left to go home! It was a pretty cool little thunderstorm!

Sunday. One of the scariest things of the mission so far. My companion and I show up to sacrament meeting and we're sitting there and the bishop's messenger runs up to us. "Hey do you guys have talks you can give?" My companion nods like it's no big deal. I'm sitting there thinking to myself. "I don't know about him but I sure don't have a talk in my backpack that I can get up and read!?!?!?!" I was pretty scared. I quickly said a prayer asking for the gift of tongues and hurried and tried to think of what I was going to give a talk on in a language that I don't know. I figured that since I am a missionary and since we talk about the Book of Mormon all the time that that would probably be the easiest thing to talk about. When I got up there I just started to talk and amazingly, I was able to talk for about 5 minutes about the Book of Mormon in Spanish. Looking back on it, I honestly don't know how I did it. It was a super good faith building experience for me. I know that the spirit helped me through my talk. You always hear the scripture about opening your mouth and how the spirit will fill it with the words to say. It's true. Turns out I just had to try it to figure out that it's real. And, our investigator came to sacrament meeting! Without us passing by his house to bring him with us!

I sing my heart out in sacrament meeting because I figure that if I'm a horrible singer it's okay, because I fit in with every other tone deaf person in our ward! Haha. You would cringe in sacrament meeting during the hymns. They sing them a cappella and sometimes they sing a hymn and I laugh because that's not really how the hymn goes. Haha I love it here!

I'm so grateful to be a missionary here in this area. This ward is great. The members here in Perú truly are special. I love it here. I know the Book of Mormon is true. In Spanish and English. I know that this church is true and there is nothing I would rather be doing than helping others come to a knowledge of the Restored Gospel.

Love you guys! Thanks for everything!

Elder Baker!