8-26-2008 E-MAIL

AREA: PERU MTC
COMPANION: ELDER PUGLISI


This was the day Mike was leaving for Bolivia. I thought I'd share what
happened. We could use your prayers to help him get there soon.
Love,
Claudia

BOLIVIA HERE I CO....oh wait.

yaaaa...... So its 7 pm on august 26th and im still sitting in the CCM.
Turns out while we were here theres been some problems with the our visas.
So there are 20 elders who will be waiting in peru. IDK what the problem is
but the church has a bunch of lawyers over in Bolivia trying to fix it. The
plan right now is for me to be in the Lima East mission for 6 weeks. But we
could leave in like 3 days, i just dont know. They told us that really if
wed just gotten on the plane tonight they would have let us in but it would
have made some customs officials angry and make this thing tougher for the
next set of elders. So right now im pretty bumbed to be perfectly honest.
Ive heard so many things from the Santa Cruz elders that are here... about
like building chapels out of palm trees and just going out into the deep
jungle. And everyone says Pres Maynes is AMAZING. But Matt had to wait and
he's still alive so i guess i can too. And pres Nash (Love that guy, he use
to be over the tri cities) says that are calls will NOT be changed cuz our
calls are from the Apostles. And if they are I would be SOOOOOOOOO upset.

There are some cool things about this. Since the CCM is in the East
mission i get to sleep here every night, since thats easier than finding me
another place to stay. And my whole district is here too, so we get to see
each other every night, and i love those guys. Me and Elder Puglisi are
rooming together when we get home, and probably Elder Smith too. And i get
showers that won't kill me if i touch the shower head.

  So yaa about mail.... I have no idea what to tell you. I havent had mail
in a long time cuz everyone is sending it to Santa Cruz, and i dont think
its a good idea to send things here cuz i have no clue when im leaving. But
its also pretty depressing not to get mail... HAHA this is so frustrating.
So ya im still in good old Lima. I do like the place more when im outside
working so thats a plus, and I'll be way better at spansih for Santa Cruz
cuz of this, but we were all SOOOO excited to go so its tearing all of us
up.
 Well now that i got that out of the way i can tell you about this Park
thing we did on saturday, i have a pretty awesome story about it I'll share
at the end. So we went to the park from 9 till 6, and my job with Elder
Garcia was to contact people and try to convince them to go in, and also get
their information for missionaries. I now know the basic excuses that most
people give, mostly "No Hay Tiempo", or "Vivo muy lejos de aqui". its funny.
But we found some amazing people. We got i think 1,000 refurals that day.
Ok now i can tell you my awesome story. I have absolutey no doubt in my
mind now that Heavenly Father prepares people for us. So we find this little
short man named Franco, and we start teaching him, and he's not really over
excited but he's accepting it and says he's open to all religions, and he
said he'd have the missionaries over to teach him more. And then as we are
shaking his hand and thanking him he goes, "oh ya i forgot to tell you two,
last night i had this dream that I was standing right here in front of
Kennedy Park, and there were two glowing white people talking to me...."
Wow... It was crazy.

Ok so I've been on for a while, i better get off, i think i got everything i
need to say. I guess you should probably just keep sending my stuff to
Bolivia and they'll just keep it in the Mission Office.

Love you guys, sounds like everything is going well there, I'll be fine here
dont worry.  and hey... Im already a 12th done... so thats crazy i think. OK... Bye