I'm sure you're all wondering if I've floated away in the floods of Peru... it really is so sad. I guess the coastline has major flooding and landslides and they are covered in mud and water. They have shut off the drinking water and food has flown off the shelves. Food that cost 3.0 Soles a week ago now costs 30.0 Soles. They can't get drinking water and food to the people fast enough. People have died and thousands have lost their homes. Haunuco has had rain but not much. We are expecting a lot of rain over the next 2 weeks and the Huallaga River that flows through the city is kinda high and pretty crazy. There is not much food left in the stores here in Huanuco. There is basically no meat anywhere, and the road between Huancayo and Lima is washed away. I wonder what we'll be eating for the next few weeks? President has told us not to leave our area, and that we will not be traveling at all until at least April 15th. Pray for the people of Peru.... pray for all of us. This country will have a hard time recovering from this. Resources here are scarce. #PrayForPeru
Pictures are borrowed from Nick's (Luke's brother who served in Trujillo 2009-11) Pensionista Irma.
Pictures were taken in Trujillo, Peru
She lives in Chimbote, Peru, a coastal city.
Pictures were taken in Trujillo, Peru
She lives in Chimbote, Peru, a coastal city.
Thanks Irma!
Just like every single week in the Barrio Micaela we walk around contacting allllllllll daaaaaaay looooong. The days are long, but we usually see some good come from them. So on Wednesday we went out to contact and it turns out that we have already contacted almost our entire area. So we posted up on a corner after 2 solid hours of contacting rude people and getting rejected many many times we started to think of what in the WORLD could we do at that moment to find someone who would be willing to listen to us! And just as we were starting to think of ideas and make a plan, we could see way down the street a man from the ward named Tomas. He was like a whole block away. Elder Crosland looked at me and he said RUUUUUUUNN!!!!! So we started speed walking toward Tomas. But just when we were about to catch up to him a thought came to my mind, there was a lady right there.... "CONTACT THAT LADY!!" So I stopped and contacted this lady, her name was Valery (she was really nice but didn’t live in our area), so after talking to her for a few minutes, we started our speed walking again to catch up to Tomas. Just as we almost reached him he turned a corner and then we couldn’t find him. Well, we turned on our "super smelling senses" and took off faster and yes, we found him! It turns out we basically did a huge circle trying to find him. By the time we caught up to him, we found ourselves outside the house of a less active lady. Tomas asked us to visit her with him. We entered into the house and taught an amazing lesson to her and her friend named Fila. Fila is now our newest investigator!!!!
As I looked back at the situation later on, and as we were counting this as a huge blessing, I thought to myself, "if we never would have stopped to contact the lady on the street named Valery we possibly never would have found Fila and had the opportunity to teach her at that exact moment. We may have never found Tomas who led us to her." The Lord is so mindful of every one of us. His hand is evident in everything we do. I see that more and more each day that I serve Him.
After the great lesson with Fila I felt an urge to go and visit the Family Delgado. This family is very active, and we wanted to ask them for a referral to visit someone. We stopped by their house and it turns out that we talked to them for about an hour. We talked about how they are and a lot of the crazy things that they did before they were baptized. Brother Delgado told us how he had rejected the missionaries, he was very mean to them, and he kicked them out of his house while his sister was cutting their hair. He said that, that day still haunts him. He said that he wishes he could go back to that day and relive it, and change the way he acted toward the missionaries. Then he started to cry, he told us how his family loves us, and how we are good examples to his family and good people, and that they love this gospel so much and are so grateful for it. It was such a spiritual experience, probably the most spiritual experience that I have had on my mission with a family of members. They are great people and great members. We love this family.
We ended that day on such a spiritual high. Those are days that you don't want to ever end. The Lord blessed us and yes, the next day ... the SAME EXACT THING happened. Faith that good things will happen and hard work always pay off! Elder Crosland and I feel happy and we are ready to keep working hard! I love you all!!
Elder Christensen
#PrayForPeru
Luke and Elder Crosland
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