Semaannaaa 6........

This week went by in a blink of an eye. pucha makina. 

(a little peruvian slang for you all) Last p-day was probably the funnest p-day I have had in the mission. We went to ilo and played futbol and volleyball on the beach with the ilo zone. SO FUN. I got fried but it was cool. Last night all of the sisters here in Moqueuga slept at the sister leaders house. Sleep overs aren't the same in the mission because all you want to do is sleep and you still have to wake up early haha soooo no pasa nada.  This week was full of lots of good stuff.

On Thursday we went to Arequipa. I was able to go to the doctor and we had our interviews with president Zobrist (the best pres in the WORLD!) He shared his testimony about family history which really touched my heart. Interviews with him are always the best because we talk about whatever and then get to the spiritual stuff. He's just so laid back. He told me that I probably do have changes next week so I'm a little nervous. I guess we will see! 

I don't have much to say this week but just wanted to share an experience I had yesterday. I have been feeling really frustrated and sad that I might have changes. Just feeling that maybe I haven't accomplished everything I need to here. You all know how much i LOVE moquegua. I have changed SO much here in my time here. I LOVE the people here. I love everything about Moquegua. I worked my very very hardest in this area. But yesterday I was just feeling a little down. So i knelt down to talk with my Heavenly Father and right before I even started my prayer a thought from my patriarchal blessing came into my head. It was just a moment when I realized how much my heavenly Father knows me. How much he loves me. He knows me better than I know myself. He answered my prayer before I even prayed. I guess what I want to share is that your Heavenly Father knows you. He knows your thoughts, the desires of your hearts. My mom was sharing with me a little about church yesterday about the song "I am a child of God" and how much the words of the song actually mean. It's so true. We have such a loving Heavenly Father and the more that we talk with him and come to know him, the more we will be able to understand his love. We are never ever alone!

I'll share with you guys a couple of super funny things that happned this week....The other night we were kneeling down to say our companionship prayer in the night before bed and I knew i was tired but my comp started her prayer and I don't remember anything more. I woke up in the dark still knelt by my bed hahaa. She said that she finished her prayer and said "amen" and I didn't move. She was feeling kind of bad like maybe her prayer wasn't good enough or something, but then realized I was sleeping. She said she tried to wake me up but I didn't move haha. My knees were sore the next day. Good times. Another funny thing happened when we went to visit hermano Luis Alfredo, he's my favorite. He doesn't have his knees or teeth and I LOVE teasing him because hes super serious. haha. He loves us. (we built his house for him with the zone) but we entered his house and it smelt SO bad. We both couldn't believe it. When we left we couldn't stop coughing haha it was so bad. So we went back a few days later to visit him and he said "hermanas! why didn't you tell me my house smelt so bad the other day?" I guess it had smelled bad for a couple of days and he couldn't figure out why...so he was searching around his house and found his cat, dead under his bed. It was probably the funniest thing that's happened. He said his cat had choked on a bone and died....I couldnt stop laughing. Maybe my sense of humor has changed but it was a good laugh. 

Anyways, Peru is still crazy. My comp says i'm getting crazier every change. I think its probably true. I love you all so much! Prepare yourselves for general conference this week! It's going to be AMAZING!!!! talk to you soon!!!

xoxxoo

HH 

 I cut an elders hair....it turned out SO bad haha...funniest thing ever.

 yummmm cuyi

 With my pensionista family. I LOVE THEM.

Just playing on the beach...my zone leader would not get out of my pictures.....

I love the mission....

I'm in an internet in Ilo. We drove here this morning because we are going to play futbol against the zone here. They played "daft punk" in the bus the whole way here...it was amazing.... I can't send pictures because this computer is really old. I'm sorry mom....BUT man this week was great!

After the dog bite, the stomach infection and the sun burn I was ready for a new weeek haha. You know I feel like when you are going through trials, there are big blessings waiting for you. You just have to push through the hard times to get to them! Me and my comp have been EXHAUSTED this week. The sun in Moquegua is getting hotter and hotter everyday. I'm pratically a latina now haha, but we worked so hard this week and we saw SO many miracles. We taught the most lessons I have had while i've been here in Moquegua and found 5 new golden investigators. But its not because of us, its becuase my Heavenly Father loves me and is watching over me and blessing me every single day. 

On tuesday night one of the members was accompaning (whaatt idk how to spell that) us and we were laughing at the end of the night at how blessed we were. We recieved so many references that night I thought it was a joke. WE ARE SO BLESSED!!! The point is, when you face trials in your life....big or small, fight. Push through them, because God is just waiting to bless you BIG time and its so worth it!!! I LOVE THE MISSION. I love all the dogs with rabbies in the streets waiting to bite you, and the thousands of mosquitos waiting to ruin your legs, and the water that looks like white soup. I LOVE IT ALL. haha. Really Peru is amazing. (i still love the US with all my heart) but I love my brothers and sisters here. 

Want to know what else I love...is the spirit. I feel invincible when I have the spirit. I feel on top of the world. It's probably the best thing ever when you are in a lesson and the spirit is so so strong and ya, it's the best thing ever. I invite you all to invite more of the spirit in your life. Because when you have the spirit and you can RECOGNIZE that you have the spirit it's the best. He's like my best friend and can be your best friend too. He's just waiting for you to invite him more into your lives! So that's my challenge for you guys this week, to not only invite more of the spirit into your lives, but recognize it and put your confidence in him!!

Last thing I will share..is that Peruvian hospitals are the most ghetto part of Peru. haha my comp was in a lot of pain yesterday (i think) and so we ended up going to the emergency room and being there for 8 whole hours of our precious sunday. I have some pretty funny videos to share with you guys after the mission. There is nothing more ghetto then the Peru hospitals haha. It was a great time for me. Don't worry my comp is fine. We waited 8 hours to hear that everything was perfectly fine :) 

I LOVE YOU ALL!!!
HH 

This is a poem/quote Kinzie shared with me today that I wanted to post because it's soooo good!!

Gods eyes

to friends and peers you dont feel like enough,

and trials you are going through are making life tough,

you struggle to look at yourself in the mirror,

and your pathway through life isnt getting much clearer.

the only way you can get through this strife, and finally find peace and joy in you rlife. 

is forget all the trials that youre going through. and look at yourself the way that God looks at you.

He knows your potential and worth of your soul, and to have you return is his only goal.

But to accomplish this goal, you must see that youre worth much more than all of the money on earth.

When you can finally look in the mirror and say, "im so happy with who I am today". Satan has no control, no matter how hard he tries. When you look at yourself as if through Gods eyes.

---

 Moquegua is super HOT!! 

 Sister Alvarez, Kinzie's companion.

Pizza!!

HAPPY!!

We woke up at 5:30 to play Futbol today, I love being in Moquegua because are zone is crazy united. It was cool. I also got my hair chopped off by a gay peruvian before internet. My hair is going to need some serious help when I get home. It's sad. But anyways....

This week was great. I decided to just be crazy happy about everything. I was overly happy this week. I think my comp got sick of it. I woke up at six to go running, and i was just happy about it. Julio told us he doesnt want to get baptized and I was just happy about it because maybe its not his time. We can only just keep praying for him. So the point is, just be happy. I bore my testimony yesterday in church about this. Everyone was getting up and crying and sharing how sad their lives are and how many trials they have. So i got up and shared how happy we can be in times of trial. I shared the scripture James 1:2-3. It's really not that hard to be happy.

I had a momento this week when I thought about going home. When my time comes and how hard that will be. I may not be the best missionary this misión has ever had, I may not speak the best spanish, or have the most baptisms. But i LOVE the people. I love my brothers and sisters here in Peru. Its going to be so hard to leave. So i just have to enjoy the time that I do have. (im not trunky or anything i was just thinking about this haha).

Anyways, this week was great. We are finding new people to teach and enjoying the incredibly hot weather.

I love you all!!!!! talk to you soon.

xoxoxox

HH

Changes.......

We had changes this week. Of course i'm still here training. A lot happened this week that I am excited to share! Last pday we made tacos as a zone and watched a movie. That is all we ever do because there is nothing in Moquegua. I couldn't even eat the tacos, so it was sad haha. It has been incredibly hot here this week, my hair is a whole shade blonder from the sun, for reals. It's a blessing but its hot haha. 

On friday the whole entire mission went to Arequipa to hear the presiding bishop (bishop stevenson) it was a really cool experience. We had to travel 10 hours in one day but it was worth it! It's amazing having these opportunities to hear these amazing men. I couldn't believe how small our mission is. There is not alot of us haha. He talked about 2 nephi 2. It was really interesting. We talked about how obedience brings blessings and blessings bring happiness. We all know this. But why is it so hard for us to do it? Satan wants us to think that disobedience brings happiness, sleeping in brings us happiness, listening to music brings us happiness? no, but thats what satan wants us to think. We know that with more obedience brings more blessings and more blessing bring more happiness. As missionaries we have more rules than ever, which means we have more of a chance to be more obedient and more of a chance to have more blessings and be more happy! I loved that. We even have the chance to be the happiest people in the world haha. There was a lot of things that he shared that i loved. 

On saturday night our stake had a dance off with a bunch of different types of dances from Peru. It was really beautiful. i LOVE watching the dances here and being imersed in their culture. It's amazing. 

We havent had a baptism in our ward here for a while and this week we put a date with Julio, an investigator that we have been teaching for a while. So I want to ask you all to pray for him that he can get baptized. He's super prepared but just a little scared so just keep him in your prayers:) 

I'll share a quick funny story that happened this week. We were walking to our pensionistas house the other morning for breakfast, on her street there are ALOT of bars. There not even really Bars just houses where people go to drink and they don't just get drunk they get completely wasted. It's really ugly. Peruanos like to drink, a lot. So there was this really drunk huge peruvian women in the street and she started to follow us to the house and was saying some really ugly stuff but we were just ignoring her because it happens all the time. So we knocked on the door of our pension and were just waiting for her to open it but she was taking along time and the fat women was just getting even more angry with us. So right when my pensionista opened her door the fat peruvian women punched me straight in the back of my head, so we all ran into the house and started laughing our heads off, it all happened so fast. Good memories haha. 

Also, my comp has this really strange accent that i couldn't understand for like a week, she doesnt say her S's. its super weird but i've picked up on her accent and now poeple make fun of my spanish....haha its weird how many different accents there are in spanish. 

Anways, I wanted to close with this scripture that I loved this week. Thanks for everything LOVE YOU ALL!!!

xoxoxox 

HH

D&C 78: 17-18

• Doctrine and Covenants

17Verily, verily, I say unto you, ye are little children, and ye have not as yet understood how great blessings the Father hath in his own hands and prepared for you; 

18And ye cannot bear all things now; nevertheless, be of good cheer , for I will lead you along. The kingdom is yours and the blessings thereof are yours, and the riches of eternity are yours. 

Week 41

This week was SUPER COOL because we got to listen to a 70's talk and it was maybe the coolest day of my life. I am forever changed. Elder Uceda came and talked to us and it was all just so spiritual and cool. First his wife talked and just burned us for like an hour and made us all feel horrible and then Elder Uceda talked and the light came back into the room and we were all just in awe. haha. I learned SO MUCH. Im not even joking when he talked you just knew it was directly from God, it was So powerful. He told us over and over again to KILL OUR FEARS. To get rid of them all. I loved that. He also talked about the voice of the spirit. If we truly know the voice of the spirit like the voice of our own mom. It was cool. I wrote all about it dont worry. We also went to Tacna for the meeting so I got to know Tacna. It's super close to Chile and a heck of  a lot bigger than Moquegua but i was happy to come back to Moquegua. I got to see hermana Bustillos. I love her to death. 

For my birthday my pensionista made me a cake and my favorite food. It was super cute and then we had a bunch of lessons that day. So i was super happy with how the day ended. 

I'm sorry I have nothing to say this week. Only that I love each and everyone of you. THANK YOU for all you all do for me.

have a great week

HH 

 Mi Fiesta

My comp...Hermana Alvarez

Thank you....

Heyyy everyone. THANK YOU for the birthday wishes. i feel super loved! i made sure to make ALOT of lessons tomorrow so that we didnt have time to celebrate my birthday haha. im in denial. 

But anyways, this week was GREAT!! I had so many experiences this week that Im excited to share. First of all we had a record number of people in church yesterday (52) so I was way excited. We had 6 investigators attend church yesterday. The past 2 weeks I have been praying so hard to see miracles in our area and Ive been feeling like He hasn't been listeing to me. But yesterday I felt His love SO strong. sometimes it is so hard to be patient hah. 

I had a really cool experience on Friday. I have been kind of really beating myself up about alot of stuff. Everyone keeps telling me everything im doing wrong (so that I can grow) but about my acne about my weight my comp always has a lot to say and i know that all of it is only so i can grow and become better but its been kind of getting to me lately and on Friday I had one of the most spiritual experiences of my mission. We were in a zone conference and my zone leader was talking about the atonement. But it wasn't a normal lesson about the atonement. Everyone of us could feel the spirit SO strong. After we got done we all just sat there in silence for about 20 minutes, enjoying the spirit that was there. None of us wanted to leave. I have been on my knees a lot the last couple of weeks and i just felt like this week a lot of my prayers were answered. I felt so strongly the love of my Heavenly Father and felt the spirit bare testimony to me of the power of the atonement. That Jesus Christ not only suffered for our sins, he suffered for our sadnesses. Our pains. He suffered for it all. EVERYTHING that we are going to go through, and everything that we are going to feel. I find SO MUCH strength in the atonement that I didn't ever understand before my mission. It's amazing when you can really understand the love that our Heavenly Father has for each of us and that our savior Jesus Christ knows us better than we will ever know ourselves. 

Last night I met Lorena. She is a single mom and is going through SO much. I have never had a lesson like we did last night.. I have never loved someone that we are teaching so fast. I wanted to do everything I could to help her and comfort her. This is something that I love aout the mission. The ability that we have as missionaries to see people differently. To see them as our brothers and sisters and the strong desire we have to help them. I hope thats something that I never loose. 

I love how much I am growing. I love all that i am learning and the people i am meeting. 

Thank you for everything. I love you guys.

Hermana Holt 

(still 19) 

Holaaaa......

This week went by super fast. Last p-day we played soccer and games. Basically nothing. This morning we starting building a house for a member in our ward that doesn't have legs. I had no idea what we were doing. Building a house here is like building a fort in your back yard at home. But he was super happy so i was happy haha. A lot happened this week but it was so fast sometimes i can't remember everything we did. The pictures that I sent is a family that we are teaching that we had a family night with. They don't have hardly anything and she didnt want to have a family night at her house because she didnt have seats for us to sit on. When we showed up that night for the family night she had bought plastic seats for us to sit on and was so excited for them. It was adorable!! We played games and ate chocolate pudding that we made haha. 

Another experience we had this week is that we met an old man that couldn't remember how old he was so we had to help him remember how many years he had and then ended up teaching him after, it was great. 

So basically the whole town of Moquegua has been worried about my acne so a hermana in my ward took me to a natural doctor the other day because thats basically all they believe in here and he like put a weird spell on me and made me a weird mud mask. It is an experience i will never forget haha and my acne got a little better. It was weird. 

We changed pensions this week, it was sad but we had to for some stuff that was going on. Our new pension is with some elders here and im super excited because she cooks healthy and is super cute. 

I wish i had more time to write, but I love you all! Thanks for being so loving and supportive!!

xoxoxox

HH