28th of July

Dear family and friends,

It's been the most normal week since I've been here in the office and I loved it! We got some work done in our area and were able to do two interchanges.  I was with Limeños (people from Lima) both times! 

The first one, I went to another area with a missionary named Elder Andrade.  That guy is so humble, I love it.  He's a good hard worker, and was actually one of our district leaders when I was a zone leader in Monserrat.  They just happened to have two baptismal interviews scheduled for that day, so I interviewed a ten year old kid named Ezekiel.  He was a pretty solid little kid and the interview was a good experience! Interviewing kids, or even talking to them, always reminds me of my sisters at home so I had that little image in my mind throughout the whole interview! 

The second one, I stayed here in my area with an Elder Parra, from a district in Lima called San Juan de Lurigancho.  That's the one with lots of people.  He's a really mature Elder, he's 24 or 25 years old and has a really solid view on missionary work.  He's in my old area, Bellamar, so we talked quite a bit about how that's going. I don't know how much I talked about Daniela, but she was an "eternal investigator" that we were teaching there.  Well, she was just baptized this past Wednesday! I was able to call her from Elder Parra's phone and we talked for about 10 minutes, it was really cool! So she'll be confirmed this Sunday, tomorrow.  I'm actually going to attend their ward this Sunday with President to help him train the ward for the "Open Chapel" activity to be realized in two weeks, so I'm super excited to see everyone there!

So it was Peruvian Independence Day yesterday, and I tell you what, they left me wanting more.  No fireworks? No barbeques? Wait, you mean to tell me the way to celebrate is just drink alcohol?? That's already done every day and more on Sundays! I will admit, most houses had little flags attached to the outside of the house, which was a nice little touch.  That was the only thing that was really different about it.  Oh yeah, and the normal 1 sol (Peruvian currency) bus fee jumping to 1.5 for the holiday.  C'mon man!  

Mmm...I kind of enjoyed the whole no-pensionista-for-breakfast-thing this week.  I made french toast a few times, which was the first time I've had that in a while.  I also did pancakes this morning, another little treat. They weren't like Dad's, but it was a decent attempt haha.

I was learning a bit about authority this week.  Many of the scriptures in the topical guide under "Jesus Christ, Authority" mention who sent Him, Heavenly Father of course.  The fact that he was sent by God gave him authority! The principle might be that we receive authority based on who sends us, who commissions us, etc. The reason that we as missionaries have authority is because we were literally commissioned by a prophet of God to preach the gospel, compared to anyone else, who might just "commission themselves".  I might have already shared this, if so, I apologize haha.  It's kind of silly that I'm just figuring some of these things out... 

My mom just informed me that I have 100 days left on my mission as of today.  I'm super excited to make it count, committed to not wasting a single one of them! My last 100 days as a full time missionary!!

Have a wonderful week, I love you all!

Elder Tanner Hart