Week 95

LETTER FROM JORDAN - WEEK 95 (3/26/16)
Well this was a pretty crazy week here! We didn't have a whole bunch of time specifically for proselyting, but it was amazing!

Well to start off this week, we had another baptism on Wednesday! Another 9 year old girl whose name is Ariana.

We have been teaching their whole family and strengthening them and helping them get to the temple. Here they are:

David and Teresa, with their kids Estefany and Ariana

Our goal with these last two baptisms was to make sure that their dad was able to baptize them and not just have us do it, so we had spent a lot of time focusing on the dads to make sure they were ready to baptize their kids. One of our big focuses in missionary work, especially here, is our focus too on strengthening the members that don't go to church all of the time, and we have found a lot of success working with them.

Also this week we were able to go down to Trujillo for a few things. Friday, we had a huge multi-zone meeting, where our zone met up with the Caja Marca zone and the Sierra zone to learn from our mission president and his wife, and from the assistants. We do these about once every 3 or 4 months and get to meet up with a few different zones every time. I also got to meet up with one of my last companions, Elder Simper.

So after this multi-zone, we went over to the temple grounds and got to spend the night in the albergue (hostel) of the temple, which was probably one of the best rooms that I had stayed at in all of Peru. Then early this morning (Saturday) we got to do a session in the temple with all of the missionaries in our zone and with our mission president. It is such a blessing to have a temple this close and inside the limits of our mission!

Then we got back to our area and had a photo shoot of some of the cool places in our zone,
Pacasmayo, a famous beach city close to our area:

A few signs in the entrance of our area:

This has also been Easter weekend, and here Easter is celebrated really differently. They actually celebrate the whole week and it is called Semana Santa (Holy Week). They celebrate each day and remember what Jesus did on each of these days. And also they don't eat meat all week, just fish. But the biggest celebration for them is on Friday, which is kind of sad having them forget one of the most important parts which is Christ's resurrection on Sunday. They also do not hide easter eggs or anything of the sort, but it is a time dedicated to remember everything that Jesus has done for us. But with all of this, it is amazing to see how religion is just part of the culture here and almost everyone acknowledges his loving sacrifice.

Well, that's about it for this week, and we are really looking forward to these sessions of conference next weekend! I guess it will be until next Monday (April 4) before I write again, so have a good Easter Sunday!

Elder Terry