Mr. Boon

Hola!!!

Who's ready to hear all the cool/random/hilarious/awesome stuff that happened to me this week?? Everybody?? Eso!!!!

We decided to visit the Flia. Uscha again, after leaving them for a little while because they weren't progressing. We were walking around Zamora Huayco yesterday looking for people to take to church, everyone rejected us and we were thinking, great, another Sunday without people in church, this has never happened to me in my whooooooole mission. Which is when HNA Bravo saw HNA Sandra and Orlandito in the bus. "It's a sign!!! Let's go!!!" We went, shared the importance of keeping the Sabbath Day holy and asked them if they wanted to come to church that day. They said yes, so we said we'd come back at 1:30 to get them (church is at 2 now, Feliz Año Nuevo!!)

However, what we forgot about is that HNA Bravo and I have a problem. We talk too much. Seriously. When we cook food in our house and sit down to eat it, we could sit there all day talking about the most random things (ironically, yesterday we were talking about all the times we've made food for the missionaries.) Anyway, we spent so much time talking that we didn't notice the time, and by the time we got our rears out the door it was almost 2:00. We ran out, hailed a taxi and despite the fact that the Ushcas' next door neighbors who are members had already arrived and were yelling after us that they had left and there was no one in the house, we were undeterred. Unfortunately, they were right-there was nobody there!!! We went back down the mountain and I was praying in my head, Heavenly Father, I'm so sorry, we messed up, we talk too much, it will NEVER happen again, but PLEEEEEAAAAAAAASSSSEEEE get the Ushcas to church on their own initiative!!!!! We got to the chapel right as sacrament meeting started, fell into a pew and I started looking around to see who was there. When I finally looked to see who was in front of me guess who I found?? HNA Sandra and HNO Angel, and Erikcito of course. I nudged HNA Bravo and whispered (very loudly) LOOOOOOK!!!! The next thought that entered into my mind was-Heavenly Father is awesome. Seriously.

So then later that night HNA Bravo was like, I think we should go visit the Flia. Paz. They're a young couple that goes to our branch and used to be one of our mamitas until their schedule got so busy that they couldn't anymore, but they still love us a lot. Andrea has gone out to visit with us and Juan Carlos is a returned missionary. Anyway, HNA Bravo was like, I feel like we should go visit them, but I don't know why yet and I was like, uhhhh okay. The whole way there I was thinking, I have no idea why we're going to visit them but I'm just gonna trust you Heavenly Father. We get there and start talking to Andrea and she asked HNA Bravo how much time she had left in the mission and HNA Bravo said 3 weeks. Then Andrea got up and took out a book and said HNA when you get home you have to read this book, it's excellent. She brought it over and guess what it was?? The manual for the Eternal Marriage institute class!!!! I started laughing HYSTERICALLY and HNA Bravo got really embarrassed, but Andrea was totally serious. She went through the table of contents with us and was like, HNA if you're going to get married you have to be PREPARED, and in this manual there's a lot of great stuff, I am just learning so much. HNA Bravo I'm sure wanted to die, and I was dying of laughter!!! It was the most hilarious thing EVER. I'm still not sure why we were supposed to go there (we didn't get to share anything with them because they had to leave, although they did give us food) but it was worth it, although HNA Bravo wanted to kill me afterwards. Whatever. It was hilarious!!!

We are teaching a lovely lady named Olivia. She is the mother of one of the members here, HNA Paulina. Her home situation is a little bit difficult, because her husband doesn't really want anything to do with the church, although he is friendly. But Olivia is super sweet and already knows that the Book of Mormon is true and will be baptized the 22 of January. Pray for her so that she goes to church and so that her husband softens his heart a little bit and doesn't have a problem with her baptism!!!

We are teaching another lovely lady named Soledad, that we found this past week randomly knocking on a door. She is also very receptive and very sweet, but teaching her is a little bit difficult because of her very large, furry, hyper, but friendly and lovable Golden Retriever, Mr. Boon (yes, that really is his name.) When we come to visit he gets really excited and jumps all over us until we sit down, and then he tries to sit in our laps, lick us and basically invade our personal space in any way possible. Then when HNA Soledad threatens to take him out he lies down on the floor and looks at all of us with a "yo no fui" face (yo no fui=it wasn't me). But despite the fact that yesterday he tried to eat my scriptures, my bag, my umbrella, my shoes, my tiger keychain that HNA Blanca gave me, my legs and my face, I love Mr. Boon to death. He reminds me a lot of Boomer, except more yellow and less tranquilo. Plus I think he brings a lot of happiness to Soledad, because her husband died awhile ago and she lives alone with her two sons, and I think she has a few issues with the older one. I think Mr. Boon helps her a lot to not feel so lonely and for that I love him and will gladly deal with him even when he tries to lick my face, which you all know that I hate more than anything in the world. In fact, I don't even really like dogs. But Mr. Boon is delightful.

Anyway, this week was so fun. We cooked a lot, ate a lot, watched fireworks and burning muñecos in the street, found a bunch of people during the week but no one on New Year's Day, and I tried Hawaian Chicken and loved it. Right now we're looking for more people to put baptism dates on, pray for us so that we can find them!!!

I love you all. I love the work!!!

Hermana Chamberlain