Hola de Sunburn City!

Hola! Sorry to fake you out like that, but we´re writing on Tuesday this week because we got back late yesterday from Cañete! We had a blast! 

All of us in the bus on the way to Cañete:

 E´Claros, E´Thorup, E´Isaguirre, E´Oroscco (I think?), E´Reed. 

Next row, E´Condori, E´Leon, the isle, E´Walstrohm (behind my head), E´Whitton. 

Next row, E´Burgos (not pictured), E´Warren, me, E´Urrutia.

Cañete!

A cheap lunch in an expensive restauraunt. 

We ordered portions of everything instead of ordering a main dish, then went to the market and bought palta and bananas. It was soooo good. I have a better picutre on another elder´s camera... for me, portion of rice+portion of yuca+portion of salad+avocado+banana=an amazing lunch for only 14 soles! (the cheapest main dish, chicken and rice, was 16 soles)

Todo está bien aquí en San Silvestre!

This week was a little rough for me right at the beginning. I was pretty heavily stressed out, though I´m not exactly sure why. I think I felt a lot of pressure with helping our investigators progress, while teaching E´Walstrohm, while worrying about being more obedient in our dormitory, and trying to work with our ward to work in the Obra de Salvación. I´m doing great now, but it was a rough Monday and Tuesday, as I was trying to make some time on Monday to write a letter home that I´ve been procrastinating for too long, and it didn´t end up happening.

We´re getting to know our sector, as well as the new elders in our zone a little bit better! Today we went on a big Pday trip to Cañete and had a great day in the sun, playing fútbol and spending time together.

So we just had the person running our internet café ask us how he can ´pertanecer a la iglesia´ [belong to a church] and if we had an invitation to give him. Luckily for us, our Stake Conference is this week, and with General Conference close as well, our stake made flyers, and I had one to give him! So we´re going to meet withVladimir on Wednesday at 8pm. We also invited him to check out mormon.org, since he has plenty of time in front of a computer each day.

We love the new way of reporting our work with less actives! I have been working as much as possible with less actives during my time here, and it has been our main source of success. Personally, I feel that I have been prepared by the Lord more to reactivate than to baptize. But as I have made sure to explain to E´Walstrohm, the more we work with less actives, the more we baptize. We just seem to run into miracles when we are focused more on being a blessing to our ward, than being able to baptize someone new.

E´Walstrohm and I are progressing in the First 12 Weeks, and he is doing wonderful. He has memorized the Missionary Purpose, our Comission, the key points of Lesson 1, the process of commitment, and the baptisimal invitaition in PMG. I made a web chart of everything I feel is the most important that a new missionary should know, and I am curious to know what you might think of it; if I should add anything, or revise it in any way. It has 4 main points, and right now we are focusing on two: PMG is everything, and things to memorize.

This past week we introduced Edith to a member across the street, which belongs to the other ward. It was an idea from E´Eklof, and it worked wonderfully. Even though they are in different wards, I believe that they will end up being great friends, and a great strength in standing firmly in the Gospel of Christ.

Right now we are working on Francisco, who is a little confused on how he can be baptized again with the authority of the Preisthood, even though he was baptized before, and the bible says ´one baptism´. He is 62, and loves to talk, and has a great testimony of the Lord, but we have to explain really well for him to learn. We´ve recently discovered this iceberg, and hope to ´melt´it this week, in order to help him set a goal date for his baptism.

Ok, just to share a spiritual thought, have you ever studied the Hymnal? Usually we don´t really think about the Hymns being scripture you can study, but they are! And they´re powerful! And once you study a Hymn, you come to love it, and it makes it even more powerful in terms of the spirit when you sing it, or listen to it. All of the Hymns have a scripture reference in the bottom corner to explain why we sing the hymn, or in other words, in which doctrines we should focus our thoughts when we sing. The Hymns bring the scriptures to life on a whole other level.

Well that´s all there is time for!

Cuídense! Love, Elder Hicken

Hurrah for Israel!

breakfast this morning! I made one of the boxes of Mac and Cheese, but I couldn´t resist experimenting, so I made it Mac´n´cheese a lo peruano. Yum.