Hola Familia y Amigos!
So this week was good, I'll start with my spiritual experience for the week. We have been teaching a family for about a month now. A women named Liliana and her two daughters. We had talked to them about baptism two times and they said it was something they would like to do, but they didn't want to agree to a baptism date. So we agreed we would lay off for a couple of lessons and then we would bring it up again. So we started teaching them about the different commandments, they are wonderful, very humble and egger to follow the commandments. We taught them about the Plan of Salvation and they accepted without a problem, so that was exciting. So this week we had planned to teach them about the 10 commandments and the Sabbath Day. But when we got to the lessons. Kimico the 19 year old daughter shared an spiritual experience that she had, had with the Book of Mormon. She had a question and she prayed for an answer, after she felt impressed the read the Book of Mormon. She open the book to a random page and started reading and the verse she read had her answer.
After she shared that experience I could tell that we needed to teach about baptism, but I'll be honest I didn't want to. Inviting people to be baptized is always hard for me, I hate making people feel pressured and I just didn't want to do it, but despite the fear that I felt I knew what the Lord wanted us to teach. Hermana Campbell did too. We started in and talked about faith, repentance.. . . and we spent a long time on repentance ha-ha. I think we were both afraid and it was like "o.k. who is going to bring it up." So finally I shared Alma 7:14-15 and we talked about what we needed to do if we have truly repented and Kimico said. . . "Get Baptized." We talked to them for a while. Liliana wants to get baptized, even more then that she wants her daughters to get baptized but she is scared. All her friends are catholic, her families catholic and they don't like that she has been listening to us or coming to church with us. But she loves our lessons, she loves the peace and unity that her family has had ever since they started praying and reading the Book of Mormon. We talked to them and asked them what date they would like to be baptized. Liliana started with dates that are really far in the future things like that and it's hard to explain but a thought came to my mind and I knew what I needed to say. "Liliana the question isn't when do you want to be baptized, the question is when do you want to be cleansed from you sins." She looked at me and there was a long pause then her 16 year old daughter says. "Well how about this Saturday!" ha-ha technically they could have gotten baptized this Saturday but we agreed on the 16th on June.
I'm really excited for this family. They read, pray and come to church together and they are experiencing all the promised blessings that come along with the compromisos that we give. The only thing I worry about is that change. Catholic isn't a religion here, it's a culture. They are excited but they worry about what everyone will think of them. That's why we just really have to help them see that we respect the beliefs of other religions, but anything that is good and true in a church, is in our church, and what they don't have we do have. We have the Book of Mormon another testament of Jesus Christ. So they aren't in the water yet but I have a lot of hopes for this family. They will make amazing members of the church! I'm so excited for them.
This week I also got to use my sign language! We ran into some Deaf people on the street. I waved them down and we started talking. It was funny cuz at first we really didn't understand each other. The sign language here is really different! Even down to the finger spelling. But once we realized that our signs weren't the same we started speaking with gestures. It was amazing how we could have full conversations just with the gestures we were making up. Sadly they both live far away. I was really hoping we might get to teach them. But it was exciting. If nothing else at least it was a contact where the people were nice to us and wanted to talk to me.
So a little culture note about Peru. Or maybe about Latin America in general PDA is WAY too accepted in this country. Seriously. . . You would think we were on the BYU campus with how many couples there are everywhere. But the way the act defiantly isn't BYU approved. Seriously. Everywhere! EVERYWHERE! And I don't just think its cuz I'm a Hermana and I'm deprived or what not ha-ha, it's just the culture, they are very loving. . . in every aspect of the word loving ha-ha.
Also In case you don't understand just how Catholic this culture is, I took a picture for you all. It's a Virgin Maria. . . . made out of bread. Even down to the bread is catholic ha-ha.
Well that's about it for this week. I love you all!
Hermana Sadie Jean Taggart
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