I am leaving tomorrow!!

Mi Querida familia

I am leaving tomorrow! AAAAHHH I am so excited and so devastated at the exact same time. Is that even possible? I am not nervous per say, but I am sad that I am leaving my beloved Bella Vista, but I feel so overwhelmingly excited to be finally going to Peru. I am traveling with another Hermana who just got her visa the same day as me to Peru. She is going to a different mission in Lima, but we will be traveling together.

I am jealous of the traditional canning of the corn ritual. It is so classic. I know exactly what happened throughout the entire thing. I can see it so clearly in my mind and it gives me warm fuzzies thinking about it. Gosh I love those family traditions. It seems like the more years go by the more bags we need to make for the growing families, but less people to actually do the bagging. Gosh life isn't fair :). Congrats to Kelsey Moore and her mission call to Colorado! I am so happy for her.

Ben is going to be a Senior?! How is that physically possible?! Gosh I love that little guy. Maybe he'll wish that he'd written me while I was still in the same country because that is infinitely easier that trying to write a letter to a different continent.

I don't have a ton of time because I am busy packing and all of that jazz. The first thing to do on this Pday before I leave the continent is to get a milkshake and then some peanut butter. Hahah... but seriously.

Our investigators have been a little flakey lately so we have been on the hunt for other people prepared to hear the Gospel. Miracles have happened in that regard. We have been knocking on a lot of doors without a tremendous amount of success until about two days ago. We knocked on some townhouses (generally a "dangerous" thing to do because no Hispanics live there, so you're in a great position to get a door slammed in your face from a white guy) and found a miracle. The first door we knocked was a woman named Silvia. She listened to missionaries 11 years ago in El Salvador and remembered Joseph Smith and the First Vision and tons of other things about the Church. She was genuinely interested in what we had to say. She got up off the couch and got her teenage daughter half way though the lesson to listen to us. It turns out that the daughter is attending Family Home Evening with an English family in Arlington, which is in our area. She was so excited to share with us the things that she'd learned at FHE. It was so awesome and we have an appointment that my companions are so looking forward to having with this family

The next milagro was with a woman named Sonia. We had a referral from the Elders that we were trying to contact, so we knocked on the door, but apparently it was wrong. Sonia opened the door and invited us in to share our message. She is from Guatemala and is a real gem. We taught her about the apostasy, to which she said, "wait, if the authority to perform baptisms was lost, who can do the baptisms today?" To which we launched into the Restoration of the Gospel. We explained how the teachings and authority from Christ has been restored to the Earth and that the Church has been reestablished as it was in ancient times. She got really excited to read the Book of Mormon and to pray about whether the church was true. We sure think she is super great. My companions are pumped to visit her as well.

Things are well for me and I am happy. I have attached some pictures of some of my dearest ward member friends. These members are so dear to my heart. I made a little bookmark with my testimony in Spanish on them and they all freaked out about how happy they were that I had thought of them. Hispanics are the best most loving people that I have ever met. I am sure going to miss these wonderful Saints ♥

I love you all so much and stay tuned for stories from PERU!

Con Cariño

Hermanita Christensen

PS the other picture was just something funny that I found as we parked on the street in front of a member's house. We do not like those vans- They give people excuses for not being able to come to church