The Gospel Fixes Families!

J Hey Famy!!

How is everyone doing?? I´m doing just dandy here in Moyobamba (aka the best place in the jungle) It´s actually been pretty cold this week. I love the weather here, but the only bad part is we still have to shower with cold water. When I was in Pucallpa it wasn´t a problem because it would feel so good when you would have a full day of work in the hot sun then come home and take your nice cold refreshing shower but now in Moyobamba we procrastinate our showers because it is SO cold. :P It´s also been raining a ton this week. But that´s ok. J I love walking around in my big black rain boots splashing around in the mud. J

My comp and I are doing so great. J She is one of the best comps I´ve had. She´s been a member for about 2 years and her testimony is SO strong. She is always pushing me to do better and not get complacent about my work. We teach really well together and we get along great. We also share a lot of laughs. J She is 29 though, and she is pretty self-conscience about her age, but I tell her all the time that she doesn´t look 29 at all! And everyone here in the mission always asks for your age, so I gave her my permission to tell people that she is 20 years old. J haha It´s really cute when she says that she is 20 she gets this “I´m telling a little white lie” face. She is awesome and I´m super happy that we get to have another transfer together.

Anyways, we had a baptism this week! It was Jimmy´s baptism this week. J I´m not sure if I have talked about jimmy to you guys but he´s really special to me. He´s 9 years old and his parents aren´t members but his older sister is. He´s pretty funny and he picks up on things quickly. His family have some MAJOR problems but my comp and I keep praying and stopping by his house in hopes to teach his parents. But something cool that happened this week is that his mom came to his baptism. His mom always looks so tired and beat. I can just tell she is so tired of her life. I would be too. They fight all the time in their family and sometimes when we go to their house I get this lump in my throat and tears in my eyes because of the stressful, unloving spirit that is in their home. But she was sitting in the front row for jimmy´s baptism and I watching her give little kisses to her other two little boys and touching them in a nice way. Then tears filled my eyes again but for a different type of spirit that I knew she was feeling. You could just tell the spirit working in her. She was more loving and had a smile on her face.

This is my favorite part about missionary work. When I can see physically the spiritual change in people, every time it brings such pure joy into my heart. I have so much love for the people here - they have stolen my heart. I feel so blessed to help families like jimmy. I know that the church is true and I know that this gospel fixes families. I hope everyone is home enjoying life and putting their families and the Lord first. It´s so easy to get caught up in day to day life, but we have to remember the big picture and remember the purpose of life. I love you all so much. I hope you have a good week. 

Love you all!

Hermana Price     

Scorpion Spiders and BIG FAT BATS - OH MY!!

Hey Fam!!!!

How is everyone going!? I’m doing just fine here in paradise. J I still love it here in Moyobamba in the Belen Branch. Things are really starting to progress. This week was a funny week. It started off SUPER slow. Last P day we went to the caves. It was about an hour and a half bus ride to get there. We went to this little village that is out by the mountains. I’m not kidding you; it was one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been to. We took this little hike that had this river with crystal clear water, and there was a family there playing around and swimming. (If I wasn’t in the mission I would have totally joined them, the water looked so refreshing and nice) There was also a little family who were walking the trail. The women had her baby strapped to her back with a blanket while her husband was leading their donkey up the trail. It was something out of a national geographic magazine. The mountains here are so tall and SO green. It was incredibly peaceful there. We were a group of about 16 and all of us were completely silent, there was a reverence there. Here in Peru, there are actually a lot of owls and they make this really cool sound that echoed in the canyon that we were in. Then once we go to the top there was this little hole in the ground. Our little guide pointed and said “here is the cave” It was SO much fun. But I have to tell you… If you have a fear of bugs the caves aren't for you. There were TONS of all sorts of bugs. Bugs that I haven´t even seen before. There were these spider things (a spider is the closest thing I can compare it to) but it had this FAT body with loooooooong skinny legs with these long antlers with too fat pinchers. It was like a scorpion and a spider combined. It was really cool. 

Then, mom you’re just going to love this… There are thousands of bats. BIG fat bats that would swoop down and fly right past your face. It was by far the COOLEST P-day ever. J But to make a long story short, we didn’t get back to our house until 7:30 at night and we are supposed to start our work again at 6. So Monday night we didn’t accomplish much then Tuesday rolled around and NO ONE was home. So we really didn’t get anything accomplished Tuesday either. HOWEVER by the end of the week, things started to pick up again. 

We found another family!!! YAY! They accepted to get married and baptized and they came to our activity that we had this week. They are really great. Also we have been working with the Sanchez family this week. We visited them Saturday night and we invited them to church. They told us that they couldn’t because they had to go work on their farm, Maria, the mom, told us she would really like to go but that they hadn’t done much work this week, and they needed to go. I was super bummed this family has had so much progress. They told us they would go to church if it rained in the morning. Well… we just set new goals as a mission this week, one of them being, to ask our heavenly father for miracles in our prayers. So my companion and I got on our knees Saturday night and asked for rain. We asked for a miracle. When we woke up in the morning it was POURING rain. J I know God not only listens to our prayers but He gives us the desires of our hearts. This Sunday the Sanchez Family came to church for the first time. J I love this work. 

I hope you all have a good week. Remember to pray with a purpose and don’t be afraid to ask for a miracle. J

Love, Your Sister Price. J

Hugs and Kisses!    

Passed Out and Old!

Hey fam. J

How is everything going!? These are going just fine here in Moyobamba. J We are still staying super busy and meeting lots of new people but…. Funny little story this week. So I broke out in this really weird rash all over my arms. It iched pretty bad but it´s not like I haven´t had a rash or something weird happen with  my health before in the mission so I didn´t think much about it. However sister Rider told me that I should probably go get it checked out so we talked to my Zone leaders and everything to got permission. So my comp and I went to the doctor and he said that it was an allergic reaction from all the bug bites. Haha! So he gave me some meds. He gave me a cream and then two different types of pills. So the next morning I took the pills like I was suppose to and by the afternoon when we got back to the house I passed out on my bed. The pills totally knocked me out!!!! I slept for two hours!!!! I think the last time I did that was my first week in the field! So this whole week I´ve been so out of it. Haha I feel like an old women. When I sit for awhile and then stand up to leave again my back always cracks. My ankles get swollen on a daily bases. Oh mission work in the jungle. J Just love it! Sorry this letter is so short this week but just know I´m doing great and I´m still loving it here in Moyobamba. It´s one of the best most helpful wards ever. J I hope I´m here for the rest of my mish. I love you all so much and I hope you are all happy and enjoying life. Life is so much fun isn´t it? J

Love, Your Hermana Price J

Hugs and Kisses!    

Wet clothes means your going to die from a cold?

Hey Family!

How is everyone doing!? I´m doing just fine. J Still LOVING Moyobamba. Seriously though, I think this is the prettiest area I´ve been in. This week we got to know SO many new people. So every week we have to report our numbers, like how many lessons we had throughout the week and all that stuff and every week we set goals of how many lessons we will teach and all that stuff, ANYWAYS, every week we had the goal to get 15 references and 17 new investigators and of the 17 5 should be families. 

Well… this week my companion and I had 21 references and 20 new investigators with 6 families! I don´t think I´ve ever had that much in my whole mission! We are getting to know SO many new people. So… I´m hoping as time goes on we will be able to have some more baptisms, especially familias! :D So the work is growing here in Moyobamba. Also I LOVE all the members here in my ward Belen. They are all SO helpful. We just got a new Branch President, He and his family are the BEST. My companion and I love their family. Their kids are so much fun and there is a strong spirit of love in their little home. They are just so happy and positive all the time. They also go out with us to visit a lot of the families we are teaching right now which is a HUGE help. Their little kids are just the cutest. They have this little boy, Jeremy who is 2 years old and there is this techno song that´s really popular down here, and whenever they put this song on he gets a huge grin on his face then he lifts up his hand and turns around in circles. It is the cutest thing ever. This family has stolen my heart. I really hope I finish my mission here in Moyobamba. The only down part about being here in my district leader… He is 19 going on 12. Haha! He isn´t every nice to us. He is super condescending all the time and it´s been a little difficult to work with him but every time I get frustrated I just remember this fireside we had the MTC in Utah. This fireside was just for the sisters and this lady talked about her mission and the things she learned and she said, “Sisters, if you have a district leader who is 18 going on 10, you can either decide to make fun of them or get frustrated and fight with him, OR you can help him with his calling and teach him how to better his duties” So sister Rider (the other gringa that I live with) are trying to be more positive.

So just a little side story, here in Peru and most of southern America they have this thing called “Carnival” At first I had no clue what it was, but slowly I´ve learned. It´s a celebration that is about a month long, and all the younger kids and teenagers stand in the street and throw water balloons or buckets of water at incident pedestrians. Well yesterday (Sunday) everyone is out in full force. So while we were walking to our Ward Counsel meeting we passed by a group of teenage boys. When they saw me I could tell something was going to go down. When they look at my white skin their faces say it all. I stopped walking and waved my finger and said, no….NO! I started to run and I think I screamed a little bit, and before I knew it…. SPLASH! I was dripping from head to toe. J When I got to ward Counsel all the women flipped out. (Everyone thinks that if you´re clothes are wet you are going to die from a cold) It was a fun experience. J Oh the things that happen in the Jungle. J 

I love my mission.

Have a good week everyone! Love you all.

Love, Hermana price

PS I have 10 months in the mission as of TODAY! WOOT! Love you.       

The Week of Miracles!!!

The week of Miracles. J

First of all this week has been one of the best weeks of my mission. We have found so many new people to teach this week!

Miracle numero uno (number one): So my comp and I left for this appointment we had with this one family but nobody was home… It happens a lot in the mission and I’m just kind of use to it. In the mission we have to invite 100 people to attend the church every week so we just decided to walk around and invite people to church. So we took this really weird road that we’ve never walked before We thought we were pretty lost when we saw this family pulling up to their house in the little motokar and I have 9 months in the mission so I have this like family radar so I made a bee line to their house to talk to them. We invited them to church but then asked them if we could share a message with their family for about 20 minutes, they agreed so we sat ourselves down in their motokar while they sat on the ground. We started talking about baptism and before I even knew it we invited them to be baptized and before I knew it they accepted. J There’s another family in our “Banco de Familias!” (Family Bank)

Miracle number 2: So this couple we’ve been working with, Nelson and Yanela. They are all ready to get married and baptized but to get married we needed copies of their ID and they couldn’t find their ID at all they had been looking for about a week and still couldn’t find them and time was running out so we deiced to go to their house and teach them about faith and prayer so we asked them to say a prayer asking Heavenly Father to help them find their IDs so Sunday rolled around and I was pretty bummed that they haven’t found them. But when we started the Gospel Principles class Nelson pulled out his manual and guess what was stuffed in their book… Their IDs! I started to cry right in front of the whole class. Haha :P They will be getting married this Friday at 11 in the morning and then Friday will be their baptisms. J

Miracle number 3: We have this family that we’ve been trying to work with for a really long time. They have this little 8 year old girl who wants to get baptized so bad but her mom and dad would never listen to us. But the other day we decided to give it another shot. They invited us into the house but the second we sat down the parents just left the room like always and I’m not one to baptize little kids so after about 20 minutes of just talking with the little girl we were just about to leave when in walks the dad all showered and clean with a white shirt and nice pants. He pulled up a little seat and said “Ok sisters, tell me what you got to say. Now I’m ready to listen to you” I just kind of stared at him for a little bit thinking I was in a dream. Haha That day we taught the whole family and this Sundaythey all sat together in sacrament. J They don’t have a date set for baptism yet but we have an appointment with them tonight. J

I LOVE Moyobamba. It´s beautiful and the people are so nice. We’re having success and Health wise I feel SO much better. J I know Heavenly Father listens and answers prayers. J I hope you all have a good week. J LOVE YOU!!!!!

Love, Hermana Price    

I AM MY FATHER'S DAUGHTER - LOVE YOU DAD!!

Hey fam!

Just another week in Paradise. J Moyobamba is SO pretty and the weather is a lot cooler here. I´m happy that the weather is cooler, but we still don´t have warm water to shower with so our showers are icy cold, but I kind of like it because it wakes me up in the morning.J So this week we´ve really been working hard to find new people to teach and the Lord has really provided for us. We are working with this one family  - Nelson and Yanela. Nelson is 20 years old and Yanela is 19. They live in this tiny little apartment, I don´t even want to call it an apartment, it´s just a tiny room with four cinder block walls. They have a little 6 month old baby who is so cute and always happy. They are probably the happiest little family I´ve ever worked with in my mission. This week they both accepted marriage and baptism. YAY! But they don´t have any money to get married. It cost 100 soles for the people here to get married which is about 40 bucks in American money. But we´ve already started thinking of ways we can raise the money. I´ve raised money for a marriage before and I´ll do it again. J I want to see them married and baptized so bad! They are so nice and have a ton of potential.

So something interesting that happened this week… I found out that I´m more like dad then I thought before. One day this week we were walked around and we decided to call this less active member to see if we could visit her. The pay phone didn´t work when we tried but then a noticed this nice little old man reading his bible so I asked him what he was reading and we started talking… J He asked me why there are so many different churches so we told him we could answer his questions and we asked if we could talk with him for a couple of minutes. He said yes so we sat ourselves down and started off with a prayer. It started off really spiritual -  we started teaching him about the restoration and the prophets in the bible. Then… someone else decided to join us… This random guy started talking with us. I´m not even sure what religion he was but all he wanted to do was bible bash with us. Usually we try to avoid people like him because we know that contention only drives the spirit away but we were sitting with the other old man and I knew we had to close with a prayer or I couldn´t count it as an appointment for my numbers at the end of the week. Haha So we got into it. I didn´t realize how much passion I have to defend the church. I had to keep telling myself to calm down and not yell at him. He was throwing all sorts of questions at us just to find a fault in our doctrine but from my studies I know exactly where to find every scripture in the Bible and in the Book of Mormon to answer his questions. Well of course it wasn´t his intention to learn from what we had to say so he eventually just left. We closed in prayer with the old man and he actually thanked us for our time to answer his questions. After that I took a step back and just realized what I did. I not only knew exactly where to find scriptures and hold my own in this battle of doctrine but I could also do it all in Spanish. It´s crazy how much I´ve progressed since I started this crazy adventure. J I love my mission. I´m really happy here.

Love, Your Hermana Price J        

ITS FREEZING HERE!!

Well it happened… last week was transfers and guess who had a transfer… ME! I´m no longer in Pucallpa, remember when we skyped and I told you guys about the different places we have in the mission? There´s Iquitos which is probably the most city-ish, then after that is Pucallpa that is city-ish but a little more like the jungle, then there is Tarapoto which is a little more jungle-ish than Pucallpa then there is Moyobamba which is the most jungle-ish in the whole mission, but I told you guys that they don´t send sisters to Moyobamba, I think grandpa must have prayed me here or something because guess who is here in Moyobamba…. Yours truly! It´s SOOOOOOOOO pretty here. One thing that I LOVE is there are mountains here! And the weather is actually really cold. So since I´m use to the heat I´m freezing here!! And I´ve given all my warmer clothes away so I guess I´ll have to buy some jackets. It´s also rained so much since we´ve been here. It's rained every day. It´s very beautiful here in Moyobamba. The mountains are so green and the white clouds hang low. I was actually pretty sad to have my transfer though. We all have different chapters in life and just like chapters in a book they all eventually come to an end. I was sad to see my “Primavera” chapter come to an end. I loved my ward, my district, my companion, and the success we were starting to have. You better believe I cried like a baby when I left. It´s amazing how much the people in your area become your family. I just need to be thankful for the time that I had with them and that I was able to spend Christmas in my favorite area with my favorite people from Pucallpa. However, I´m excited to start fresh in a new area. I´m looking forward to my “Moyobamba” chapter. Like any good chapter in a book I´m sure I will have my ups and my downs, my disappointments and my successes, and my moments of heartache and of joy. I don´t know what the Lord has in store for me here, but I´m excited to learn and to grow.

My new house is the nicest house that I´ve ever lived in and the fun part is that my companion and I live with two other sisters! :D Sister Rider (from Idaho) and Sister Quispe (from Peru) My comp is from Lima and her name is Sister Tenicela. She is 29 years old and has been a member for 2 years now. None of her family are members of the church but she is very spiritual and sweet. She´s a newby and has about 3 weeks in her mission. Anyways I love you guys so much and I hope all is well and that you guys had a good new years! I´m sure I will be sending some pics soon because it´s so beautiful here. J I love you all! Until next week. J

Hermana Price.