Eternal families and Pancakes.... Happiness

January 20th 2014

Happiness is an eternal family, eternity is one big circle, pancakes are circles, and therefore eternal happiness is found in pancakes and family!

So this week started out with a cinnamon challenge! The whole mission participated and your son, having one of the biggest mouths in the entire mission. Won! :) A sublime chocolate bar was the reward; after that, soccer and volleyball nothing unusual.

Tuesday I talked to one of my baptisms. I asked, how’s life? She started crying. She says, “Before you came I used to hide in my room. I never came out I was never happy. Now I’m just so happy and I don’t know why! My family and I spend more time together I feel love and I just can’t stop being happy.”

What a special experience for me. This is the effect the gospel has on people, they are just happy! And this week was one of the best! We went to our ward council where I, thinking of my dad and his work, asked how many people had a recommend. 112 people have the priesthood, 80 have been to the temple, and 25 have a worthy recommend! I was shocked! We’re starting the work this month to change that. I guess I bugged him so much our old ward mission leader well…. quit! Ha-ha. He went to the bishop and said I don’t want to do this anymore, so we got a new mission leader, a returned missionary. Wow he’s so great!

Jueves was a capacitiation with the mission president, and one of the happiest days in the mission. He started it off about the families, all about families. I’ve never felt the spirit so strong, I cried more than once (real men cry) and well…. through the spirit, I understand. I understand the temple, the importance of the convents, I understand families and the eternalness of them, and I understand the importance of family home evening. I know that when I go home and find a wife who’s kept her purity and virtue I will enter the temple with her and the sealing power and we will embark on our journey to exaltation and raising a family. I get it all. I was so happy. Words cannot describe what I felt.

Afterwards I GOT BOXES!!!

Happiness is found in eternal families, but also in pancakes, Christmas candy and Shaun White gum!! It was so awesome to get that. The hardest thing in the world is learning to share ;) Ha-ha… but it was amazing I loved it so much! Our Pinchianista’s family left to go be sealed in Lima. It was a sad parting for him because if there are changes this month I might leave Huaraz, and he said I was like his only son. He cried. He wanted a tie. He wanted the one mom gave me. I told him he could pick any other but not this one, so we made a deal. In 2 years he’s coming to Utah to come to general conference with my dad and me, and he can wear that tie to see the prophet! It’s amazing what I’ve taken for granted leaving in Utah.

Anyway with them leaving, I cooked! WOW so fantastic, I made macaroni and cheese, I made pancakes!!! I made chicken with 3 cloves of garlic half a purple union and a red apples sautéed with soy sauce and butter, and then fried chicken with corn flakes!! I died and went to heaven! Sooooooooo good!

That’s pretty much my week. Sunday we had 5 menos activos familias in the capilla. We’ve instituted a new program. We stop families in the street and ask if we can visit their house to do a noche de hogar! We come and spend 10min. We start with the “if you see a frowny face” song" I’ve got the paper with the guy HAHAHAHHAHA you should see the faces of the kids and adults when we flip that paper over :) ,eyes as big as Christmas. Then we share a short message, played “Don’t Eat Pete” with candy, and then leave. Just like that…. usually looking backing seeing the kids playing with the paper or yelling NO COME PEDRO!! The parents in the door thinking to themselves “who were those masked men?” ;) It’s so much fun.

The others things that happened this week were… People think I sound like George Bush, apparently he came here a while back and I sound exactly like him! Ha-ha yeah, ok. Then they also think my Spanish sounds exactly like the monkey from lion king ;) A lady in my ward gave me 2 horseshoes, she heard they were good luck in America, I ate more tocush, and a missionary gave me his sweater vest! Lucky sweater vest is back baby ;) Life is great, I am loving it. Missing my family terribly but we can be together forever ... with pancakes :)

Frio frijoles el fantastic,
(The fantastic Cool Beans)

Elder Grow