July 8, 2015

 What the heck.  I can´t believe I finally get to write!!  This has been the longest week of my life!  Honestly, this is the hardest thing I have ever done... but also I have never laughed so hard and so much in my life.  I don´t have a lot of time, so I won´t be able to respond to every email, but I love you all!

First off, Peruvian drivers are insane.  Like they just zoom around at like 90 miles an hour and cut everybody and their dog off.  They drive 3 inches away from each other and never stay the lanes.  It´s terrifying, but also I´m super impressed with their skills.  They have to be way more aware of the cars around them than we do in the USofA.

The food here is amazing.  I am SO sick of rice though and it has only been a week.  We eat rice for every single meal.  Rice and chicken for dayzzzzzzz....  I love when they pull out the ice cream machine.  Yeah, I've already gained weight, nbd.  I blame the CCM people though, because they told us we are required to eat everything on our plates, so if we can´t eat all of something we shouldn't take it.  The only problem is that they dish the food for us.  What can you do?

Ya know how it gets overcast and warm when it is just about to rain?  It literally feels like it is just about to rain all the time.  I have not seen the sun, moon or stars since I've been here.  It´s constantly overcast.  It has only rained once and it was just mist.  It´s super weird.

They announced that Boyd K. Packer died last week and I cried.  He´s my favorite!

The people in my district are amazing.  Elder Cole Noel from Eden is my district leader.  He´s super great at it too.  He used to be a punk, but I love his guts.  Elder Barry is this kid from Cali who is in my district and he´s probably the funniest person alive.  We just laugh all day.  

We have two main phrases here in spanish.  Que en el mundo, and que bueno.  When we don´t know what to say we just say ¨que bueno¨.  (This keyboard is impossible)

Spanish is so hard.  We study it all day and I still don´t speak an ounce of the language.  We were put in companionships so that there is one person who has taken some Spanish in school and the other person hasn't.  I´m supposed to be the one who speaks Spanish, but I most definitely do not.

We teach lessons every other night to this fake investigator named Sara in these little tiny fake houses.  My companion and I have to write a script down in Spanish and just try to read it to our investigator.  She tells us about her life and we have to try to help her in Spanish.  It is the most frustrating thing in the world because I know what she is saying and what she needs, but I don't know how to say it in Spanish.  Our first two lessons were so bad and I just felt horrible after.  The spirit wasn't there.  My companion and I decided we needed to try to change that.

We both were given blessings and the next lesson we prayed about what we should do.  We decided to share our simple testimonies using all of the Spanish we knew.  Somehow we were able to share the feelings of our hearts and the lesson went really well.  It was a miracle.

We had to stand in line all day yesterday at the international police station so my district decided to talk to the people around us and try to share the gospel in our terrible Spanish.  We ended up giving out several books of Mormon and pamphlets.  It was super scary!

I want to share the biggest thing I've learned this week.  I used to want to learn Spanish so that I could talk to the people of Peru, but I've come to realize that I need to learn Spanish so that the Lord can talk to the people of Peru through me.  Like this has nothing to do with myself.  It´s all about being an instrument or mouthpiece for the Lord.  That has made learning Spanish so much easier.

On the fourth of July all of us Americans wore red, white and blue.  It was awesome!  The Latinas all wanted to practice their English so they would say, ¨happy four uh July.¨  The lunch ladies decorated the comedor with balloons and American flags.  The best part is that they fed us hamburgers, hot dogs, fries, onion rings, and pie.  It was amazing.  I cried.

I love that speaking only Spanish has helped me to go back to the basics of the gospel.  We only know how to say simple things so our testimonies and prayers are simple, but powerful.

I love being a missionary!  It is so hard and I´m tired all the time, but when we all stand and sing called to serve there is such power.  It is crazy how much I feel the prayers for the missionaries. 

I´m sorry if this isn't making sense.  I have a thousand things to say, but no time.  I love and miss you all so much!!!!

Con amor,

Hermana Harris

 We play volleyball everyday.  The Latinas love to tell us how to play.  haha