Wow I can´t believe the year is almost over!!

Nov 26, 2012

Hola Familia Mia!! 

Wow I can´t believe how fast time is passing! It’s incredible! It is almost Christmas, this year has really flown by. 

So first of all-- I have great news from Chimbote!! Hno Roger baptized his son Jose Luis. I was so so so happy to hear this. I can´t believe how well they are doing. They are truly converted to the gospel of Jesus Christ!

Also I hope you had a great thanksgiving! We sure did. We celebrated with Papa Johns and Mangos!  It is always a great time to spend focused on what we are grateful for. I hope we can all be more grateful all year round. Can you imagine how great our lives would be if we were always in a state of gratitude. We would be looking for the blessings not the problems. What are you grateful for?  I´m grateful for Peru, the mission, my family, and all of the wonderful things God has given me. 

Today Hna Langi went home. It was quite sad, but it wasn´t as hard leaving her as it has been my other companions. California is a lot closer than Nicaragua or Lima. But we had a great time together and we made lots of good memories.

Remember when I told you about our wards here in Trujillo were being put together, and there were four missionaries in our ward. Well with changes President has decided to take out two of the missionaries. And it’s not the Hermanas. So yes.... along with Hna Langi leaving the elders are being taken out as well. So Yes I am being left with two huge areas and with a new companion. Yea, lots of hard work, but it will be good, we’ll have a lot of great investigators.

So my new companion will be hna Cevallos. She is from Ecuador, and we had the same trainer. So in mission language we are sisters. It’s quite funny. But it should be an interesting week, we are going to be walking a lot and exploring our new area.

So that is all that I really have to report on, I have learned a lot these past couple of weeks, of how I can be a better missionary and a better person. That’s what the mission is for, right? Every day, Every Investigator, Every Companion. It’s a learning process. I am learning and I know that I am so far from the kind of person I want to be. I love that we have the opportunity to repent and to come unto Christ. CADA DIA (EVERY DAY)! I am so grateful for the atonement and for the opportunity I have to be in this learning process.

eating guinea pig - cuey

I love you all!! And I hope you are ‘Decking the Halls’ at home! I know our room is ready. :)

Love you Lots!

Hna Sandstrom

¡Feliz Día de Gracias!

Nov 19, 2012

Hola Familia!

Como estan? 
Espero que todo esta bien con todos!

Congrats to Taylor and her mission call. I´m super excited to for you, but I´m sad I won´t get to see you before you leave!  And Congrats to Deb and Tyler! When are you due?

This week has been great! 

Last Monday we had family home evening with Maribel and Mercy. We made chocolate chip cookies and read some chapters from the Book of Mormon to them. It’s so fun to see them get excited about what they are reading. Their testimony is growing stronger everyday. 
Mine too :)

This past week has just been a regular mission week. Looking for the elect! I love being a missionary and testifying of our Savior Jesus Christ every day. I have the best job! 

So we have had quite the time getting a hold of Milton. I feel like things go so well when we teach him, and that he is accepting everything and wants to do what is right. But it kills me when we can´t get a hold of him. Oh well, we are going to just keep on trying! Because I know he knows its right, and he will be baptized! 

So this past week we had a Talent Show in our ward. A couple of weeks ago two wards were put together and a lot of the people don´t know the other half. So we had another Talent Show to get everybody together to try and unify us. It was great! So this time my companion thought it would be great for the four missionaries to get together and sing. Ha! That was interesting. At the last minute we grabbed two future missionaries from our ward to sing with us. We sang one of the songs for the Christmas program, Michael Jackson’s We are the World, but in spanish. It was great fun, lots of laughs! 

So here in Peru Christmas is in full swing! They don´t celebrate Thanksgiving so Christmas lasts two months long We have already been singing Christmas songs for weeks. I love it. 

So sorry that my letter isn´t that long, but I don’t have much to report on this week. But I want you to know how grateful I am for you and for all the letters I have received from you.  I am grateful that I too was born of goodly parents and that they have taught me the principles of the gospel in my youth. I am grateful for my siblings and the relationships that we have. Sometimes I still can´t wrap my head around the fact that we are going to be TOGETHER FOREVER!! I am grateful for all of my other family too. We have such a great support unit. 

I am grateful for my Savior and that he was willing to die for ME and suffer for MY sins. I am grateful for Joseph Smith and the courage and faith that he had to do what he had been commanded to do. 

I am grateful for my church leaders and teachers that have helped me learn about the Doctrine of Christ and how to love the scriptures!

I love you all!

Eat Lots of Turkey and Mashed Potatoes!!

And some PIE!

Love you!

Hna Sandstrom

dress alterations :) - who knew

Nov 12, 2012

Hola Family!

Wow what a week. The week was actually slow but it ended great last night! So let me rewind. 

So to start the week off we had the elections in the states. What an outcome. SO all day monday and tuesday members and people here were asking Hermana Langi and I about the elections. We really don´t have a clue about what has been going on. But they are all concerned here. Its kinda funny how big of an effect our elections have on other countries. Interesting. So now that Obama is staying for another 4 years, we´ll see if anything changes. :s

So one day last week we were heading down a street, we didn´t have any appointments and we had decided to go visit our Elders Quorum president, but we were taking some wierd side streets to get there. Well we saw a lady in a park and she came up to us, ¨Hermanas Hermanas, can you help me?¨We are kinda use to this, but she said that she needed help finding an apartment and wanted to know if we have seen anything. We thought of a few and decided we would meet up later to go look at them. The funny thing is is that she not a member, she has lots of friends who are members and has even been to our church before. She hasn´t found one that she likes yet, but we will keep looking. Hopefully we can find her one in our area, and then we can teach her. :)

So yesterday was the primary program in the ward. And Mercy and Johana were super excited for it. They had been practicing their songs and everything. They even invited a friend to come with them, and to participate! Maribel was doing missionary work right along side them talking to the little girls mom. So all the girls were supose to come in white dresses and the boys in their suits. But Mercy´s white dress from Her catholic baptism doesnt´fit her anymore. When they bought the dress they had to take it in because she was so little, but now that she has grown it doesn´t quite fit. So somehow I accepted the task to work on it.  I had about 30 hours with not alot of free time, to make a dress bigger, redo the beading and fix the waist. Haha So I have my little sewing bag that Sister Price made me, but I didn´t have a machine, or any advice from an expert (aka my mom or aunt tiff). I was a little nervous, because she didn´t have any other option.  Well church starts at 9, and at about 8 I finished the dress and we ran it over!

STRESS. But att turned out well!

This past week we could not get ahold of Milton. At all! He doesn´t have a cell phone and he changed jobs, he was working from 8 in the morning until 9  at night. It was kinda frustrating. We thought he was golden. So everyday we went to look for him. He is renting a room and I think everybody in this house is sick of us ringing the door bell to look for him! So as we went home last night kinda sad, we didn´t know what else to do to look for him. Plus yesterday was his birthday, poor kid. Well as we were finishing getting ready for bed, I was writing in my journal when the phone rang. Normally we don´t answer it after ten. But I knew it was Milton. I told my comp to answer it just to make sure, we couldn´t risk not taking the chance to find him. And guess who it was.... MILTON! I was so so happy to hear his voice! He called to apologize for never being home. But he said that now he has a cell phone :) I was so so happy. He said that he has been working like crazy, but now he is going back to his other job, with better hours for him to contact us. It was the best miracle!

thanks gma barker for lunch!

I´m so thankful that God answers prayers. I know he is mindful of me and my situations. He loves us so much, but he sometimes has a different time schedule. :)

I love you all. Give your family a love. They are the best thing every! 

I love being a missionary!

Love Hna Sandstrom 

Dia de los muertos

November 5, 2012 

Hola Familia.. Hows everybody doing?

I hope you all had a fantastic Halloween! They don´t really celebrate Halloween here but they do celebrate day of the dead (dia de los muertos)! It’s so crazy. It’s kind of like our memorial day but a lot crazier! We have a cemetery in our area so we went and walked around to see what all of the craziness was. They don´t put their dead people in the ground but they put them in these big cement walls. Some even build them their own little cathedral. But it’s a day when they come and put flowers on them, or they pay people to come and sing to them. But it’s craziness. Our Pensionista said that one year when there was a tsunami that a bunch of the cement walls fell down and there were lots of body parts floating all over. Haha, that would be creepy though.

Thanks mom for sending me the kids halloween pictures, Eveybody looked great! So big, but great!

So as for life in the mission field, it is great. This past week was a little slow, with the holiday and everything. But we are moving right along. We met a GREAT new investigator. His name is Milton. He is from the selva (the jungle), and he has only been here in Trujillo for about a month. The best part is.... he was meeting with the missionaries out there, and he loves the church and is really eager to learn more. He went with us the wards Party this past week, and he liked it, and he came to church in dress clothes! It’s great. When we were teaching about the restoration, I had the greatest feeling come over me as I testified to him that I know that these things are true. It was amazing how the spirit can teach. We have to follow it, we can teach in front of it or depend on our own knowledge. It’s all done by the spirit.

So Rosa... Well this past Wednesday we got a call from her thanking us for all that we have done, and for helping her out; but she wasn´t going to be able to meet with us anymore. She said that she had talked with the preacher from her old church and he said that she can’t be baptized again; because that is just a big sin to do it twice. So she listened to him.  But we weren´t going to let her go that easy. So we decided that Thursday we were going to go back and answer some of her questions. Well Thursday before our appointment she called and told us not to come back, but maybe in the future she would call us to come visit her. She said that the other preacher told her it wasn’t a good idea to keep meeting with us. It was so so sad. And we felt that if we could just talk to her, we could help her. But after thinking and praying a lot about it; we both came to realize that right now is not her time. A big seed has been planted in her life, and she is already living the commandments. But someday in the future, she will be ready.

 

Well I hope you all have a wonderful week!!! I´ll send you some sunshine from Trujillo!

 Love you with all of my HEART!!

LOVE, Hna Sandstrom