A new companion

Hello family!

Well, this week we had transfers. And the crazy thing is that my companion had transfers! I stayed here again in Canadá! Isn´t that weird? Maybe not for you, but for me it´s super weird. She only had one transfer here, and I already had two. But they changed her, not me. We didn´t understand why, and my companion was really sad.

But that day that we had transfers, we had a huge reunion with the whole mission. EVERY missionary in our mission was in the same chapel at the same time. That´s over 200 missionaries. It was one of the coolest moments of my life. We sang the classic missionary hymn "Called to Serve," and our mission president started to explain to us that he hadn´t really wanted to change all of us. But that it was the impression that he received from the Lord; that all of the changes that were made were made because that was what God wanted. My new companion is crazy; just to be honest, she is the last person that I would have chosen as my companion if I ever had to chose. But in these days, I have felt that what our president said is true. I really believe that I stayed here for a reason, and that I am with my companion for something greater than we understand right now.

My companion´s name is Hermana Paris, and she´s from Chile. I am with a sister from CHILE, named PARIS, in CANADA, in PERU still. What the weird, right? Lot´s of things going on there. Like I said, she´s crazy, but we are having so much fun together already. It´s going to be a great 6 weeks. 

I just want you to know that I know that God has a plan for us. He is in charge of everything we see. Like it says in the Book of Mormon, in 2 Nephi 2: But behold, all things have been done in the wisdom of him who knoweth all things.

I love you all so much. Have a great week, and remember that I´m always praying for you!

All my love,

hermana michelle scott

He shall prepare a way

Hello my dear, sweet family!! I am writing you on a sunny afternoon. I LOVE THE SUN. Winter in Lima is not the most beautiful thing in the world. It´s just cold and gray and humid and rainy. But, if you´ve got a smile on your face and a Book of Mormon in your hand, the cold´s not so bad ;) But today we have sunshine!! And that´s the best! So there is nothing to complain about.

Today we had a big P-day of all sisters. That was super fun. We just hung out and watched a movie, and played some funny little games. I kind of felt like I was at a Young Women´s activity at church. It was super fun and all of the sisters were just being...sisters. Hahah I don´t know how to explain it. But it was a great time!

This week has been really interesting. A lot of really small miracles have happened, and those are the reasons we keep working right? If we don´t have the results we want, we still need to look at the small blessings we have. For example, there is a family in our ward, the Familia Ynga, that is like 92 % inactive in the church. The whole family are members of the church, the grandma and the grandpa, and all of their children (8 in total), but only the grandparents go to church regularly. It´s really sad actually, but we love them all and we are visiting them and trying to get them back to church. The grandpa was inactive for YEARS also, but in the past few months has started going back to church and is active again. That has been a huge blessing and honestly a big surprise for his family. His name is Alfredo but everyone calls him "nene" which means "little boy" in Spanish. His wife is Elena, but they all call her "nena" or "little girl" :) they are the sweetest humans in the world! I love them so much. But anyway, el Hermano Nene is a little stubborn. We were telling him that he needed to talk to the bishop because the next step for him and his wife is entering the temple to get sealed! He was really nervous for the interview and really didn´t want to go. We went to visit them the day of the interview, and talked to them about enduring to the end. We talked about the importance of the family, and of the priesthood. He really understood the lesson, and afterward he told us he was going to see the bishop. He stood up and said "Let´s go nena. I gotta go talk to the bishop." (in Spanish, though) The bishop told us later that it was a super spiritual interview, and since the bishop can´t tell us anything that the hermano said, he just said "Trust me hermanas, he listens to you when you teach. He is one great man." So he´s getting ready to enter the temple with his wife! Its going to be a great time. We´re not sure when, but he´s in the process. He will be a great example for all of his children as well.

Something interesting happened with my companion a while ago that I never really explained. She had a period of time when she literally wanted to go home, and didn´t want to work. She would tell me that she was going to call the president, have an interview, and she was convinced that he would hear her out and send her home just like that. It was rough to see her like that, because I knew that she didn´t REALLY want to go home. Sometimes she´d be normal and happy, but something difficult would happen (cancelled appointments, lack of sleep, upset stomach) and she would get all depressed and just not want to do it anymore. I know how hard it can be, but during that time, I had to just put a smile on all the time and help her to get over it. There were times when I wanted to just tell her to shut up, or times that I wanted to just let her call president and let him deal with it, but somehow God helped me to have the patience that I needed to be able to help her. Patience has always been an attribute that I lacked...I still need to work on it actually, but I feel like I came to understand a little bit more about it. And there have been many times when she has had to be really patient with me. It´s really funny how the mission is. It can be so dramatic, but it´s the best time in the world. The other day I was pretty emotional, a little stressed out about some things and sad about the up-coming transfers, and my companion told me, "Hermana Scott, even though I never tell you, I really do love you. Don´t worry. Every thing is going to be okay if we trust in God." It just made me want to cry. I feel really blessed to have been able to see this great change in her. That is what this gospel is all about...forgiveness, love and change. I felt so grateful for what she said to me that day when I was a little down in the dumps. She reminded me of one of the most famous Mormon scriptures: 

And it came to pass that I, Nephi, said unto my father: I will go and do the things which the Lord hath commanded, for I know that the Lord giveth no commandments unto the children of men, save He shall prepare a way for them that they may accomplish the thing which He commandeth them.

I love how God teaches us. I had thought that I was placed with my companion to help her, but really it seems like it was the other way around. God does all that He does for a very specific reason, and He will be with us in each step of the way to help us understand and do what he wants us to do. 

I feel really blessed and happy. I hope that you are enjoying the last little bit of summer. We´re going to be leaving winter soon, so when it´s cold over there, I´ll be getting sun burned and enjoying the sun here :) I love you all so much more than you know! I hope this week is filled with little miracles and that you can understand a little bit more of God´s great plan. 

I LOVE YOU!

Con mucho amor,

Hermana Scott

Families are the best

Hey there family! I hope you are all doing well. This week has been super great, our area is progressing and changing so much. It´s still pretty cold here in Lima, but what really is a bummer is that it´s really humid. I feel like it wouldn´t be as cold if it wasn´t so humid. But that´s okay.

I wanted to share a sweet experience that we had yesterday. Remember how I told you about Nancy? We have been teaching 2 of her 6 kids, Jesus and Roberto. They are super great, but super shy also. They don´t talk very much, but they really like our visits. They seem to be understanding everything that we are teaching, and they are starting to open up a little bit more. Roberto is 15 and Jesus is 13. Roberto has been getting a lot more involved in the church and going to all of the activities. It stinks because Jesus is a little bit more shy and hasn´t really gotten very involved, and he wasn´t going to church for the past few weeks. Roberto went 2 Sundays in a row, but Jesus didn´t want to go. This week, we had a really good lesson with them both, and they were asking questions and talking a lot more. Yesterday, we went to their house to pick them up with a lady from our ward, Patty, and her son Sebastian, who is their age. Jesus was the first one to walk out of the house - he finally went to church!! It was so exciting. They became friends like right away, and Jesus and Roberto really actually had fun in the classes with the other Young Men. It was so sweet.

The best part? We all sat down together in the sacrament meeting, Nancy, Jesus, Roberto, my companion and I, and all of a sudden another one of her sons, Julio, walks in and sits down next to us too. He is a member of the church already, but is inactive and hasn´t gone to church for years. It was such a sweet moment, I couldn´t help but let a few tears out. It was just a sweet moment when a broken family could be all together to feel God´s love. 

Families are the best. We are always taught that we should always look for FAMILIES to teach, because we were put here in families to learn and grow and progress TOGETHER. 

This week is going to be really good, I´m really excited. It looks like we´re going to be having exchanges next week, we´ll know on Tuesday. It´s possible that they kick me out of Canadá, but we´ll see. 

I hope you have a great week, I love you and I will be talking to you soon!

All my love,

Hermana Michelle Scott

Submit cheerfully to His will

Hi family!!! I hope you are all happy today!! Today is a special day for Perú...it´s their independence day! Everyone has abandoned Lima to go to all of the pretty parts of Perú. That´s really just the truth...Lima isn´t that pretty. To me, it´s beautiful, but most people prefer the sunshine and the jungle. The wet, cold city life isn´t super appealing. I´m memorizing the Peruvian national anthem while maintaining my 100% gringa-ness. I am still American! But Perú is the bomb.

So this week some really intense things happened that have made me think a lot. I have been reading a ton and praying a ton, learning how to trust in God and His plan. There are 3 people I want to tell you about -

1. Nancy. She is a super sweet lady that we have been visiting for about 2 months. I think I mentioned her before... When she was 24-ish, she got baptized and was SUPER active in the church. She met a guy, fell in love, and she says that she got married to her husband, who was also a member, and the very next day he turned into a psycho. He has schizophrenia and never told her the gravity of his sickness. Basically, he took over her life and she didn´t set foot outside of her house for YEARS. When people came to their house, he sent his mom to the door to tell people that she didn´t know where Nancy and her husband were, that they had moved and she didn´t know the new address. I don´t know how it´s possible that nobody ever realized...literally, it blows my mind. But her husband abused her and treated her horribly. The weird thing is that her kids lived "normal lives", they went to school and everything, but they didn´t really understand either the intensity of their dad´s sickness. She says that one day,her son saw her husband hit her in the back of the head (trying to make her pass out or something), and that was the first time one of her kids had ever seen that happen after years and years of abuse. But that same day, her son helped her escape from the house, by locking the dad in the bathroom, they left (Nancy and all 6 of her kids), and finally escaped from him. That happened about 2 years ago. And now Nancy is living here with three of her sons. We are teaching 2 of them, and they are going to get baptized in August.

2 and 3. Saira y Hector. Saira and Hector are married members of the church, and they come from the jungle part of Peru. To make their long story a little bit shorter, they came to Lima because of an emergency...Hector has a really serious cancer that has spread to his spine and a lot of parts of his body. Basically every person that we talk to says that he has a very small chance of surviving. We visit them, sing hymns with them and teach them, and Hector always talks to us with so much love and patience. They have a 2 year old son that can´t live with them right now...he´s living with Saira´s mom. They both miss their son so much and cry when they talk about him. It´s  so hard to keep it together with them, not break down in front of their faces. But they both have so much faith; it´s truly amazing.

Even as a missionary, it´s sometimes hard to understand why these things happen. Why people have to face to many challenges in their lives. We are taught that in the scriptures we find all of the answers to the "questions of the soul." I put that to the test today, because I was really struggling to feel it after talking to these people about all of the hard things that they have lived. And the cool thing, is that I really came to feel it, and I found the answers to the questions I had. There´s so much more that I want to explain about this, but I feel like I never have enough time. But there is a scripture in the Book of Mormon that talks about a group of people that were living in slavery, and were being persecuted by "a wicked and corrupt people", look at what they did -

10 And it came to pass that so great were their afflictions that they began to cry mightily to God.

 11 And Amulon commanded them that they should stop their cries; and he put guards over them to watch them, that whosoever should be found calling upon God should be put to death.

 12 And Alma and his people did not raise their voices to the Lord their God, but did pour out their hearts to him; and he did know the thoughts of their hearts.

 13 And it came to pass that the voice of the Lord came to them in their afflictions, saying: Lift up your heads and be of good comfort, for I know of the covenant which ye have made unto me; and I will covenant with my people and deliver them out of bondage.

 14 And I will also ease the burdens which are put upon your shoulders, that even you cannot feel them upon your backs, even while you are in bondage; and this will I do that ye may stand as witnesses for me hereafter, and that ye may know of a surety that I, the Lord God, do visit my people in their afflictions.

 15 And now it came to pass that the burdens which were laid upon Alma and his brethren were made light; yea, the Lord did strengthen them that they could bear up their burdens with ease, and they did submit cheerfully and with patience to all the will of the Lord.

I know that every person is different, that we all live different trials, but God loves all of His children equally. Even though we don´t understand it perfectly, just because one person lives a harder trial than someone else doesn´t mean that God loves them less. So much of it depends on how we handle the trials that He gives us. If in the end we "submit cheerfully and with PATIENCE" to the will of the Lord. If we can understand that He really does actually have a plan for us.

It´s normal to have questions, to get angry and to be sad. That´s just part of life. But there has to be a moment when in our misery we turn to the Lord and accept Him, and learn to accept His son as our Savior.

Does this make sense?This is my testimony. That God is in charge. And He will make our burdens light if we trust in Him.

I LOVE YOU! Have a great week, and look for the blessings this week. Remember that I love you! Talk to you soon!

All my love,

Hermana Michelle Scott

Time flies

Hello family! I hope you are all well and that this has been a super great week for you!

You know the saying "Time flies when you´re having fun"? That´s really true. This week, my companion and I had so much fun and worked our little bums off, and this week has literally flown by. I feel like I was here just yesterday writing you on P day.

Yesterday we had a baptism of 2 kids. It was such a crazy time. We ended up having to heat up giant pots of water because the water in our baptismal font is ice cold. I don´t know how to explain it, but all day it just seemed like everything was going against us, it was so hard to get everything together. Satan really just didn´t want these little angels to get baptized! Satan sucks. But, he didn´t win, don´t worry. After hours of preparation and lots and lots of patience, both of them got baptized. After the baptismal service, the grandma of both of the kids said the closing prayer. In the middle of her prayer, she started talk about her kids (almost all of them are inactive, and ALL of them were present in the baptism), and she started to thank God that all of them were able to come to the baptism. She started to cry, and we could just feel the Spirit so strongly. When she finished the prayer, all of her kids were crying too, and they all stood up and started hugging each other. It was such a sweet moment, how this baptism brought them together, and how the Spirit was so undeniably strong in that moment. 

It made me think about how important the family is. I just wanted to tell you guys how much I love you and appreciate you. The family is the greatest gift that God has given us. And you 3 are the greatest gift that I have. Thanks for your support, your love, your emails. I love it so much more than you know!

I am doing well, great things are happening here and I will have a lot more stories to share in the coming weeks.

I LOVE YOU! Have a great week! 

All my love,

Hermana Michelle Scott

The gospel really changes lives

Hello family! I hope you´re all happy and doing well on this beautiful Monday! The missionaries are strangely excited and hyper today...I don´t know why. But it´s a good day!

Just so you know, I am an obedient missionary, but I just so happened to see the last 12 minutes of the World Cup yesterday. We walked into the house where we had our lesson, and it was like 4:00 in the afternoon here, and the game had started at 2, so we thought that it was already over. But when we walked in our investigators were glued to the TV, so we watched the last little bit of the game with them, and we saw the goal! It was kind of cool, it was the first time during the whole World Cup that we´ve actually watched part of it, so we weren´t really attached to either team. But the goal that Germany scored was honestly pretty sweet, I kind of wanted Argentina to win, but that´s probably just because I hang out with South Americans all the time. But it was pretty cool! The Germans are still partying I bet.

Anyway, we´ve had a really interesting week. The baptism we had planned didn´t end up happening. Usually, that´s a huge bummer. But this is actually a good thing, and I want to tell you the story.

So the girl who was going to get baptized is named Camila. She is only 10 years old, but she is the bomb. Her mom is a member of the church but is inactive. The rules of the mission are that the child of an inactive member can´t get baptized unless they have the support from another family member, someone who will be able to take them to church every Sunday. In Camila´s case, she has support from her grandparents because they all live together in a 5 story house. (Yes...Perú is an interesting place.) We´re working with the whole family because the two grandparents live there with 4 of their own children, all of which are inactive in the church. It´s a little crazy. But the two grandparents are active! ANYWAY, so Camila was going to get baptized on Sunday, but she wanted her uncle Moises to baptize her. It was really sad actually, because when we told them that he couldn´t, both Camila and el Hermano Moises were really bummed out. But since he´s been inactive for so long, he can´t do certain things in the church until he´s active again. So one of the Elders was going to baptize her. 

I´m really bad at telling stories....

But on FRIDAY, we had a lesson with Hermano Moises and his wife, Hermana Luisa and their two kids. I literally love this family so much, they are so fun and so awesome. We decided that we were going to watch a movie with them about Joseph Smith and the Restoration. We had to leave early because it was 9:30 and the movie still hadn´t finished, so they finished it without us. During the whole movie, both Hermano Moises y Hermana Luisa were super into it, asking questions and saying "Oh, I remember that!" It was really cute to see how excited they were.

...So on Saturday, the next day, the bishop told us that we weren´t going to be able to have the baptisms because the water was literally frozen and they couldn´t find the water heater. When we went to go tell Camila, she was obviously really sad, but Hermano Moises got this little look in his eye. He said "Why don´t we just wait one more month for the baptism?" They started talking about how after seeing the video of Joseph Smith, they stayed up late talking about how much they missed the church and how they had really felt the spirit during the movie. They told us that they had decided that they wanted to go back to church, and that Hermano Moises was going to do all that he could to be able to baptize Camila.

The next day (Sunday/yesterday) THEY WENT TO CHURCH!! Hermano Moises already talked to the bishop, and they are going to start the process of returning to the church. And Camila´s baptism is temporarily postponed.

What I´ve felt the past few days is that really, this church is true. We didn´t do anything...we just turned the movie on, they watched it, and THEY felt the Spirit. THEY felt the real desire to go back. We literally just brought the movie to their house.

I am always amazed at the Spirit that I feel when I talk about Joseph Smith. When we teach, I really know that these things are true. We get to see so often how the gospel REALLY, literally changes lives.

More next week. My companion´s name is Hermana Sullca, mother. Sorry I forgot that. 

HAVE A GREAT WEEK! Have faith in things that are true. Believe in miracles! And believe that there is someone bigger than us in charge.

I LOVE YOU!

All my love,

Hermana Michelle Scott

Companionship

Hello family! I hope you are all doing well! This week has been really good, we´ve been working hard and a lot of cool things are starting to happen here in Canadá.

Before I forget, I wanted to share a little experience that I had last night. So when my companion first got here, she really struggled with the change. She had been in her other area for 5 months, and it was her first transfer, so it hit pretty hard. But little by little, she has gotten used to the area. She is so much happier now than she was before, it´s a huge change and a great blessing. But I made a goal to tell her every day that I loved her, even though we still didn´t know each other, to help her feel loved even though she was far away from the people she had come to love so much. It was kind of funny, because she really isn´t very expressive (I feel like that's how people from Bolivia are...I don´t know, its not a bad thing, but that´s just what I´ve noticed.), so when I told her I loved her, she literally didn´t say anything. Every single night for these 3 weeks that we´ve been together, I´ve told her that I love her, but she doesn´t say anything. It´s almost awkward, a little bit funny, but it also kind of bummed me out a little bit. She didn´t even laugh awkwardly or anything...she just didn´t say anything. Hahah a little uncomfortable, right? But anyway, last night, as we were going to bed, she said "Goodnight" in English, and I was about to respond, but before I could say anything she said "I love you" also in English! She was already in her bed, and I was about to turn off the light, but when she said that I literally almost jumped up and down out of excitement! It made me feel so good, seriously I can´t even explain it.

WHY would that be so important? Well, for me, it´s something that I like...part of my personality. I´m a little bit over-expressive, so that´s just one of the 874 differences that we have as companions. Seriously, we are so different. But, it´s okay. We are taught that our success as missionaries starts in our companionship. If we´re struggling or fighting as companions, the missionary work will be 98 times harder and it will be super difficult to have success. But if the companionship works out their differences, and if they try to love each other even when things are hard, they´ll be able to see the blessings even in the hard moments, and they´ll have the "success" that they´re looking for, because they´re working towards the same goals.

They always say missions prepare you for marriage, and I used to think that was a little awkward and weird, but it´s really true. I guess I´ll figure that out someday in the future...the far-off future...

But anyway, that was a sweet little moment we had this week. Also, we finally met our new mission president! He is SO great, so sweet, and so excited to do the missionary work. He speaks Spanish too, so that´s super fun. We had a missionary-night activity last night, and he spoke. His wife also spoke, and she doesn´t speak Spanish as well, but since I´m also a gringa I could understand. I think the Latinos understood too, mas o menos :) All of the missionaries are super excited about the new president, we all know that great changes are going to be made and that we will see great miracles here in the Peru Lima East Mission!

In these next few weeks, we´re going to have some baptisms. It´s going to be super fun, I´ll make sure to take lots of pictures. I´m sorry but I´m not going to be able to send pictures right now, none of these computers have USB connector things. I don´t know how that works, but I promise I will send pictures soon! When I finally send them, there´s going to be a ton. That´ll be a good time. I´m sorry I can´t today but SOON!  I promise!

I was a little bummed on 4th of July, since it´s my favorite holiday (besides Christmas and Halloween...and Thanksgiving.) But the independence day of Peru is coming up so I´ll still get to celebrate the independence of someone.

Well...all of the missionaries are getting feisty. Fiesty. How do you spell fiesty? P day is going to be fun I think. This week is going to be great! I hope you all have a great week, enjoy the sun and all of the summer activities. I love you all so much! Have a great week, and we´ll be talking soon!!

I LOVE YOU SO MUCH! 

con MUCHO amor,

Hermana Michelle Scott