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

Happy and healthy!

Buenos días family! I hope you are doing well, and that this week has been super great!

Wanna know something sad/cool/interesting/exciting? We have a new mission president! I was really sad that Presidente Ardila left, but he finished his mission. And our new President is American! The official language of the mission is going to be English. Just kidding, that´s just a joke. We´re still going to speak Spanish. That was supposed to be funny, I hope you laughed.

Well, this week has been really interesting, filled with lots of super happy moments, embarrassing moments, and really spiritual moments. Yesterday, we had a lesson with an Hermana that has been inactive for over 20 years. During those 20 years, she had 6 children, and none of them are members. Yesterday we met two of them, Jesus and Roberto. They are two teenagers, super shy, that really don´t know much about God. Their situation is really difficult, half of the kids live with the dad, the other half with the mom, and neither of the parents have a job, and things are really difficult. Both of them were really excited to listen to us though, and even though they didn´t say much, they listened really intently as we talked. At the end of the lesson, my companion and I both felt the spirit so strongly, and we invited them to get baptized. They both said YES, and we are going to be working with this family to help them find and know God.

Things are great, we are happy and healthy! Sorry that I haven´t sent any pictures for so long, next week a longer email and pictures!

I love you all so much! Have a great week!!!! Know that I love you! Talk to you soon!!

All my love,

Hermana Scott

You need to be strong

Good morning family! How are all of you? I hope that this has been a great week for you and that you are enjoying the lovely summer weather. It´s actually been relatively nice here, we´ve had some sunny days and I´ve been walking around with a red face just like always. It´s been pretty great!

Last week, I didn´t really know how to write a letter because I was really, really bummed. I didn´t even know how to pretend that I wasn´t sad, so I just decided to skip the whole public letter things. It´s hard for me to admit that I am struggling, I like talking to God about it because I know He doesn´t judge me. But sometimes He´s the only one who knows because I really don´t like other people to know that I struggle.

Why is that? I still don´t really know. I think it´s mostly pride. I sometimes think that as missionaries, we have this expectation to be happy all the time, and that we shouldn´t complain because we´re doing the Lord´s work! We really SHOULD be happy, because we´re doing the happiest thing in the world. Seriously, it´s a message of happiness. But, unfortunately, we´re not prefect. And sometimes we get sad too. And I got sad last week.

But then something truly incredible happened. We had transfers again, and my new companion came. She is also from Bolivia, and she came from her other area really sad and really discouraged. She talked about how sad she was to leave all of the members, and how she knew she was going to be okay but that she just needed a little bit of time to get used to the change. She has 5 months in the mission, and this is the first time she´s had to leave an area. I felt bad, she was crying and the only thing I could do was just listen to her. She talked one night about how her dad told her that if she left on the mission, he wouldn´t support her or talk to her or anything, and that´s really what happened. He didn´t give her anything for her mission, he didn´t go to say goodbye when she left, and he doesn´t write her now that she´s here. It is so sad, and it breaks my heart. Right before my other companion left, she told me something really specific and profound : "You need to be strong Hermana Scott." It sounds a little dramatic, a little bit like a cheesy movie scene, but that´s one of the last things she told me. And that´s really just what I had to do. I just kind of had to suck up all of the poopy things, and get over myself. I feel like these are words I´ve said before in other emails I´ve written you guys, but hey, it´s all about learning and growing up. 

I have had one of the best weeks of my mission, I have been so happy and excited every day, and I know that it´s because I´m learning how to forget about myself. I´m learning how to love the people around me with a real, Christ-like love. I know that I have a lot of things to learn, a lot of things to work on, but I thank God for this time He´s giving me to serve His children and work out my kinks in the process.

I hope you understand what I´m trying to say...I´m forgetting more and more English every day.

LIFE IS GOOD! And I am happy! And I love the mission.

One time a friend said this, and I feel like it´s perfectly true -

"Every day I think about you less, but every day I love you more."

Time is flying! I hope you have a great week, the next time I write you I´ll be completing 11 months in the mish! What the weird?! I LOVE YOU!

All of ,my love,

Hermana Michelle Scott