Peace, hope and miracles

Hello family!!! I hope you are all doing well and that this has been a great week. I feel like I always say that, but I really mean it!

 

Well, I´m writing you with tears in my eyes. But good tears; really good tears. I feel so happy and so blessed, I don´t even know where to begin, I don´t know how to explain how I feel.

 

Right now, I´m sitting in Surco. The place where I started my mission. I´m here because we had to do divisions today so that my companion can go to the doctor. So I´m here, in my very first area, almost a year later. As I was walking in the streets, I realized how different I am. When I started the mission, I was still so stubborn, a little too confident, and super prideful. Now, that doesn´t mean that I´m not still a little stubborn (still got lots of flaws....) but as I was walking around in these streets that I know like the back of my hand, I really felt that in the course of my mission, I have changed and grown and learned so much. It´s been over a year! Sometimes I can´t believe that a whole year has already passed, and I feel like it was just yesterday that I stepped off the plane, taking my first steps in a foreign land. I feel so happy, and I feel like God has blessed me SO much! It´s really just incredible.

 

I wanted to share an experience that we had this week. On Wednesday morning, we received a call from a sister that lives in a different area, but she had communicated with the missionaries in her ward and they gave her our number, and she called and told us that there was an emergency and that she needed us to go visit one of her friends. She lives in a city called La Molina, and we live in San Luis, but she works in our area with this guy. She explained what was happening, and her friend´s dad had already had cancer for a while, but it had gotten really serious and in the past few days it had really taken over his body and he was going die within a few hours. So she told us to go to her friend´s house at 6 in the evening, and we went with the elders so that they could give the dad a blessing, as well as the members of their family. So remember that in the church, men hold the priesthood of God, which is the power to act in His name with the intention of blessing God´s children. They literally can bless people in God´s name, the blessing being the words that God wishes to communicate with the person receiving the blessing. (I hope you understand my horrible English...it´s getting bad, sorry). When we walked into the house, it was such a sad scene. The dad was lying in his bed, perked up by pillows and attached to an oxygen tank thing, and he was already unconscious and totally out of it. It was really hard to see. And his kids, who are about 25 and 30 years old, just looked so sad. The look in their eyes was one of real pain and sadness, and tears just sprung to my eyes. We explained to them what we were going to do, what the Priesthood is and the reasons why we were here as missionaries...to be able to serve all people and invite them to come unto Jesus Christ. The Elders gave a blessing to the dad, and afterwards gave a blessing to the son (Jose) and the daughter (named "Lluvia" which means "rain" in English. cool name, right?) As soon as the Elder said the word "Amen" in the last blessing, the whole atmosphere of in the house changed. We all just kind of sat there for a minute, and looked at each other almost in shock for how strongly we felt the Spirit. It was a feeling that I´ll never forget. Afterwards, we sat down and spoke with them for a little while, explained a little bit about the Plan of Salvation, and scheduled another appointment to go back another day. Jose and Lluvia thanked us, and we left. When we were all outside (the 4 of us, with the elders) we just stood there for a minute smiling, with tears in our eyes. It was a moment when all 4 of us really felt that God had led us to that family and that they were ready to receive the gospel.

 

A few days later, we received a call from Jose and he told us that that same night his dad passed away. But in his own words, he said that he "felt a great peace" and that after we left, a feeling of calm and peace had filled them with hope. When at one point they were so devastated, they felt that they could accept the passing of their father, and felt that they had been changed by what happened that night.

 

So, now what? You can probably assume that we are teaching this family. You´re right! :) We visited them yesterday, and explained to them how the Church of Jesus Christ has been restored in these days by the prophet Joseph Smith. We taught them from beginning, and when we finished, they were all smiling and kept saying how they had been searching for the truth for so long and that they´ve finally found it. We´re going to keep visiting them and help them reach the point when they decided to follow the Savior and get baptized in His church.

 

That´s just one of the miracles that I´ve seen on my mission. But it´s a real miracle! THAT is a miracle. We have to find the sister who called us and thank her, and tell her how much has happened since that call she made, looking for someone to help her friend.

 

It makes me think of how my dear friend Emma Lattin invited me to church not so long ago. And, how even before that, Shelby Barton had invited me. I too was one of those people that needed to find God and find the truth. Through Emma and the entire Lattin family, all of the members of the Orchard Ward, and the missionaries that had so much patience with me, I too was able to come to know the truth.

 

Do you not see how true it all is? To me, it´s just too simple. I feel so blessed to be a missionary, to be able to testify of Jesus Christ and get to know so many wonderful people. Life is hard, and we all of trials and weaknesses and temptations and doubts. But God knows His children, and He has a plan for them.

 

I just want you to know that I am so happy. I love being a missionary, and I wish this time of my life never had to end. I also understand that someday you´d like me to come home ... ;) Just don´t worry about me. Everything is great here; I´m happier than I´ve ever been in my life.

 

I hope that you can learn to trust in God, and look for answers to your questions. Have faith in the Atonement of Jesus Christ and always believe in miracles. One of my favorite scriptures says it all perfectly: "...this is my life and my light, my joy and my salvation, and my redemption from everlasting wo. Yea, blessed is the name of my God, who has been mindful of this people... yea, I say, blessed be the name of my God, who has been mindful of us, wanderers‍ in a strange land. Now my brethren, we see that God is mindful‍ of every people, whatsoever land they may be in; yea, he numbereth his people, and his bowels of mercy are over all the earth. Now this is my joy, and my great thanksgiving; yea, and I will give thanks unto my God forever. Amen." (Alma 26 36-37)

 

That is literally exactly how I feel. I am a wanderer in a strange land, just like Ammon was so long ago. But it´s okay, because God is mindful of me, just as He is of each of you.

I hope you each have a great week! Remember that I love you SO much!!!

All my love,

Hermana Michelle Scott

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