Transferred to Las Viñas!

¡HOLA! How are you, my dear familia? Today is a sunny day here in Lima. We´re getting ready for the heat!

Well, this week was transfers. I always feel like they´re never going to come, that I´ll just get to stay in the same area forever, but that´s just not how it works. Once again I had to say goodbye to so many amazing people that I love so much. But I´m happy here in my new area. It´s called "Las Viñas." It´s part of the La Molina stake, and I was in this stake before when I was in Cieneguilla. So the church buildings where we go for our meetings and P days is the same building that I used to go to! That´s pretty fun. I´m sure I´ll get to see lots of familiar faces during General Conference :)

I have two thoughts for today. One, thinking about how much changes stink sometimes, and how difficult they can be. I was talking to one of the sisters that I live with now, and she said that she always tries to look at the transfers as little snippets of what it will be like in the real world. Changes happen in our lives; big ones and small ones. And we have to be ready to go down the path that God lays out for us with faith. 

Being converted to the gospel also requires a lot of change. Like it says in the Bible Dictionary about conversion, "Denotes changing one’s views, in a conscious acceptance of the will of God. If followed by continued faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, repentance, baptism in water for the remission of sins, and the reception of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of hands, conversion will become complete and will change a natural man into a sanctified, born again, purified person—a new creature in Christ Jesus. Complete conversion comes after many trials and much testing." We must be willing to make these changes to one day be perfected in Him.

Another thought I had is just this...I´M STILL HAPPY! Even though it literally breaks my heart having to leave an area, I have come to love this work, and I know that wherever I am, I need to keep doing it. My area is really different, the people are rich and the streets are dead (complete opposite of Canadá) but it´s beautiful and we´ve got lots of work to do. We live with two other sisters...that´s just dangerous. We laugh a lot and don´t get enough sleep. :)

I´m excited for spring and for summer to be here, but I hope you're enjoy the beginning of fall! OH, by the way, I have another companion from Argentina!!! She is the bomb and we get along SO well. We´re basically just best buds already. Her name is Hermana Tacconi...I promise I´ll send pictures soon!!

I love you guys so much!!! Have a great week!

All my love,

Hermana Michelle eh-Scott

Charity is the pure love of Christ

Hello sweet family!

I hope you are doing well. Thank you for the emails and the fun stories. It sounds like all is well!

This week something crazy happened. Crazy is the only word that I can think of to explain it.

On Friday night, my companion and I got back to our room, and right as we walked in the Elders called us to ask us a few questions. I sat down at my desk and was talking to them, and my companion lay down on her bed. I think I was talking to them for like 6 minutes, on speaker phone so that my companion could hear too. But when I hung up I looked over at her and she was sleeping. Six minutes! I was amazed at how fast she fell asleep, I didn´t realize she was so tired. She had mentioned it during the day that she was abnormally tired, but she kept working as normal. I tried waking her up, but she was super duper asleep. I got a little irritated actually, because every night we always plan for the next day, and it´s not an optional thing. So I decided to just leave her alone for a minute, and I started to get ready for bed and stuff. At 10-ish, I tried waking her up again. I was literally screaming her name and shaking her whole body, but she would not wake up! I was legitimately angry at this point, and I just thought to myself, "Whatever, you can just do whatever you want." I´m so dumb and immature sometimes. So at 10:30, bed time for all missionaries, I prayed, tried to wake her up one more time (with no luck) and went to bed. Literally the second my head hit the pillow, I felt so strongly in my heart that something was not right and I heard in my mind, "Go take care of your companion!" I jumped off my bed and turned on the light and saw that my companion was convulsing. Her whole body was shaking and her eyes were rolled back in her head. It was probably one of the scariest things I´ve ever seen. I don´t know how I managed to keep calm because I was so freaked out. I called our leaders, they called the mission president, and they all came to our room to take her to the hospital. When the elders saw my companion, they freaked out a little bit too. The President came, and they carried her out to his car and we went to the hospital. We got there at 12:30ish. Basically, it wasn´t as serious as it looked. She´s been taking a medication that apparently doesn´t work right, and it made her body enter into shock. I don´t know what the doctors did to get her out of it, but it wasn´t that huge of a process, thankfully. When she woke up, she was so confused. I felt so bad! Imagine that, just waking up in the hospital and not remembering anything. By the time we got out of there, it was so late that we had to sleep in the president´s house because our area was too far away. The next day we woke up after getting about 3 hours of sleep, and just laughed. It was such a strange, sweet, and funny moment.

My companion is okay! Don´t worry. This week and especially the past few days, we´ve talked a lot about all of the things we´ve learned together; all of the moments that have taught us so much. We´ve seen a lot of amazing things together and had quite a few bumps in the road. But that day, I really felt that God is always taking care of us. Who knows what would have happened if I had ignored that impression and let my tiredness win me over. I think I´m still paying the price of getting so little sleep, but obviously it had to be that way. 

This experience helped me to understand the importance of the little things that happen in our lives (in the midst of the big things). Loving my companion, for one. Second, being able to listen to and respond to the prompting I received that night. 

There is a scripture in the Book of Mormon that I really love. It´s in Moroni 7. It´s really well known, but it says everything that I´ve felt these past few days:

Wherefore, my beloved brethren, if ye have not charity, ye are nothing, for charity never faileth. Wherefore, cleave unto charity, which is the greatest of all, for all things must fail—

But charity is the pure love of Christ, and it endureth forever; and whoso is found possessed of it at the last day, it shall be well with him.

Wherefore, my beloved brethren, pray unto the Father with all the energy of heart, that ye may be filled with this love, which he hath bestowed upon all who are true followers of his Son, Jesus Christ; that ye may become the sons of God; that when he shall appear we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is; that we may have this hope; that we may be purified even as he is pure. Amen.

Interesting how it says that if we don´t have charity, WE ARE NOTHING. We really have to learn how to love all people, despite their flaws. It´s something that I´m learning, and trying to master. 

We must be like Jesus Christ! We must learn to love as He loves. And also, don´t take medication that has crazy side effects :) Be willing to listen to the Spirit, and follow what He says. 

I love you so much! Have a great week!

All my love,

Hermana Scott

I get to see miracles everyday!!

HI FAMILY!

When I write in capital letters, it´s because I´m excited. HI FAMILY! I´m excited to talk to you today! 

I hope you´ve all had a great week. I have had a wonderful week. Today is September 15. Can you believe that? I literally can´t. I feel like just yesterday I was writing you!

I want to tell you about something amazing that happened this week. I talk a lot about Nancy, Roberto, and Jesus. Probably because they´re the best and I love them too much. But this week, we had a lesson with them, and Jesus finally opened his heart up to us. Just a little bit. He said that he knows that to be happy in this life, he needs to get baptized and follow God. Those were his exact words! He is only 13 years old, but he really understands. His problem is that he doesn´t want to yet. His mom told us that he really looks for affection and love from his dad, but his dad never gives it to him. His dad is schizophrenic (I think I told you that already) and he never even talks to his children, let alone show them love. But Jesus really loves to see his dad. Who doesn´t love to see their dad? It makes sense to me that he wants to be with his dad, but it absolutely breaks my heart because he´s not going to find what he wants; what he needs. But the fact that he understands that he can find that happiness by following Jesus Christ gives me hope. I have so much hope for him.

After the lesson, we talked to Hermana Nancy for a minute and she told us that her other son, Raphael, mentioned that he wanted to go to church on Sunday. I was so excited (a little TOO excited)! Since the beginning of June, we´ve been trying to talk to Raphael. He´s 17 years old and already has a drug problem, and really no one in his family cares about him. He lives with his dad, and no one even cares at what hour he leaves the house, when he comes home, if he eats or not, if he goes to school or not. It´s so sad. But Hermana Nancy told us he wanted to go to church, and I cried because I was so happy! We went to go look for him, but as always, he wasn´t home. We tried looking for him all day long, in the streets, in the parks, but we didn´t see him. This was on Saturday. I was a little bummed because I wanted to invite him personally to church, and offer to go pick him if he wanted. As we were finishing the day, heading back to our house, literally 20 feet away from our door, WE SAW RAPHAEL IN THE STREET. I had to try really hard to contain my excitement. I was saying in my head "Act natural, act natural..." because I didn´t want to scare him. We invited him to church, and he said "maybe". That was enough for me. That night, we just prayed and prayed and prayed that he would go.

The next day, he went to church.

And his brother Roberto, now Mormon and super faithful, went and picked him up and brought him to the church.

There are moments in the mission that I just can´t explain correctly. I don´t know how to make you feel what I feel; to understand the happiness and love and excitement that I feel. It´s indescribable. It´s something that just lives inside of me everyday. Seeing people come to know God and his Son Jesus Christ is the most amazing thing I´ve ever experienced. I am so lucky. I get to see miracles everyday!!!!!! 

I know I´ve already mentioned this scripture before, but I´m going to mention it again: (Alma 26:36-37) "...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."

That scripture just brings tears to my eyes. This is my life. And I love it. 

I love you all so much! Daniel, I´m happy to hear you got to go home this weekend. I hope you all have a great week, and enjoy the color change of the leaves! It´s finally starting to get warm here, I´m loving the sun and I´m excited to start wearing my sunscreen again. :) I love you so much! 

All my love,

Sister Scott

Thank you!

Hello family!

Thank you to everyone who wrote me today, I really felt the love.

The time has escaped. What I mean to say is that I don´t have very much time left. But I just wanted to share two quick things-

1. Roberto, the son of Hermana Nancy, received the Priesthood yesterday. We spent a lot of time explaining to him what that meant, that he was going to have a great responsibility, and that as the only priesthood holder he was going to be able to do a lot for his family. He was SO happy yesterday. He had this goofy grin on his face all morning long, and he helped the other young men wash the trays from sacrament meeting. His happiness was contagious, and it brought tears to my eyes to see him like that. Happy tears, of course!

2. I AM SUPER HAPPY! I love being a missionary. I feel like I say that a lot. But that´s really just the truth.

They are calling us. I have to leave, but it´s always a great "booster" for me reading your emails. Thank you for your love and support, remember how much I love you and that I´m always praying for you!

all my love,

Hermana Michelle Scott

Redeeming love

¡Buenos días querida familia!

Hello hello hello my sweet family! I am super excited today, today is just another poopy, gloomy day in Lima, but us missionaries are all super happy because we are the most blessed people in the world. We get to teach the true gospel everyday of our lives! What could be better, really?

This week, we are going to have another baptism of an 18 year old girl. Her story reminds me so much of my own, honestly. Her friend invited her to go to church, but a few months later he left on his mission. She had gained a testimony and wanted to get baptized (at the time she was 16) but her mom didn´t want her to get baptized (sound familiar....? ;) ) She is now 18 years old and can make the decision for herself. We went to her house to talk to her mom about her baptism, and she accepted it! It was really almost funny, because she had waited 2 whole years to get baptized and her mom just said it was fine. We have plans to teach her mom as well, because as we know miracles DO happen :) 

Also, this week was kind of "bumpy" for me and my companion. She´s been sick in her stomach for a long time out here in the mission, and she´s finally getting better. But for some reason, she gets super sassy about the food, and gets this attitude with our pensionista. I just feel bad because they give us this great service, and it´s just hard to see her be so ungrateful. Well, I can´t judge her,but I sometimes I just got a little peeved and didn´t want to talk to her. So, we were both acting super immature. This whole time I just thought that she had a problem with the food and was being immature. But last night, she finally opened up to me. I´m a super overly expressive person, and she doesn´t express her feelings to anyone. I just kept asking her and asking her and BEGGING her to tell me what was wrong. But all of a sudden, I just stopped talking, said a little prayer in my heart, and started telling her about some things that had happened in my life. Random things that I haven´t talked about in forever. But she just sat there and listened to me talk, with this look in her eyes that I hadn´t seen yet. There´s a book that I read a lot when I was at home, called "Redeeming Love", that is based on the story in the Bible about Hosea. Hosea is commanded by God to marry a prostitute, and in the book it talks about how he questioned God, obviously thinking, "Are you crazy? How do you expect me to marry a woman that has sold herself her whole life?" The book is amazing, and it ends with the girl, named Angel, coming to know God, learning how to accept His love in her life, and then being able to accept the love of other people. I did my best to explain this story in Spanish, super late at night (white girl + speaking Spanish past bed time = bad news), and she just started bawling. It turns out that she has had a really hard life. A lot of horrible things have happened in her life, and no one ever knew about it. She says that none of her other companions knew because they had never insisted so much. (That sounds kind of funny right? I guess I´m a little pushy or something.) In those moments when we were talking last night, I felt so happy and relieved, and she felt free. Even though I was exhausted and confused about how the conversation had turned out like that, I felt like the Lord was literally there with us.

I don´t know if I´m able to express myself really well in my emails, but something that I just want you to understand is that in this time in my mission, I´m feeling the Lord in every step. The time is going by so fast, and I can´t believe how little time I have left. I have never felt the presence of the Lord so strongly and surely in my life. Great things are happening here; I wish I never had to leave this area. But in these last few weeks that we have in this transfer, we´re going to keep working hard and seeing the Lord´s hand here in Canadá.

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

All my love,

Hermana Scott

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