Well, don´t have much time, so this will be short. It seems like every week I have less and less time. Hmmmmm.

This was a great week. Jorge called us on Tuesday, and we set up a visit for the same day. He´s been having some bad moments, but with a lot of prayer, and a couple visits from the bishop´s wife (she´s amazing) he´s overcome a lot. Right now his only problem is finances. He has to buy a lot of medicine (like me) and doesn´t have a lot of money. I think he will or has talked with the bishop about a loan. He said he still wants to be baptized and wants to be a member of this church. We´re hoping maybe this Sunday. The next at the latest.

Willi and Vanessa are still waiting for his citizenship to come. January´s a long ways away. It´s frustrating cause when we give the report every Sunday, we can´t count them as investigators in the church or as progressing because they´re not married. Even though they´re progressing better than most of the other investigators and a lot of members! We´ve been meeting up with them on a corner close to the house to go to church together. But yesterday we had to pass for some new investigators. We called to tell them and they were already getting dressed and ready for church. Wow!! We had a Family Home Evening with them last night with another family from Peru. We talked about Joseph Smith, watched The Restoration, and shared testimonies about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. Willi and Vanessa had the strongest testimonies of us all! It was really great, especially since they have fellow Peruvians to be friends with in the ward.

About a week and a half ago, a woman talked to me and my DL, Elder Barney, in the street. Her name´s Sylvia, and she´s looking for a church for her 12-year-old granddaughter and wants to investigate ours. Last Tuesday we passed for her. The granddaughter wasn´t there, but we set her and her son, Nicolas, with a baptismal date. Sunday when we passed by to pick them up for church she was in a dress and him in a shirt and tie. They had read the pamphlet about the Restoration we left, and saw that we dress up when we go to church. They said "Is this all right?" I was like, "Um, of course it is. It´s perfect!" They´re really great. In the church they found friends pretty fast: Sylvia with the bishop´s wife (I told ya she´s amazing!) and Nicolas with the bishop´s daughter, who is in charge of the Young Single Adults in the ward. Later after church, we passed for them and taught her granddaughter, Natasha. When we were talking at the end about baptism, Sylvia said about Natasha, "She´s not baptized yet." Then, startling us as much as her grandmother, Natasha said "I want to get baptized." Um, yeah. No problem there. She has the same date as Sylvia and Nicolas (he´s her uncle), the 13 of December, but they could all progress and be baptized the 6th.

Just a few tidbits of experiences that I didn´t get to put in last week:
1)One night we were coming home at night and a couple drunks stopped us in the street. They were pretty wasted. As one learned a bit of English from Elder Squire, the other told me the the watch on my wrist was his and he wanted it. He threatened that he had a pistol, but it was obvious that 1)he didn´t and 2)he was too drunk to aim properly even if he did. I got pretty amused, and he got frustrated cause I wouldn´t give it to him. Finally they left and we went to the house.

2)Another night we were doing contacts, knocking doors in a street. At one door, the guy came to the door, a little drunk, and said "I´m not doing anything. I´m just drinking coffee. There´s no problem." Turns out he thought we were from the PDI-Policia Departamento de Investigaciones (Police Department of Investigations, basically the FBI)When he realized that we´re missionaries, he asked us to visit him another day. He said that he´s been praying, and that night he had said "Lord, save me" and right then we showed up. Pretty cool story. Unfortunately, when we passed by with a member, he was way drunk, so we didn´t enter. We´ll probably pass by another day and hope he´s sober.

Well, I think that´s all the big stuff. We´ve found quite a few new people. Now we just have to keep passing for them and help them progress more. The language is going great. I can mostly say anything I want and understand basically everything. The food´s still great except for the clams we ate for lunch yesterday. Not my favorite, but not too bad. It keeps getting warmer and warmer. I´m really gonna miss snow. Recently I´ve realized that I´m not gonna see snow for two more years from right now, the winter of 2011. Wow. I really hope I don´t go into withdrawal this Christmas. :)

Well, time to go. Hasta la proxima semana (Until the next week)....

Elder Murdoch