Monday, April 20, 2015

Marshall & Sullivan Take Corire: Part 2

  So today are changes, and I´m thrilled and super grateful to say that Sister Sullivan and I will have another 6 weeks together here in the beautiful Majes Valley. I´m looking forward to this next transfer and Sullivan and I have lots of goals and hopes for the Branch and the work here in the valley. We have lots of work to do!
  One of the adventures of this week is that we went to do a service for a member of the Branch Presidency. Presidente Vigil amazes me because in order to get to his house from the town where we live, and where the chapel is, you have to take 2 different convis for an hour, and then walk about an hour and a half to this beautiful little town of like 10 people that´s at the base of a little mountain. We went to his house to build some walls that were destroyed when we had that storm a few weeks ago. It was super fun because to build the walls they just have a bunch of sticks stacked up, and then they make mud and just throw the mud at the stick wall and smooth it out. And as you can imagine, after throwing mud with 4 elders for a while I ended up covered in mud. And then I became a Peruvian woman, after washing all the mud off me and cleaning out my hair in the river, I washed a bunch of potatoes in the river, then we ate way more than we wanted to (I ate 6 potatoes and 2 steaks (Vigil has a rule that we can´t leave any food uneaten)) and then washed the dishes in the river. So it was a good Peruvian day.
  This week was another rough week because once again, we traveled a lot. It was a little ridiculous because on Saturday we traveled 4 hours to have a sisters conference with our hermana lideres, and it ended up just being a spa day. Literally we did face masks and painted our nails while elders played guitar and sang worldly songs to us, and then all of our zone and district leaders made us lunch. Only in the Peru Arequipa Mission. We didn´t have a single lesson on Saturday, our best work day, to do all that. Sorry that I´m complaining it just frustrates me when we lose good work time.
  This week was a little sad because our little district got divided. We were 6 gringo missionaries here in the valley and in the Aplao Branch. Elder Kleinlein finished his mission last week, and Elder Cooley left to be a zone leader in Ilo. Elders Garcia and Paredes will now join our little family. We´re sad but we know it´ll be great to have 2 new elders here. I know that they will contribute to the work and then the Lord sent them here because they can help us to strengthen this little branch. And having 2 latinos will probably help our spanish a lot, it´s hard to want to speak spanish when you´re a group of 6 english speakers. Especially because the 4 of us that remain are all fairly new to the mission.
  All in all things are going great. The last couple weeks have been rough, and we haven´t had nearly as much time as we would like in our area, but it´s been great nonetheless. There´s still much a lot of work to do here, and I´m grateful that the Lord trusts me to help do it. 

You´re all in my prayers! 

Love,
Your favorite Peruvian missionary

Hermana Marcial.
taping Hermana Sullivan's face, spa day, and Mama Julia's fish heads :)




Week of Unneccesary Travels

  Is that how you spell unneccesary? It looks weird but who knows, I´m forgetting how to spell in English. 
  So this week was a little obnoxious. We´ve traveled so far 12 hours in this week. And we´ll have 7 more hours of travel this week. Which is obnoxious. It´s a little complicated so I won´t explain all the travels but to sum up my frustration, in 2 weeks we will have had 7 days not working in our area. But that´s okay, just gives us a reason to work harder!
  Fun story of the week: On wednesday we were out working in Pedregal Chico (about a 2 hour walk from the house) and we needed to be back in Corire by 5 to take the bus to Pedregal (for a meeting). After the lesson we waited a little bit for the convi (bus) but it never came. So we decided to start walking and hitchhike in order to make it on time. After about 15 minutes a truck stops with 3 men inside and offers us a ride. And then they open the door of the truck for us to get in and we realized by the smell and by looking at them a little more closely, that these men were fairly wasted. So we decide to just get in the bed of the truck (we´re the smartest women on the planet I know). And after about 15 minutes of crazy driving they pull over in front of a house. At this point I started to get a little bit worried. They get out of the truck and the driver tells us he´s just going to get something. and the other 2 men stand on either side of us and start talking (mumbling mostly) to us. A few minutes later the driver comes out and apologizes to us for his very drunk friends and tells them to get back in. One of the 2 decides to hop in the back with us which made us a little uncomfortable. And the driver gets out of the car and tells his friend to leave us alone and get inside the truck. His friend says no and so the driver pulls him by the shirt out of the bed of the truck and the man is so drunk that he just falls over on the ground. And then 20 minutes later we arrived safely in Corire, just in time to take the bus! Just another Peru adventure I guess. Lesson learned.
  This week was a little hectic, more than a little stressful, and we slept a lot less than normal, but it was a great week anyway. We had a conference in Arequipa where not only was I able to see a lot of my missionary friends, including my old companion, but we were able to hear and learn from President and the Assistants. It was great and gave us the motivation to work harder and to challenge even more people to learn about and accept this gospel in their lives. 
Also when I spoke with Hermana Lucano, she told me that one of our investigators, emy, got baptized, another old investigador (Jisaac) accepted the invitation to get baptized, and a couple that we were teaching FOREVER are getting married/baptized in 2 weeks! Really makes all the hard work we did there seem worth it. I remember being sooo frustrated with Jisaac, and know he´s so excited to get baptized. And I think of alll the lessons we had with Jessica and Christopher and sometimes I doubted if they would ever get married. I know that hard work pays off, even when you can´t see the results right away.

Well I love you guys! Have a great week!

Sister Marshall.

aka. Marshall Matters

Crazy Corire!


 Another crazy week here in Corire!
  This week I had divisions in Camana because that´s where the sister leaders for our group of sisters are. Camana is about 2 and a half hours from my area so I got to do some traveling solo! It was quite the adventure. In order to get to Camana I had to take a minivan to Pedregal, buy a ticket to Camana and wait for the next bus. So I waited about an hour in Pedregal, then headed to Camana. I was expecting Hermana Uriona to be there when I arrived but she wasn´t there. So I went a found a phone and called her and she had me take a moto taxi to where she was. And then I spent a wonderful day with her and heading back the next morning! Divisions are great but I was happy to be back with Hermana Sullivan.
  And then this weekend was CONFERENCE! I had been looking forward to conference for months and loved every minute of it. The American missionaries usually get to watch it in English buuut we don´t have a whole lot of technology here in Corire so we watched in it Spanish with some members in the chapel. I mean I understood everything so it was fine but it´s different having to listen to a translator and not their own voices. I LOVED conference. Last night we were teaching one of our investigadors and he asked us how we know if the prophets and apostles are called of God, and we explained to him that we had just had the General Conference, and that as we heard these men speak to us we couldn´t deny the Spirit that we felt and we knew that their words came from our Father in Heaven.
  It was so great and I was taking notes like a mad woman the whole time. It´s funny because if you look at my notes it´s like 4 lines in Spanish, 1 line in English, and then 2 more in Spanish, and then 3 more lines in English. I was listening in Spanish, and I guess my brain was about half & half between the 2 languages. Or maybe I wrote direct quotes and scriptures in Spanish and just impressions from the Spirit in English. Who knows. Either way conference was great and the Church is true. I was going to share stuff from my favorite talks buuuut I forgot my notebook in my cuarto, so maybe next week!
  I hope you all were able to watch all the sessions of General Conference, including the General Women´s Session and the Priesthood Session. If not I encourage you to go back and watch/listen to them. And when they're available, read and study them. Every single message of that conference was for us. There is something that we can and should learn from each message that was given. I also hope that you were all able to sustain the Prophet, First Presidency, and Quorom of the 12 Apostles, along with the other leaders of the Church, and I encourage you all to think of the ways that you can sustain them in your daily lives, remember that it´s more than just raising your hand for the vote.

I love you all! Have a great week!

Sister Marshall