SKIPPED A WEEK!

Elder Diederich forgot a week... talk about a focused missionary!

he forgot to even email!! My mom has calmed down and canceled her amber alert for him.. love that elder <33

Hey! Sorry last week I thought I sent the email but I guess it didn't

send! Haha the internet here isn’t the fastest thing in the world.

Things have been great. We prayed to find more opportunities to give

service to the people and the Lord answered our prayers. This past two

weeks we have been working in farms, painting houses, and

making/pouring cement in peoples houses to cover up the dirt floors.

Its been a great learning experience but I have helped the people a lot

(members/nonmembers). We are trying to gain their confidence and be

their friends.

This week was a little hard. There was a carnival and every night the

whole town was in the plaza, it was hard to find anyone in their house.

Everyone wears big white/colorful dresses and dances. They

dance all night and drink to stay warm. The kids run around with a

type of silly string that shoots shaving cream. There are little gangs

of kids walking around and attacking people with silly string! It is

hilarious until you get attacked. In the mornings it has been a ghost

town, everyone is either sleeping or in their farm.

We have been teaching a lot but we just need to help our

investigators keep commitments so they can progress. This week we are

going to try hard to have more people attend church and read the Book

of Mormon. We realized that alot of the members don't have a testimony

of the Book of Mormon, and as Preach my Gospel says "it is essential

for conversion". Its true, our whole religion depends on if the BOM

is true. We should all work harder to gain a testimony of it.

My companionship with Elder Pulido is awesome! He continues to teach

me everyday. His family is really poor and he was a doctor before the

mission. He could have stayed and helped his family but he chose

to serve. He told me that he knows he is blessing his family

spiritually and that no amount of money could buy this experience. We

are obedient and happy, we are working hard to find the people that

God has prepared for us.

Pray for this branch in Chivay!

-Elder Diederich