COME FOLLOW ALONG! VOTE LUMINOUS_MOOSE

¡MOLLENDO!

Last week in Chivay! Elder Yglesias was heading home so we decided to get all the photos from everyones camera to share them. The day before he left i was copying his photos and i when i took his memory out it deleted all of his photos! He had a year of his mission on his camera and i deleted it all! I felt horrible and we didnt know what to do, he was really sad and i didnt want to see him leave without his memories! Luckily Elder Kehoe is a computer genius and could figure out how to recover them. I couldnt imagine going home having lost all of your photos.

Our zone leaders called and said that i have a transfer to mollendo! It was really sad to leave chivay. I didnt want to go, i had to speak in church yesterday and i cried really hard. Our members had a going away party and more members showed up to the party than sacrament meeting. They went around in a circle saying things and i didnt realize the impact i have had on them. I feel so blessed for the opportunity to have been in chivay, i will never forget those members. They have all become my second family, i will miss them so much.

We had two funny experiences this week! 

1- In sunday school with the young men and women. we were going around and asking the high and low of the week. One of the members said "well my friend escaped from prison and called me.... i hope they find him"

2- Last night we forgot our keys in the room, our recent convert is the owner and she has extra keys but she went to arequipa for the weekend. We went to a store and borrowed a small ladder to get up to the second floor. I climbed up and scaled across the second floor and got in through our window. During the process many people passed by staring at us, probably thinking that we were trying to break into a house.

Well now im in mollendo! im excited for new experiences. Im the new district leader and im a little nervous because i dont know anyone in my district but we will see how it goes! My new comp is Elder Heywood from Arizona, he seems like a great guy im sure that we will have a great time together!

AMAZING PICTURES FROM ELDER D

dun..dun.. transfers

Hey Everyone!!

One of the missionaries here in chivay is going home (Elder Yglesias).
I have been with him for 6 months here in chivay and i dont think im
closer with any other latino in the mission. Its going to be hard to
say goodbye to him, we have been through it all together.

This week was great, we had 14 investigators come to our english class
and 4 came to church! We decided to have a BBQ for the fourth of July
and it was great. We ate hamburgers, hotdogs, lemonade, lays chips and coke!
haha It was great for our investigators to get to know the church and
our members. We played capture the flag and had a good time.

We have a less active family of 7 that i have been working with since
i got here. They sell chicken to every restaurant in chivay so
everyone depends on them. They cant shut their store so they never
come to church.  We have visited them in their store alot but they
have never let us go to their house and teach them. We have decided
just to serve them and go over in the mornings and organize the
shelves in their store. After a couple of weeks we gained their
confidence and for the first time in 6 months we had a lesson/family
home evening with them yesterday. We made french toast and talked with
them. We decided that those that dont work are going to come this
sunday and they are going to change every week! (its a start)

We had a "cool" suprise. It started raining for the first time in 2
months and at night it turned into snow. We ran up to our roof in our
pajamas like kids on christmas, the whole village was white the next
day! It was a christmas miracle in july! We had a snow ball fight with
the other elders and made snow angels. Turns out that it hasnt snowed
like that here since 1995.

This may or may not be my last week here! Either way im going to work
my hardest. I love chivay and i love all the members here. Im grateful
for all the experiences that i have had here and the people i have got
to know. The mission is great and my testimony is growing everyday.
Have a great week!

-Elder Diederich

temple trip

Hey Everyone that still reads my emails! This week was great, it was the anniversary of chivay. This week everyone from all the other villages came in to celebrate the anniversary. They all have their traditional clothing from their own areas and it was just a fun atmosphere.

Yesterday was the dedication of the temple. We brought about 12 members down to go see one session of the dedication. It was great because our converts Hna. Blanca and her son martin got to see it and learn more of the importance of the temples.

I learned alot in the dedication. Something i learned is that ¨sin nuestros muertos no podemos ser perfeccionados¨ Our personal and the salvation of our ancestors depend on the work we do in the temple. We need to do this work. About 1% of what we do in the temple is for ourselves but after we receive our ordinances the rest of the time we go is for those whom havent received these ordinances.  Inside the temple we can recieve the biggest blessing that God has for us.

I dont think our church would go through so much trouble looking for ancestors, keeping their records, building these temples and performing these ordinances if it wasnt the work of God. 

I had a really spiritual experience last week. In preach my gospel it says that we should renew our testimony about the book of mormon so that when we teach we can be more powerful and effictive. Last week i prayed againt to know if the book of mormon was true, i didnt recieve an answer immediatley but i decided to continue praying/looking. In the opening prayer for the 12 o´clock session the brother in his prayer said ¨estamos reunidos aqui, los decendientes de lehi tu siervo fiel¨when he said that they were gathered together (decendents of lehi) i felt the spirit really strong and started to cry.I knew at that moment that what he said is true that they really are descendents of Lehi and that the book of mormon is true. It was great to feel the spirit so strong and to reconfirm my testimony.

I was glad to see that on some parts of our family tree we have alot of work done but there still is alot of work to do! I hope everyone can make a goal to at least find one more person and go to the temple to perform this work!

Everything is good in Peru! Thanks for all that you do for me, have a great week!!

tupananchiskama

HEY Everyone!

We are working really hard right now and we have some great investigators! The branch is progressing alot! 

We have two families that we are working with to get married and then baptized! One family we need to send the missionaries in kusco to find his birth certificate and then they can get married! WE have some other people that we are working with, we have been using our english to help us find more people. When people arent interested in our message we offer free english lessons and almost everyone says yes, and at the end of the lesson we have been able to share more about our religion.

This week my friend from the office hinted that i might have a transfer in two weeks! It is weird to think that i will be leaving this area! I have grown to love this area and the people. Alot has changed since i got here! We have found/called a new branch president, the attendance has gotten higher, we have rescued many families and our recent convert is in the relief society presidency and gave a great talk in sacrement meeting yesterday!

 When Elder Ringwood wrote me something along the lines of "You know your doing good when you leave an area better than it was when you came" and im happy because if i do leave this transfer i feel like this area has changed alot. Im grateful for all the experiences ive had here in chivay! Im excited to go have different experiences but im also down to stay here 6 more weeks! I guess we will wait and see!

Thanks for all the love and support! tupananchiskama

its a small world

Hey family and everyone else that still reads my emails!

Cool story/small world experience! Before the mission at Jon
Diederichs farewell I talked with his cousin Katie Nydegger. She said
that she knew someone that was in the same MTC that I was going to!
She opened up one of his emails and showed me. It was cool to read
about what the MTC was going to be like and I remember that he wrote
something about getting one of his best haircuts in the MTC. Last
transfer we got a new zone leader (Elder Anderson) and he came up to
me and asked if I knew Katie. Turns out he was her home teacher while
he was at BYU and I told him I read his email before I left. He remembered
writing about his really good haircut and its so weird how I came
across his email before the mission and now he is my zone leader! He
is coming up this week to do splits with us!

The branch is progressing! Our new branch president is awesome. He has
been interviewing a lot of our members to get a recommendation to the
dedication of the Temple in Trujillo. We are going to take a bunch of
members to Arequipa this Sunday to go see it. We have rescued a lot of
less actives and we are giving them callings. As of now our branch has
a President, mission leader, Relief society president and one
counselor, and  young women’s president. We decided to broaden the calling
instead of only having one full presidency. I have been assigned to be
the new elder’s quorum president. I have learned a lot about how the
church leadership works and all of the responsibilities.

My comp is great! We haven’t had any problems or anything. The only
bad thing is that I talked in church yesterday and I started talking
in English without realizing it haha! I think that is a pro and a con
about having a comp from the states. We haven’t had problems because
there isn’t any miscommunication and con is that my Spanish is going
to get worse!

My health is back to normal. Its amazing how fast my mom can message me the name of a prescription that I desperately needed. The village doctors gave me a pain relief and a Claritin pill. They tried. I needed an anti-biotic so I found it in the city the next day when I traveled down to a zone conference.  It gets really cold here every night but
we bought more clothes to wear so we stay warm!

Thanks for all the love and support! A goal we have put for our branch
is to get them to the temple. I challenge all of you to make an effort
to go (in Utah its a lot easier so you don’t have any excuses)! Have a
great week, love you all!