Familia:
What a week! Actually, better said, what a transfer! That´s
right, six weeks have come and gone yet again. My sources tell me that I am
going to stay here, and it sounds like a good plan to me, although I would be
happy to get transferred out of Iquitos. My biggest fear would be getting a
transfer inside of Iquitos. I guess I will know in a couple hours!
I wish that we wrote at the END of P-Day because that´s
almost always when the good stuff happens.
Last week, we went out into the deep, uninhabited part of the Jungle and
it was SO great. I love living here. We
took a bus out of the city and went hiking and exploring over by our
Patriarch´s fish farm. I wish I would have had a camera! You wouldn’t believe
all that I saw. Crazy spiders, little red poison dart frogs, and those really
huge hairy ants that you see in National Geographic. AMAZING. I feel like an
official Jungle Woman now.
We cooked chicken over a fire and ate it using
leaves for plates and eating rice with our hands. Also, I hit a big Jungle
Milestone: I can officially drink coconut milk without a straw! I knocked down,
cut open, and drank my coconut right out of the shell just like a true native.
I´ll admit, it was pretty impressive! Add that to my list of fleas and
Parasites and eating turtle and crocodile and I think I just need Dengue to be
an official Jungle Woman…but I´d rather avoid that one.
I was grateful for such a good P-Day because, honestly, the
rest of the week was rough. One Hermana
got sent home on emergency because she was starting to go blind, and it left
her poor, new companion really scarred and stressed. Some of my best converts
fell into problems with the Word of Wisdom and it really hurt to see it, but I
know we´re going to help them climb back up—coffee is a LOT easier to deal with
than Alcohol! Another sister has been facing problems with depression. A lot of
people that were progressing just randomly stopped going to church and don´t
want to get Baptized. I saw how I had kind of neglected to visit the sisters in
one of my zones, and not a single one of them were able to Baptize last month
and they feel really bad and I can’t help but feel a little responsible.
The
worst part has been a sister that is struggling with some really scary stuff,
something along the lines of Schizophrenia and I can´t even describe the
sleepless nights, the fear, the Psychologist visits. I was really starting to
feel a heavy load with all these things, even though they may seem small. It
reminded me of the times that I would watch Mom or Dad face problems with work,
kids, school, money, family, Anxiety, health, and everything and I could just
see the weight on their shoulders. That´s how I was feeling!
With all of these happening, my companion and I lost a lot
of work time and I was stressed out. Friday night, as I looked at how few
lessons we´d have and how few people we´d been able to find, I remembered what
I learned last week about being constant and decided that we still needed to
meet the goals that we set. Saturday, we found some awesome members that worked
with us all day long so that we could do divisions. We worked as hard as
humanly possible, but at the end of the day we were able to see some serious
results and see how many people we were able to help by deciding to remain
constant even with the time we lost. It was amazing! We were able to see the
rewards of our hard work when we saw how many people came to church.
The best
part was when the Bishop announced the Baptism that we are going to have on
Sunday, a man named Orlando, Orlando stood up and smiled and was waving at
everyone, almost TOO excited for his Baptism. About three months ago, I knocked
on Orlando´s door and he slammed it in my face and said he didn´t want anything
to do with us. What a change!
I guess my last little thought is about the Temple. A few
weeks ago, a family in the ward did a Fundraiser to try and go to the Temple in
Lima to be sealed as a family and pick up their son from his mission. They
worked so hard and had everything ready to go.
They were supposed to leave on Sunday, and I was confused when I saw the
husband on Tuesday. I asked him when he was going to the Temple and he just
looked up and said, with a brave smile “Someday, Hermana Simonson. We´ll get
there some day.” My heart almost broke.
They weren´t able to get the funds together
even after doing EVERYTHING they could. If I could just beg the world
(especially my family) to do two things they would be share the Gospel, and go
to the Temple. I took the Temple so for granted before the mission. I had
always heard stories before about people that have to sacrifice so much to go
to the Temple and how we need to take more advantage of the Temples close to
us. Hearing is one thing. Seeing it and living? So heartbreaking, so
guilt-tripping, but oh, so inspiring!
For a long time, I thought that my call to this Mission had
to do with my love for adventure and outdoors and craziness, but I finally
understand better. It is for my incredible love that I feel for the
Temple. This mission has a huge purpose:
A Temple in Iquitos. Our backpacks and wallets have pictures of a Temple in the
Jungle and it motivates me a ton. I so
badly want these people to have this amazing blessing that we have.
The Temple is a huge motivator for me, but there is also
another thing that really keeps me going. I´ve reached a milestone in the
mission, a new nametag! Mine was so dead from repellent and son and dirt and it
was almost unreadable. When I got the new one, I thought about what I wanted to
put on the inside to motivate me.
The last one was great, the inside had an
American flag, a sticker that a little girl in Tarapoto gave me, a sticker from
the MTC, and I had carved Elder Simonson´s initials the day he entered the MTC.
Now, as I looked at the new nametag I thought about what most motivated me, the
answer came fast. Now, the inside of my nametag has a picture of 5 (slightly
angry) kinds laying in leaves in Layton, Utah. My brothers. If anything
motivates me, it´s the promise that I felt in my heart when I watched Finding
Faith in Christ and heard the Savior´s voice whisper kindly “Thy brother shall
raise again.”
You should know that on
those days that I don’t feel like getting up on time or start to feel tired or
that I don’t care, I just think of how much I want to bless my family and how I
know that they will be blessed according to my obedience. I know that the
Savior´s promises are real. Now, every day that I get ready and I put that
sacred nametag on, I see the faces of four of the most important people in the
world to me, and I wear them over my heart all day long, knowing that I can
make as big of a difference in their lives as I can in the people here.
Love you all so much!
Love this work. Love my Savior, and I love His church.
Hermana Simonson
I Love Sister Simonson!!! Thank you for sharing and allowing us to have a glimpse of a week in your life as a missionary in Peru!!! Such a beautiful testimony and dedication to the Gospel! I am definitely better for reading this beautiful entry!!
ReplyDeleteLove,
Brenda Jones
Thanks, Brenda. We sure do miss her! But, you know all about that with your own missionaries that have gone out :)
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