i am the peruvian legend

9/18/17

this week was pretty crazy! always awesome! sorry mom i totally failed at taking pictures, both of us did. seriously its been too crazy busy. renovating houses and preaching the gospel 24/7.

we met this super sweet member family from Peru and they've been here for four months and are trying to learn french and english so we told them about our ward cause its french and that it would help them and they love that idea so they invited us over for dinner and to talk about church and man this family is too sweet. we end up talking to them in french and a little bit of english and spanish and its kinda fun being in a home of three languages flying around. basically how it is everywhere here, its so weird thinking back to home where i wasn't surrounded by numbers of languages 24/7. all my memories of home are so hard to picture in english, is that weird or is that a normal thing for foreign missions? but yeah the Sevillano's fed us soooo much peruvian food and the dad makes this special super spicy sauce with all these fancy peruvian peppers and i asked for some and they were all like ooohh no only the most legendary eat of it, and i poured it all over the food and it was so good, yeah spicy but so good. and of course Elder Johnson then had to try it haha and halfway through the meal he was tearing up and wiping his nose and his eyes were watering and sister Sevillano like freaked out thinking he was crying and she was like trying to comfort him and i explained to them that it was the sauce and they were crying they were laughing so hard haha it was awesome. they called him a baby, then gave me the recipe for the sauce to make back home so i can, "impress my lover." such a sweet family. 

the rest of the week has just been insane, so much service and helping people move. and we got four new progressing investigators this week! super sweet people. one was this incredible woman we met while knocking the door of another one of our investigators Khuman. she answered and she immediately goes off haha like who the heck are you why are you here for my son and then we started talking and she changed on a dime, like instantly she was so respectful and we talked for forever on the doorstep about religion, she did most of the talking. you know the whole "if everyone had listened to Muhammad oh the world would be perfect" and that was super awesome! haha then Elder Johnson kinda jumped in and said "yeah hey we are messengers of God and we have this for you" and handed her the Book of Mormon and she got so excited! she was like oh my thank you so much! i will read it! and she asked for us to come back again. she knows we're christian, so that was new but still awesome. she's seriously the sweetest lady, as we walked off she stood by the window hugging the Book of Mormon to her chest and waving with so much excitement when we turned around smiling so big ah this work is so amazing. times like that make all the rejection and door slams and cursing soooooo worth it. id take all of Rive-Sud spitting their garbage at me to see just one person have a reaction like that to our message haha so awesome. the rejection is awesome. 

so we got a call the other day and found out that both of the Lamoyne sisters are leaving, and three new sisters are coming in. one who has only been spanish speaking, and two who have a little bit of french and none who have driven a car on the mission or been in any place like Rive-Sud haha so thats been exciting. we've been doing our best to take care of them. but yeah they're having a hard time, they got here and had no food haha but luckily Elder Johnson and i had our service that night where we leave with two giant boxes of food so we gave them the food so that was a little miracle. but yeah its been a little crazy for them and helping them out is a bit difficult haha but its good, lots of things to learn for everyone. 

the service deal we have every thursday at the food bank has been so cool. I'm learning all sorts of things from all these people. learning phrases in Arabic, spanish, more french, different dialects of african, so cool. and the people there are always so respectful of our religion. they ask a ton of fun questions and ah i love it. super awesome finding opportunity its been too. 

so fun experience, maybe a lesson for someone you guys know or something but being offended in the church. so for those of you that don't know me super well, i am not easily annoyed by people and not a lot of people can really set me off. and for those of you who really do know me, you know that was totally sarcastic. but I'm working on it. so we met this guy Daniel Best, and right off the bat he's telling us why he left the church. so apparently some members offended him and because of that, the church wasn't true to him. after that he began trying to tell Elder Johnson and i that he knows the Book of Mormon by heart, that he doesn't need the church and that his relationship with Jesus is perfect and that we should stop wasting our time and figure out for ourselves where our faith should be. oh man. haha oh man i was heated. i said a prayer that i could keep cool to talk to this man. my friends, how in the world does it make a single bit of sense to put all of our faith into the members of the church? theres an awesome story in the Book of Mormon in Alma chapters 60 and 61. Moroni is facing a super hard time and his people are dying of starvation and he's getting like hardly any help from Pahoran the chief judge, so Moroni sends this devastating letter to Pahoran just destroying him and telling him how evil he is and negligent to the church and the people and basically that he should be dead rather than continue being as he is in position as chief judge. super angry letter man, and then he hears back from Pahoran and finds out that theres been rebellion inside of the city and that Pahoran can't send anything to Moroni and his troops because this rebellion is taking over like all of his people and everything. Pahoran mentions that he isn't even mad that Moroni basically trashed him, but that he rejoices instead to here that his beloved brother is still alive. we have the choice to be offended or not. its so silly to hear that this man left the church because some member offended him. don't choose to be offended, and don't put your faith in the members of this church. people make mistakes, guess who doesn't… Jesus. haha sorry kinda preachy, just something that had been bothering me since hearing it. 

everything has been too awesome here though! i couldn't love it here more. the families are all amazing, the family Mouhe is still doing great. we still go over and read with the family a few times a week and i look forward to it so much. i haven't met many families as strong as the families here that have gone through refugee camps and devastating trials together. its been interesting to see how these destructive trials that could easily break anyone always tends to make these families so much stronger than most. theres a good reason family is so important to God. man how lucky am i to have had my family. its an awesome opportunity to help other people see the same thing. the family Nadji Adjim is doing beyond amazing. Bernard asked us about baptism and if his kids that have already been baptized catholic need to be baptized again or what and we explained the priesthood and everything and he was like oh perfect! lets do that! haha so thats awesome. and then he asked about tithing and said he hasn't ever seen the tray for offerings go around and he was like, "we pay EVERY week. please tell us how." my friends this is coming from a father of seven kids, came out of Africa four months ago, had a disease that scarred his face and forced him to suffer so much pain, and now lives in a basement of another family. i hope you guys can see how big of a sacrifice this is for them, and they didn't even know what tithing really was and they already are demanding to know how to pay. there are so many things to learn from this family. 

so yeah, sorry a bit preachy this email, but those are just some of the things that strengthened my testimony. i love this work so much! its incredibly hard every second of it, but being able to see how happy this gospel makes people makes it all beyond worth it. we finally got Angéle to church for her first time in five months and ah seeing her change was incredible. i love being here. this mission couldn't be more incredible and I'm so lucky to be here. i can't thank you all enough for helping me get here!! i love you all so much!! the church is true!!! 

-Elder Halliday