We’ve had a good week. We went on a very interesting lesson with the missionaries one night. We taught a boy about 10 or 11. He lives with his aunt and he has cousins who are members of the church. Javier dropped us off at the bottom of a steep hill. We climbed a bunch of stairs and walked up a steep road and the Elders directed us to an even steeper dirt hill. We walked to the top and knocked on a door. He came outside and we taught him right there on this steep dirt hill. His cousins joined the lesson. It was dark so Tim turned on the flashlight on his phone. We taught him about faith in Jesus Christ and baptism. After a few minutes the missionaries offered to translate if I wanted to add anything. As Ive previously shared, its hard to contribute when you don’t know the context of what’s already been said and then keeping it simple enough to translate. However, this time I was able to follow pretty well what was being taught and could give a short testimony. A few minutes later, though, I felt a strong impression that I needed to add more about knowing Christ and being able to trust that he will be there for you when needed. So I let them know I wanted to add a little more, and I think it turned out OK. I felt like I was being led by the Spirit in understanding the language and in what I could contribute. Baby steps.
Speaking of which, after all that climbing, I realized I need to get in better shape. I do stretching and Pilates each morning, and we walk a lot around the city, but now I’ve added walking up the stairs to our 7th floor apartment instead of the elevator. From the back of our complex it is 10 stories. From the front it is 7 stories. And we are at 8,000 feet, so it is rough.
The office couple left last Friday for home, so Tim has been the finance guy all week. The day after they left, we went to the temple with our newly baptized friend Alicia. She had 4 names to be baptized and confirmed. She asked Tim to baptize her and then to be baptized for the male names. He wasn’t planning to get wet, but he was happy to do it. I was happy I could be there to show her what all she needed to do. It was a great experience.
The next day was Father’s Day. We did a little Father’s Day shopping the day before, before we went to the temple. I was hoping to pick out an alpaca sweater for Tim, but he just ended up getting a tie. Then we went out to lunch.
Also, the Chipman’s son’s family were here for a couple of weeks. It was fun to see them. We had a waffle and game night with them and we offered to babysit their two kids one night so they could go to dinner. Bear, their one year old son, slept while we were there and Emma (almost 4), went to bed soon after that, so it was pretty easy, but we had fun with Emma until she went to bed.
The week after all this, was zone conferences and temple trips for the missionaries who live in Arequipa. Tim got very busy with his new temporary finance job on Monday, then zone conference for the La Costa and Chachani zones was on Tuesday. La Costa travels in from the coast, so they were the first zone to go to the temple that evening after the conference and interviews with President Chipman. One of our new responsibilities is to organize these trips to the temple and this was our first one. We arranged for a special session with the temple since there were about 24 of us arriving at once. It went very well and the missionaries were very happy for the opportunity to attend the temple.
The next day was zone conference for the Pichu Pichu and Misti Zones. We didn't attend this conference since we went the day before. But we went with Chachani Zone to the temple in the afternoon.
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