MOTOS, MY EYES, AND A BAPTISM

Hola Familia!!!

Sounds like you guys are doing INCREDIBLE!!!! Thanksgiving IS THIS WEEK! Eat lots of food for me and if you are with the McCleskey’s tell them I love them and say hello!!!! Mom, to answer one of your questions, yup I got your package!!! And I cannot even thank you enough for everything! I didn’t have time this morning to go through all of it, but from what I was able to see, THANK YOU FOR EVERYTHING! You are all the absolute greatest and I feel so blessed to have such an incredible family!! The Priority Mail Envelope hasn’t arrived yet but they said hopefully by December for the stuff from the CCM. And I am going to send a pic next week of the food I eat! Our pencionista is incredible! So stay tuned for food pics!

So guess who was my companion for a day this past week??? Hermana Cardon, Kayla Cardon’s sister who is in your YSA ward!!! She is my Sister Leader and is absolutely incredible! She ends her mission in a week, so I was her last intercambio! She is an absolute doll, and it was heavenly being able to speak English and talk about all of our experiences so far on the mission. She is an incredible missionary and gave me such good advice! Seriously, it was the best 24 hours of my mission so far!! I just love her!

Also, funny story from when I was with Sister Cardon. So we were contacting and we found this family just standing all together outside of their house, so of course ran over to talk to them. It ended up that the only person interested was their son, about 23 years old. So we sat down and had a quick lesson with him. I was sharing some of my feelings about the gospel and THE ENTIRE time he was looking at me and smiling. I assumed it was because of my Spanish, because it’s a typical reaction when I start talking :)! But nope! Right as I finished talking (more like pouring out my soul, people!) he says, "You have the most beautiful eyes." And I just lost it! It was the funniest thing ever, and he seriously had not paid attention to a single thing in our lesson! Hermana Cardon tried to bring it home by sharing her testimony and he said the same thing about her eyes! Yup, we ended the lesson with a sweet little final testimony and hustled out the door! We busted up laughing afterwards! It was too great! What a little rascal, he wasn´t even interested … but it was a great experience!

Oh and some big news is we have a BAPTISM this week!!! Wohooo!!! It is our investigator Jorge, and he is so excited! He is the sweetest thing and his mom is so happy that he has made the decision to be a member of this wonderful church (she is a member). And my companion and I feel so blessed because he hasn´t been interested in listening to the missionaries, until the last few months, and so we all are so excited that he has made this decision! We can´t wait!

Overall, we are having some great success with the families we are currently teaching! Family Ramoni (the family of Water, Norfidia, Gaby, Luz) are incredible and are so willing to hear our message. The only thing is they are a little scared every time we talk about baptism so we hope that after time they will come to realize that is more of a blessing then a scary thing! But overall, they seriously are so amazing and I hope that they realize how much of joy comes from the gospel!

Another thing I want to share with you is a great quote I found in Preach My Gospel. It says:

"Regarding one’s testimony, remember, that which one willingly shares he keeps, while that which he selfishly keeps he loses... teach and testify. There is no better combination."

To me that is so powerful! The only way we can grow our testimonies and MAINTAIN our testimonies is if we SHARE them! So my challenge this week is SHARE your testimony! Whether this Sunday, or during the week with your friends, just SHARE what you believe! From experience, I seriously am always so scared to testify, because my Spanish is so bad, but I want you all to know that every time I do testify, no matter how weak or bad, I feel stronger and more confident!

I love you all A MILLION KAJILLIONS and thank you so much for your support!! Always do what’s right and have the greatest Thanksgiving!!! 

XOXO – Hermana CHUMway!

Riding in the moto with my comp (our typical form of transportation which is basically a motorcycle with a little cabin for people to sit in) 

P-Day at Chili's eating some yummy American food ... HOSANNAH!!!

Hermana Cardon and I ... she is seriously awesome

Zone Conference

PICS, MIRACLES, AND MORE MIRACLES

Hola Familia!! 

To start, I want to say I love hearing about all of your stories and the things happening in your lives!! Sorry I haven´t been responding about all of those great things. Parker, SO SO SO SO HAPPY FOR YOU!!! You and Cass are darling and I am absolutely thrilled for you guys! LINDSEY PETERSON is going on a mission!!!! Ahhhhh, when you see her please give her a big hug from me and tell her I am so excited for her! She will be an incredible missionary!!! And Mom, you are incredible!! All of the work you do for your job is amazing, and the big change in employees is such an exciting step for Allegiance! And Mr. Downs. OH MY HEAVENS I LOVE THAT MAN!!! So happy you got to chat with him for a little!! Seriously, it sounds like you guys are just so busy and doing such great things! Lovey, I hope school is going great for you and you are feeling okay!! Love you so much!! Chariton, what ever happened to writing me?? Just kidding, but seriously I would love to hear about you and your dates and school!! I love you champ! Parks, love you to the moon and back! Thank you for your letters and I am thrilled for you!! Justin and Emily, you guys just are the cutest and I love you way too much!! Hope law school is going great for you Emily!! I bet you are just killing it! And Justin, hope school and work and all of those great things are going well!! Love you guys so much!! Mom and Dad I love you guys so much too!! Thank you for your support and letters!! 

So, this week has been great!! So busy, but so great!! To start, we had a member of the Seventy come and speak to us. His name is Elder Evans and he was an incredible speaker. He pretty much just laid out that we need to work harder, and dedicate all we have to this time as missionaries! He also shared about how repentance needs to be a very strong focus in our lessons with our investigators. He wanted us to understand that for a member to repent and be baptized requires a complete change of heart. And that we make such sacred ordinances when we are baptized. It seriously was just such a powerful talk and made me want to work so much harder! He also stressed the importance of finding references from members and our investigators. And he promised us that that night (after the meeting) in our proselyting we would find references. What a promise!! And guess what happened!! My comp and I found someone!!

So here is what happened. So like normal, we went out to meet with our investigators that night and none of our citas fell through, so we got super frustrated because we had hoped we would find references! And then... as we were walking around a park looking for families to share the gospel with, a 14 year old girl came up and asked us when we were going to visit her family?? It was so crazy!! We had never met her before, and she shared with us that about a year ago missionaries had visited with her and her family but I guess they stopped coming after a while. When she saw us and remembered the sister missionaries and wanted to know when we were coming to visit again! So we set up a visit for the following day. When we went and met with her the following day, we decided to ask her for references. She gave us 5!!!! It was such a blessing! Seriously I couldn´t believe it! Such a blessing. 

Also, we were going to have a baptism this weekend but we are probably going to move it to the next week. Our investigator Jorge is incredible, but he needs a few more lessons and we want to make sure to not rush through them! Also, our other investigator that was going to be baptized can´t anymore. Her parents, who are not members, don´t think that she is ready. It is so sad!! She has such a desire to be baptized! But they said that maybe in December she can do it! So we will shoot for that.

Overall, things are going really well! We are preaching the gospel and trying so hard to find more people to teach every day! Please pray for us to find new families! We want to share this gospel so bad, because it is such a blessing!! Seriously, I don’t know what I would do without the gospel. I love this work!! Share the gospel with everyone around you! We are so blessed to have the church in our life!

I love you ALL!!! Do what´s right every day and always trust in your Heavenly Father!! 1 Nephi 7:12 

XOXO – Hermana Shumway


Noche de Postres (Dessert Night) ... we baked brownies and a carrot cake!

Just another hot and sweaty day in Piura ... sending my love to you all!

KNOCKING DOORS, PREPARED INVESTIGATORS AND LOVIN' LIFE!

Hola Familia!!!

Another great week has flown by! Oh my heavens, I have two months in the mish!!! That is so nuts! I am loving it here and this week has been so great!!

As you all wonder every week … how is my Spanish? Well, this week I was able to understand A LOT more!! My comp is so patient with me and pushes me to speak as much as I can. The best part is when we are contacting in the street and my comp says the next person is mine and right when I start speaking the same thing happens every time. The person starts with a smile and then their face slowly moves to a confused look, a no idea what was just said type of look. Well, the language will come one of these days! :)

Right now we are teaching about 7 families! We found one of the families as the sister was washing her car out in the calle. We introduced ourselves like normal, and when we started talking about the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith she was shocked and said, "Oh yeah, I had a dream about him." WHAT??? Talk about a prepared investigator!! She wanted to learn more and invited us in to her home. She invited her brother and cousin out (keep in mind that they are all about 60 years old and the sweetest group of people) and we taught them the first lesson. The spirit was so strong!! I could only speak a little bit of Spanish, but I testified of what I could and we asked if we could come again! Now we have taught them three lessons, and they are GOLDEN investigators! They are reading their Book of Mormon and are so sweet and excited to learn more! Oh and in the last visit, they invited two of their family members to listen to the lesson. WOW!! Maybe by the end of December we will have 5 more baptisms?? Cross your fingers!!

Also, this last week we had a day when none of our meetings with investigators fell through, so we decided to do contacting and knock on a bunch of doors in the street. We began knocking, and did for what seemed like forever before we got to the house of one of our current investigators. We stopped to say hello, talked to her for a little, and then found out she has a brother who is a member, who lives in her house, and has been looking for the missionaries!! WHY HAD WE NOT HEARD THIS BEFORE?? She called him down to meet us, and he is an incredible man named Julio. He has been looking for the church ever since he moved from Lima to Piura! It was a miracle!! Seriously, we had been knocking on doors ALL DAY and one of our last houses (a house of an investigator) had a member of the church! He was so excited and said he would love to come to church that Sunday! And sure thing, he was there the following Sunday!! He seriously is incredible and so willing to take the lessons again since he has been inactive for quite some time. He is literally the perfect investigator!

Overall, we are working hard and are loving the opportunity we have to teach the gospel every day!! Thank you for all of your support and we´ll see what this next week brings!! I love you all!!! Keep choosing the right and make every day count!

XOXO – Hermana "CH-UM" way!!

TEACHING PIANO, TEACHING ENGLISH, AND THE TOP BUNK

Okay ... so this week has been superb! Seriously last week was so hard for me, and I was really down and frustrated A LOT ... but this week has been so full of happy moments and success! First, I want to start with some cool facts:

- I sleep without a blanket (it is way too hot for one) and I think I almost die every time I try to climb up to the top of my bed (I am the top bunk).

- I am currently the ward pianist. HOLY TOLEDO is all I can say! And yes, I am pretty terrible! Hahaha! The members assumed I could play because I am American and asked if I would play this last Sunday right before sacrament meeting began. And of course, me being the determined human being I am said of course!!! The first hymn was..... The Spirit of God. FOR A BEGINNER IT IS SUCH A HARD HYMN! I am pretty sure everyone in the congregation was laughing because it sounded so horrible but I just grinned and did my best! It was SO HILARIOUS! But they asked me to play so I must have sounded somewhat okay! So I guess you can now consider me the ward pianist!!!

- And it gets even better... BECAUSE ... I am now officially the piano teacher and English teacher every Friday. Can I please say HOLY TOLEDO again! I seriously am so terrible at teaching piano and English, but hey, this is going to be so entertaining! I will definitely keep you posted!

- I finally received the ward letter from September - THANK GRAMPS!! You are the bomb!!

I just love hearing about you guys and seriously can´t even tell you how grateful I am for your support!! My Spanish is coming along! I seriously want to be completely fluent already, but I know that it just takes time! But, it is becoming a lot easier to understand what people are saying so that is progress! 

Also, we have one investigator with a baptismal date!! WAHOO!!!! And hopefully by the end of this week we will have two! The first is Jorge, who I talked about last week with the pic of the temple, and the second (we are crossing our fingers she will want to be baptized soon) is Carla! Both are about 14 years old and incredible people! Carla has parents who are not very supportive, but hopefully they will have a change of heart as we progress in the lessons! They are so hilarious though! My comp and I love their family! And Jorge is doing superb as well! He continues to progress and now we are really pushing him to read his scriptures more. But all in all, he has the desire, he just needs to continue to strengthen his testimony. His mom is a member and an incredible person! Hopefully her influence will help Jorge out a little bit!

Also, I want to testify of the power of prayer. Oh my heavens, I cannot stress enough how much of a blessing it is to kneel down and talk to Heavenly Father every day. Whenever I am struggling, feel homesick, frustrated, or all of the above I know I can pray and feel peace and strength. THIS IS SUCH A BLESSING!! Like I said, this last week was HARD! I was so frustrated, but I can testify that every time I sincerely prayed to my Heavenly Father for help, he has answered my prayers! This week was hard, but I was blessed with many experiences that I have looked back and realized it was exactly what I needed. I know that when I sincerely pray, my Heavenly Father listens, and that has been an incredible blessing this week!

Overall, I am doing great!!! I am happy, my companion is incredible and pushed me to always be better, and I am becoming more a little latina every day! I love you all and can´t wait to hear about your experiences this next week and all the wonderful things you guys are doing! Work hard, STRENGTHEN your testimony everyday, and do what's right!

XOXO - Hermana Shumway

Pictures from our zone activity last week ... such a pretty building!

My comp and I posing with the only male we're allowed to be close to

The view from my apartment window

Just a giant iguana chilling in a tree

I'm putting a big smile on my face because this burro was scary--seriously!

At the market with my comp and two other hermanas

The bunkbeds in our apartment ... it's like scaling Mt. Everest each night!