"I have officially been on the mish for twenty months! TWENTY. How?!?! That is so weird."

Hello!

Week two in Cajamarca. Still pretty cool. Still pretty cold too! The other day I went out and bought a new pair of socks because, one, all my socks were dirty and the lady who does our laundry was out of town, and two, my socks aren't warm enough. Well, the socks I bought are even less warm and are made for someone with really big legs because they kept falling down! Buy fail. I'll try to buy socks again some other day...

Hmm, well, it's been a tough week. For one, both my companion and I got sick, on two different days. Killed two days of working. Plus, all the days that we did work, we couldn't find anyone to teach! We made this huge list of people we were gonna try to find during our last weekly planning session (mostly of old investigators) and so we spent a lot of the week trying to find those people, and we couldn't find anyone! Our one ray of hope was the set appointments that we had with people, but, surprise-surprise, almost all of those fell through too! Not the best of luck this week, but we did have some really good lessons, even if we didn't have very many lessons in total.

I also got asked some questions this week that I always imagined having to answer a ton on my mission but I've actually never been asked them until recently. These are the fun kind of questions. Actually, not so much. But still. First, one lady told us that she had a gay friend and that she read in her Bible that people like that won't enter into the kingdom of God. So, she was concerned about that, and asked us what we thought. Not exactly my favorite types of questions to answer. But, we started by telling her that each and every one of us here on this earth is a son or daughter of God, and God loves all of us perfectly. We then clarified, telling her that just "being gay" is not a sin, but acting on the feelings and urges that cause them to break the law of chastity is where it becomes a sin. The other fun question (this one was even better) was when one of our investigators told us that she saw a documentary about Mormons, and it had this part about these Mormons in Colorado (I think...) who live in this community where they practice polygamy and their "prophet" punishes people for disobedience by taking away people's wives (and mothers...) and assigns them to other families. Haha, whoa! Actually, I've heard of that church before, and that "prophet" was on the FBI's top 10 most wanted list and is currently in prison. The FLDS church, I think? Anyway, that was a fun one, because, all of that stuff is true. Except... it has nothing to do with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints! We explained that that was a different church, and also made it clear that in our church "We believe in obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law" and that what goes on in that other church is completely illegal and against what our church teaches. But, that was a first for me. Nobody in Peru has ever asked me about those other apostate LDS splinter groups before. Something you hear a lot more about in the States...

Y´know what else? TI have officially been on the mish for twenty months! TWENTY. How?!?! That is so weird. Time is flying so stupidly fast.

But, honestly, like I said, we had two sick days this week and not much success finding people to teach, so I really don't have that much stuff to tell you about this time! Or much time to tell it (we have an appointment in a few minutes...)! We really gotta get ready to go teach a family right now. Sorry we decided to get on the internet so late! I'll try to tell you more cool stuff next week! I'm doing good though. Don't worry ´bout me. I enjoy it here.

I miss you a lot!!

-Elder Hemsley