"The chances of me dying before I get home are now 500% higher."

Familia!

You know what's weird? It’s July now. That's what's weird. Hope you have a fun 4th. I sure won't! Well, I'll try to make it fun, even if there are no fireworks or hot dogs or cousins or nuthin'. Maybe I'll baptize someone.

This week was pretty good. Err... not that great. We had like no lessons this week! And we had so many appointments! One day we had nine set appointments. NINE APPOINTMENTS. I've never had nine appointments in one day!! Six fell through. Great. In this zone we also keep track of how many hours we're out proselyting each week. Elder Maldonado and I had the highest amount of hours working this week, and the least amount of lessons! I don't like it.

But, let's see what else happened this week, aside from being in the street for a ridiculously huge amount of time because we could never get into anyone's house...

On Tuesday we had our regular district and zone meetings. Being the district leader, I got to give a class. This time I taught a class on working with members. Inspired by the broadcast last Sunday. I stressed that the members need to get to know us better, and that we need to show the members more love. Pretty good class. Hope it’s something that can help us out. The prophet sure seems to think so. So I think its a safe bet that yes. Although, I've also learned that in Peru things don't work like in other parts of the world. So, we'll see.

Friday was kinda fun, because on Friday I got to eat lunch with Elder McGrath and his family! Elder McGrath was the assistant when I got to the mish. He and his companion Elder Aaroni were literally the first missionaries I met in this mission, because they picked us up from the airport! Anyway, he finished his mish over a year ago, and came back to visit with his fam. He served in this area, so he came to eat lunch with my pensionista's family. Fun times.

"Elder McGrath"

Later that night, I got a really awful cold. Still suffereing from it. Not so fun. Saturday was horrible. I was dying. Sunday was pretty bad too. Today, I'm mostly better, but I sure don't like being sick.

On Saturday in the morning we got to do some service, which I like. We helped a family move apartments. We teamed up with the zone leaders and we did it really quick. That was fun. It was a family that we've been visiting and we're trying to help out in whatever way we can. I like serving.

That night (when I was super sick) we had an FHE with one member family. One of the guys there said that the last time that I visited his family with Elder Tróchez (like three weeks ago) was the first time in a very long time that the missionaries had come to visit them. He was super thankful for that. He was almost in tears. Last night we had another FHE with another family, and the guy told us that in the year that he's lived in Cajamarca, last night was the first time the missionaries have ever come to visit his family. He also thanked us a lot for that. I guess missionary visits are something that the members here really enjoy, and really need. Gotta keep visiting them!

This week we had some more great visits with Herber. We taught about the priesthood, about temples and temple work, and about what Doctrine and Covenants and the Pearl of Great Price is. Now, he wants to receive the priesthood, and he wants to go to the temple, and he's more excited about reading his scriptures! But the most awesomest part is that after one of the lessons Herber told us that he wants to be a missionary like us. Because he's awesome!!

That's basically all that happened this week. Not much, honestly. We wore ourselves out walking so much. We had like 25 set appointments this week, and almost all of them fell through. And almost all of our backup plans fell through. This isn't exactly how I want to finish my mission... But, we're gonna see what we can do to change this. Finding new people would be a good start.

Read a big pile of mail this week. Some of it was really old! From when I was still in Picsi! But whatever. Grandpa Hemsley sent me a cool article about the animation program at BYU which almost made me wish I would have pursued my childhood dream of making cartoons. Oh, I got the pictures you sent too! Why the heck are my sisters and brother so big?! How is Sam so tall?! I don't like it. Stop. Jacqueline finished the New Testament? That's pretty awesome! I'm trying to finish the BoM another time before I get home. I'm in Alma. Chapter 53-ish. That's cool how mom used parts of my e-mails in her stake conference talk too. Hope you're all having a fun summer!

Oh yeah, one last piece of bad news. On Sunday, the bishop announced that starting now, every Sunday the missionaries are going to start eating lunch with the members! My heart sank as I heard that. The chances of me dying before I get home are now 500% higher.

Well, I gotta get going. I wanna buy souvenirs (something I haven't done my entire mission), but my companion doesn't want to because he thinks it’s boring because the culture here is really similar to the culture where he lives. Psh. I'll see if I can convince him to let me go buy stuff one of these Mondays.

I miss you guys a lot! I hope next week I can tell you that I had a sickness-free successful week! See ya!

-Elder Hemsley