PUERTO!

Hola!

This week went faster at internet, I don't know what happened. My hands might be affected by the heat, I'm not sure.

But a little bit is this.

Elder Quevedo is my companion now. He was in Vallecito when I got to Sicuani. I've sent at least one picture back when he was there. He's super great, we're both doing our best to support one another and to do the work. We're opening the sector after a sister finished and went back home. Her companion was a mini missionary I think, so we're opening it again. From not much to work with, so it's interesting. But we're making progress. And we had a lesson yesterday! With members even! There's lots of trees, it's hot, it's like Lima, I'm adjusting well, but air conditioning makes you sweat more when you leave it. Last night we slept in 27 degrees C or more. Or 80 more or less F.

It's great here. Hot, but great! The members are fantastic! We're working hard and will have visible fruits soon.

Ask me questions to answer for all.

Love you all! Overcome your challenges with Christ! Be willing to change and become better people! Be the child of God that you are!

--

Hurrah for Israel!

~Elder Fincher

Transfers!!! La selva!

Hola a todos!

Espero que su semana fue lo máximo y que la siguiente será lo mismo o mucho mejor!

I hope that your week was the best and that the next one will be the same or so much better!

Things are changing here. I'm heading off to the jungle and my companion is going to have the old medic as his companion and we had a baptism this week and there's so much going on! It's awesome!!!

So yeah, first, good week. Good lessons. Baptism on Thursday so that the family of Hermana Anel could be there. (I constantly learn how to spell names correctly, especially when I put them in the baptismal record) The internet died for a minute just now, but thankfully gmail saves automatically. :D

So yeah, I'm heading out to Puerto Maldonado, in the beginning of summer, but the Lord likes to try His servants, sometimes by fire. :D It'll be fantastic! But I knew there was a reason that I decided to keep wearing long sleves here even though I could have worn short sleves for the heat. It's about to get a lot more.

I kind of wish I could stick around here in Sicuani, but I know that I'm leaving a ton of great people for my companion Elder Yangali and his new companion to help out. And I'm off to help more people in the jungle! It's actually the place that my first trainer, Elder Wilde started his mission.

I'll be packing today, but I'll also be prepping photos with testimony. A little for you guys is that Jesus is the Christ. He is the son of God and performed a perfect Atonement for all of us to be able to return to live with our Heavenly Father and Him, being as they are after this life and being perfected. The Plan of Salvation is so amazing! It's the Plan of Happiness and how we can be happy no matter what happens, because Jesus did the Atonement, we can repent, we can be saved. We just have to act.

--

Hurrah for Israel!

~Elder Fincher

Interviews and Stake Conference

Hola a todos!

Espero que su semana pasada fue muy bien, que muchas buenas cosas han pasado y que están aprendiendo mucho que está ayudando a ustedes y ellos quien les rodean.

I'll leave it to you guys to translate the first paragraph this week if you want to know it. :D

For us here in Sicuani, this has been a good week. We've had a lot of lessons to help people understand the Gospel of Jesus Christ more, because it brings us blessings.

Stake conference was yesterday, it was really good, focused on the Sabbath a lot. President Herrera was here for interviews and the Stake Conference, it was great, interviews helped us to lift our spirits even more, have more unity and just go for it.

Also, Anel is getting baptized this week! WHAT?!?! Yup, she passed her interview yesterday and now she'll be baptized the day that they decide on. Her mom will luckily follow as well and their family will have the blessings of the Gospel more abundantly in their lives.

Sharon and Ener as well are doing well and super interested. Life is good here, working on becoming more like Christ, but it's a great adventure.

Live the Gospel, it's how Christ blesses us. Be the amazing child of God that you are!

--

Hurrah for Israel!

~Elder Fincher

Keep going

Hola a todos!

Espero que su semana fue tan bien esta ultima, y también que han aprendido muchísimo, pero por medio de un medio tranquilo, viviendo el Evangelio.

I hope that your week was so great this last one, and also that you've learned so much living the Gospel!

This week has been a real ride. Yesterday we decided with the sisters in our sector of Sicuani that we'd split our area so that we can focus more and not walk from one end to the other end all within the same day, multiple times. So now we've got our side of the river as well as behind the hospital, they've got the rest. We're giving them a lot of the people we were teaching, but we all feel that it will be for the best, that the Lord will be able to work more effectively now.

Last Monday we had a 4/5 zone activity (sorry Espinar) it was really fun, we played a few games with the fútbol and volleyball. And for the people that went to the school I went to, we also played Koosh! That was fun to play again, the other missionaries liked it too, other than Elder Sanabria won three times in a row. But that was a fun activity, at the very end the food finally was cooked, next time we might bring gasoline to start the fire... Or different charcoal, we'll see... :D

We've got a lot of people progressing, Sharon and Ener whom we found last week are really interested. Edith and Annel her daughter are also progressing well for baptism, they really want to be baptized, just lack a couple requirements like all the lessons. Other people are going good too, but we're giving a lot to the sisters, it helps us remember before we get transferred that they're not "our people" rather they're the Lord's.

I'm learning to be more humble. We can be something, such as humble, or nice, or charitable, but we need to remember that until we are perfect like Christ, we still have to improve. Which means we can recognize an attribute of Christ that we are developing, that we've developed more than others, but that we still need to develop.

The thing that's always been the test, is to put in practice the things that we've already known. When we came to Earth, we had already known everything we needed to, but we forgot it all, according to the great and grand design of Heavenly Father. And here in the Earth, we learn a lot, but the task is to put it into practice, just like it's always been. We can do it, we just need to actually do it.

So, I invite you that you can think of one thing that you can do to act this week. And do it.

--

Hurrah for Israel!

~Elder Fincher

BAPTISMS! And MIRACLES!

Hola a todos! Amigos, familiares y a los demás!

Esta semana fue muy, muy bien. Recibimos muchas más cosas y nuevas normas de excelencia todavía. Pero nos ha ayudado todo esto!

This week was very, very good. We received more things and newer standards of excellence still. But it's helped us, all of this!

The sector Sicuani is good. We had two baptisms this week! Two brothers in the young men, we're super excited for them. We've had a lot of great lessons this week. Really, things are going really well, just a little bit more on our part and it'll shoot off!

Yesterday a really cool experience that we had was we were in the fields that we have in Sicuani, my companion had been feeling that we should go over there since no one had ever pretty much, that there were and are families that need us, we went there and as we were about to head back to the more city-like area because of the rain I felt that there was someone that needed our help. Maybe because of the rain or something else. Anyway, we went and hide under a tin hut until the downpour stopped, I wasn't feeling so strongly anymore and asked if we should head back, but we decided to go and find who had been in need of our help. We came to a house that I felt prompted to go to, knocked, nothing. Then Elder Yangali said there was a sister in a small shack that was nearby, we started off, then I felt that it was in the other direction, like it had been from the main road to the small house. We went over to where two people were talking as one of them was about to head off with his motorcycle. We told them that we were prompted to come over here because someone needed our help. We said that we were missionaries and had a message that is very important that we'd like to share, and if there was any physical needs we could do that too. They invited us in and we shared about the Atonement and that through Christ and living His Gospel we can change, we answered some questions and had a fantastic lesson focusing on them. Then we invited them to pray and read the scriptures, then we set an appointment for Saturday and left. It was an amazing, spiritual experience.

And on Saturday we had the baptism of Oseas y Obed. It was really special, the spirit was strong, I didn't know what to feel, but it was good, the spirit was there and everyone felt it. Their parents were able to attend as well.

All in all, we're doing great. Elder Yangali and I are having a lot of success in many areas, spiritual, personally, in our companionship and in the work. It's great.

Go study the Book of Mormon. Don't just read it, study it. Do it now, you have access to https://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm?lang=eng if you're reading this blog, you probably also have scriptures in your house. Go read it now, have a question you need or want answered, I promise that if you do as Moroni says about prayer, real intent, sincere heart and faith in Christ, you'll find the answer in the scriptures just like we can while praying. God talks to us through the scriptures, we talk to Him through prayer. He also gives personal revelation during both. Go now, read, and yet more, study the Book of Mormon, and you'll find the answer you've been seeking.

--

Hurrah for Israel!

~Elder Fincher

Progress, keep making life better!

Hola a todos!

Cuando servimos a nuestros prójimos, servimos a nuestro Dios. Y crecemos en una manera bien grande.

When we serve our fellow men, we serve our God. And we grow really good many ways.

This week has been good, we had a lot of good lessons. We didn't have with Osias, Obet or Darwin sufficient to be ready for their interviews this weekend. But they should have themselves ready for this weekend to interview and then baptism on the 22nd! That's some exciting news! :D

And I've been being challenged in my patience and love from any angles recently, but as I've looked back, I have seen that there's been tremendous progress! That's nice to see. :) We're working hard to use time very well and help all the people here.

A cool epiphany that I had during a lesson is that I always like to look at potential progress as how much better life could be, and it's awesome already! We're not going to be perfect, or even get close in this life. But each step we take in that direction is one step further into a better life. Life improves the more we follow God.

Read the Book of Mormon, find a couple things that'll make your life better than it already is, then let me know how it goes. :)

We're off to  Cusco this week for a multi-zone conference, going to go find things that I don't have yet that'll help me have a better life as I implement them. 

Hasta la próxima!

--

Hurrah for Israel!

~Elder Fincher

Conference!!!! (what else would it be?)

Hola a todos!

Si no han tenido la oportunidad a escuchar a la conferencia general, yo recomendaría que lo haga, fue lo máximo!!!

If you haven't had the opportunity to listen to the general conference, I would recommend that you do it, it was the best!

And if you did have the opportunity to listen, go back and review it, that's how we learn the best, reviewing. That's why we read the scriptures everyday, pray everyday and go to church each week. A review of the things that matter most in life. Also why we have conference every 6 months, to review the things we need the most today. Review in the meantime too!

I'm not going to write what all the talks were, that's your homework. ;) But a couple things that I noticed were like others have already said, prayer, that was a big focus. Make it meaningful and do it. It's talking with our Father in heaven, how awesome is that!?!? We get to talk to a God, we have the huge chance to talk the creator of the whole universe, and He tells us to talk to Him each day to remind us of His love.

Repentance, keep reading, don't let that "scary" word keep you away from one of the greatest blessings that God has given us. As was said, "repentance isn't a back up plan in case our plan to live perfectly doesn't work out," that went out as a valid plan very early in your life, sorry, but that's the case with everyone that's ever been here except for Jesus Christ. But, because there is that exception, Jesus Christ, because He was and is perfect, He could and did pay the price for our sins.  He made it possible to constantly return and become more like Him. And if we do it how He established, we'll repent daily, then as another speaker said, we'll go to the church each week to participate in the ordinance of the Sacrament, renewing all of our covenants with Him, saying that this week we'll do a little bit better, realizing that it'll take a long time, our whole life, but that it's possible through His grace, we keep falling, but as President Uchtdorf said a while back, it's not the times we fall that count, but rather the times we pick ourselves up off the ground and go forward again." It's the way of life, choose to remove the things that are making you sad (sins, and other things mentioned in another talk) and experience the JOY of the gospel! The JOY of Jesus.

There was so much more in the conference, and this week was great for us here in Sicuani, but I'll just leave you here and invite you to go and read, go and watch and/or go and listen to the voice of God's prophets today. I had the chance to listen to their voices for all but the Priesthood Session, the words are the same, but the voices add the emotion that the prophets themselves have. If you're reading this you probably speak English, take advantage of the huge ability you all have to hear the same voice of the prophet.

Hasta la próxima,

--

Hurrah for Israel!

~Elder Fincher