Elder Ramírez

¡Hola familia! This has been an awesome week here in our sector! My new companion is Elder Ramírez. He is from Chiclayo, Peru, but now he lives in Argentina. He has about 14 months in the mission and he is awesome! We get along really well and he is really humble. He used to be one of the district leaders here in Callao but President moved him up to be my companion and one of the new zone leaders. Looks like he is going to be my last companion. Now there are sister missionaries in Callao! President Larson opened up a new sector in the rich part of La Punta for them. Its the first time that Callao has had sisters for over 20 years. Hermana Larson was really worried about it so we have a bunch of rules and a lot of responsability to make sure that they are always safe. It shocked the entire mission that there are sisters in Callao, but I think that its a good change. Now there are sisters in every zone in the mission. The elders in La Punta are in a trio and they got kicked out of their room so that the sisters could live there and until they find a new place to live they are living with us. Its pretty uncomfortable because we are five missionaries with three beds and one shower. Its crazy but it looks like they are going to be moving out next week! Hooray!!!

We had a great week! Elder Ramirez is always happy and positive and is a hard worker. It helps me to keep working hard too. We are going to work hard until the last minute of this change. This week we met almost all of our goals and taught a ton of lessons. We found a bunch of good new investigators and it surprised me how many accepted a baptismal date so easily. We were expecting a lot of people in the church yesterday. So many people had promised us that they were going to be there. Claudia had to be there so that she could be baptized this week. Nobody showed up. Then just before sacrament meeting was about to start an investigator named Antonio showed up on his bike. It was his first time at church, the missionaries had invited him before but he never went. He really enjoyed it and felt good there. He broke down crying during princples of the gospel class and told us that he is going through a lot of family problems. His girlfriend and her kids left him a few months ago and he feels super alone. He is trying to lose weigh too because he is like 5 times my size! He is a good person and as of now he has a baptismal goal for the 13th of August.

Last night there was a pretty strong earthquake. It only lasted like a second though and nothing happened. We felt it when he were planning and the assistants called us and told us to be ready with our shoes by our beds and our emergency money at hand. President and Hermana Larson have been teaching us a lot of emergency safety and since last month we have been creating a mission emergency plan. 

Something fun about this week is that everyday this week we contacted someone who was either born in the States or had lived there for a long time. I got to contact them in english. Its wierd to contact and teach the gospel in english. For me its so natural to do it in spanish now. It was interesting though that in one of the ugliest parts of the whole mission is where I have done the most contacting in english! haha!

Im glad that you all had fun on your camping trip and time at the Walquists. Thanks for sending all of the pictures! I love ya´ll!!

--

-Elder Kevin Torgersen-

Misión Perú Lima Central

-Hermana Jany, our pensionista and her daughter made the four of us elders our own candy-filled tie box before Elder Luis and Elder Winn went home last week.

 -All of the suitcases in our house. There are 5 of us living there!

 -Elder Ramirez is the elder on the far left.