Hola

Hey everyone!!

I hope all is going well.  Things are going awesome here in Iquitos, and yes, I am officially serving in the Misión Perú Iquitos now with President Gómez.  I still haven’t actually met him but there was an activity on Saturday and apparently the food here isn’t really his friend…welcome to Iquitos!!

So Saturday was literally the most exhausting day in every way humanly possible.  So we had 3 baptisms on Saturday but it was really difficult because we have 2 wards and there were 2 in one ward and 1 in the other so we had to put together 2 baptismal services and get both chapels ready in the morning, and we don’t really have a ward mission leader in either ward because one was recently called and we had to show him how to do everything and in the other ward, we just don’t have one.  There was also that activity with Prez Gomez at night so we had to do both in the afternoon…the members could only do it at 3 and the other at 4…so we already knew that we were going to be very short on time and had to rush a little bit. 

That morning, we passed by the family that was going to be baptized at 3 because we were going that way and stopped to say hi and then he tells us he’s not going to get baptized anymore…we go in and then he goes upstairs leaving his wife with us and just won’t come down…well we have about a thousand other things to do that morning and we have a few lessons planned so we couldn’t wait for him. We go, get everything ready, including chase down the keys to one of the chapels for an hour because everyone had passed the keys along to someone else who really had no need for the keys.  So we’re just running around that morning and basically every moment we get to breathe we’re just praying as hard as we can because we can’t do anything more to help H*.  So after that, we pass by for them to see what is going on at about 2:30 (the first chance we got) and he’s sitting in front of his house and we start talking to him and he tells us he’s just waiting for his wife so they can go together to the chapel for the baptism…I still have no idea what happened there but let’s just say prayer works. 

Then, because we had to wait for the baptismal clothes (we didn’t have time to go get them in the morning) and another priesthood holder, we were starting about a half hour late…we had the other baptism at 4 but we can’t cut out the baptismal program because it’s important to have a nice program…so we just had to be patient.  We finished at 4:30 and just booked it out of there only pausing briefly to congratulate the 2 of them. We ran from one chapel to the other with backpacks full of wet clothes to get to the other chapel and when we get there, (dead tired) there were a bunch of people outside--the bishop still hadn’t come to open the chapel and P* had left because he thought nobody was coming.  Long story short, the bishop showed up, P* came back and we had the baptism with only a few other things that went wrong.  I really cannot explain all of the things that went wrong that day but when we got home that night I just wanted to die. 

It was an emotional and physical rollercoaster but luckily it all ended well.  I honestly don’t know if I have ever prayed harder for so many things in so many instances but I’m thankful to my Heavenly Father for making it all happen.  Sometimes it hurts, and sometimes you might think that things can’t possibly be going worse but God is always there listening.  I wish I could tell you all about some other experiences I had this week but it’ll have to wait because I have no time. 

I love you guys and hope everything is going well!

Elder Peacock

PS still no package, I think it’s in Lima

** See HERE for more on the power of prayer **