Nola :D

Everyone.

Wow. its been a great week. 

I have a story.

We have an investigator who is getting ready for baptism. and we are so excited. his name is orlando and his wife is named  eli. Eli is a member but is less active. 

Eli is a very strong woman, but very quiet. Her and Orlando are the poorest family i have seen here in peru. they live with only 4 walls of straw adn have a floor of sand. Eli this last week told us she needed a blessing of health adn so we gave her a blessing and afterwords she told us that she and orlando  had been talking. Elli is really sick and she said the doctors said she needed surgery but she told orlando that they had no money and they needed to trust in the lord. so they made some decisions. Her and Orlando have decided to turn their lives around. they are going to get married, attend church, and pay tithing (even though they have nothing) and orlando decided he wants to be baptized. We are estatic. We are hoping to see the Lords hand in their lives.

I know this story is breif. but i wanted to share it because it is such an example of faith to me. this young couple have nothing but they have decided to give everything to the lord. I wish i show everyone one in the world what miracles are taking place here in the mission feild. 

Im sorry this is so breif but i have one other experience to share.

This week we had our english class. and we have decided as a companionship that we want to strive to teach a gosple principle as well as english every time we have our class. but we want to do it in way not to scare people away.

This week we learned christmas words.

As we were teaching i was struck with an idea. We were approaching the end of the lesson and i told everyone i wanted to share a neat thing about the english language. I explained that the english language is a combination of many different languages.

I then wrote the word "Christmas" on the board and explained that there were two parts to the word. the first "Christ" and the second "mas": "mas" is a spanish word that means in english "more". 

I then began to explain that when one says Christmas in english, they are really saying More of Christ. And that whats Navidad (or Christmas) really is: it is to have more of the spirit of christ in our lives. The room grew silent and the spirit entered. and i could tell what i was saying was begining to sink in.

I hope we all can remember this christmas what christmas really means. More of the spirit of christ.

I love you all

Always turn outward and keep smiling

Elder Bunker

ps i have a new baby sister!! Nola sadie! cant share all the details right now. but heidi can explain more. :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D

New Area

Hey Everyone!!

K, First. Grandma and mom. Thanks for the packages. Mom, i got package number 5 today. The one with the hello kitty card from molly haha. Made me a little sad at first. I hope she remembers me when i get home. And Grandma Schellenberg, I died laughing when i got your letter. Im so happy for you and grandpa that you got to come back to peru to visit. I hope i get that chance in the future. I know what you mean about peru becoming a home. its going to be weird to leave. I will be happy to see my family again but it will be weird. but i can forget about that for now. i still have 18 months! :D What made me laugh so hard though was your comment about the ´white lamanites´ in Cajamarca. I have met a lot of people from Cajamarca and i always think they are from the united states haha. The joke here in the mission for all the people from the united states is when we can speak well enough to tell everyone we are from cajamarca. I have only been able to do that a few times. My accent still gives me away haha.

This week we had a conference with Elder Camargo. He is a newly called 70 from this last general conference i beleive. (speaking of general conference i still havent seen that magazine... I might have a photo in it... not sure yet though). It was a great conference and he said a lot of things i really needed and really motivated me to work harder and get to know the scriptures better. Im finding more and more the scriptures really are my best freind.

So big news from Morrope!! we are growing!! Morrope is a small fishing town and its kind of the forgotten village of peru so its an area completely different than any other. But its been so amazing to see the work take off in only the two weeks i have been here. This week we broke records. We had the highest asistence we have ever had this week of 31 people in the house -church (we still dont have a building because we dont have enough people) but we almost ran out of seats and hymn books this week!! We have to ask the mission to send more supplies so we can help even more people.

And its all because we had a few great activities this week in which the Lord blessed us to have success. This week we had an activity of vollyball which was really fun. we played in the street and we set up the net between two light posts. it was almost like beach volleyball because the street is just dirt and sand haha. And we had a few new investigators show up there. We also started a english class this last week... and guess who is the teacher.... haha. yep! im teaching english now haha. it was alot of fun and we are starting to see the area really open up more. One of the hardest things we have to deal with is other churches teaching their members to turn us away. a rumor was spread before i got here that we are actually theives and we steal things from people during lessons... im pretty sure thats never happened. (im only the fourth missionary here and the other missionaries i know are good missionaries) so its been really interesting to work with that. The Lord has really blessed us with a lot of oppertunities to serve this week. We have been helping people all over town. We helped the wife of one of the investigators the other day pull water out of a well and set up a time to teach her and her family later that afternoon, and as we were heading to our next activity we ran into a guy who was tryign to load a dresser into his motortaxi so we helped him with that, and then we ended up offering another service immediately after that. It was amaizng to see that only within half an hour we were able to serve 3 different families and change their perspective of us. I love the mission for that reason. We get to serve ALL the time. I hope we find more oppertunities this next week.

We have a goal of setting up three baptismal dates this week! i hope they workout. They will be the first 3 baptisms of Morrope Chiclayo Peru Mission!!

I love you all

Always look outward, and Keep smiling!!

Elder Bunker

Pictues 1.5

Morope The Edge of the Vinyard

Hey Everyone!

First before all, Michelle Perry I just got your letter this last tuesday!!!!

Natalie Cameron congrats on your call!!!!!!!!!!!! holy cow im so excited for you!!!

And michelle i havent had time to write back yet, but I am expecting to hear the big news from you, not from my family haha. so DONT FORGET TO WRITE ME! haha Im waiting for that letter about your call!!! 

Wow so i have a lot to write haha. This last transfer has been crazy. I am in a place I never expected to be. I have been sent to Morope, its a small village about 20 min from Labayeque and about 40 min from Chiclayo and about 20 min off the coast of Perú!

This area is going to be really different. Morope is a small fishing-farming village. Everyone owns animals or Chakra wich pretty much means feilds of crops. There has only been four missionaries here, and i am the fourth. The people here are very poor, but still reject us a lot. I guess this is known to be one of the harder areas of the mission. there hasnt been a baptism here for at least 5 transfers which is 30 weeks. but just in this last week we have seen a lot of progress. I cant beleive it my new room is now a 3 story house haha. (mostly because we live in the church) there is only 4 families in our family group (there is no ward or branch out here) so i guess i will be giving a talk every sunday for a few months now haha. 

We are pretty much the pioneers out here. there isnt much to work with but we have had progress. I like to joke around that the lord has sent us to the edge of his vineyard haha.

 Our area is actually pretty big because we have our small town morope, but we are also assigned to all the little casarías in the area. (or small small villages around us) we got to visit one of them this last saturday. The village is called Caracucho. HOLY COW i have never seen anything more beautiful. we have two families out there and one of the owns one of the most beautiful chakras i have ever seen. and the best part... its FULL of mango trees haha. Mango has become my favorite fruit in peru. We will hit mango season in January or Februrary from what I hear and I will be here for it! :D We have already had a lot of mangos. 

So thats my new area, my new companion on the other hand is just as awesome. His name is Elder Cordero, He is from Chile and he is my first Latino companion and I am his first Gringo companion. So he has been helping me a lot with spanish and I have been helping him a lot with English. He is a really layed back guy. He likes to play soccer and he has 2 brothers. From the first day we have been laughing. He is funny guy and its fun to joke around with him. I will probably only have him as a companion for one transfer, and so im kind of bummed but its fun for now. 

This last week we have been teaching like crazy. Even though the people in general are rough, we have been really blessed to be able to find people to teach. 

we are teaching a couple named José y Deisy (yes its spelled like that). And they are awesome. I think they are going to be the first baptism in Morope! but first we have to help them get married... we are praying we can do it this month. the river next to their house has been full lately so we have been joking around that we need to get them married and baptized before the river dries haha. 

we had an interesting experience with José this week. we were teaching them one night and after the lesson José asked if we could help him understand something, and of course we said yes. He went on to explain that the night before he had a dream about us (the missionaries) he said that we came to help him finish his house (he doesnt have a roof and a few walls still, because he needs to earn more money) and we started digging a trench around his house and at first he didnt understand why, but then he saw that the river started to overflow and started distroying all of the other houses but when it got to his house it didnt pass the trench we dug. he said he took it as a sign to keep listening to us. 

One reason why they love listening to us is because we stop to talk. they said they can see a difference in the missionaries. that we dont just stop by to hand out pamplets but really were here to help.

well its time,

Love you all

Always turn outward, and keep smiling.

Elder Bunker

ps... i think this is the first time a lot of people have seen a gringo. (They all think its so funny i have arm hair haha)