Pictures 1.10

Leaving Morrope

Hey Everone,

(Elisa, i got your messages, thanks)

(Krysta, i got your birthday card, dont know if i thanked you yet)

Well the end has finally come... Time to say goodbye to Morrope. Wont lie. Im a little bummed, but i knew i would have to leave sometime. 

This last week has been hard but has been my chance to really give everything i have left to Morrope. I wanted to leave on a good note so ive been working hard to help people attend church and learn more there (and build relationships with the members). This week has been a success. We had 44 people in church yesterday which is the most we have ever had there. we have only done that once before...

Church was really good. We were a little worried at first because the district presidency was going to come to see if we are ready to become a branch... we wanted everythign to go well. My companion and I left to go pick up an investigator who wanted to come to church with us, and we got stuck (we couldnt find an open street, someone had blocked off all the streets to her house....) we realized that we might not have time to pick her up and make it to church on time... and we didnt want to be late because we wanted to leave a good impression with the district presidency.... well we sat for a second and prayed silently to ourselves. 

I realized it was much more important to me that a child of god got to attend church that to be one time and make a good impression. Even though my companion disagreed with my decision he followed. we found a way to climb over the barrier in the road and get to the house. We waited for a few minutes for them to finish getting ready (they were waiting for us!!) and headed up to the church. I hope that investigator will be able to progress more in the future. It was her first time at church. she seemed to enjoy it.

This week we also got to head out to caracucho. Mango season is over... all the fruit on the mango trees is gone. haha I feel like that was a little bit of a tender mercy that i was here in time to enjoy my favorite fruit. ;D while we were visiting one of the families they gave us a new fruit i have never seen before. from the outside it looks like a coconut. but the shell is softer. but when you cut it open it has a mangolike meat inside. (but harder) its called Mamey.... YUM... so good. Its super filling and very sweet. I hope i get the chance to try some more in the future.

Almost forgot to mention!!! so church went really good. (my convert, Jose, gave the class in preisthood! he is goign to be such a great preisthood holder, he will be receiveing the Higher Preisthood this next month in april!!! ) the district presidency came to preisthood with us and talked for a bit. They announced that Morrope is in the process of becoming a branch and when we get to a level of 80 people attendign church for a year they will build a chapel here! I think that really motivated the members. Our less actives from Morrope are now More active, and progressing very well. I think they are now even more eager to participate in everything that is happining. In april we will have 8 preisthood holders.

I feel like i have done everything i could have done here in Morrope, and the Lord has forgiven me for my short commings. Even though im sad to leave, im happy to know morrope is growing, I hope i get to come back someday to see morrope as a strong branch in the Kingdom of the Lord. (maybe with a building and everything)

Im excited to go to a new area and meet even more people to love. we will see where the lord sends me tommorrow.

Love you all!

Always turn outward, and keep smiling

Love

Elder Bunker

Thanks Everyone-- zombie week

Hey Everyone,

so this has been the most....  how can i say it... unproductive week i have had in the mission so far. or at least i havent been able to  see the results yet and i feel like im treading   water. 

Wait, Before i continue thanks everyone for the birthday wishes. I had a great pday birthday. or in otherwords i got to rest for my birthday because it landed one our weekly preparation day. we went and had lunch, watched church movies and then proselyted. not to bad, oh and then missionary sleep over with the zone leaders because we had multizone conference the next day. fun stuff. (elisa i did get your email)

 this week however has been the hotest week we have had in the mission, or at least it seems that way its been around  38 - 40 degrees celcieus (i dont know what that is in faraheit but yea). its been a little warmer, haha, so we asked the office to help  us out. they reallly came through this week with some new electric fans for out cement home. they saved us this sunday when we had our meetings. 

this week we started our third hour in church. we didnt have a third hour before becasue we didnt have the people to do it before.  so a lot of our week has been geared towards that goal. this week only 25 people showed up... the meetings went  great but i have no idea why we lost half our family group. i have been so excited these last few weeks because i have beginning to see a change the lives of the people we are helping... but there is oposicion in all things. we have a baptism planned for the end of this week, of a girl from a family that is reactivating. they are great people and they have come to chruch every week, but somethign happened yesterday. i hope all goes well this weekend.

  at the same time, with all of the training and traveling we have been doing, both on our part and on behalf of the members we havent had a whole lot of time to teach. i feel like we have reallly lost contact with a lot of our investigators. we have a few people who are progressing fantasticallly, but others that i feel like we have failed them this week.

my companion, at the same time, has been in zombie mode. not quite sure how to wake him out of it and get the work moving again. I only have 2 weeks left in morrope and i cant leave without  feeling that i left them in good hands. he is a great companion but he is old in terms of the mission. i would like to leave morrope with the highest asistance that they have had.  i will need your prayers this week. we have hit a low this week, but that means we are about to hit a high here soon. that is usually how things work.

we have done a lot i guess, just it doesnt show in our reports, nor in any of the goals we set. and i havent seen any of the fruits yet.

so this week, (despite being relatively unproductive ) we have had a few spiritual experiences. one of wich i would like to share breifly.

we are teaching a woman named santos. she was a contact i had while traveling with my comp. we hopped on a combi (its like a 15 pasenger van, but for public transport), and took a seat in the back. as we were walking to the back i noticed her watching us. when the combi starting going my companion fell asleep and left me to sit and think on my own. an impresion came to mind to talk to this woman, because i had set the goal to improve in talking to everyone. i wasnt  sure how  to start  the conversation, but  came to my mind the scripture in D&C about  opening your mouth and having it filled. i asked her where she was heading, that was a really dumb  question.... she was goign to the same place i was... morrope, but she smiled and responded morrope of course. I asked her if she lived there or was jsut traveling.... and from there we started our conversation, eventually she asked us what we do as missionaries, i responded that we share a message about christ, and she then INVITED us to her house  to share our message. i asked her for her address (which i wrote down completely wrong, but we found the house anyways) and later that week  visited her in her house.

this week we gave her a book of mormon, i  dont think i have ever seen anyone so happy to receive a book of mormon and accept the challenge to read  it. we will be visiting her tuesday this week... tomorrow... to see if she has read.

so  this week  hasnt been terrible, our numbers are low, but i know the lord is hellping us. we have been rejected many times but the work is still going forth.

im out of time. love you all

Always turn outward and keep smiling,

Love,

Elder Bunker

Last Week

Hey  Everyone,

first, krysta thompson, i got your letter with the little boat and such. thanks for that. i really enjoyed the letter.

So this week has been good, a little better than the last.

Its been raining a ton here in lambayeque, or at least a lot more that normal, (which is nothing). for about 3 days in a row now everything has been soaked in the morning from the nightime rain - all the streets here are made out of dirt so everything is muddy. - and then it dries (kind of) by 6 in the afternoon. it makes walking a little harder because we have to avoid mini rivers in the streets and such. and sometimes the mototaxis get stuck. The rain has come late this year.

All the farmers are happy for the rain, because it really helps with their crops, but its horrible in the cities because everything gets so dirty and trafic is terrible. (this last week the trash-picker-upers went on strike so not only  was there a ton of mud but it was mixed with all the wet garbage as welll. it smelt for a bit in lambayeque)

I was talking with someone the other day about the rain and they said that this next year we should be due for a peruvian weather phenonminon called "el niño". If you get a chance to look it up on internet im sure you will find some neat things about it. but "el niño" is when it rains HARD here in peru for about a week straight. a few hundreds of years ago it distroyed an entire civilazation of the señor de sipan. we will see if it really happens this next year.

the rain causes some problems for us though (other than the fact that everything turns to mud) and that is that people cant travel to attend church, so our asistence has been a little down this week. Also, there are many people who dont live under solid roofs here in Morrope. So many people get sick, and their things are all wet. (it also brings in mosquitos... misionary nightmare haha) it should pass soon though. 

So this is my last week in morrope. I really dont know for sure, but we are pretty positive because i have been here for 4 1/2 to 5 months now which is normally the time the missionaries get assigned to a new area. im really sad, but i want to leave morrope on a good note, so this week is going to be another week of hard work. 

Another interesting thing that happened this week. A few of the other missionaries are teaching a girl who works for a TV station, and she was looking for someone to do a Cabri cooking oil interveiw for their channel that week. and their missionaries offered our cook to do the job. Even though we cant be filmed as missionaries it was fun to watch the camerman come in and do an interveiw where we eat and everything. our cook was really funny, she had no idea what to say.

so thats about all i can write this week. Hope all is going well in the states! :D

Turn Outward, Look Upward, Walk Forward,

(Dont turn in, Dont look down, Dont go Back)

Love

Elder Bunker

Pictures 1.9

Jose - futuro sacerdocio

Hey everyone, 

k first just to remind everyone the address of the office has changed. it is now:

Elder Bunker

Misión Perú Chiclayo

Los Alamos 128, Urb. Santa Victoria, 

Chiclayo 

Peru.

second. we had a great weekend this week. :D XD

it was great for a few reasons. first, we had our third baptism here in morrope. José got baptized and he will soon be a preisthood holder here in our family group. he is great haha. he always shows up to the activities on time (sometimes 1/2 hour early) haha and is always the first to offer to clean (even though all the members are willing) :D

we are excited for what is going on here in morrope. even though the progress is slow, there is progress and its amazing to see. 

José brought his neice Melissa to the baptism. She seemed pretty interested, so we will see what happens. we have a appointement with here and José this weekend...

other interesting experience is that one night we were walking back to the house and we passed through the center of town, and for the first time ever in morrope we saw police... it made me kind of sad to see that... morrope has always been so calm and quiet. Many people have told us that what happens is that outsiders from other cities come to the small villages and introduce drugs and crime, and it ruins these small peaceful places...

I was talking to my companion one night about all this, and i told him i would love to be here in morrope my whole mission. haha he looked at me like i had gone crazy and asked my why. i explained to him that i thought i would be able to have more of an influence that way. I have been pondering a lot about the missionaries in the book of mormon and how they had so many miracles happen in their work. Ive often wondered why it is that we dont baptize thousands of people like they did in the days of the book of mormon. I realized that Alma and the sons of mosiah were missionaries for a long time (i think it was about 15 years that alma the younger served as a missionary) and i figured that the miracles take time and i would love to have more time in morrope to see those miracles happen. 

My companion then said something that has caused me to think a little. He asked me if i didn think that José´s baptism wasnt a miracle... I have to admit, it was a miracle and we have seen a lot of other miracles here in morrope as well. i have already seen the hand of the lord in the work and seen the fruits of our labor. 

I feel so blessed to be here in morrope. I often think about Heritage Tours here, when we visited Palmayra, and Navoo and Misouri, because these people are REAL pioneers. the experiences here in morrope and parrallel a lot of times to what the early saints had experienced. we have A LOT of opposition here. Many, if not all, of the other churches teach people to reject us as missionaries and spread rumors about us. Many people are afraid of us because i am clearly a foreigner and they are afraid that we are theives of some sort. But what has been milagroso in all of this is that the hearts of many people have been changed and they are a lot more receptive now.

one last experience, yesterday we found a man through a reference who belongs to a different faith and is very devoted to his beleifs. he is really different because he is well educated in the bible and has read the bible 3 different times (this is really rare to  find in a small mining-fishing village) He knew a little about the book of mormon and asked us about the golden plates. we explained that joseph smith traslated the book of mormon from these golden plates. he then asked about where the golden plates are today (as if he was expecting that would stump us) we explained that they were with moroni, and he explained its hard to beleive in somethign that just one man has said. 

we then explained about the 3 and 8 witnesses and that god has always provided more evidence as well as answer our prayers. 

he then admited he didnt know much about the churchand wanted to learn more.

shoot, out of time, love you all.

Love you all,

Always turn outward and keep smiling,

Elder Bunker

Pictures 1.8

20 Anos en la vida mortal

Hey everyone,

So first, Thanks everyone for the birthday wishes. its wierd to think im not a teen anymore. I have alwasy felt like i was over 20 and now that its here i feel like a little kid again... haha.

Thanks to the hovanski family for the birthday card. and Collin Willardsen i finally got your letter haha. I will write back to you soon.

So this week has been long. we have had a lot of service projects. (one being digging a sewage trench for a brother in the stake, hence the fotos) haha... we have been travelign to caracucho a lot more lately to help the families reactivate. they are becoming stronger members. and we will be able to baptized their kids soon. sister gladys, the mom of one of the families, bore her testimony this sunday. it was amazing. she expressed her gratitude to us as misionaries and then said she was so happy to see the hand of god again in her life through us as missionaries. it made me think a little about the importance of our calling. Im so glad we have been able to be worthy tools in the lords hands.

school for all the kids starts this week so everyone has been freaking out the last 3 days. haha. it will be a new experience to work around the school schedule here in Morrope.

This week i got to try two new foods. squid, and guavana. squid was good (just like chicken haha) and guavana... wow... the weirdest fruit i have ever seen. its a long green fruit like a banana but when you open it there are seeds with a sugary substance that looks like snow all around. so its like eating warm sugary snow... strange... haha but delicious. im sending a foto i hope it gets through. (oh i also got to try goat this week. super flavorful but tough, but good) haha

so BIG news!!! i just found out this week they are opening 2 new missions in peru!!!! what!!! haha its so awesome. its due the sudden rise in number of missionaries. :D there will be an iquitos mission now and one other that i cant remember the name. (iquitos is in the middle of the jungle haha, that mission is going to be INTENSE haha)

sorry this is so short,

I love you all, 

Always turn outward, and keep smiling!

Elder Bunker

Family,

Wow, thank you all for the wonderful emails it was so great to open my email this morning and see all your wonderful letters.

I just want to say I love you all so much and i hope everything is going well.

Love you all

Elder Isaac Bunker

Pictures 1.7

Peruvian Family Reunion

Hey Everyone,

so, there is a ton to say and so little time to write.. here we go...

first, Lisa and Lauren, i got your letter this week. Haha wont lie i was a little confused by the return address at first. Thanks for the invites and the kind letter. Im afraid im a little late for the big day... haha. Your husbands look like great guys. Happy for you both, best of luck to the both of you.

Second, This week has been the greatest!!!!

Morrope is growing!! Holy cow, i never thought i would see the day that morrope would grow so much. we had 44 in the chapel!!!!!!! 44!! Im so happy morrope is progressing so well, ive been reflecting a lot on my time here and it has really been one of the greatest experiences i have ever had. I really dont want to leave Morrope, but it is allmost 100% set in stone that i will be having a transfer the end of March... I dont know how thats going to turn out its going to be really hard to leave.

k, before i continue i want to share some funnies. 

this last week we were getting ready to leave for the day when suddenly we heard someone pounding HARD on our door, (and since our door is made out of metal you can imagine how loud it must have been) it kind of freaked us out for a second. I headed out on the second story balcony and looked down and there was an old man i had never seen before, and he was really upset. haha he was talking outloud to himself saying stuff "why is this door locked?? who is trying to keep me out??? MARY!! open the door!!" haha it was super funny, but i was still freaked out at the same time. I called down to him and asked who he was looking for and he looked confused like he couldnt find where the voice was coming from haha. I then realized he was drunk. haha our kind neighbor saw what was happening and helped the man find his house just down the road. I guess he also had a metal door that looked alike...

this week we also almost got eaten by a dog. we were trying to contact one of our references when a dog ran out at us from a house and started barking and became really agressive for some reason. dogs barking is normal but this dog was going to eat us. My companions have taught me a few tricks to scare away dogs and I was try to scare this dog away but it kept coming after us. Everyone in the street was watching. i was kind of mad no one did anything. we couldnt walk away because we couldnt turn our backs to the dog with out getting bitten. finally a little kid ran up to the dog and put its hands around the dogs mouth and calmed the dog down enough that we could get away. ( how in the world the dog didnt bite the kid I dont know, Im just grateful that the little kid saw what was going on)

other thing that happened was i was sitting in bed this saturday after a long day of service and i felt somthing on my neck, i thought it was a mosquito so i swept my hand over my neck and a spider fell on the ground... haha feaky, dont know how long i was laying in my bed with that spider. i didnt know if it was poisonous or not so i smashed it with a shoe.

so biggest  thing that happened. 

Saturday we went to Caracucho and had a great activity there. In the morning we helped them build a bridge and then we had lunch and then played games. ( hence all the pictures ) The purpose of the activity was to help all the less actives reactivate. (hence the great number of people in church 44!!!!) It was so much fun. as we were working and playing with the little kids i couldnt help but feel like i was at a family reunion. I really feel like the people here in morrope are my family. I still miss my family in the united states but its going to be hard to leave Morrope at the same time. I hope i get the chance one day to return and see everyone again. I love the people here.

anyway time is short. 

Love you all

Always turn outward, and keep smiling!

Elder Bunker