January 5th, 2015

Dear family,

First of all Happy New Years! I can't believe that it is 2015 already! Time really does fly while you are in the work of the Lord! So this last week has been pretty good! The beginning of the week Elder Farnsworth and I had a couple of really awesome lessons with our breakfast pensionista who isn't a member of our church, but the last few lessons that we had with her were so powerful and spiritual that she decided that she wants to be baptized on the 17th of January! We really hope that this all goes well for her because we love her so much! In one of our lessons we decided that we should get on our knees and have her pray to know if she should be baptized, and while doing so she started to cry and the whole room was filled with the spirit. I love the little miracles that I see every day in the lives of the people that I teach.

For New Years we didn't do anything. Elder Farnsworth and I thought it would be better if we just slept, which sort of happened, but not really because Peru drinks and parties all night long on New Years. They also have a tradition to burn dolls that they make with straws that have their old clothing on them. So we saw a bunch of that happening at midnight. Also they have a tradition that during the first day of the year, everyone goes to the beach, and when I mean everyone, I really mean everyone. It was really hard for us to find people to teach on the 1st, but we encountered a bunch of new people to teach! 

This week went by pretty fast, being the first week of the change and the year. I have been preparing a training for our zone with Elder Farnsworth because we were asked to do a training on accountablility this Wednesday, so we are excited for that. We are going to use a lot of Alma 5 in our training which is one of my favorite chapters in the Book of Moromon. 

Today I think we are going to make cookies and then watch How to Train your Dragon 2, so I am excited for that!

I love you all and hope that you have an amazing week and New Year!

Love,

Elder Thorpe