July 27th, 2015

Dear Family,

The love that I continually am able to feel from my Father in Heaven is incredible. I'm not sure what I would do without the knowledge of a loving Heavenly Father and his great Plan of Salvation. This morning I was reading in 3 Nephi 11 and as I was reading I thought of the love Heavenly Father has for his Son as he presents him to his children in the Land Bountiful. It made me think of the ancestors of all the people that live here in Peru. It has become evident to me that their ancestors truly did see Christ and had an enormous amount of faith. I have been able to witness that first hand as I see God's children make the right decisions.

This week for me was so wonderful, just like every other week. For P-day we started off by going to a seaport, which was awesome. We were able to have an entire tour of the whole port, so that was exciting. On Tuesday we had our first interviews with President Rios, which I thought they went really well. President Rios is certainly a man of discernment. He is so loving and is inspired by the spirit. Throughout the rest of the week we had few but powerful lessons including one with an investigator that has had her baptimal interview and is scheduled to be baptized this next Saturday. While in church her son leaned over to us and asked us what we did to help his mom to decide to get baptized, because she had listened to the missionaries for 4 years without accepting, and we simply replied, it isn't what we did, but what our Father in Heaven has done and what the spirit testified of. There is no doubt in my mind the this is the Lord's work and it is through his Holy Spirit that his children are able to come unto his Gospel once again, just as they promised in the pre-mortal life.

I love the Gospel and I love my Savior. This is His work and he is hastening it. His pace has quickened and so must ours if we decide to take a role in his work.

I love you all and hope you have amazing weeks!

Love,

Elder Thorpe