Elder Preston Bruner

This week has been awesome!  We had intercambios this week, and I was with Elder Jordan (another gringo!), and yeah we probably spoke english too much. We moved some stuff in a family's house for service, and then talked with them for a bit, and ended up helping them out! The mom hasn't been to church in a while, so I hope we can help her to become active again! Her daughter is an example to her. She goes every week and is 16 years old. With Elder Jordan, we tried to cook Tequeños (i think thats how you spell it) and it kinda worked. Cooking is hard when you dont have much to use. You get creative sometimes. We also had training with President and Sister Larson, and I saw Elder de Arce there! He's in Callao right now. He says it's definitely more difficult to serve there, but it's still not terrible. Even though it may be the hardest sector and possibly the most dangerous, we definitely still can receive help from the Lord wherever we are! I know he's r...

This week has been awesome, and a little difficult, but more awesome! The difficult part was that we had transfers, and Elder de Arce left. My trainer left me... That was kinda sad.   I didn't think it'd be so hard, but we were pretty close as companions! The good news is... my new companion is great too! Elder Trujillo is my new companion, also from Argentina (Santa Cruz), and he's 24 years old. He likes drawing as well, and also plays the guitar! Although he forgot a bit since he's been in the mission for 15 months, it sounds like he's pretty good! Leading around this week has been a little difficult, but it's great preparation for the future if I have to train a new missionary or lead another missionary around as a senior companion! It's gotten easier each day. Now the awesome parts. We had a baptism this past Saturday! We baptized hermana Mayra, and her testimony she gave afterwards was great. I feel she'll be a faithful member of th...

Hey everyone!  This week has been great! Sadly, the 2 baptisms we had for the 4th of February fell through, but they were rescheduled for later! We should definitely have one this Saturday! (That is, if we're still in this sector... We hear about transfers tonight. They'll be tomorrow. Elder de Arce and I are hoping to stay, but we'll see what happens!) Fast sunday was last sunday, and let me tell you, blessings really do come when you fast. We had 4 investigators come to church (whether or not they stayed the full 3 hours I'm not sure), but 4 is more than usual for us! We later had some amazing lessons. We knocked a door, and talked to someone who didn't seem to interested at first, but then I asked if we could share something with her, and she accepted! We had a lesson at the door since we didn't have another male with us to enter, but by the end, she prayed with such a sincere spirit, and we didn't even have to explain how to pray! She then left ...

This week has been awesome. LOTS of spiritual experiences! We had an opportunity for service this week, and we helped to remove paint from someone's house. It is so satisfying to scrape paint off, I'm not sure why. We had some celebration during lunch on Tuesday since on the 22nd was the birthday of Elder Paz. His face got pushed into the cake made for him. It's a tradition here to do that. Wednesday... Wednesday was amazing. We had the worldwide training broadcast and we learned lots about the purpose we have to teach about repetance and the atonement, and to baptize converts. We really are helping people with their salvations, and it's a great responsibility. We also learned about the worldwide schedule changes as missionaries. For our mission specifically, we now wake up at 7:30, plan in the morning, have personal study, then we can choose when in the day after 11 am we want to do companionship study, language study, and 1st 12 weeks (if applicable). We ...