Hola everyone!!!                                                                                           

It’s been a crazy week here at the CCM!! I don't have a ton of time so this'll be short and sweet :) so, I got to Lima at 12:30 a.m. Lima time. Somehow, all my luggage got here safely!! That’s a huge blessing. Then, we got to the bus but two sisters were missing. They weren't on the plane to Lima!!!! So we had to wait for another 30 minutes until they figured out what was going on. We got to the Lima CCM at around 1:30 am. But we couldn't go to bed til 3:30 a.m. because they still didn't know what was going on with the missing sisters and we had to watch an orientation thing. Luckily we got to sleep in a little bit the next morning.  We found one sister, she had come a day early and went to her aunt’s house. The other sister went to the wrong MTC, she went to Provo not Lima.... she'll be here in two weeks.

Wednesday!!! ELDER BEDNAR CAME!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Oh my gosh, it was amazing. Four different missions were there so guess how many missionaries... 800!! I'll just say that the singing was awesome!!! He gave us a lot of good tips like: write on small plates not big plates when you write notes during church. In the BOM the small plates are used for spiritual things and the large plates were used for history. So make sure you use small plates and listen to the Spirit! He also said to be an agent in the gospel not an object. "I will go, I will do, For I know" like that. The one thing I loved though was this... he said that the one big problem in the church is that people aren't steadfast in the church. Example: you want a temple in your area. The church announces the temple in your area. You go every week to the temple to see it being built. You’re there for the ground breaking, the open house, everything, you go to the temple for the first week, and then never go again... muy triste. STAY STEADFAST. Elder Bednar gave us a tip: buy the cheapest scriptures at the store. BOM. Read it and mark everything about being steadfast or steady or anything like that. When you’re done write a one page summary about what you learned and put in your bom. On the spine write "steadfast one" do it all again, and then again. Go back and read your summaries and you will see how much you learn! You should have dozen of steadfast BOMs by the time you’re Elder Bednar's age. He treasures all of them! He has TWO bookcases of those BOMS. Elder Bednar also said that you get to have a bad day when you’re on your mission. not okay! :) He said a lot more but i don't have time. BTW I’m sorry for the terrible punctuation, this keyboard is Spanish... :) 

Okay! My companion is Hermana Prado de Sellers! She's from Colorado and she's tiny. She’s awesome and nice and really cool. I love her. She doesn't know Spanish at all so that's nice......

Oh... We had an earth quake on Thursday!!!!!! Like a REALLY big earthquake. It was AWESOME!!! The whole room started shaking :) all the elders were under the tables... :)  So, the Hermanas are kinda perfect here at the CCM so that's cool. :)

OH, I met this guy named Hermano Moreyra. Apparently he knows grandpa and grandma Hicken!! :) that's cool :)

So we have one investigator (he's actually our teacher-sorry to ruin the fun). We call him Jose and he's hard to teach. He sleeps in every lesson, and I don't know enough Española to say anything!! But we taught him about the restoration and families and tonight were teaching him about the plan of salvation. He feels the spirit and he likes what we’re saying but the language barrier is hard to deal with!! 

Sunday was fun but hard. I missed my family a lot... but the spirit was SO strong!!! The branch presidency spoke and that was awesome... :)  OH so yesterday... we had to go to migration and apparently I was in the wrong group.... so Í had to go earlier with another group but there was no room for me... so!! I was in a car by myself with a crazy driver. Peru is HUGE!!!! And I will Never complain about Utah drivers... You don't know what it's like!!! PERUVIANS ARE CRAZY!!!!!!!!!!! I'm officially allowed in Peru!! :) Peru is very pretty and it wasn't very cold this week. We went to the temple today. It’s a tiny temple but very beautiful. The whole session was in Spanish so that was interesting! We also went shopping and it was crazy! But a lot of fun!! All in all, it's been a crazy roller coaster but it's been awesome!! I'm doing okay. I've just accepted the fact that I’m going to be fat when I get home. SO MUCH RICE!!!!!!!!!! EVERY MEAL!!!!!! but esta bien!! I LOVE YOU ALL! THE CHURCH IS TRUE!!!!!

 

- Hermana Hicken