Christmas and New Year 2024

With the arrival of 2024, 26 years have passed since we first came to Peru. That seems impossible. Much of that seems like ancient history and some seems like yesterday. We are sorry to be so inconsistent with our blog.We have experienced a pretty amazing few weeks that have included celebrations for Christmas with the missionaries and attending a large interfaith chorus concert sponsored by the church. It is part of the Light the World initiative. 

Our area president spoke, as did the archbishop of Lima and the pastor of the Orthodox church gave the opening prayer. An interfaith choir sang the Messiah and it was remarkably well attended. The Church News carried a report of the concert and gathering.

We had two mission multi-zone Christmas conferences. We brought the zones together and participated in a white elephant gift exchange. It helps, but Christmas in Lima is just hard. We stay in contact with the missionaries and take a lot of health calls.  We also joined with the other senior couple to cook breakfast for 16 missionaries on Christmas day. That was fun and we shared a favorite scripture there.

Our missionaries have had all manner of maladies now that the cold and flu season has hit in the states but it is warming up here so we can't figure it out. It is hot and humid so we get some dehydration and all that accompanies it. 

We are gearing up for a second large influx of missionaries this week. What started off as five missionaries coming in has swollen to fourteen! We can handle that but it is challenging.

One of the many highlights for us has been sharing the gospel message with taxi drivers and we've been able to place many Books of Mormon. It has truly been a remarkable and spiritual experience this Christmas season. Over the course of our nearly eleven months in the mission we have placed something on the order of 500 books. It is remarkable.

 On Saturday evening we went to Nikolai's baptism. It was a wonderful experience. He brought his three sons ages 10, 8 and 6. They are all very well mannered and nicely dressed. Nikolai came in a suit and tie for his baptism, a true rarity here. When it was over, he bore his testimony about his remarkable conversion. 

While walking in the park the evening of Dec. 3, he passed the two sister missionaries who took notice of him but kept walking. Sister Broberg explained that they had the prompting that they needed to go back and talk with him. He accepted a teaching appointment immediately for the next day. 

He was excited to meet with them and began to receive lessons.  They invited him to church the next Sunday and he and his boys, all went.  They showed up from an outing in the park and were not well dressed and sweaty but came in anyway. Though that first time was awkward, he has not failed to attend church. He bore a sweet and powerful testimony of his conversion and the miracle of his encounter with the sister missionaries. We both told the sisters to make sure they wrote about it in their journals. We said these things don’t come along every day. The truth of that was not lost on them. 

Truly, truly, this was a miraculous conversion story and we were so grateful to have been present to feel the power of the Holy Ghost.

Fireworks are a huge deal here. They go off any day of the year but especially on Christmas Eve and even more for New Year's Eve. Since we're usually worn out by the end of the day we were awakened by midnight fireworks on both days. It's such an adventure living here!

We love our mission. This is one of the most wonderful and fulfilling experiences of our life.


Light The World Interfaith Concert





Random cat
Hermana Hasler did a bunch of accompanying


Christmas Zone Conferences





Surprised by Amazon shipping success!!!



They apparently ran out of oxen and donkeys
A new raft of cool new murals on the elevated rail
























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