Week 4 of my Quest

Spirit Prison......Well, here we are, yet another P day has come. We are now at 1 month!! How cool is that? These past few weeks have flown by so quick!!

I am really enjoying the CCM, but I am not gonna lie, I am so ready to get out of these walls!! The people in here that are teaching us and helping us really are amazing though, I will miss them when I leave.

First off I would like to talk about a few things that happened this week:

Learning Spanish is starting to really come along well. We are now learning at an even more accelerated rate than before, it is really cool to be able to understand what people are saying and being able to respond back, slowly but still with a response :)

Last Saturday we were able to go prostalyting again. This time we went to a different part of Lima, it is called Las Villas. It was definitely a lot nicer than Las Delicias. But, we didn't have quite as much success. I was paired up with an Elder from Bolivia. His name is Elder Gareca. What a freaking character!! He was really funny and it was fun to get to speak only Spanish for those 4 hours. I taught him how to say, "What in the world?" in Spanish, apparently that is only a US thing, but he loved it. So every time we would knock on a door and no one would answer he would just say, "Oh Frickin Mundo!" It was hilarious. It was a loooong four hours though. After we got back from prostalyting, we ate dinner and then all the elders in our district, basically had a big siesta in the middle of our classroom all together, when the Hermanas walked in after we had been laying there for like 20 minutes they both said, "Que en el mundo?" It is a district 107 thing I guess haha.

Sunday was a great day. During church, I was hit with an impression that I needed to write down my conversion story. So for the next 10 hours, you found me with my head in my journal writing away. I took up 12 pages!!! It felt good to know that - 1) I still knew it :) but 2) that now I could share it with basically anyone in English or Spanish. Sunday was a good day.

Oh yeah, also on Sunday, me and Elder Holmes were made the Zone leaders over about 5 districts. It will be interesting. There are 2 districts that we are over that are very very disobedient... It will be our job to fix that. I am not worried about myself taking care of it.... I think I am mainly worried about doing it in a "loving and gentle way". I can do it, but it is so much easier to rebuke people who don't follow the simple simple rules we have here in the CCM. It is frustrating but I know that we will be able to help them all grow to become the best missionaries they can become.

Oh whoops, also on Sunday night, I was able to share my conversion stories with 4 Hermanas. (Don't worry my companion was with me) It took me about 40 minutes to tell them, but it was nice to share it aloud with people who are really really excited about helping someone in Peru receive a conversion story similar to mine. It was great.

Monday was a hard day. Our district said goodbye to a few of our good friends we made here in the CCM. Elder Prestwich and Elder Jensen, who left for the Chiclayo mission, became really good friends with a few of us in the district. It is hard seeing someone you are really close with every day for a month straight, and then leaving them for 2 years, (oh wait, didn't we do that with our families like a month ago?? :)   ) They are going to be very good missionaries, pretty sure we will be friends after the mission.

Yesterday, we had a devotional by Elder Ballard. He is such an amazing man. All the Apostles really are. But what he talked about yesterday really just sunk in deep. Most of the stuff he talked about last night was how, the Gospel is all about the Family. We all want to return to our Heavenly Father, with our Earthly Parents and siblings. How is that possible? Through Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and by following his example here on the Earth. Seems simple right? I wish. It isn't even easy for a missionary!! But it is the way back to an eternal life and that is what we have to do. Plus we are always happy when we do it so why not right?

That is basically all the stuff I have for this week. Other than a few "Fun Facts":

-We call this place Spirit Prison because the walls around us are literally 10-15 feet tall. We have 4 security guards on shift at all times, and the reason we are here is to learn what we need to progress. Just like in the Plan of Salvation pamphlet. (I know this thing like the back of my hand now).

- The food is getting disgusting. The scrambled eggs are as runny as water, literally.

- We had pizza for the first time down here and it was HEAVENLY. Actually back home it would have been really gross, but we are desperate down here.

-I love buying American food.

-I WANT TO WISH MY MOTHER A HAPPY BIRTHDAY TODAY. SHE ROCKS!!

That's about it. It is really a good place though :)

Love you all!!

Elder Bell