Jacob arrives in Piura

Dear Brother & Sister Smith 

We are so happy to have Elder Smith serving in the Peru Piura Mission!  He arrived eager to go to work and we are impressed with his enthusiasm and desire to serve our Heavenly Father as a missionary.  After meeting him at the airport we had a luncheon at the Mission Home followed by a devotional and an interview.  The following day was a morning of training and the assignment of his trainer/companion.  Trainers are chosen for their obedience, patience, dedication and the guidance of the Holy Ghost.   We know that as these two missionaries study, pray and work together they will be blessed and guided in their service and find joy in teaching and sharing the gospel message. We are attaching a photo of your missionary with his new companion and us. 
  

We are grateful to you for sharing your son with us.  We know that thru hard work, obedience and prayer. Elder Smith will find joy in serving the Lord and the beautiful people of Peru.  Please encourage him to share his experiences with you and your family.  Write to him weekly and express your love, support and confidence in him.  You will witness miraculous changes in him as he learns to serve and love those with whom he works. 

We know that the Gospel of Jesus Christ brings joy and peace to all who will follow Him.  We are grateful to be a part of this great work and to serve with the wonderful young Elders and Sisters of our mission. 

If you have questions or concerns, please contact us at:  2010224@ldschurch.org. 

Fallow our Facebook page: Peru Piura Mission -- Rasmussen 

Sincerely, 

President & Sister Rasmussen 

Peru Piura Mission 

Week 5

This week has been a lot of fun but kind of crazy. Peru won their game on Wednesday night to make it into the world cup for the first time in a long time. Even though the CCM is kind of isolated we could hear the celebrations all night long. There was tons of fireworks and air horns going off. It was funny because all of the teachers had lost their voice from screaming celebrating and were running on 2 hours of sleep.

 The Spanish has been going well but can be very frustrating at times. I'm starting to be able to understand everything pretty well but can´t speak like I want to yet.

 Our proselyting activity was pretty hectic this week because we were supposed to be able to proselyte for about 3 hours but our bus took a wrong turn and got lost. We only got to proselyte for an hour but for me it was really only 30 minutes because the Elder I was going with misunderstood something and got us off track. I got to ride in their little transportation buses but I had to stand because there was no room and I was way too tall for it. I had my shoulders pushing against the ceiling and found out the ceiling was very dirty. It stained my shirt pretty bad with dust but Hermana Moore (the President's wife) will see what she can do about it. The first thing I got to teach about was homosexual relations and if women can wear pants to church so that was interesting. We only got to knock on 2 doors but we were able to have a good 10 minute conversation with a great lady that let us set up another appointment. I didn't say a whole lot but I got to testify to her that God loves her and knows her personally and her eyes lit up when I said that. It was great experience and the people of Peru are very open to talk to us. There are many people here who are ready for the Gospel.

Today we got to go to the temple for the last time for the next 2 years but it was a great experience as always. I will try to send some more pictures this week.

We will probably be leaving for Piura really late Monday night or early Tuesday morning. I will either get to email you guys quickly or have a quick phone call when we arrive there. I´m very excited to finally get to go out and teach.

Love, Elder Smith

My teacher

Week 4

The days are really starting to fly now and we get the chance to go proselyting in the Lima East Mission on Saturday so I'm super excited about that. Hopefully I'll get lucky and get to go with Jack Lopez. We got to go to the Temple again today and we got to do an English session which was great. I did get some better pictures of the temple but I'll have to find another way to send them because they blocked google drive on all the computers. 

This past Sunday has probably been my favorite day so far even though I had to speak in sacrament meeting. Every week they pick 4 people out of the congregation to give 5 minute talks in Spanish so you have to prepare a talk every week over a certain topic. I got called up and actually spoke for almost 7 minutes which has been the only time I've ever spoke over the given time. 

It has started to warm up here so we'll make it to Piura just in time for the heat. We talked to some people at the distribution center this morning who were from Piura and they said It's about to be really hot there and they eat a lot of fish. I've heard we're not allowed to eat the fish so hopefully that's true because I have eaten it twice in the CCM and it wasn't very enjoyable. 

It's also a pretty exciting time in Peru because they play tonight in Lima to get into the World Cup. I've asked the President and his wife many times about letting us all go for our P-day but they weren't big fans of the idea because the game isn't till 9:15. 

Anyways hope all is well in the States and love you guys.

Elder, Smith

Week 3

This week flew by but It was really sad to see all of the Latinos leave yesterday. I also found out that the Astros won on Thursday morning. I asked my teacher to tell me but his reply was 1 Nephi 13:22. Another teacher came in and he looked it up but I had to make a deal with him for him to tell me. The deal was that I could only speak in Spanish for the next 10 hours and every word I said in English was 20 pushups during physical activity. I ended up saying 19 words and doing 380 pushups but it was totally worth it. It kind of sucked to not be able to speak in English but it was cool to see how much Spanish I actually knew and how Spanish I still don't know. On Thursday I got 2 huge blisters on the bottom of my feet from playing soccer barefoot on the turf for like 10 minutes. It has been a pain to walk all week but they are finally healing now. I am thankful I just have blisters though because one of my roommates broke his wrist while playing soccer and has to wear a cast for the next few weeks.

My companion and I both got called to be zone leaders starting today so that's exciting but I think it is also very uncommon to have a companionship to be zone leaders. 

This morning we got to go the temple which was an awesome experience. It was a Spanish session but they gave us headphones to listen to it English. It was really hard to get any good pictures of the temple because it didn't fit in my camera. 

Love, Elder Smith

BLISTERS!

With my Ecuador peeps

"The food is pretty good for the most part but sometimes isn't very good.
It is just different types of chicken and beef with rice everyday"

Week 2

The days are starting to move a lot faster now but it gets kind of old sitting in a class room all day everyday but we find ways to have fun. The only time we got to leave the walls were this morning when we cleaned a church for 4 hours. The Spanish is starting to come pretty well and I can hold a decent conversation with the Latinos from Ecuador. The still love our room and hang out every night with us so we can practice our Spanish. 

Nothing really too exciting happened this week but we did experience 2 small earthquakes. This time they were probably calling us to repentance because they both happened when messing around in class. My companion and I also got our first investigator to commit to baptism. Even though it was not real because he is our teacher, it was really awesome to see the progress that was made.

We get about an hour everyday for physical activity an I typically play volleyball most days because it is really dangerous to play basketball or soccer. I have played soccer with the natives a few times but they were way too good for me and did not let me cherry pick. 

I hope all is well and Go Astros! 

Love, Elder Smith

P day will be on Tuesday next week and let me know if you guys were able to see the pictures. None of us really know how to share them with family yet.