Increased Load and Heightened Support

Hello amazing people!

This week has been absolutely amazing. I'm so grateful to be in the Lord's service. The subject line highlights a principle that I feel has defined a lot of the past five months for me. I've been in the office for a while now, and in some ways the load has been gradually increasing, but the support from my Savior has never flagged in increasing in tandem. This week is going to take another big jump: transfers are happening and we're losing more missionaries, so my companionship of office secretaries is going to move from having a ward to ourselves (when I got here we had 1/4 of one ward) to double-covering, serving two wards at once, in addition to coming into the office every weekday. I know the Lord will support us, but we do need to raise our efforts and efficacy.

I love this work, and I am so grateful that the Lord is willing to and capable of using very imperfect tools to do it.

I want to bear my testimony. I know this Church is true. I know Russell M. Nelson is a prophet of God. I know that Christ lives, that He is my Redeemer, that the Book of Mormon testifies of Him, and that salvation comes only in and through His name. How great is the importance of sharing these truths with the world. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

I love you all,

Elder Child

Repentance can be Complete

Hello everyone!

Wow has it been an incredible couple of weeks! The work is progressing, I am happy, I'm progressing, and miracles are being worked here.

This week, on top of that incredible General Conference we had, we had the awesome blessing of getting to sit at the feet of Elder Becerra, a General Authority Seventy and counselor in the South America Northwest area presidency (Poor Little Ones April 2021), for three days as he taught us about how to internalize our missionary purpose, raise our vision, set better goals and make better plans, and ultimate help more people along the covenant path. It was an incredible call to joyful repentance and invitation to participate more fully in the Lord's work.

General Conference was so wonderful 😊 I would love to hear all of your takeaways; personally I learned a lot about consecration being a complete commitment and the possibility of total repentance through our Redeemer. This Conference, I did something new for me: I took Elder Bednar's advice very literally of writing down little-to-nothing that the speakers said and only what the Spirit related to me personally. As one might expect, I understood a little less of talk topics and perhaps overall messages of what was said ... but I received a lot more personal revelation. The talks, however, are available for study for the rest of my life. I'm planning on talking this type of notes every Conference going forward.

I wanted to testify of something I've been learning in Conference, personal study, and the mission tour with Elder Becerra. Repentance can be complete. There is no point we can get to where God won't let us and help us come back. He never wants us to get down on ourselves for our errors, but rather only to feel remorse to the degree that it inspires us to change. Godly sorrow. The idea that we have to feel a certain level of hurt, wrong, or bad about ourselves as a necessary step to repentance is false doctrine. That's called atoning, and someone a lot better than us did it for us. In every moment, God wants us to progress towards having joy and making better choices just as fast as we possibly can.

Carolina is on date to be baptized!! Oh my goodness we had an incredible lesson Thursday night where we just let the Book of Mormon and the Spirit teach the doctrine of Christ just as purely and as simply as we could, and it was incredible to see her take that and commit. Her date is the 29 of this month; please pray for her.

I'd also ask for your prayers for the Peru Lima South Mission. After the visit with Elder Becerra, we really have an incredible opportunity to bring about drastic change in our mission culture and raise our efforts, our vision, our effectiveness, and our consecration. Many fruits will come as a result of this change, and we need your prayers and faith to be able to take advantage of this opportunity to accomplish more of what the Lord has in store.

One miracle from this week is that President rearranged the responsibilities in the office a bit. I'm still finance secretary, but I'm no longer going to be the housing coordinator. This feels like just a massive burden off my shoulders. The light at the end of the tunnel that I've been chasing for five months has suddenly arrived. I'll be able to put everything about the finances in order this month, and I hope that by the end of the year I'll be able to support my companion in getting everything with the housing put in order.

There are just so many little miracles and answers to prayer every day. God is in the details. I love Him, I love His work, I'm so grateful for your faith and prayers, they are felt in the lives of many of His precious children here in Peru. Thanks for everything you're doing to gather Israel!

Happy, grateful, lucky and blessed,

Elder Child

P.S. I finally tried the famous Peruvian dish cuy (guinea pig). I ordered half ... see if you can tell which half 😇