Letter 11/11/2013

Hey everyone

So I sent some pictures. They are of the baptism we had on Saturday. Eddy got baptized by his dad. It was super cool. We did it in the river and got lots of cool pictures. Eddy is 18 years old and his entire family is members. Actually he pretty much already was a member but his papers got all messed up and the church had no record of him being a member. So we baptized him. He is planning on serving a mission too. He´ll be the first person to serve a mission from Chivay if he does.

Sweet so I´m getting a Xmas Package. That´s what I´m talking about. I don´t really know what I want though. Oh speaking of Christmas. I might not be able to Skype you guys this time. If I´m still in Chivay for Christmas it´ll be impossible. The internet here is SOOOOO slow. I´m shocked sometimes when I can get in sending you all a picture.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO How did Hart lose to Canyon too? Hope they regain momentum and STOMP on Paso Robles.

NOOOOOO Sam lost too!?! Oh it´s Veterans Day today. I had no idea. The only holidays I ever hear about here is Day of the Virgin Maria or of the Virgin of Chapi or Saint John or other catholic Holidays.

Well not much happened this week. Alejandro and Eddy both got baptized and confirmed. It was a relaxed week. Got a haircut this morning! My comp says I look like John Cena. Davey will know who he is. Yep that´s about it.

Oh and It´s taking to long to load the pictures so I could only send one and I don´t know which one it is. Well I gotta go love you all a ton. CHOU CHOU

Love Elder Russon

Letter 11/4/2013

So I sent the pictures of the Colca Canyon from last week and also of the baptism we had this morning.

First off..... I am sooooooo sad Hart los to Valencia. But I´m super happy that Davey had like 15 tackles and 3 sacks. Which is super crazy good.

Well this week was normal. We struggled ALL week long to get Alejandro baptized and finally today this morning he did. Alejandro is 96 years old and is almost completely deaf. ALSO he doesn´t understand Spanish. So for like the last 3 months we´ve been teaching him with people from our ward that speak his language(Ketchwa). We can communicate with him if we scream into his ear in Spanish but it is very very difficult. So he basically had like 4 different baptismal dates this week. First Friday then Saturday then Sunday then today in the morning he finally did it. The problem with him is that he forgets everything we teach him. He is pretty old and has a tough time remembering. So finally yesterday after church. We had one of the members who speaks Ketchwa ask him about baptism and then he started his same old spiel. But then the other members who spoke Ketchwa heard them talking and like 5 members shared with him and his wife with their testimonies. It was awesome and he and his wife were like "yeah, tomorrow, baptism." (His wife got sick this morning though and couldn´t get baptized). Anyways so we had the baptism this morning and guess where we did it at.... A PUBLIC SWIMMING POOL!!!! It was pretty weird but super awesome. Because what it really is is a hot spring. And they build a Swimming resort on top of the Hot Spring. So yeah that´s what happened this week.

Well I gotta go. Love you all a ton.

Thanks for the pictures they ROCK! CHOU CHOU!!!!

Love Elder Russon

Letter 10/21/2013

Hey everyone

Well this week we spent a ton of time in Arequipa like 3 full days for training and then I had to go to the Doctors because I've had a cough for like 7 months and I'm getting really sick of it. But it was a really fun and a good week. So I sent some pictures to you. The first is when we went down to Arequipa for the doctors. We got there at nighttime and had no where to go so we went to the Elders closest to us and they organized a wedding and baptism for some investigators that they were teaching. It was cool their whole ward came to support them too. My comp and I are behind the cake. Then the other picture is us at a Branch activity "picnic" we had this Saturday. We had tons of games for everyone to play and one was a sack race so there's a picture of me hopping around in a sack. then the last one was this morning. 

Sack race with Chivay Branch

Sooooooo changes were yesterday and me and my comp are splitting up. Sad, BUT my comp is only going to Chivay 2 which is the other group of missionaries in Chivay and I am staying in Chivay 1. We got our comps this morning. To play a prank on them as they came. We had the guy in the picture with me President Cardenas dress up as me to pick up our comps. SO he went to pick them up as Elder Russon while driving a car (which we cant do in this mission) with a cellphone (which we cant have) and as a 35 year old man. It was hilarious. They were freaking out thinking that we could do all this crazy things only in Chivay. They believed it all too. It was fun though. My new comp is Elder Cortes from Mexico.

Also this week was pretty good in Church attendance. We had 25 come in total which is the highest its been since I got here. And we have a few investigators preparing for baptism that should be happening this week or the next after.

Dang super happy for everyone in their games. Sounds like Davey had a dream like day against Golden Valley. And Sams team is still winning all their games. That's awesome. Sounds like there will be lots of Playoff games in our house this year. Davey also told me like all my old team is at COC that's awesome. And Teddy is coaching there too. Glad to hear Grandma and Grandpa made it down okay. Say hi to them for me too. Also say hi to Grandma Nancy I haven't heard from her in a while.

Love Elder Russon

Shoes after 1 year

The other Elder Russon

Letter 10/14/2013

Hey fam

BTW, I´m chillin in Arequipa right now for our Pday with the zone.

This week was cool because we raised the branch attendance up again to 24 this week. We basically just focus on the members in Chivay because they are in a pretty rough spot right now. We do VERY little missionary work and it´s all just reactivating members. Although this Saturday morning, we were walking and some lady walked up to us and asked us if we could teach her family. So we go in and teach them and they were GOLDEN!!!!! They had questions and everything. They asked if they could go to church with us without us even asking them. So yesterday they showed up to church during testimony meeting. In the middle of the meeting the mom, her first time ever at church, walks up to the stand and gives her testimony. She had been praying for help to god lately and that same morning we walked right into her. IT WAS AWESOME! I literally feel like God just handed us the most golden family ever for our work in making sure all the members are taken care of.

Thanks for all the letters they mean a lot. Oh and we did some straight up FARM work this week. I sent pictures of us digging a trench for water, me about to jump on a bull, and me following a heard of angry bulls who actually ended up charging me a little later but I didn´t get pictures of that.

Well I gotta go love you and thanks a ton for the letters CHOU CHOU

Love Elder Russon

Letter 10/7/2013

Hey everyone

Well this week was pretty normal. Like usual nothing too crazy other than the branch is passing through TONS of problems. Conference here was pretty cool. We actually didn´t end up going to Arequipa because OIM which is the organization within the church that handles all the building and expansion and renovation and all that stuff for the church came and brought us some crazy USB that caught internet like a cell phone. But we had about 22 attend every session (not priesthood tho... my gosh what a headache that was) which is super cool. Because the members here really needed to see and hear conference and they ended up being able to. Also we passed out papers and pens to all the members and they ended up taking notes about the conference which also was awesome. 

Oh this week we got to do service in one the farms of the members. It was super cool. First we started up hucking some corn and then we went to their farm to harvest alfalfa. I sent some pictures. What else happend this week. Well we finally finished moving into our new house. It´s super tiny. Imagine my old room as your entire house. It´s our bathrrom, kitchen, living room, bed room, and everything. But it´s cool though. Also we aren´t really in there all that much so it´s no big deal. Oh so for the priesthood session me and my comp showed up and set everything up and we sat there by ourselves for like 30 minutes. Then finally some 9 year old kid and his mom showed up. The other missionaries didn´t even show up. Anyways. Chivay is suffering a bit right now. But it´s all good. I know that as hard as it is right now and as hard as it´ll get all of this will just become A GIANT blessing for us later on. 

Hey you guys gotta get me more updates on the games. Stats everything the works. Well I gotta go. Love you all a ton. CHOU CHOU

Love Elder Russon

Oh and for Dad, I found this leg on the ground the other day. It´s from an Alpaca.

Letter 9/30/2013

HEY EVERYONE

Well thanks everyone for the letters, they rock. And all of the pictures. I sent a picture of me this morning eating a bowl of cereal on top of our roof right before we washed our clothes and another of something cool in the sky and of the view of our new room we just moved into.

Well lately in the Branch up here it has been SUPER ROUGH. Satan himself is probably living in this village. But from our 6 members last week we worked super hard and got it to 14 this week. So hopefully we can just keep going up and up.Well not much cool stuff has happened this week. We moved houses which SUCKED. Our new room is way smaller than before and on the 3rrd story which has its ups and downs. We are planning on putting a table filled with missionary supplies in the village market all this week if we can get permission from the city hall place. Which should be SUPER COOL. Oh and also here in Chivay we don´t get Conference so this week we are planning on taking all the branch (all 8 members lol) to a trip to Arequipa to watch the conference Saturday and Sunday which should be super cool.

Oh and last night I scared the life out of my comp. So idk if you guys remember, I know at least Davey does, that sometimes in the middle of the night I would wake up and just start freaking out and starting doing crazy things and then the next morning I wouldn´t remember anything. Well Yesterday apparently I like freaked out in the middle of the night and started yelling that there was someone in our room and then he like teleported away and I thought this same person was my comp. So I started yelling at my comp asking him "what the heck he was doing" and my favorite "HOW ARE YOU TELEPORTING LIKE THAT?" It was pretty funny when I woke up this morning. The first thing he said was "dude you are sooooooo crazy". And apparently it wasn´t just me yelling either it was like a full on conversation.

Well I gotta go love you all. Thanks A TON for all the letters and pictures that you´ve all sent me. Well I gotta go. CHOU CHOU!!!


Love Elder Russon

Letter 9/2/2013

Hey Everyone

Well I´m doing great. I´ve been kinda sick like every single week since I came to Chivay but it´s not to bad. We have a lot of baptisms set up for this week. Could be 6 if we get a few miracles thrown our way. So I´m super excited about that. But this week I don´t have any stories for you guys. It´s been raining a lot and snowing but I didn´t take any pictures of it. After about 30 minutes the snow all melts away so we haven´t been able to do anything cool with the snow.

So for a Branch activity the branch wrote letters to the Spanish Ward in our building in Santa Clarita. We still don´t have the address or anything so we are going to send it to you guys to give to the Bishop of that Ward. But I NEED his email soon or he is going to end up with some random box of letters he has no Idea what to do with.

Well I love you all. Hope everyone is going good in Santa Clarita. Oh and TELL ME WHO WON THE GAMES!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You can´t just throw in some sentences about the game and then NOT TELL ME WHO WON! Well I gotta go CHOU!!!

Love Elder Russon