Welcome to the Jungle!

yep, river... i was wearing my comps glasses and forgot

Hi everyone!!! Well, I am in Puerto Maldonado now!!! Oh my... It is HOT!!! Like really, I went from Puno where it was snowing to here where I feel like these people are crazy for living in this heat. But oh my it is beautiful!! Our sector has the main part of the city and then the real life jungle! We have Triunfo, Puerto Viejo, and Pueple viejo and then the plaza de armas, a huge bridge that takes 15 minutes to cross. Here in Puerto we are only 2 hours away from Brazil so there are Brazilians here and we hear some portugese and its fun- im learning for you dad!. oh my it is so different than my last sector. It was actually super hard leaving Puno and my companion. It was my home for 5 months! Now I am meeting all the people here and trying to get around this huge sector, it has been a hard change, but I am excited for what's ahead. My companion is from Peru, she is from Lima and she is such a cutie. She speaks English well too! But I told her I will help her with her English and speak to her when we are in the house, but outside we just speak spanish and it has been great. Just in one week I feel a lot more confident speaking. My grammar is good now, I am just working on learning new words. 

  Well this week was mainly me meeting the people, and it surprised me, but we only have 2 investigators. I still haven't met them, but yeah the problem here is everyone is inactive, thats why its just a branch, so we work a lot with less actives which is cool, but all the ones we visited didn't come to church. They all said they were busy chopping down all the plants, picking the coconuts and selling them, unshelling nuts and selling them... ahh jungle life. It really is hard though, but I got my companion excited about finding new people to teach and really figuring out what the deal is with all these less actives here. I can tell there has been a slip in the work here, but I want to work SO hard and I just want to help these people and help this rama become a stake. Its gonna be hard, but I am excited. Also I was informed that all the missionaries that come here to Puerto stay here for a realllyy long time. like I will probably leave when I hit my year mark. So that will be cool to really get things going here.

  Well some funny things, my first night here I already had to take a shower, we take about 3-4 a day, and I came out and there was a HUGE cockroach!! I kinda squeeled and made my companion kill it. She laughed and said "welcome to the jungle" yeah the bugs here are HUGE. Oh my. And every missionary has a bunch of scars from all the bug bites!! Also, the other day we were teaching a less active and it started raining SO hard!! Like we could barely hear our own voices. So when we left we RAN to catch the bus back into the city. Well we went and got boots on to walk around in the water the rest of the day and oh my.. i kid you not the roads down in the jungle were literally mini rivers!! I feel like Indiana Jones here no joke. Its an adventure every day!! 

  Something I learned this week is about forgiveness. I learned that when we forgive others, no matter what may have happened, we immediately feel the love of God, for us, and others. It is an amazing feeling. It isnt always easy to forgive, it take humility, and many Christ like attributes to really forgive, but it is so important. I know that is we cant forgive others, God wont forgive us on our part. It is better to let things go and keep moving forward than to keep something nagging at you forever. This life is filled with trials, and some of the trials come from other people, but if we forgive and move on and focus on what God thinks of us and that what we are doing is right, we are filled with His spirit and love. So I hope that we can all forgive others and also treat others the way Christ would. Life is a lot happier!

  I love you all more than you know!! Seguir adelante con fe

Hermana Hunter

xoxoxoxo

found some kids chopping down stuff with their machetes.. livin the life