Hayley Imbler	Jan 27 (1 day ago)
to me, Michael, Michael, kayleemaughan

Holaaaa! This week has been FULL of blessings! I almost don´t know where to begin, but I hope I will have enough time to get in the good stories!

Starting with Monday.. normal P day.. After we were able to talk to Jaqueline, she´s the wife of a less active member. We talked about the Book of Mormon and invited her to read. We also talked with Sergio (like always.. because he just makes us so happy because he´s progressing so fast). Tuesday was a little more normal we were able to talk to 3 sisters, Elizabeth, Paola, and Julie, they all have kids and their husbands..but lacking the marriage part. We are hoping to be able to help them to get married, but I´ll keep you updated on that. We talked to Holger and Jhon about the Word of Wisdom.. that was a struggle because Holger drinks quite a bit and doesn´t want to stop..but Jhon told us that he isn´t much for drinking and said that it wouldn´t be a problem. He is surprisingly laid back and willing to listen. We then went to talk to Steffani, Nayeli, and Cesar. Steffani told us that she had decided not to go to church for a while.. we were really sad and tried to help her understand the importance, but she didn´t really want to listen. I just asked her to pray before she made the decision, she said she would, but then at the end of the lesson she refused to say the closing prayer. We will be working with her a lot these next few weeks I think.

Wednesday we finally found Jonathan.. he´s been really struggling this last week. He has lot struggles because his mom is rarely at home and his dad lives in another neighborhood with his wife...so Jonathan is left alone a lot. He has his girlfriend (they are both 14) and he spends a lot of time with her.. We are trying to help him find other more productive things to do. We talked to Victor again and he was interested in the doctrine but said he is a member of another church. We invited him to pray and he said he would, so we will follow up with that today. We then had another lesson with Jhon about the Plan of Salvation. He was super intrigued with the Kingdoms of Glory, we´ll have to talk to him more about how that works. 

Thursday I woke up feeling really sick. I had a fever and was coughing. Bad day to be sick because we have weekly planning. I called the Elders and my zone leader and another elder came to give me a blessing. Even though I felt pretty awful during the day we were able to have 5 lessons. We talked to Tony, he said that he wants some kind of proof that this is the true church, so we are bringing him a Book of Mormon for the next lesson. We have been visiting Jhon more and more because he is going to be baptized the 8th of February.. this time we talked about keeping the Sabbath day holy. He took everything really well and we set up another lesson with him. 

Friday we talked to a reference we had that ended up being really interesting. He is super philosophical so it´s not going to be an easy road. We talked to some recent converts and then we were able to talk again with Jaqueline. We invited her to be baptized and she said no.. We resolved her doubts, but she finished by still saying no. Side note: on Sunday Hermana Callejas went to visit her and she says she wants her dad to come to her in a dream and tell her she is in the right path.. she says that feelings just aren´t good enough for her. 

Saturday we had 9 lessons.. beating last weeks record of 8 in one day. It´s a good feeling to teach a lot. We were able to talk to Jhon yet again and he committed to come to church on Sunday even though it was really early at 8 in the morning. We also found a less active young man who we are going to work to help get him out on a mission, on Sunday after being 6 months inactive came to church..YAY! We did divisions and my wonderful companion was able to find 2 new families to teach!! I am super excited to get to know them today! 

Sunday Jhon came to church with us, as well as Jhonathan. The members received Jhon really well and the young single adults invited him to an activity this Saturday and he said he really wants to go. This week he will have his first interview for his baptism. After church we were finally able to find a reference we have been looking for and they were really friendly and gave us probably the best lemonade I have ever had.. haha. Then we did divisions again because we had a ward activity that we went and visited less active members in groups of 2 or 3. I was able to find yet another new family to teach which was super great... until in the middle of the lesson I choked and started coughing uncontrolably.. super embarassing, don´t know why I´m writing to tell you about it.. oops haha, but they accepted another visit this week. My companion also found two new investigators. We are feeling really blessed to have found a total of 13 new investigators this week and 4 families. We are going to be working really hard these next few weeks to help them progress quickly. 

Have a great week everyone and always remember that no matter what happens in life our Heavenly Father loves YOU. There will be times when life is hard when maybe you want to give up, get on your knees and pray. Our Father in Heaven wants to listen and wants to help. Never forget that! 

Love, 

Hermana Imbler

Hayley Imbler	Jan 20 (6 days ago)
to me, Michael, Michael

WOOOHOOO!!! I´m still here in Libertad! Well, for at least one more transfer, which makes me super happy because we are working really hard here to change the vision of missionary work. Members and missionaries in our ward work together! Although we aren´t perfect yet we are gradually getting better and better and animating the members to work with us more.

On Monday we didn´t do a whole lot, we went to eat lunch with Hermana Jenni. We then had lessons with Erika and Andrea (a mom and daughter who are inactive). Then we talked with Sergio, we are helping him a lot to prepare to receive the priesthood and a calling in the church! Hopefully all goes well with that. 

Tuesday was a good day, we were able to go and do service in one of the other wards in our zone. We started painting a little room for one sister. I got to paint a ceiling, and let me tell you that was not easy.. We did only the base and then had to leave. After we went to visit Alonso, one of our recent converts, and his mom Anny. We talked about the importance of the scriptures and obedience and everything seemed to sink in well, but then they didn´t come to church.. super sad day. We are also working with one sister who is less active that lives a little bit up the hill and she has been doing well, she´s only lacking the Sunday part.. where they come to church. For some reason that is on of the hardest thing for less active members is getting up the strength to come to church on Sunday. But what I do know, is when the less active members show up I am almost happier than when our investigators come.. That night we had a lesson with Jhon, the 24 year old that we found on Sunday and we were able to talk about Joseph Smith. He is super receptive and willing to learn more.

Wednesday we found some new people to teach. Delfilia is 86 years old, her son is a preacher, but her grandson (son of the preacher) is a return missionary haha.. We invited her to be baptized, she accepted, but we´re going to have to work really hard with her because she has her little sanctuary where she prays with idols and stuff.. she´s got a lot of faith in the Virgin Mary.. so we´ll be helping her with that. We also were able to find a new investigator Manuela. We talked about the Plan of Salvation, but then when we went back and talked about the restoration she had a lot of ideas in her head of how it´s impossible to have only one true church on the earth. That wouldn´t be a huge problem to explain except for that after we explained she didn´t want to pray. She said that it would be mocking God to ask him which church was true.. So we hit a rough spot there.. I´m so thankful that I know that our Heavenly Father not only LISTENS to our prayers but also ANSWERS our prayers. 

Thursday was a slower day but we were able to find a young man Jose who is really interested in learning more. The only problem is that we haven´t been able to catch up with him since Thursday.. but we´re going to try to follow up this week. We also were able to find a girl Alessandra who had her grandmother recently pass away.. We were able to answer her questions and give her comfort about where her grandma is now. 

Friday.. our best day for lessons! We had 8.. I almost can´t believe it! We also found two new investigators. We were going to visit one sister in our ward and on the way we found a woman struggling to carry a mountain of things up the stairs on the hill. I offered to help her and my companion and I helped her up to her house. There we entered and we able to talk with her. She grew up in Guanaco, which is a province and she didn´t have very good schooling so we will have to read with her. We also had another lesson with Jhon and he accepted a baptismal date for February 8th! We are really excited because it was pretty much a fluke that we had our first lesson with him. Then we talked to Jaqueline.. she is the wife of a less active member and we were able to find her and teach a lesson. We invited her and her husbad to pray about Joseph Smith. 

Saturday was pretty normal during the day and then at 6 was Henry´s baptismal! His brother baptized him and everything was super spritirual. He bore his testimony and it was really strong, we could feel the Spirit so much, which we are really hoping will help his wife, and we are going to work with her as well. We then had stake conference evening session. The second counselor in the stake presidency spoke and then started talking about two sister missionaries who were in his house for Christmas. He talked about the look on the sister´s face as she saw her dad for the first time in 6 months as well as her other family. He told about how she bore her testimony very strongly to her brothers and other family members. He said although she was speaking english he could feel the power of her testimony. And of course you all know me.. I was crying buckets in the back.. because he was talking about me.. I never thought that he had been watching so closely. I felt so much fatherly love in that moment.. it was really wonderful. We ended the night really happy.

Sunday Jhon came with us to stake conference and we were able to listen to a member of the Seventy from Bolivia who was awesome! He focused a lot on the family and how fathers should treat their wives and children. He shared an experience about how one bishop in his ward invited a five year old boy to offer the closing prayer in sacrament meeting. Everything went well until he asked Heavenly Father to let all of the drunks die. He said this not becaue it was something bad to say, but he had seen his father who had lots of problems with alcohol and wanted the problems to stop. We learned that our actions impact the our children when they are young. We should correct with love and help them to understand the important principles of the gospel. After conference we did divisions and Kathleen and I were able to find another new investigator Victor who was really interested in the Plan of Salvation.. I´ll keep you updated on how that goes. So then we finished off the week with 36 lessons, 4 more than the goal of the mission.. my companion and I were super happy.. who am I kidding, we are still happy, and loving the mission more than I can describe!

Hope you all have a fabulous week and always remember that you.. yes YOU are a child of God, He loves you, He literally is your father and wants the best for you. But just like a good parent He will give blessings when we obey.. He can´t give blessings to us if we don´t obey, it wouldn´t be just. But.. He will ALWAYS be waiting with his arms open to receive us in whatever moment... His love is infinite. I´m so grateful to know that!

Love 

Hermana Imbler

                                                                         Alonzo                 

                                                                            Flora's

                                                                        Friendly  spider

Hayley Imbler	9:13 AM (11 hours ago)
to Kathleen, me, Michael

Another week gone by and today we will find out transfers! Can´t believe yet another 6 weeks has passed by so quickly! I´m a little bit nervous for what will happen, but I know that the Lord will put me where he needs me!

This week has been WONDERFUL! Haha ok I feel like pretty much every week of my mission is wonderful, but hey that´s how it should be right?? Hmm.. where to start... How about from the beginning..

Monday...We went to visit Alonso´s mom and she told us that her friend´s dad just recently passed away. We shared the message of the Plan of Salvation with her and gave her a pamphlet so that she can share it with her friend. We´ll follow up with her this week on how that went. Then we had Henry´s baptismal interview and........He didn´t pass... Ok JUST KIDDING! Everything went really well and he´ll be baptized this Saturday!! I really feel so blessed to have been able to see baptisms 4 weeks in a row, it´s truly a miracle!

Tuesday was a day full of lessons (my favorite days.. teaching for hours is amazing, if you can believe it). We were able to visit Romelio, his wife is a member but they haven´t been able to get married because of troubles with documents.. darn, but we´re hoping that they will come soon! But they live on the hill so we had to climb a bunch, when we got there they had a rooster and 3 other chickens.. so if you know me I had an anxiety attack.. because they were just running around wild..but I survived. Then we had lessons with some less active members and Sergio, who is doing great by the way! We then went to visit Flora who was to be baptized on Saturday.. she was doing really good and was super excited for her baptism! Then to finish off the day we had a lesson with Miguel Angel who is also a less active member and he told me that in the U.S. it´s like insanely cold right now? I had no idea... oops! Don´t get updated much on weather over there! Hope ya´ll are staying warm!

Wednesday we went to visit a reference of less actives and we found Rosa, she has pancreatic cancer as well as something else and isn´t doing too well, but we were able to share with her about the power of prayer and brought her some comfort. We then found a reference that we´d been looking for for sometime, an older man Manuel. He accepted our visit and then came to the baptism on Saturday, but left when he found out it was the church of his brother, I guess they don´t get along too well.. Later we found Holger and Jessenia who we´ve been teaching, she´s less active and he´s an investigator. Everything went good and they promised to come to church on Sunday.. (but.. didn´t come, after calling them and everything..)

Thursday we had lunch with Flora and her grandson who is 16 years old. We were able to teach him a lesson and he told us he would come to his Grandma´s baptism! Then later on we were able to have a really good lesson with Henry. In the closing prayer he asked that everything would go well with his baptism on the 18th. It made me so happy! He pretty much acts like a member already, we are feeling super lucky to have met the people we have met here in Libertad! We then had a family home evening with a family who are less actives and we talked about covenants then played some games. It was a really great night!

Friday... One of our slower days, but we were able to have lessons with the Bishop, his first counselor, his second counselor, and the ward mission leader. Talk about a lot of support in one day. We found a new sister who is less active and were able to help animate her a little bit, but then she didn´t come to church.. sad day. Then we had a family home evening with another family who are less actives and we talked about eternal families.

Saturday was a full day! We talked with Sergio again and he said he wanted to come to the baptism of Flora.. he is doing so well I just can´t believe it, it makes me SO happy to see him participating in everything he can! Then we found two new investigators who we taught a lesson, but then the second time we went back they said that they can´t listen to us anymore because they have their own religion.. maybe one day! Then there was the baptism. It was beautiful and lots of the members came to support Flora! That night also it rained more than I have seen here in Lima... but still not nearly as much as what we have at home.. by a lot I mean it´s the first time I felt real rain drops here! Then we taught a lesson to Jonathan and everything went well, he promised to talk to his mom about being baptized, and to come to church.

Sunday.. in church only Henry showed up, we did a lot to help others, but no one else came. That means that Jonathan will have to be baptized the first week of February.. In sacrament meeting we found out that Sergio is going to recieve the aaronic priesthood, I almost cried, a true convert!!  Then in the afternoon we had a ward activity where us and the members left in companionships to visit the less active members. Sergio also came (seriously he is the best little 78 year old man, super converted, even though he only had two weeks of lessons before his baptism). We did divisions and I left with Kathleen (yes mom she spells her name just like you!) she´s 24 and she loves practicing english with me.. she´s pretty much my best friend in the ward haha. We talked to Gladys about the Book of Mormon and she was really interested. We then went to visit Holger and Jessenia and they weren´t there so we had a lesson with one of her many cousins that lives in the house. Jhon, is 24 and was really receptive and had a lot of questions, at the end he prayed and thanked Heavenly Father for sending these sisters to help me. 

And that was my wonderful week! Hope this week can be just as good! Now I´m off to transfers, so the next week I will let everyone know what happened. Remember always to pray, prayer is one of the most powerful things we have and one of the most beautiful. Our Heavenly Father has a lot of qualities, but one of them that we sometimes forget is that he knows how to listen, and he will always be waiting for us to talk with him. 

Love you all!

Hermana Imbler

Lovin´ the Mish in Libertad

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Hayley Imbler	9:13 AM (8 hours ago)
to Kathleen, me, Michael

Happy Monday! (I think I say that every pday..oops, my only excuse is that it really is a happy day for me to be able to write all of you!)

This week started out a little slow but then got better and better. We couldn´t find a place to do internet this morning so I´m not going to have a whole lot of time to write, but I will try to do my best. We were able to visit Sergio multiple times this week and when he found out that we wouldn´t always be the missionaries in the ward he got pretty sad, but he said I will never forget you because you were the first and you were the ones who taught me. Super cute! He is really excited to prepare to receive the priesthood so we are working with him on that. 

On Monday we were able to talk to Rosmery, Henry´s wife and things went pretty good, but I think if she is ever going to want to be baptized she will need a really good friend in the church. We also talked to Alejandra again and she´s been strugglin a lot. She isn´t praying or reading and we´re having a hard time helping her with it, if she doesn´t put in her part there isn´t very much we can do.. 

Tuesday was a really slow day we weren´t able to find many people to teach, but we did have a lesson with Alonso. We taught him about Tithing and fasting which are always interesting lessons, but I love the testifying part because I have a such a strong testimony that if we pay tithing we will never lack anything that we need. As well as fasting, if we fast with a certain purpose the Lord will help us accomplish what we need or give us the answer that we need.

Wednesday was the real Pday, we had a little barbeque and then after played soccer. I fell pretty hard because my shoes didn´t have good traction and my back hurt for a couple of days, but I´m getting better. Then after we moved to our new house with water all day, never thought I would be thankful for something as simple as running water. Then that night one brother in the offices that helps with stuff came to put in our shower, it lasted until 8:45 so we didn´t have the opportunity to leave the house and teach lessons, bummer!

Thursday was another slow day, we were only able to talk to 2 less active members and we felt pretty down at the end of the day, but we decided that Friday was going to be a better day and that we were going to do everything possible to have lessons. We also had two interviews.. well we were supposed to, Alonso didn´t show up for his baptismal interview which meant he couldn´t be baptized unless we did it on Friday (thank goodness all went well with that). Flora, one sister who has been coming to church for almost 4 years and paying her tithing faithfully, is finally going to be baptized. There were a lot of problems because her husband didn´t want to get married, but she now is separated from him and can be baptized!! We were all crying of pure joy!

Friday and Saturday were days FULL of lessons which left my companion and I feeling really good! We were able to talk to Jonathan who is one of our newer investigators who is 14, but we are planning his baptism for this month, we´re praying that everything turns out well with him. 

Sunday as well was a great day and we were able to get a lot accomplished. We were able to have a lesson with a sweet lady Gladys who I think is going to progress rapidly. We are also receiving a lot of help from the members, they are coming with us for lessons which honestly helps a lot! They can bear testimony and befriend our investigators as well as the less active members. 

Whelp out of time, yet again, but just want to let you know how much I appreciate you all. This last week I received a lot of letters from ward members which left me just feeling AWESOME! Keep ´em coming por favor!! Hope you all have a great week!! 

Hermana Imbler