Finishing Up January

family.

It's wonderful to be alive!

This week we attended a leadership training in Chiclayo on Thursday and Friday. I learned loads of good stuff as usual. President Chipman wants us missionaries to have a better doctrinal foundation. He wants us to start up the "CCM Peru Piura" (basically a second MTC) in which we will read all of Preach My Gospel before April starts. We will also make new lesson plans for every lesson and have ready 6 scriptures for every principle of every lesson (which turns out to be almost 200 scriptures). I'm pretty excited for that since it has a lot to do with my goals for 2011.

In the training we were introduced to a fictitious family and the whole second day of the capacitacion was devoted to helping them resolve their problems and progress towards accepting a baptismal date. I liked the idea. President Chipman taught us something that I really liked. He said that it's crucial to know that the plan of salvation isn't just a "lesson of circles." It's about overcoming death. It's about Christ defying physical and spiritual death and forever breaking the chains of hell. And then giving us a way out. That's what I preach every day! It's called the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Today we played soccer in the morning. It started out normal temperature but by the end the sun was pretty intense. We were at a chapel that has a drinking fountain in it, and as I drunk my thirst continued and I wanted to drink more! That's how I'm just barely starting to feel about the word of God. I want more and more of it. I'm ashamed that it took me so long, but the important thing is that I'm really starting to realize the importance of the scriptures. I'm trying my best to make them part of me. I loved the January Liahona and I've already read basically all of it. There's an article by Elder Jay Jensen (the other Elder Jensen ha ha) in which he says that we will come to know that Christ exists as we read, study, and cite--NOT PARAPHRASE-- the scriptures. Interesting. A very straightforward statement.

Victor attended church for the third time which is pretty exciting. He also went to a JAS (YSA) meeting. He's a great guy and I'm glad that he's finding friends in the ward. We haven't been able to speak to Felipe and Olga all week because whenever we come to their house they're not home. I'm a little worred about them. Nilton is doing well and is planning on getting married on February 16th. We're also teaching a brother named German. His wife and sons are members and we're trying to figure out why he hasn't been baptized yet, since he attends church regularly. We taught him yesterday for the second time and he expressed his concerns that he's scared to get baptized and then "fail God" afterwards by falling into temptation. We left him some homework--to pray every day to know when he should be baptized. We have an appointment with him on Friday.

Well, that's about it. There's probably a ton of things I could say but I love you all and I think you're all very neat.

elder bassett.