January 4, 2016 Letter...

Family!

Well, this week has been rather interesting. I forgot to tell you guys that we have been working with a man that had cancer named Julio. He had lived a super worldly life full of drugs and alcohol and when we received his reference we didn't think much of it. It just so happens that this man's cancer was terminal and had spread to every part of his body. Anyways, we went to his house to contact the reference and the first day there, November 29th, we felt inspired to invite him to be baptized on the 26th of December, but for some reason it felt like it wasn't going to happen. For the whole month of December we visited him in his house, usually three times a week, teaching him and doing all we could to give him spiritual strength and cheer him up. He was to the point where he had to be in bed all day every day and his depression was just terrible, the worst I have ever seen. He was extremely skinny and too weak that he couldn't move easily because his muscles just didn't allow it. The good thing was that he did understand a lot of what we taught and we taught a lot about the Plan of Salvacion, because we felt that he was going to go soon. Our goal was really to help him gain a testimony before he left, so he could get baptized here on the earth and continue in the next life. Anyways, we continued teaching, continued inviting him to be baptized the 26th, but he just didn't want to accept, he kept saying "only time will tell" when we invited him to be baptized. He couldn't read or go to church so that made the process of receiving a testimony rather difficult. So on the 26th we go to his house to see him, and we see that he is sleeping. Hmm, Okay. Darn, looks like we'll have to come back another day. So we returned a few days later and he had passed away, on the 26th of December, the same day we had been working towards for his baptism. Super weird. I feel like we felt to invite him for that day, the 26th, because it really was his last day and last chance, and he would have the most amount of time possible to accept the gospel. In the end, due to his health, he couldn't understand everything we taught, but I do thank the Lord for taking him and bringing him into a better place. I know in the spirit world he will have the capacity to understand the gospel, and will be able to accept in its fulness.

This week we have been working extremely hard to get our investigators that are progressing baptized. This week we accomplished that goal and Ingrid was baptized on Saturday! How wonderful. It's amazing because the Lord really had prepared her from the beginning. We didn't really do much. We felt the impression to talk to her in the street about 3 months ago, and that day she told us, "Well, you can try to visit me, but I'm Jehovah's Witness and you're gonna waste time trying to convince me." Ha. Anyways, we took a while in contacting her again, but we did it and began teaching her. The Lord had prepared her for us unlike I had ever seen before. She had a great knowledge of many gospel truths... she had already bought a Book of Mormon but didn't know why, she had a mormon friend that, for many years, taught her about the gospel, she had many dreams and spiritual experiences that helped her recognize that the Lord had something more for her, she just didn't know what. Just wow, as we taught her she had many, many, many questions, but we could relate the gospel truths with all of her questions and ideas to help her understand the meaning of everything and see the overall picture of the Gospel. With each visit, she was able to gain a testimony and receive many answers that this is the truth. She shared her testimony with us many times. We capped it all off with her baptism, and she is happy. I have so much to be grateful for, but today I'm especially grateful that the Lord does answer prayers and does bless us when we are diligent and increase our faith.

My birthday was cool. Probably the most regular day of my life, haha, but I'm sure it's the first bday like that of many. Unless I get a cool wife who makes my bday's cool. That night we had permission to be out until 12:30AM, and we went to a members house to eat dinner and cake for my bday, fuunn. Then we came back to our house, and climbed to the very top of our building.. like 7 stories, and watched the fireworks from there. Sooo smooth. Peru is cool because no one cares and laws don't exist so everyone and their dog buys the biggest john fireworks and bombs and dynamite and c4 and blows it off on New Years. Dope. Literally, the whole city of Lima was lit up, it was sooooo smooth. Good way to finish off the year and my birthday. Now we're in 2016 and idk what to do.

I want to thank you for the Joseph Smith tapes you guys sent. I must admit, Truman G. Madsen is one of my heroes. That man is a scholar. I'm jealous that Grandma and Grandpa Cluff were friends with him, I would've died to meet him. The Prophet Joseph really was the man. I'm grateful for all that he did, for his diligence and for the service and work to which he dedicated his life. I know he was a prophet and nothing can change that. Before the mission, I don't think I could've said that.

One last thing, this letter is huge idk why I'm sending letters like this. But anyways, I woke up last Tuesday with two giant ball like things on my back and I was like, what the flip? So I had my comp look at them, too, and he was also like dudeeee, what the flip? So I made the decision to have my comp cut them off with a new razor blade from my shaving kit. So he did. I thought he was going to cut a line in it so he could squeeze whatever was in it out, but he decided to grab it and cut the entire ball things off. When he cut it off, these two hard white things came out, like hard balls of fat. The good thing was that I didn't feel anything. Anyways, yeah, it bled a lot and I was terrified so I called the secretary and Sister Larson was like, yeah I better go to the hospital and get it checked out. So we went, (there went our whole day) and we get to the doctors and showed him the pics and he's like, "What have you done, why did you cut it off?" Then he looked at my back and was like, "Wait, good job, that's a clean cut. I would've done the same thing, thanks for saving me time. Now I don't have to work. You're free to go, just take these antibiotics".. okay thanks, doc. Anyways, he said they were like random fat deposits.. (idk if he's right) and that they weren't too harmful. I personally still believe that they were cockroach eggs. Cockroaches climb all over me at night and it's terrifying. But yeah, my backs better now. I'll send pics.

Pray that Romano gets baptized this week!

Love yall and God bless the USA.
Elder Cluff

PS... I'm never writing a letter that long again.