El papa🥔

 The new pope was elected this week and has peruvian nationality. He was the bishop of Chiclayo for a long time

It is all we heard about this week. People here are going absolutely insane. I don't know what sky rocketed more, church attendences in the Catholic church or beer sales to celebrate. 

In his acceptance speach he stopped speaking in Latin for like 10 seconds and gave a shoutout to Chiclayo Perú in spanish. He said, thank you to the beautiful people of Chiclayo Perú who have made this church the Church of Jesus Christ. People here could not be more proud. Everyone who was "catholic" before but now are 10x more so. When he first got elected we were joking about how it would make the work harder, but it actually has. Crazy. Obstacles in the Lords work, but the truth will press on. 

Our friend Eliza is on baptismal date for this Sunday. Her story is crazy! She was a catholic nun. She spent the first 24 years of her life completely dedicated to being a nun. She spent multiple years living in a monastary without contact to the outside world. Eventually there came a point about 16 years ago when she decided she didn't want to continue being a completely dedicated nun, and left the monastary. She continued being extremely Catholic, but no longer a nun. She had a kid and started her life out. Recently her daughter started going to our church with her extended family that are members. Her mom gave her permission to be baptized. We started teaching Eliza and a couple weeks ago we threw up a hail marry in one of the first sit down lessons with her and invited her to be baptized in 3 weeks. She accepted and now will be baptized on sunday if everything goes smoothly. Like every single heavily practicing religious person that I have seen get baptized in our church, the BOM was the ticket. We read Alma 7 with her the day we invited her to be baptized and it absolutely blew her away. Any person who reads it with true intent, humility, and a desire to know if it is true, will decide to take any necessary measure and be baptized. 

The couple that I talked about last week was going to get married this week. The husband is a taxi driver and they had been saving up money and everything but then his car broke down and he had to spend everything he had saved on the car. Its crazy the obstacles satan throws at people. He got it fixed and has been working around the clock to save up. We are hoping they can get married this friday. Asking someone that works day to day to feed their family to save 400 soles to get married is such an insanely hard thing to ask. It amazes me how humble they are and their desire to follow God's commandments. 

The talk from James R. Rasband from this last conferece is beautiful. He talks about how the best way to know that the BOM is true is to contemplate the mercy and loving plan that it teaches about. 

"If you are struggling, may I invite you to follow Moroni’s counsel to ponder on the many ways the Book of Mormon teaches “how merciful the Lord hath been [to] the children of men”? Based on my experience, I hope that when you do, the peace of the Holy Ghost can enter your heart and you can know, believe, and feel that the Book of Mormon and the plan of mercy it teaches are true." 

El campo blanco está ya para la siega 

The field is white and ready to harvest. 

Elder Pohlman