“And the Free Fall Begins............ 1 year, I CANT BELIEVE IT!!!”

HOOOLAA Familia and Friends!!! How are we doing??? 

I hope all is just fine and dandy… So this last Wednesday we had transfers and my companion, Elder Winterton went to serve in the Jungle!  That lucky dog!  He’s a great kid and missionary, I’ll miss him!!  But I now have an AWESOME New Companion, ELDER KEATON BROWN, straight outa Tucson Arizona!!!  He is a straight up champ!  Haha!!  I just knew he was going to be the best when he got here, cause first of all he is an “Elder Brown” and since I know another “Elder Brown” as well but he is serving his mission in Chile and well we all know that the “Chile Serving, Elder Brown” is a Grade A Champion!!  Then when my new companion told me his first name is KEATON!  Haha!!  My mind was just blown, my new companions has the same 2 names as 2 of my greatest friends from home! (In case you don’t know, Spencer has 2 amazing friends from home, they are Elder Jordan Brown who is serving in Chile and Elder Keaton Morton, who is serving in Bolivia)Haha!!  Pretty  good stuff eh!

So, me and Elder Brown go running every morning and it is really just awesome!!!  All the people just stop in their tracks and stare at 2 Gringos running by with Book of Mormons in their hands, haha!!  We just say, “Buenos Dias” and keep on chugging!  But we have to run with rocks in our other hand cause there are about 5 dogs every day that want to kill us, but dont worry mom, we dont actually hit the dogs with the rock (that is good cause he would be grounded for the rest of his life if he hit dogs with rocks!!) just close enough to scare em… sometimes haha (Not funny Spencer!)!  So he is a champ, and we are just going to have so much success, I just know it! I’m pretty stoked for this change!   

            So for the last couple weeks I have been pretty worried and confused, we haven’t had any investigators here that are progressing… we haven’t had anything going on with missionary work!!!  Edwin and Janiz are great people but they aren´t married so that will take a little while, and other than that we have the Little old lady Aida but her son, who takes care of her isn’t the biggest fan of the church at all!  So I have just been pretty stressed out with all the zone leader stuff and my area not having any people even listening  to what we have to teach them! !!  But this week I found my answer, The Lord was just teaching me a lesson!!!!  And here I have been very, very slow to learn it.  So, once again I learned that the most important thing in Missionary Work is to have the Spirit with you.  Absolutely Nothing Happens in this Work Without the Spirit!  And it’s not that I wasn’t being obedient or not working hard but I sometimes didn’t obey the promptings of the Spirit.  We would be walking and maybe I felt that I needed to talk to a guy, but I thought, why?  He is just going to yell at me or walk away and not listen to our message and I would just keep walking… ¡¡¡OH QUE ERROR (I am guessing it means something like, A HUGE MISTAKE??)!!!  I mean, I was doing it without even realizing what was going on!  So, one night I just got on my knees had a good long conversation with the Lord and I promised Him that I will ALWAYS follow the promptings of the Spirit, no matter how crazy it seems.  Well, I have been doing that and I have already seen a great change in my area!  Yesterday we left dinner and both our plan A and B failed, so I just thought and thought, where should we go?  It felt like we should go and visit Johnny again, he is a contact we have but we had already gone 2 times that day to see him and he wasn’t there either time!!  We decided we would go and try him again and on the way there I felt like we should talk to these 2 teenagers we saw and it turns out one of them was already a member of our Church and the rest of his family had listened to the missionaries when they taught him but only he got baptized!  His family was so happy to see the missionaries again, so we scheduled a lesson and we are going to visit them on  Wednesday!  I have such a great feeling about this family and if I hadn’t listed to the Spirit we would never have found them!!!  So, Everyone…. LISTEN TO THE SPIRIT ALWAYS AND LIVE WORTHY TO HAVE IT IN YOUR LIFE, EVERY MINUTE OF EVERY DAY!!!

Love Yall!

Elder Spencer Marty McGhie!

Sorry, once again the pictures wouldn’t load on the computer!!  WOOF! 

Hey, I finally got some pictures from Spencer!! =)

SPENCER'S ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF BEING OUT ON HIS MISSON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



Spencer one year white shirt with all his areas
and his companions on it..........now he is going to burn it!!! =)




BURNING HIS WHITE SHIRT ON HIS
ONE YEAR ANNIVERSAY....ITS A TRADITION?? =)




Blowing out his one year candle and lovely hostess
treats that he smashed into a cake!! =)




Eating his lovely Hostess smashed together cake!!
Celebrating his ONE YEAR IN THE MISSION!!! =)



 

Elder Brown blowing the horns we sent
and wearing the hats that say:
Spencer is one year old!! =)







The made mini Teddy Grahm Smores.........So fun=)



Spencer holding one of his Teddy Grahm Smores..........Russ gave us the idea!!
We did them for FHE and it was sooo very fun!!  So we sent them to
Spencer to help celebrate his 1 year in the mission Anniversary!! =)

Sorry, I am 2 weeks behind..................Oops!!

Hi,
Sorry, I am 2 weeks behind in updating Spencers blog...................I have no excuse except that I am sometimes an airhead..........thats the total truth =)!!

Quick update until I get this blog caught up............Spencer is still in Lima, Santa Anita but he has a new companion, Elder Keaton Brown from Arizona!!  Spencer sounds really great and is very happy!!  I promise I will get this blog caught up be later today.....that would be Monday, Oct.31st.................Oh and Happy Halloween =)!!!

Here are some Halloween pictures for you:

Marty is supposed to be dressed like Spencer
but Spencer would never wear those jeans????? Anyway,
Marty is wearing Spencers orange indoor soccer shoes
that I picked out and Spencers Peru hat so he is supposed to
be "Spencer" picking out his pumpkin but he, well he... Oh nevermind =)!



Spencers Pumpkin =)!





Ainsley, Caroline and Me with Spencer Pumpkin =)!

The Family and Natalee and Spencers pumpkin, minus me and Spencer!

More............ =)!

I put this in because I am never in pictures and so
I didnt want people to think I wasnt real so I put this picture
in and it isnt too beautiful of a picture of us all but here we are
Spencers Family at home with his pumpkin that we carved!!

“ME PERSIGEN"

QUE TAL MI ESTIMADA FAMILIA Y AMIGOS!?

Well another week has just FLOWN By and this week are changes (transfers)!!!!!!!!!!!!!AAAAA AAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!  I can’t believe it, it’s like yesterday that I got here in Santa Anita! Holy Smokes times just flies by.  So last week was pretty nuts!  I have about 12 pictures to send home but my stupid computer won’t read my CAMERA CHIP! I mean seriously, come on people, I just need to load a few fotos, thats all I ask!  Haha, but hey what can ya do?  So let’s see where do I start, well I’ll tell ya about some investigators we have, first of all we have Edwin, Janiz and their daughter Jefferin.  They are pretty great, and they are crazy fanatics of HERBILIFE! Haha!! So it is a funny story of how we actually met them, we went and trained a family on how to share the gospel with their friends and we scheduled a family home evening for the end of the week.  So I was pretty stoked for the family night cause they told us that they were going to bring like 6 neighbors to listen to us!  We got to the family night and there were like 4 new investigators... SCORE and then 2 more people walked in, I was already imagining every one of them Dressed in White getting into the Baptismal Font... ooops not so fast skipper, turns out that instead of the family night, 2 of their neighbors figured, hey how bout we take advantage of this little gathering pitch our product... Herbilife!!!  So, instead of starting with a hymn and a prayer, we started with a 45 minute pitch on why we should take Herbilife... About 10 mintutes into their presentation I stepped out and talked to the sister that brought all the investigators  and she said... umm they told me they would listen to the message but first they had to give thier herbilife pitch... WOOF!!  We told them that we were going to leave and come back in a half an hour.  We bailed to go do some contacts or anything but watch some dumb video telling me i am going to die if i dont take my vitamins (Now Spencer, patience is a virtue and something that a missionary should have a lot of !!!)!  Well, we came back in 20 minutes and they were just turning off  a video...  I was just really irritated and wanted to scissor kick em in the back of the head (Wow Spencer, did I not sing, “I am Trying To Be Like Jesus” to you about every day that you were growing up??? I guess it didn’t sink in like I thought it would??? I think you would say…….WOOF!!)!!! They were totally robbing us of our teaching time!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  So I waited a little more and it was already 9:20pm at that point and we were going to have to sprint to our room to make it in by 9:30pm,  so I just got up and gave a 2 second spiel and told em... thanks (a lot)! haha, but we scheduled another appointment, I was pretty upset and telling my companion,  man if I see those Herbilife people again, I will give them a talking to... Yeah let’s face it I’m a Lover not a Fighter(HELLO, that was just a really weird thing to say????), and I didn’t say a word to them about robbing us of our family night, instead we taught them about the restored gospel and they loved it!!!  Haha, so I thought that was interesting, also yesterday when we finished our lessons it was already 9:25pm and we can dead sprint to our room in 5 minutes, and Sundays we have to take informs (I have no idea what informs are?) till about 1130pm... woof, so we were sprinting in the street and some giant beast of a dog and his best bud decided they wanted to eat Elder McGhie, so I just want you to imagine me sprinting down the street, screaming like a little girl (He does that really well, those of you who have never had the experience of hearing him scream like a girl should be very grateful!!) in my suit and with all my scriptures screaming, COMPAÑERO ME PERSIGEN; ME PERSIGEN (I am assuming we are all just supposed to be able to translate Spanish miraculously or something?? I have no idea what he is saying???)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Haha, we passed a group of Peruvian gangsters and they got a pretty good laugh out of it, but I escaped somehow, and the dogs didn’t even chase Elder Wintereton! QUE PASA haha!  So there is a little bit of how my life right now!!  I love my mission ssososososososo much!  And all of you too!!!
QUIDENSE MUCHO!!!
Elder McGhie

WE GOT AN ACTUAL LETTER TODAY!!!

Okay, this isnt Spencer but his pain in the neck .............MOM =)!!  I just had to write and tell you that we got an actual, real, hold in your hand and read, LETTER today, from SPENCER!!

I have been so excited that I just had to write a post, so that I could tell you, that..... LETTERS ARE SO AMAZING!!  It is like sending a little piece of yourself to your family and it is so great!! 

So, I am rededicating myself to writing Spencer actual letters!!  Not just emails or Dear Elders but real, bonifide, paper and pencil (or pen if you like) LETTERS!!!!! I just cant beleive how happy I feel right now and its all because we got a letter from Spencer in the mail!!

So................I want everyone who actually reads this (I hope someone reads this blog, no one ever comments so...............I dont know if people really read it or not but it makes me happy to have a blog for my cute missionary son!) blog to think of someone you love, who is far away from you right now AND WRITE THEM A PAPER LETTER --------------> SNAIL MAIL IS WONDERFUL!!! 

Now, if by chance you want to write to
Elder Spencer Marty McGhie, I am posting his mailing address below, even though it is posted to your right ------->, under the title: mailing address =)!!


Spencer's Mailing Address (this will be his mailing address for his whole mission) is:

Elder Spencer McGhie 
Peru Lima East Mission
Calle Los Agrologos 368
Urbanizacion Las Acacias De Monterrico
La Molina, Lima 12
PERU

Here is his mailing address in a different font, just for fun!!  =) 

Elder Spencer McGhie

Peru Lima East Mission Calle Los Agrologos 368
Urbanizacion Las Acacias De Monterrico
La Molina, Lima 12
PERU

So.....Go and write someone a LETTER!

And ...........Remember to Be Happy =)!





"MIRACLES"!!!

 HHHHOOOOLLLLLAAAA FAMILIA Y AMIGOS!!
     

Alright I’m cutting right to the chase cause I don’t have much time!!!  So how yall doing?  I hope you’re just fine and dandy!  So this week we had a miracle baptism! Hermano Absalon got baptized!  He is about 55 yrs. old and his wife has been a member for about 2 years!  He was a STUBBORN Little Bugger!!! He works as a Welder, if you saw him in the street, you would probably think he was going to kill you! Haha  He doesn’t like to smile, but as you can see in his Baptism pics, he was as happy as a clam!!!  The main reason why he didn’t want to get baptized is because he doesn’t know how to read.  We helped him through that challenge but he was still nervous that everyone was going to judge him and make fun of him.  But the President of the Relief Society, she has been a member for about 20 yrs, but when she got baptized she didn’t know how to read either!  Now she is has been the President of the RS for about 10 years! She is a really amazing lady!  So she talked to Hermano Absalon and told him that he shouldn’t feel bad, that she went through the same challenges.  The importance of working with members is really, really, really, BIG!  SO you all need to find your friends that aren’t members and then go WITH the missionaries to teach them, don’t just pass the references to the missionaries!!!  So Hermano Absalon is just the man, we have been teaching him since I got here to Santa Anita, and finally he got baptized.  I just had the greatest feeling after the baptism, that we had fought and fought to help Absalon enter the Baptism waters and he finally did!  He bore his testimony afterword’s and he thanked us for helping him change his life and giving him hope.  It was SO rewarding.  After getting rejected So many times, to hear someone say that, just gives ya the energy to keep going!!! The mission is tough sometimes, but it’s moments like that that give us the energy to keep on chugging!!!  I love the mission!!! It’s really awesome! Tough, but awesome!

Sorry my letter is so short (Wow, that is a total understatement, its only one small paragraph!!  I had to enlarge the font so it looked like it was longer???)!!!

Love ya and keep it real!!! Tell bubba I will write him a letter next week (I hope someone out there can tell Bubba?)!

LOVE YAS (I guess that is a new way to say, I love ya?, funny guy!!)

Elder Spencer Marty McGhie!

Today, I sent an email to Spencer, with the subject line that said…”YOU NEED TO ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS TODAY!!!  So here are his answers!!  But there wasn’t a question about the family meetings, he came up with that one on his own !! =)

Hey mom, so i will send ya some quick responses here to your questions..

Yes Elder Zach Hansen is in my zone, he is a great guy!! I really like him, he is super nice and a great missionary!

My stomach is a lot better, but seriously,  I’m in tip top shape right now! My pensionista es lo MAXIMO.  She is super funny, she reminds me of Aunt Jane, I would not be mistaken if I said that, she is the Peruvian version of Aunt Jane!!! So she of course is AWESOME!

Also I liked the blue heart rock that you sent me, haha its pretty great! 

Oh and I was inspired from your email about the “family meetings”(our family has been known to have….fairly dramatic and loud family meetings and usually they don’t end up with everyone being happy and sometimes no one ends up happy, even the pets cause they run and hide!!), so I wrote you guys a letter, but it must be read together as a family in a family night or a family meeting!!!Haha   Its like I am leading the meeting through a letter in Peru!  You can’t read it alone mom!  Only in a family meeting together!!!  (I would never read it by myself first!!!  I mean really???!!!!!  Okay, I confess, I totally would read it by myself first……even if it had…….. Marty’s name on it or Ainsley’s or Caroline’s………and I wouldn’t even feel one bit bad about it!!!) : )



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Just puttin one foot in front of the other!!

Hola mi Estimada Familia y queridos Amigos!

  

Ojala que todo les vaya super bien!!!

Alright enough with the Spanish talk haha, so how yall doing?  I’m doing pretty swell, here in good old Peru!  So to respond to your last email i was very happy to hear BYU beat Utah State! After all, me and Jordy did suffer through that disaster last year as we traveled TO LOGAN and sat in their student section!!!  haha  Sounds like it was sweet revenge for Riley Nelson, So good for him! But anyways, so where to begin, is always the hardest thing in my cards, but here goes nothing!

 

This week has been, well a Test and Trial of my Faith for sure.  Haha I have been pretty sick to my stomach the whole week and it wasn’t very fun at all!! Haha Don’t worry Mom, I’m feeling a lot better and good solid nap for p-day should do the trick!  So battling with the stomach bug just made everything a little harder, and the natural man was STRONG this week.   But we kept on fighting; my comp Elder Winterton is a straight up Champion!  love that kid, and we have 3 investigators with baptismal dates for this week, and it was crazy trying to find them and actually set the baptismal date, but we have that extra help from above (which is very needed cause we are 2 gringos!!!) Haha, there are only about 3 other Gringo Companionships and I think we are like the Guiney pigs here

(I hope they aren’t the kind of Guiney pigs that the Peruvian people eat?? :O!!!!!), cause in the Peru Lima East  Mission, a companionship of Gringos was Unheard of before but we shall see how it goes, so far it’s really going good. 

My Pensionista, well she is the editor of a magazine that she is just starting for teachers here in Peru with ideas of what to teach and activities for students and all that jazz, but she wanted to do an English and Spanish translation, and well since my companion and I speak English, she asked for our help!!Haha  So with the help of Google Translator, (yeah I know we cheated a little, but I’m sorry I didn’t know how to say Mahogany in Spanish!)  We were able to translate it all, and we got our names put in the magazine! Haha It says below the English translation, “By Spencer M. McGhie and Brent Wintereton!” Haha Yeah we are pretty much famous, except for the fact that no one knows who Spencer M. McGhie is or how to pronounce my name but hey, I’ll take what I can get! Haha!

I like it here in Santa Anita.  My ward is really great and my bishop is a champ and really supports the missionary work!  The chapel we meet in is GIGANTIC!  It’s only about 3 or 4 years old and well it is 3 stories high with an elevator! It is so dang nice! The church really is amazing!  So Life is going great.  I’m still fighting with the stomach, but don’t worry mom, my mission president’s wife gave me some pills and stuff.  Sorry I don’t have much to say!

Tell Bubba that I tried to visit him. We had our meeting Tuesday in the morning in the chapel right next to the CCM (The Peru MTC), but I didn’t get there until about 7:30 am, and he left at like 6 am! I was seriously BUMMED!  So I failed there, sorry Bubba!  I got to go to the temple again and it was the BEST! Everyone that lives close to a temple please take advantage of it and GO!  You don’t know what you got till it’s gone!!!!  Haha  So, I love y’all! I’m sorry my email today is super lame, but I will strive to do better the next week (that is what he has said for the last 3 weeks……… he is totally going to be grounded for at least a year once he gets home =)! 

LOVÉ YA

Elder Spencer Marty McGhie



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In This Family We SERVE Missions!!!



Habla Familia Y Amigos!!!

    Another Conference has come and gone…  QUE TRISTE! (Marty said this means, so sad!!)All the sessions were amazing but time just flew by! Haha  I remember before the mission 2 hours of conference seemed like an eternity and I could barely keep my eyes open… Oh how times have changed!!! That’s the beauty of the mission!   So I think my favorite quote from the conference has to be from the Sunday afternoon session when the guy from the Quorum of the 70 said his mission was the best 2 years FOR his life.  It is definitely and 100 percent TRUE! As I look back on the 11 months that has Flown By, I sometimes say well I don’t think I have changed or improved very much in this time.  But like uncle Steven wrote me a couple months ago, it’s like seeing a little kid every day and then going away for few months, those that are with the child don’t really note the change and how fast he is growing, but he that left for a month always comes back and say WOW! Your kid has changed so much!  It’s like that in the mission, I think well I’m just about the same I dunno, but that if I take a good look at it all I realized, well I have changed, matured and my testimony has grown vastly.  I also enjoyed the quote in the priesthood session from Elder Holland I believe it was, when he was absolutely bringing the Hammer down on the need of more missionaries old and young.  He said to the Senior Couples that we need more of them and told them to not just say, but show by acts that in This Family, WE SERVE MISSIONS!!! I’m so blessed to have a dad who served, uncles, cousins, and Grandparents, I was born knowing that in THIS Family WE SERVE MISSIONS.  I was reminded by the scripture in Joshua about Choose ye this day whom ye will serve, but for me and my house WE WILL SERVE THE LORD. I just wanted to thank ya fam for letting me know by your example that we surely do serve missions in this Family. 

So Conference was the Bomb I really have a boat load of things to improve on!  I can’t believe I almost have one year in the mission, and instead of looking at how far I got to go I look back to see how far I have come!   Life is GREAT!

I just about fell on the floor when I saw that Liney and Ainsley went to the Taylor Swift Concert! SO JEALOUS!  I hope you sported my election shirts with me and her on the front haha, it brought back memories of the skit we did in the 6^th ward me, Will, Ryan, Collin, Blake, Staples and Brandon, to Love Story, haha!!! So classic! When we all get back we are so watching that again.  But the best part of all is that every one of us is on a Mission!!! Does it get any better than that?! I THINK NOT!  Haha

So congrats to Ainsley that she is going to start actually cooking!!! Oh and I really need to know what are your thoughts about coming to Peru and picking me up? If you want to hear my take, I think it would be pretty cool, but I know it costs like a lot so if not we can just party it up in the house and save our money to go to  next year! Or to pay for college… haha, but don’t worry I’m not trunky I’m just posing the question! 

So let’s see I will think about the Christmas package mom, but I would like a 1 year package POR FAVOR! Not very big but there are some things I need… first of all hangers, I left em all in Huancayo…oops, I need a white tie for baptisms…also got left behind in Huanuco and It seems to have been ¨lost¨ as they tell me, I still haven’t gotten a copy or picture of my missionary plaque in the Pampus or my sbo pic at alta(mom) haha that’s your homework! And if you could send me the talks that spoke about the mission and the talk from President Uchtdorf  in the Saturday morning session, it was one of the best talks I have hears, and that’s about all I can think of for the 1 mark year package and well of course DULCES! Candy! Haha.  I love ya fam, life is good, Lima is well more difficult to preach the gospel, people aren’t quite as humble but its all good, we will continue with faith!!! Love ya sosososo much!  Keep it real and I’m anxious to hear from Liney about Juan Diego, life and all that stuff!!! And how’s it going in early morning seminary!!! Love ya sorry my email kinda is crappy today and no picture… ooops sorry!!!

BYE!!! I WILL WRITE LETTERS TODAY I PROMISE!!!

Elder Spencer Marty McGhie!