Fasting on Thanksgiving, What were we thinking???

This email was edited by Marty, Spencers Dad so if it doesnt make sense or is a mess, then it is HIS fault =)!!  I just wanted everyone to know that because I spend a lot of time on Spencer's emails but at least he did it and saved me from doing it so I am grateful =)!!! 

HOWDY FAM Y AMIGOS!

How’s it going in dear old Sandy Utah!?  I hope all is well and it’s really cold!!! I’m sittin here in Lima Peru, it’s a solid 75 degrees, with the sun shining!  And about to enter into Summer Time!  Haha how bout that for the polar opposite of Utah in December!  Well almost December... Can you believe we are entering December!  So how was Thanksgiving?   I’m guessing it was pretty fun!  So I’ll tell you about what went down this week in PERU!

Starting off, we have been working like mad here in Santa Anita.  It’s the end of the month and we have some goals we gotta meet!!!  And Edwin and Janiz couldn´t get married this week, cause in Santa Anita, you have to put your name in the newspaper announcing your wedding for 8 days!!!  WOOF, apparently a lot of people have gotten married more than once, and 2 weeks later their wife comes and flips out saying that he is still her husband... CHISPAS!  SO we have to wait for them to finish their papers and announce it and all that jazz...  So to say the least Elder Brown and I have been searching like mad to find people to baptize and also the zone, we have been searching like CRAZY!  

   

So Tuesday in the zone meeting Elder Brown and I announced that we were going to have a zone fast Thursday, and break it together Friday, with a sister in our ward that knows how to cook tacos!  Because they don’t eat tacos here in Peru - that was a shocker when I got here expecting to eat like cafe rio everyday... NOPE, haha turns out all Latinos don’t eat tacos and they aren’t all from Mexico... MY BAD!!!  Haha I’m a little slow the thinking department, I know...  Haha but anyways, after the zone meeting Elder Brown and I were cleaning up, and I stopped dead in my tracks and said, NO! Elder Brown do you know what Thursday is?  He thought for a sec and we looked at each other... THANKSGIVING! NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!   Hahh so if you are all wondering when I ate for THANKSGIVING... A whole lot of NOTHING! Haha, yes I fasted on Thanksgiving... I know that would be a sin in the states, but I guess that’s what happens in the mission... haha.

  

So in our giant quest to baptize this week, we ended up with... 0 baptisms, Elder Brown and I, but we ended up with lots of stories and a whole bunch of investigators for December.  I would like to share a little story of Hermana Aida and her family.  She is like 85 and loves to attend church, and wants to get baptized but she can´t go alone, so there are some members that take her.  But to be able to baptize her we had to get verbal permission from her son, who takes care of her...  We had already tried 2 times to get his permission, but all we got were a lot a excuses.  But this time Elder Brown and I were determined!!!  What we ended up with is me telling her son that well I sure as heck wouldn´t want to be him in front of Dios when he asks him why he didn’t let his mother get baptized... and not gain eternal life, but hey maybe I’ll get to baptize her in the Spirit World....  So with that we just keep and chuggin here in Lima Peru! I hope you all have a great week, sorry my pics didn’t work, cause my computer wouldn’t read my card reader!  So keep it real, I love yall a whole bunch!!!

CHAU!!!
Elder McGhie

I am behind 2 weeks at posting cute Spencers emails on here!! :O!!! And we finally got some pictures too!!!

I am so sorry that I haven't posted Spencer's last weeks email (we got like 12 pictures!!  Finally!!) and then this weeks email needs to be put on here too!!  I promise that I will have them both on here by Wednesday............we are trying to get Spencer's Christmas package ready to be mailed and we are a bit behind because our very large Golden Retriever Dog, Walter got some weird sickness and he was paralyzed and couldn't move because it made his muscles really weak, it took forever for the vet to figure out what was wrong with him!!  I thought he was going to die!!  But we actually saw a Heart Specialist, an Orthopedic Surgeon and a Neurologist, all for dogs and we saw them all in 2 days...........But all is well and Walter is getting stronger and stronger everyday, he still cant sit up but he can go from a lying down position on his side with his head down to a lying down position with his body sitting upward and with his head up...........anyway he is doing so much better.................WE ARE SO VERY THANKFUL!!  I thought he was going to die just a few days ago and I am so thankful he is getting better and better!!!  Yeah for Walter...........what a sweetie =)!!  And what a blessing for us all!!

But I will get this blog caught up............sorry to be so spazzy!!???  =)

I will be posting on here soon!!
Bye for now
Carrie



Walter is on the right if you are facing the
 picture and Gabby is on the left. This is an old
 picture from like way last year!!



Elder Waddell Is My Hero!!

Oh and Marty edited this email so if it doesnt make sense or has a lot of errors..........it is his fault =)!!!

Spencer’s email from Nov. 21st

¡HABLA FAMILIA Y AMIGOS! 

So my letter is going to be rather short today cause I am sending like 12 pics home and that always takes a while, so i sent a voice recording that was pretty long so you won’t feel robbed!  So where to begin is always the toughest part of my letters!!!

                But I should start with the biggest event of last week… ELDER WADDELL!  He’s in the area presidency here and he gave a talk in conference in October, in the Priesthood session.  He talked about the mission and that The Lord already has all our investigators, companions, and areas planned out, it was an awesome talk, but do you know what was even more awesome!?  His conference with us! Haha, he pretty much threw the HAMMER DOWN! And it was the greatest thing ever!!!  He got up and told us the biggest problem that missionaries have is that we don’t invite people to baptism or to church with power and authority.  He then told us that we don’t do it cause we are scared to get rejected or we are scared that the investigators will get scared and bail out.  He then told us that feeling comes from our PRIDE!  He said that we are not here to feel good, to be all buddy buddy with investigators - we are here to represent Jesus Christ and testify with POWER AND AUTHORITY, and if not we are too Prideful and we put ourselves, and our own desire before the LORD!  It was EXCELLENT!  He also said we have to promise the blessings that are to come when we obey the Lord or they have no reason to accept and seguir (this means follow) our invitations!  He said if we don’t promise blessings people won’t want to progress and if we don’t do our part we will be accountable for our actions.

                He asked us to think of our last interview with Heavenly Father and think of what he will say.  Elder McGhie, why didn’t you promise your investigator, umm let’s say Suzy, the blessings she would receive by attending church, because you didn’t complete with your duty, she didn’t get baptized nor her husband or kids and we lost GENERATIONS because YOU didn’t invite with power and authority and YOU didn’t promise her the blessings so she had no reason to attend church…. FLIP!!!  So to say the least we have been promising a lot more blessings and inviting with POWER AND AUTHORITY!  Cause I don’t know about you guys, but I don’t want an interview with the Lord like that!  It was absolutely Fantastic the Conference! 

                Elder Waddell is also GIANT, he is even taller than Bishop Peterson!  And there were random seating assignments, so we got there and guess where are seats were… front row right in front of him!!!  HOLY SMOKES IT WAS AWESOME!  So I can safely say the conference was a life changer and Elder Waddell is a straight up champion!   So Edwin and Janiz don’t know if they want to get married and baptized this week, we need a miracle, we have a lesson tonight so please pray for us!!!  Also for Vayron - he has his date for Saturday and we can’t find him!!! WE NEED LOTS OF PRAYERS!!! So I love yall.   I hope you have a WONDERFUL week!

CHAUCITO!!!
Elder McGhie

Ps - Shout out to Down Town Elder Brown, he´s going for the year mark!!! I mean he only got his call 5 months after me but left 3 weeks after… not that I’m bitter or anything!  HAHA LOVE YA JORD!  CHAU!  VIVA PERU!  NO PASA NADA CON CHILE! JAJA!

Pictures are coming soon!!

Living the Good Life!

HOOOOLLLLAAA FAMILIA Y AMIGOS!

Hey, Hey, Hey!  How are yall doing today!  Hope all is well, life is just great here in PERU!!!  I flippin love Peru!  So life is pretty great right now and I’ll tell ya why!!!  This past week has been pretty crazy!  Yesterday, Elder Brown and I were just POOPED!  There are some weeks when I feel super energized and I’m like oh sweet tomorrow is P day, but there are other weeks when it’s like… holy crap I need a P day haha!!  This week was one of those weeks!!!  We had splits, conferences, baptisms, crazy contacts, crazy lessons and it was nuts!!!  But that’s the way it should be!  So yesterday, its Sunday night and its 8 o clock, we hadn’t eaten dinner yet and we went to our appointment at 8, and they weren’t there, so the only thing I wanted to do was go to the Pension, eat dinner from 8 to 9 and head back to the apartment to take INformes (I think those are what they call and get from the missionaries in their zone but I have no idea what they are??)   and maybe, just maybe get to sleep before 11:30PM!!! Haha!!  But the Lord, as usual had different plans for us!  We felt like we should go and see how Edwin and Janiz were doing, cause they only attended Sacrament meeting and then they escaped!Haha!!  As usual, the Bishop asked Elder Brown and I to give talks, 5 minutes into the meeting… haha   So we were pretty occupied writing and giving our talks and they escaped from us! haha!  Oh, side note on my talk… I got up there on the stand and I was listening to Elder Brown´s talk (which was awesome, he was destroying with stories and scriptures, and it was sweet!) and the Bishop pulled me over and said, Elder McGhie your comp has now shown the ward what they need to do and why, with Doctrine and everything,  now you need to get up there and tell them why… They are GOING TO DO IT, haha!!!  He told me he wanted them ¨Trembling¨ haha!!   I chuckled and said, yeah sounds good, cause as ya know I don’t really give the deepest talks in the world, I  pretty much get up there, tell some stories, talk really loud and more or  less wing it…  But, I got up there and pretty much just told them how it is, that they can’t be going to the flippin market every Sunday after church, to go grocery shopping because they just partook of the SACRAMENT and made SACRED  COVENANTS with the LORD  to ALWAYS REMEMBER HIM and to KEEP ALL OF HIS COMMANDMENTS!  It was great!!!

NOW, back to my story about Sunday night, we were on our way to Edwin and Janiz´s house and this guy passed us in the street and said, HEY MORMONES!!!  I just thought, oh boy, here we go again…  He was slightly drunk, but still able to walk and process his thoughts, so we started talking to him and he starts off by telling us how we are wasting our time and why are we throwing our lives away!  I won’t lie, it really does bother me when people say things like that, Elder Brown also wasn’t too happy with this guy!  We were just about to tell him off, when he said that he wasn’t  worth our time to talk to him cause he was worthless!  It dawned on me that this was just a cry for attention, that he really was unhappy and had no idea that he has a Father in Heaven who loves him!   I immediately just testified to him that he was worth it, that he has a Father in Heaven who loves and knows him!  He just kinda looked at me like… What is going on?  I’m yelling at 2 Gringos and they are treating me well?  From that point on the whole feeling of the conversation changed, instead of just yelling at us, he started to actually talk and ask us questions, it was actually pretty cool!  He totally changed his attitude, well ever other word still was a swear word… I don’t know many cuss words in Spanish, but I picked up a few in that conversation to say the least, haha!!  So he said he was a member of our Church and his brother was a member too, but he is long since inactive!  He said that he has an 11 year old daughter and he is worried about her, so we invited him to come to Church on Sunday!!  It will be interesting to see if he actually comes to church Sunday, who knows??  It was such an interesting experience to see how his attitude changed and well, the entire conversation too,  with just one sentence, telling him that he isn’t worthless and that God knows and loves him!!!

Then we went to Edwin and Janiz´s house and THEY ARE GETTING MARRIED AND BAPTIZED ON THE 26^th,  YEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!  Please pray for them and also for Bayron and Geraldin who have baptismal dates for the 26^th too!

Love ya all and keep it real!!!

ELDER SPENCER MARTY MCGHIE!

Ps... mom, we are 14 in the zone with 2 sister missionaries, 5 gringos and the rest are Latinos!!!  Sorry my flippin pictures DIDN’T WORK AGAIN!!!!!!  AHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!  I’M soooo ticked!!  We have the best pics from my 1 year party with my shirt burning and teddy gram smores and blowing out my candles!!!  AHHHH!  LOVE YA!!  I’ll figure out how to send pics next week, I hope!!!!!!  CHAU!

Since I can’t get Spencer voice recording to load…………I was reading Spencer’s Companion, Elder Browns Blog and he tells some of what Spencer talks about in his voice recording and also he just talks about things that Spencer didn’t talk about, so I am going to copy and paste part of Elder Browns email on here so you can read more about their week as companions and missionaries!!  I probably should have asked his mom if it was okay to copy and paste part of Elder Browns email on Spencer’s blog……………….I hope she isn’t upset that I did this……….I will write her as soon as I get this posted and if she doesn’t like it I will remove it, okay, I feel better about this now =)!!!

Here is an excerpt From Elder Keaton Browns (he is Spencer companion and he is an Amazing Missionary!!  We are so thankful that Spencer gets to have such a great companion!!!!)   Blog and a link to his blog too!!! 

 http://www.keatonbrown.com/

“So last Thursday after the temple we went to downtown Lima with the whole zone, it was pretty fun.  We went to the Plaza de Armas and a museum with artifacts from Peru and paintings and a whole bunch of other cool stuff.  It was a good time and it was good to get to know everyone in the zone.  Then Friday we went on divisions with Elder Giocochea and Elder Udall. I went with Elder Giocochea from Chiclayo Peru and we had a good time.  Then Saturday we had a baptism, it was really good and everyone had an amazing time.  Then Sunday was a normal Sunday.  It’s awesome cause right now we’re teaching a family.  The parents, Edwin and Janice aren’t married, so for the past couple of weeks we’ve been teaching them about the church and about everything.  A couple of weeks ago we taught them about the law of chastity.  So when we went on Sunday to visit them, they informed us that they are going to get married and now they have a baptism date for 26 of Nov.  I’m so excited for them.  They are so awesome and need the gospel in their life.  They have learned so much and just want to keep learning, they are the best.  We’ve been praying so hard for them and yesterday we saw the blessings.  The Lord is so powerful and we are nothing.  That’s something that I’ve learned here in the mission is that after all we do we are still so weak, but the Lord is merciful and blesses us so much more than we probably deserve.  We definitely saw the hand of the Lord working with Edwin and Janice.  It was funny because when they told us that they wanted to get married, Elder McGhie got super excited and gave me the biggest hug right there in the middle of the lesson.  Edwin and Janice thought it was hilarious.  Then all the way home we were so pumped.  The night finished in the room with a 10 minute celebration dance party.  We were so pumped.  We are also teaching this one guy named Bayron, he is 22 and really awesome.  He went to the church after an invitation from Elder McGhie.  We’ve been teaching him and he is super excited for his baptism the end of this month..”

I love that Elder Brown talks about things that Spencer never remembers to mention, like what they did on their P day and about going on splits with other missionaries!!  I had to laugh right out loud when I read that Spencer was so excited about Edwin and Janiz wanting to get baptized that he jumped up and gave Elder Brown a big hug right in the middle of the lesson!!!  I can totally see Spencer doing that and it is so great to know that Spencer is still……………well, Spencer =)!!!

I hope you all are doing great!!!  Thanks for all your love and support!!

Carrie =)!!!

HOLY CHISPAS!!!!!

Estimada Familia y Amigos,

  

AINSLEY IS ENGAGED!! AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!! HOLY SHNIKIES! Congrats Big Sis!!!  (For those of you who don’t know, Spencer’s sister Ainsley got engaged on Nov. 6^th to Mr. Russell Banks, who just happens to be the Grandson of Marty’s Mission President!!!  How’s that for a small world!!)  

That’s great!  I’m so proud of ya! But if you ever put on a U of U shirt you will be dis-owned, I just wanted to make myself clear on that point (Just in case you don’t know, Spencer is a die-hard BYU Fan)  But really congrats!  Just got out of the temple and I was putting some names on the prayer list and of course I put the family down, and I paused and thought...  Well I better put Russ on there as well!!! Haha Thats great, tell Russ Hey and congrats and all that jazz!!!  

  

Soooo it feels like I haven’t written yall in about 3 months!  A week and a half is brutal! haha! Oh yeah, when I left the internet place, last week I had a slap the forehead, and scream, Oh No, Moment, haha I totally spaced on telling you that I was going to go to the temple this week so pday and your email wouldn’t come until Thursday!  But Elder Biliter saved my life!!!  I love that KID!!! He is such a champion! (Important information pertaining to Elder Biliter saving Spencer’s life:  Spencer and Elder Biliter went into the MTC the same day and they were in the CCM together so they are good friends and I am friends with Elder Biliters mom too, so Spencer called him in a panic on Monday morning because he knew that I would wait and wait and wait all day and send him about 300 emails, during that time, asking him where he is and I also, might have(no I totally would have) made Marty call the mission office and find out from one of the office missionaries where my son was!! So he asked Elder Biliter in his email to his mom (their zone had a normal Monday pday) to ask her to please email me and let me know we wouldn’t be hearing from him until Thursday and she did!!  I know, he probably went to all that trouble to let me know his email wouldn’t come until Thursday because I am such a pain but he also didn’t want me to wait and wait and get all stressed either!!  So Elder Biliters cute mom sent me an email telling me about “no email until Thursday”and it was almost as good as getting an email from Spencer, cause basically by all he did, he was telling me that he loves me and is thinking of me!  That was so nice and it made me very happy!!  Sorry about using the word email sooooo many times??)

We also had Zone Leader Counsel Meeting and Elder Brown and I got to sit next to Elder Biliter and Elder Paolacci, they are awesome!!!  Their zone is our neighboring zone, in Vitarte, and we are in Santa Anita, It’s just above our zone!!!  So I just gotta say that my mission President is THE BOMB!  President Ardila is a straight up champion!  In the meeting Pres. Ardila just gave it to us... QUEMADITO (This is what the “Marty translator” said Quemadito means: On Fire or Marty says in other words, he let them have it!!)!  But it was so flippin awesome!  He is great and his wife is really, really sweet and nice!  So yeah zone leader counsel is a little different than just zone meetings and stuff, things are said a lot more clearly... haha if ya get my point!  So that was pretty fun!

Oh and I got my “one year celebration” package and me and Elder Brown had a major party!!  It was great and yes we made those mini smores and had a great time!  We laughed our heads off while making them and then we laughed some more at your in depth instructions on how to make them!!haha...We just chilled and ate lots of junk, it was great!!!  I love my having Elder Brown as my comp!!  He is so awesome and he loves to work hard but we have so much fun too!!  I took like 100 pictures of the one year celebration we had but they won’t load, AGAIN!!  So Monday si o si madare mis fotos y una grabacion de voz! (Marty translates it as: I will try to send pictures and a voice recording)!

So, now I want to tell ya how we are doing in our area...AWESOME!!!!  After SOOOO Much time with just nobody progressing, last week Elder Brown and I just said, “Okay, it’s time to just go at like mad men” and we did and it has paid off greatly!!!  We were walking down the street last Friday and it was like 3 in the afternoon, it was really hot and nobody wanted to answer the door, we had just eaten cow tongue for lunch... or was that the day I completed 1 year...??  I cant remember but anyways we ate cow tongue and also octopus this last week and so we were walking down the street and i see a guy right in front of me and I thought, hey I am going to contact this guy, but the Natural Man of course said, No, don’t do it, it’s hot and you really don’t want to contact him!  So, after and internal argument of a solid 10 seconds I fought off the Natural Man, manned up and went to contact this kid.  We started talking to him and he agreed to have us come and teach him and he said yeah, don’t worry I’ll be there Sunday at church!!  Well, that’s what everyone says!  But he actually showed up at church on Sunday!!!  I don’t know if you guys understand how rare it is that a street contact actually attends church, but it’s pretty rare!!!  We had our appointment with him right after church, and we started talking to get to know him and what he believed and we started teaching lesson 1, but the Spirit told me to CHALLENGE THIS GUY to be BAPTIZED!  I was like, well here goes nothing, so, I opened up the scriptures to 3Nephi 27: verse 20 and taught him about the Gospel of Jesus Christ asked him how, he thought we can we become clean again.  He said through baptism, I said alright if we can become clean again through baptism should we wait and delay or do it as quick as possible?  He said as quick as possible (in this moment I almost fell off my chair)  And we invited him to be baptized the 19th of this month and he accepted and BOOM… WE BE GOING TO THE BAPTISMAL FONT BABY!!!!  Oh, it was so great and the Spirit was so strong!!!  I just was in awe at the power of the Hand of the Lord.  After that major success, we found about 4 other investigators and they all have baptismal dates!  We are going to rock it this month!!  Oh and we are working with Edwin and Janiz trying to help them get married on the 26th of this month and then... VAMOS A LA PILA BABY (Marty translated this as, “lets head to the baptismal font, Baby!!)!!!

I love the mission and Elder Brown is a Grade A CHAMPION!!!  I am so stoked to have him as my companion!!!  He is awesome!!!! Well, I will be emailing you again on Monday, so I gotta go now!

LOVE Yall sosososso MUCH!!!

I hope all is well!!!!!

tell Liney hi and I love her and to keep on charging(charging??)!

CHUA CHAU!!!
Elder Espencer Martincito MAGGIE (I am thinking that this must be how the Peruvians pronounce his name?  He is such a goofball!!)!!!!

Fotos- NOPE!  And once again a complete failure on the fotos ! AHHHHHH I have like 50 to send you and some voice recordings!!!!  Monday the computers better work for us!!

Hi, I just wanted to say hi and tell you all that we didnt get our email until Thursday this week!!   Also, I just want to say that it is getting harder every email to figure out what Spencer is saying??  Marty said it is because he is using “Mormon Slang” and google translator doesn’t have that in its dictionary!!  Plus all his sentences are backwards and he writes just like he talks and he doesn’t speak with correct grammar and he speaks in run-on sentences too!!!  (Okay, I admit that I talk the same way and I love those run on sentences too!!)  Marty says that Spencer is thinking in Spanish and translating it to English so he says his sentences backwards and I say that Marty should be translating and editing Spencer’s emails instead of me….Haha(as spencer would say!)

We had a fantastic “Fiesta” at our house on Nov. 3^rd as we celebrated Spencer being out one whole year in the mission field!!!  Oh and we burned a white shirt (that is what they do in Spencer’s mission to celebrate their one yr mark) and Marty almost burned our house down!!  So he is totally grounded from burning anything ever again!!!! =) I will try to add pictures of Marty’s pyro-maniac-ness  at the bottom of this, since we haven’t gotten any pictures from Spencer for 3 whole weeks………due to defective computers in Peru ??? =)

Oh and I apologize in advance for adding so many comments!! 

Carrie =)!!

Here are a few pics of Marty burning out house down (almost =)!