Aaron

Hey family and friends!  Hope all is going well wherever in the world you all may be!  Sorry for not writing last week....  This past week was a little crazy for me.  A lot going on.

Well, as you all have noticed, I will be home for Christmas.  Well, before Christmas.  Yep!  This is the last email I will be writing from here.  A little crazy...  Time has flown by and I´m a little sad that it is coming to an end, but at the same time, excited to see you all again!

The mission has been the greatest experience of my life.  It has prepared me for so much more than I could have ever imagined.  I really have grown to have charity for the people down here in Peru and I wish the best for them.  I wish that all would just accept the gospel!  But I will leave that all up to them.  I have learned so much that I can´t wait to put into practice at home.  I really love the mission and I know that it will help me face bigger challenges in life.  I really don´t know what to put in this last email!  There are just a lot of things and too little time.  I love you all and thanks for all the support and love you have all shown me during this whole time.  It hasn´t been the easiest thing I have done, actually it was rather hard and exauhsting, but it was worth it.  Each trial I have passed has helped me for the better and now I feel like I am more of who my Father in Heaven wants me to be.  This is God´s work.  He is our Father.  Jesus Christ is His son who knows us perfectly through his perfect atonement.  And I have felt just a little bit of his love through this work. I love you all and will see you soon!

PS: Here is a note from my mom!  Elder Aaron Augat is returning from Cusco, Peru, after honorably serving a 2 year LDS mission. Please join us in making Aaron feel AT HOME at an open house Welcome Home Party on October 7th between 6:00 - 8:00 PM. Don't feel obligated to bring food to share. We won't make you feel guilty. He will be so excited to see you!

Everyone is invited to come listen to Aaron speak in church on October 16th at 9:00 AM at the church house on 4500 West 11800 South. 

Hey everyone!  Hope you are all doing well.  Everything is good here!  Final stretch!  Not a whole lot happened this past week but I will see what I can write you guys.

First off, we got to Sicuani on Wednesday because we had some meetings in Cusco.  Good but long meetings.  There were some good things to learn.  But we finally made it back to Sicuani!  There hasn´t been much but we have been ablel to do a few things.

We have 2 people with a baptismal date, Jerson and Fernando.  Jerson is super prepared and ready for the gospel.  He  came to church for the 3rd time yesterday and for the 3 hours as well.  Fernando wasn´t able to come due to work or something like that.  We are going to try to work more closely with him so that he can get to his baptismal date for Oct. 8th.

We also went on divisions with the asistants.  I went with a Canadian, Elder Fritz.  He is awesome!  It was good to talk English to someone for the whole day.  After 18 months with Latins, I´m not going to lie, it was good to talk English.  We were also able to talk about the mission and some ideas that could help.  Right now, we are really focused on ´´raising the bar´´.  President wants to set high expectations which I think is pretty good.  We just have to take it in the right way.

Other than that, it has been pretty hard with meetings these past weeks.  I hope you all have a great week and sorry for the short email!  Love you all!

Title Cred: Elder Ludlow (@zludlow_4) Follow on Instagram

Hey everyone!  Hope you are all doing well!  Right now I find myself in Cusco with not so much time!  So I will try to write as much as possible!

So this past week was great.  We have been walking a ton.  But out of that we have been able to get 2 investigators with a baptismal date!  Jerson and Fernando.  Jerson is a members´ brother and is super cool.  Fernando is a 19 year old kid that ´´doesn´t believe´´ in God.  They both attended church yesterday which is awesome!  They both have baptismal dates for the 8th of October!  Also, I shook an Area 70´s hand on Sunday with out even knowing.  Elder Agüero (not Kun Agüero).  It was pretty cool.

So today I´m going to play soccer with President so that will be great!  I´m sure we will beat him.  We want to make a gringo team so that would be awesome.  

Well, I´m not entirely focused today for some reason.  Random note: We met some Canadian members this morning.  Everything is going well here in Cusco!  Sorry for the short email!  Love you all!

Hey everyone!  I hope you are all doing well!  This past week was a little strange, but not too much.  Just a few events that happened!

So this past week we have been working with Percy, the guy that told us that he couldn´t wait to meet us.  We put a baptismal date with him for the 24th of September.  We will be working really closely with him on that.

We have also been working with a lot of less actives.  A lot of which are in the process of coming back to church.  It´s really cool to see the gospel work in their lives!

Random note: A dog bit my companion this past week.

A couple days ago I was reading in 3 Nephi 11 when Jesus Christ visited the America(s).  It was really cool to read because even Jesus Christ as a resurrected being visiting the America(s) testifies of his atonement.  The atonement is an amazing thing that ´´allows us to reconcile with God´´.  ´´I stand all amazed at the love Jesus offers me.´´  

This past week has been a pretty basic week.  With 4 greenies straight from the CCM (MTC) and 1 other still in training, we have a lot of work to keep up on!  

Thanks for all the support!  I love you all and hope to see you all soon!

Zone Conference

Hey everyone!  It´s good to write y´all again!  I hope you all had a good week!  This past week for me was pretty good.  Not too much happened but it was cool!  We have been working trying to find people to teach and also babysitting missionaries at the same time!  It´s a fun job!  Well, with 24 new missionaries in the mission, there will be 4 of them coming to Sicuani!  That will be interesting.  There are a lot of changes in the mission with the new mission president.

So yesterday, my companion and I were looking for the investigators that we are teaching and we started heading to an investigator that we knew wasn´t going to be home until today.  I don´t know why we started going to that family but we did it anyways.  We knocked on the door and their nephew came out.  We asked him if he had time and he told us that he did!  When we walked in the door he said, ´´I can´t wait to meet you guys!´´  It was really weird but really cool!  God really does prepare His children to hear the gospel.

Other than that, we are just working as usual.  Trying to help out the ward and doing the best we can!  Hopefully we can find even more of God´s children that are prepared to hear the gospel

I love you all and have a great week!

Hey everyone!  Hope you all had a great week!  This past week has been pretty normal for the most part.  The ward has been progressing like crazy which is awesome.  We have basically been doing the same things as every day.  Still having to babysit sometimes.  But that´s part of the mission!

So this past week, a less active that we are teaching proposed to his girlfriend (an investigator) so that means that we will be able to teach them a lot more now and they will be able to progress a lot more now! 

Also this past week, I made it to Espinar.  Kind of ironic.  Espinar is the highest sector that there is in the mission and we went there to do divisions.  President Harbertson always joked about sending me there and well, I finally made it!  Even though I didn´t stay.

Other than that there really hasn´t been much.  Still talking to people in the streets, not being able to find other investigators all that good stuff.  Also, yesterday I had the opportunity to go to Machu Picchu!  It was great.  I also was able to play soccer there so that´s cool as well.  Not a lot of people can say that they have done that.

Well this past week was pretty cool.  At least it ended that way!  But I´m looking forward to more progress in the ward.  It will be cool  Thanks for all your support and love!  Love you all!

P.S. We didn´t just play in Machu Picchu, we won as well.

Hey Everyone!

First off, I´m sorry for not writing an email last week.... It totally spaced my mind.  But this week I remembered so no worries!  These past week have been pretty good and tiring at the same time!  There has been a lot of things to and we have been all over the place!  We have also been having to babysit some missionaries which is a joke...  I don´t know why some people just can´t take  care of themselves and be responsible!  But I guess that´s just part of being here!

So there hasn´t been a whole lot of new things going on here and nothing out of the usual.  We have been able to find a few new people to teach and we have also been able to put baptismal dates with a couple of them as well.  They seem pretty cool.  One of them is named Raúl.  He is about 50ish.  The other is named Fernando and is 19.  We are working with them so that they can get to their baptismal date with no problems!

Other than that, we have been visiting a couple named Benji and Helen.  They are both from here but they have lived in New York for some time (although they don´t speak so much English).  We have been working with them so they can get married and it just so happens that the rest of Benji´s family came from New York (who do speak English) and he decided to get married!  We still don´t know when, but we are excited.  Also, I forgot to mention that Benji is a less active and Helen isn´t a member.  So this means that Helen will be able to get baptized if they are able to get married!

Speaking about marriages, someone in my old sector in Sicuani (who I was able to teach while I was there) got married this past week and got baptized!  That was cool to see as well!

So just a cool experience that happened this past week.  We were talking with some recent converts about baptism because there son is 8 so he can get baptized.  As we were talking to him about that I was able to talk a little bit about why I got baptized and why I am gratefull for that choice.  It was really cool to feel the spirit confirm to me that it was the correct descision in that moment.  I was talking to an 8 year old kid but yet, I was able to feel the same spirit that I have felt in a lot of other places as well.

Well, thanks for all your support and love!  I love you all and hope you have a great week!

Hey everyone!  It´s good to write you all once again!  Everything is well here in Sicuani!

This past week was a busy week... We have been in Cusco for about 3 days of the past week so there wasn´t a lot of time to actually work in the sector.  First off, we went to Cusco to have a meeting with President (all the leaders of the mission) and it was cool.  There were a few minor changes to the mission then just a few reminders of what we need to be doing as missionaries.  President also talked about how we can do things our way and think that it´s easier, or we can do it the way that our leaders have told us and it will work out a lot better in the end.  We did an activity before they talked about this and it was a test.  They gave us two rules to the test and one of them was that we had 7 minutes to finish (21 ´´questions´´) and the other was that we had to read all of the questions before starting.  Luckily, I have had this type of test before.  The ´´questions´´ weren´t really questions but things we had to do like write our name on the bord or take off our shoe or suit coat or something like that but the last one (#21) said that if we were obedient and read all of them before starting, all we had to do was write our name on the paper and put it face down.  So that´s all I had to do while I watched others running around haha!

Also this past week we were able to have a baptism!  It was cool!  She was really excited to be able to be baptized.

So this past week we have also been teaching a lot about repentance.  We decided that we need to teach better the repentance and baptize converts.  So every lesson we go to now, we are teaching about repentance and it´s a lot different!  People seem more willing to keep their commitments!  It was way cool.

I love you all and hope you all have a great week to come!  Thanks for all your support and love!

Hey everyone!  I hope you are all well wherever in the world you may be.  This past week there really wasn´t much due to traveling.  I left Juliaca Tuesday morning and traveled to Cusco for a training.  We arrived Tuesday at 4 and we had the whole rest of the day to basically roam.  We went to eat and visit a few members.  The next day we didn´t have anything to do in the morning so we went roaming once again!  We had the training at 3 and it went until about 6ish.  It was too late to travel so I stayed in Cusco one night more!  Thursday morning, I finally got out to Sicuani!

Now in Sicuani, I have seen a lot of people and some have asked if I have finished already haha!  But it´s cool to see a lot of these people again.

Yesterday an investigator that we are teaching had her baptismal interview so she will be getting baptized this coming Saturday.  Also this past Saturday, one of the investigators I used to teach got baptized!  My companion sent me some pictures which is cool.

Everything is good here in Sicuani!  I´m really excited to be here and work!  Thanks for all the support and love!  I love you all!

Click image to find me. I am in the center with a huge smile!

Hey everyone!  I hope you are all doing well wherever you all may be!  This past week was awesome!  There was a ton of work to do and there is still a ton of work to be done here in Julicaca.

So this past week we put a baptismal date on a girl that we are teaching for this Saturday and she is going to be baptized this Saturday!  She also told us that it´s something that she has been wanting to do so it´s pretty cool that she has decided to take this step.

Yesterday at church we had a lot of progress!!  There was more attendance in the ward and a lot of people brought investigators to church!  I don´t know what impelled them to do that but it was awesome!  Now there is a full week here in Universidad!

Well, apart from all that, today are changes and it looks like I´m going back to Sicuani!  Deja vu!  I don´t know how that happend but it will be cool!  I´m really glad I was able to work here in Juliaca.  I love the people here.  A lot of the members are awesome here and I am happy to have been able to work here!

Well, these next months will be interesting but awesome!  I hope you all have a great week!  I love you all!

Hey everyone!  I hope you all had a good week!  This past week more than anything was a learning week for me.  I was able to learn and experience a lot of new things that have and will help me a ton.

First off, we have been able to find a couple of new people to teach that are really progressing!  It has been awesome to see a lot of people come out of the woodwork.  Now we just have to take care of them and help them get to the waters of baptism.

Second, we have been working with a lot of old investigators that have been progressing as well!  Some have been investigating the church for years and they are starting to progress little by little!  At least I feel like it.  Even though some people have been investigating for some time, they still have the potential to inherit Eternal Life so that doesn´t mean that we are going to stop working with them forever.  We might leave them for a little time, but eventually we will make it back to them, if they permit it.

Other than that we have been doing a lot of walking!  The sector is huge and there are only 2 companionships.  If it really interests you, the sector goes from Real Plaza (center of Juliaca) to almost Sillustani (tourist attraction).  But the good part is that there is a lot of work!  

We have also been teaching others who are preparing for baptism.  Some weird cases.  One of them says that she is scared of the water and if it weren´t for that, she would be baptized.  Sometimes there are those weird cases.  

This past week I was also able to study a little bit more of General Conference.  There are a few talks that I love!  Some of them are the 2 talks from President Monson (from Priesthood session as well) and David A. Bednar´s talk about Always Retaining a Remission of Your Sins.  Those are some that I love!  I am still studying more so we will see what more I can find!

Thanks for all the support and I love you all!  I hope you have a great week!

Hey everyone!  I hope you are all doing well!  This past week was crazy for me!  But it was awesome as always.  We had a lot going on such as finding new investigators and our last interviews with President Harbertson!  It was a full week!

First off the interviews with president.  Before we went into our interviews, he talked with all of us in general.  He talked about a bridge that is pretty close to Cusco called ´´Qeswachaka´´.  If you look at the picture (attatched) it has four big ropes made of straw.  He compared each one of these to the motto of the mission which is Vaya SOLO (go alone).  It doesn`t really work in English so that`s why I wrote it in Spanish.  But each letter means something in SOLO.  Servicio, oración, leer, y obediencia (Service, Prayer, Read (Scriptures), and Obedience).  He said that we need each one of these to help sustain us in our lives.  He also compared the river to our lives so that with these four things, we can sustain ourselves to get accross life.  But not only that, he also compared the two big ropes that are up higher that we can hold onto to keep ourselves balanced.  He said that we need to hold on to the word of God and our covenents to keep us balanced.  It was an awesome conference.

I`m a little sad to see the mission president leave because he has helped me a ton but I`m excited to see how I can work with the new mission president.

Apart from that we found this girl called Shami.  She is 18 and from Sandia (jungle).  She had a friend that left on the mission recently this past week in Puno and he had introduced her to the church inically.  When she moved to Juliaca for studies, she found a church and luckily that day we were having our interviews so we were all in the same chapel.  She understands a lot and is really prepared for baptism.  She is really open and loves to hear more about the gospel.

This week was awesome but there is always room for improvement!  I look forward to working hard this week!  Thanks for everything!  I love you all!  Hasta Vernos...

Hey everyone!

I hope you are all doing well!  This past week was kind of rough but none the less, there is always something that goes well if you just look for it!  We have been looking for new investigators to teach this past week and there haven´t been very many.  We have also recieved refferals but the address is not exact and it´s impossible to find the people.  This coming week we are planning on street contacting a lot of people.

We also have a new bishop in the ward!  Those are the best!  He is with a lot of desires to work and ready to help out in the mission work!  We will be working really closely with the new bishop to keep up his desires!

Well, now that I have a little bit of time, I will explain the parables in Luke 15.

First.  The Lost Sheep.  Elder Godoy (area president) exlpained it like this:  First off, why did the sheep get lost?  Maybe he was eating grass and he just kind of wanderd off not wanting to.  So maybe these are the people that just kind of don´t go to church one Sunday, then 2, then more and more until they don´t know where they are!  So what did the shepard do?  He went looking for the sheep!  We need to go looking for those type of people!

Second.  The lost coin.  How did the coin get lost? Some careless person had misplaced it perhaps.  Maybe these are the people that leave the church for some comment or rumour or a conflict they had with another member.  So what did the woman do?  She also went looking for it.  Most likely appolgizing for what we had done to that person.

Third.  The Prodigal Son.  How did he leave?  By his own free will.  He wanted to experiment the world for his own and try different things.  So what did his father do?  I´m sure he waited with love with lots of prayers.  And when his son come back home, he recieved him with open arms and they had a party because he had come back.

Let us all find those who may have wanderd from the church for some reason.  And let us all help them return!

The church is true, Jesus is the Christ!  I love you all and thanks for all the support!  Have a wonderful week!

Hey everyone!  I hope you are all doing well wherever in the world you may be!  It seems like everyone is going their own seperate ways!  But hey that´s life.  I hope you all had a great week! This past week was ok.  There wasn´t a whole lot but we were able to do some good things!  Well.. We are always doing good things.. Haha!  But yeah you know what I mean.

This past week more than anything, I remember something that Elder Godoy said (Area President) in a Face to Face devotional.  He was talking about Lucas 15 and the 3 Parables that there are.  The lost sheep, the lost coin, and the prodigal son.  They all have to do with people that leave the church for some reason.  I´m not going to explain it all due to the time but in the parables, think about, how the sheep got lost, and how or who lost the coin, and how did the prodigal son leave or why.  Then think about what they did to find them or recieve them again.  And that´s how we should treat each one of those people.  If I have more time next week, I will explain it all!

Apart from that, we had stake conference yesterday.  And it looks like we are going to have a new bishop!  We still don´t know who it is but hopefully we can get a good one!

Other than that, we have been looking for other people to teach and with the recent converts to be able to find new investigators!  Sorry for the short email, but thanks for all the support and love!  I love you all!

Hey everyone!  First of all, I`m sorry that I didn`t send an email last week... I found it today in my drafts so yeah... I`m sorry!  But these past two weeks have been pretty good!  To start out (I can`t remember if I already said this) we had 4 baptisms in our ward these past weeks which was really cool!  They are all super cool people and I`m happy to see them in the gospel now!

So this past week we met a kid, 19 years old, that says he preaches the ``Word of God`` as well sometimes.  We talked to him for a while and he had some good questions, but he obviously wasn`t listening to me!  I told him about a million times that he just had to pray to God to know if Joseph Smith was a prophet, and all the rest will just come naturally.  I told him that it`s like a tree.  If you want to take out a tree from the ground, you start straight from the roots!  You don`t start from the top cutting off every little part to get to the bottom, you go straight to the roots!  He still kept asking the same questions and all that. I`m sure he just wanted to Bible Bash.  He tried to be all fancy in how he talked but it really didn`t work.  He also called us Prophets because we preach the gospel.  It was kind of weird.

Another experience, probably completely opposite to what I just mentioned, is that we met a less active member (who`s mom is an active member) and we invited her to listen to us again but she just told us no and that she wanted to keep sinning.  We just left it at that.  We didn`t want to fight with her.

This past week we were able to find some new investigators which was cool.  Hopefully we can keep that up!  Other than that there hasn`t been much!  On Wednesday I`m going to try to cook tacos so we will see how that goes!  Well, I love you all and hope you have a great week!  Don`t be rumerous!  It really destroys people!

Hey everyone!  I hope you are all doing alright!  This past week was pretty sweet.  It was super crazy as well but all good!  This past week the zone leaders went to Cusco for concilio (I think that means council) so I promised them that I would work 100% this past week and I feel satisfied about it.  Now I am tired everyday.  It´s just something that happens after a while.

To start off, we have been visiting a lot of people but especially those who will be baptized this coming Friday.  We have 4 people that will be baptized and they complete 2 families (as in everyone in their family will be an active member).  All of them are awesome.  One of them is getting baptized because her baptismal record got lost somewhere and there is nothing to say that she got baptized so that was interesting.  2 of her kids are also getting baptized which will complete their family.

The other is someone called Janeth and her husband is a member that we recently rescued.  They have 2 little kids.  One is 3 and the other one about 8 months.  They are an awesome family.  Yesterday they invited us to eat dinner with them so we went and it was awesome!  Her husband also recently got a new calling which will be awesome for him.

Also this past week we had zone meeting.  It was probably my favorite zone meeting that I have had.  The best part was when a couple of people were giving their testimonies.  We have 3 people in the zone that are going home in about a week.  The 2 zone leaders and a sister.  They are all awesome.  I am really sad that they are going home.  I wish they could stay haha...  They have taught me a lot that I will never forget and even moreso through their examples.

Well that´s about it for this week.  This coming week we will be cleaning the chapel and keepin it clean for the baptisms on Friday!  I hope you all have a great week!  I love you all!

Speaking of 100%...Aaron giving 100% on the soccer pitch on his p-day.

Looks like a goal celebration!

Hey everyone! I hope you all had a fantastic week!  I am really enjoying Juliaca.  Right now I´m in Puno visiting so I don´t have much time but I will try to get in as much as possible!  

So this past week I got kind of sick....  Wasn´t so fun but now I am past it!  The best part about being sick is that a ton of people give you stuff!  But just stuff to help you get better.  They also have a lot of weird thoughts on how to get better.  They are just crazy down here!

We visited someone this past week and we set a baptismal date with her.  Her name is Yanet and has two kids and is married to a member.  We are planning on rescuing her husband first so that he can baptize her.  Her date is set for the 28th of May so that will be pretty cool!

Yesterday in Ward Council, we got some pretty crazy news.  So we have been visiting a ´´member´´ who the other Elders had rescued but it turns out that she doesn´t have any records in the church!  The ward secretary called the church offices and they say that she has no records.  So it looks like she will have to be baptized once again!  Pretty weird.

Well everything is going well.  The ward is progressing which is awesome!  The only problem is getting to places and starting activities on time... But other than that everything is pretty good!  Thanks for all your support and the the birthday wishes this past week!  I love you all and hope you have a great week!

Happy 20th to Elder Augat on May 15!

Hey everyone!  I hope you all had a good week!  This week was pretty good.  There wasn´t a whole lot because of Zone Conference and Mothers Day and a ´´talent show´´ type thing.  But it was a good week!

So like I mentioned, this last week we had a zone conference.  It was awesome.  It was outside so we were in P-Day clothes.  We started off with the zone leaders talking to us a little bit about obedience.  Then we did an activity that had to do with obedience.  We had to follow what the zone leaders said exactly and if we didn´t do it, we all had to start over.  Then we moved on to a bigger activity.  Basically we started out with an egg, a raw egg in it´s shell.  And we had to hold that while we went through a type of obstical course.  There were a couple people trying to break our egg while we were going through and if it broke we had to start all over again.  We eventually changed the egg for a hard boiled egg and when we finished, into a rock.  After we had the rock we helped other people finish the course thing.  It was way cool and fun.  They talked about how the egg is kind of like our testimony and sometimes we fall and have to start over again but eventually we can turn it into something as hard as a rock.  And once we have that testimony, we can help others come unto repentance.  It ws pretty cool.

Later in the conference President talked a lot about Temples (what he could) using a lot of scriptures and how satan works with us and how he makes us feel.  It was really cool.  I forgot to bring the scripture references with me so I cannot send them.... Next time.

Well there isn´t much but I hope you all have a great week!  Thanks for all the support and love!  I love you all!

Hey everyone!  This week has been pretty good!  I hope you all had a good week as well and look forward for the blessings to come!

So this past week on Saturday we had another baptism!  He is a cool kid named Alejandro.  He is 19 and is now the only member of his family.  He is a really smart kid.  He studies medicine and basically he is the guy that makes the drugs (the good ones) so he has to get exactly the right amount of everything.  If it`s too much, they die.  If it`s too little, they die.  So he is a really smart kid.  I also had the opportunity to confirm him member of the church so that was pretty cool.

After the baptism we went to a restaurant calld El Tablon and got a huge pizza!  It`s a meter long so that`s pretty cool.  The pizza wasn`t the best though.  We went with the other two Elders in our district so it was way fun.

On Thursday and Friday there was an activity about Family History.  A senior couple of missionaries came to help out so that was pretty cool.

This past week I went on divisions with an Elder named Elder Bird.  He is awesome.  He told me a quote that I really liked that said, ``A goal not written down is only a dream.``  So I was able to write down some goals that I wanted to accomplish this change and it`s helped me out a lot.  So if you guys want to accomplish something, write it down!

So this week was pretty good and I`m looking forward to the time that I will have in Juliaca.  I hope you all have another wonderful week full of cool things to do and see and service and all that jazz.  I love you all!