Elder McKay White: Week 4 in Huaycan (Birthday Week!)

It's been a crazy week. I can't even remember a lot of what has happened actually. I'm starting to name the street dogs, so I guess that means we're friends now. Thanks to everyone for the birthday wishes, it was an awesome day! The members even threw me a surprise party! It was a lot of fun and still a productive day. We've had a lot of success the last few days. We put baptismal dates on the Mendoza family, but the parents aren't married. So please keep them in your prayers. People are always saying the Huaycan is a sketchy place. I can see how they'd say that. I never feel in danger though. I guess that's just Jesus keeping me safe. But I love my companion and all the missionaries that I am with, even if they do listen to the same song literally 6 times in a day, usually in a row. Anyways, Have a good week everyone!

-Elder White

Monday

Today was another p-day come and gone. We got ready this morning and went straight to the internet cafe. I saw my family was wishing me a happy birthday so that was pleasant. Then I did a bit of shopping. Everything is stupid cheap here. You can buy like 5 brand new pirated movies that came out yesterday for about a Sol. Not that I did. But I bought a pretty nice hat for 20 Sols (> $7). I also bought like 15 pretty big rolls for 5/3. The other companionship and us helped the Gutierrez family (the one family that just got baptized 2 weeks ago that I really like) move their shop. They sell shoes and none of them were by the other pair and none of them in boxes. So it was a giant matching game with a couple hundred pairs of shoes (none my size btw) that took us 2 1/2 hours. We took everything we could to the new shop, including the wood display holder thingies. That all took another 1 1/2 hours. I thought he was going to make me cut a live wire to remove the light too, but he killed the electricity first. I was ready for things to get exciting. Then we had to come back and do an inventory of all our teaching materials. Then we went back to their house and did a noche de hogar (FHE) there. It went well. They ordered chicken delivery from a restaurant, so that was cool.

Tuesday

We had a mulit-zone meeting today, so we had to get up at 6:15 to go to La Molina. As we were walking to the chapel, a girl leaned out of a tourist bus from across the street and was like, "Hey Elders!" The entire bus was waving and cheering us on. It feels good to be that guy now. I was talking to Elder Lewis beforehand and he was telling me how after the 2 weeks thing last week, he asked his companion where he ranks with his Spanish. His companion told him, "Other than that one White guy, your pretty good." I've had a few others tell me it's good too. I'm gonna give the gift of tongues and Senorita T all the credit on this one, because I rarely speak Spanish with Elder Yanez and I haven't really actually studied it directly here. I can understand basically everything if I concentrate, but that's exhausting. The training all in all was good I guess. We did some skits about missionary work at the end that were pretty funny. The whole thing lasted until like 4:30 so it went way longer than we thought it would. When we got back, we went straight to piano lessons at the church. I almost forgot: at the meeting they sang Happy B-day to me and a few others. They also gave me a really good fudge brownie. After the lessons, we sorta just decided to contact the rest of the night. There was this one lady who was just about to walk past us, but then I was like "nope" and stopped to talk to her. We were talking to her and I just really felt like I needed to bear my testimony of eternal families. So I did. She immediately lit up like a Christmas tree on the 4th of July and was super excited and interested in talking to us. We hope to see Mariala this Sunday. Bearing testimony works wonders. I felt really good after too.

Wednesday

So my shoelace on my brown shoe literally snapped in half today. I've had them less than a month and half and wear them every other day. So that was dandy. I found some laces en La Quince, but I think they're a bit big. We'll have to make it work though. The district got up early to play soccer this morning. Today was another one of those days were literally no one was home when we went to visit. We even got Alex, the gospel doctrine teacher to come with us so that we could visit our female/young people we're teaching. But yeah, no one was home so we wound up using all our time walking to and fro all over our area trying to visit them. When he left, we had Alejandra come with us. But he had to leave pretty quick because his mom needed him. Hermana Yolanda (Carlos) took us to visit one of her non-member friends. We drove to the end of a super steep street till that ended, some stairs till those ended, then climbed the rest of the way through the dirt. She wasn't home either. The craziest thing about my area is probably the fact we probably have a total change in elevation every day more than a mile. And most of it is walking. Up and down and up again. My ears don't like it. I got stuck in the chapel for a long time tonight because there were a lot of baptismal interviews. I got reading Mosiah 26. It's a pretty good chapter. I've noticed that tons of people here wear Gucci. Also Crocs. Lots of people wear those too. It's an interesting fashion trend. I'm not really sick anymore, but I've still got a pretty good cough.

Thursday

The zone leaders came by this morning to install these mosquito repellent thingies by the windows with some dudes from the office (zone). Except we don't have mosquitoes here. And they only put them on the windows in one room. But whatever. I miss all the guys from the CCM. Today was pretty awesome. It started out pretty slow because the references we went to visit weren't home. That's all we did today: visit references. Usually (or in the last 3 weeks at least) the references aren't home or we were given a wrong/fake address. Speaking of which, the address system here is horrible. Once you get to the right UCV, sometimes you spend another 10 minutes looking for the house (Lote). We got Alex to come with us again and we went to go check out Miguel. He's done a lot of soul searching with a lot of churches and knows the Bible well. He's 30. We invited him to be baptized and he didn't say no. He didn't say yes either. But we're taking him to church with us on Sunday. It's looking good. The we got 2 more accompaniments from the ward: Diego and another Hermana. We spent about 40 minutes looking for the house of a reference named Mariam. We found the house and it was one of the smaller ones. It was kinda tight fitting our 5 plus the 5 from her family in a room a little bigger than our study area. But the lesson went super well and we committed her, her parents, and her son and daughter to baptism! Except then we found out she's not married, which is kinda a major obstacle. But she says she has plans to get married and she was a super escogido (chosen one), so hopefully it works out.

Friday

Well, today was my birthday, and it was pretty stinking awesome. To start the day off, our zone had a get together breakfast at the pariachi church. It's a casa capilla (house chapel), so that's pretty cool. Elder Yanez and I went early to help prepare the food: breakfast burritos. They were pretty good. It wasn't for my b-day of course, but it was still fun. Elder Monzon has picked up my "your mom" jokes. That man is relentless. They're all original and pretty funny though. We went to go visit Christopher today. He's ready for the 18th. !Un bautismo esta viniedo! (A baptism is coming!) While we were walking afterwards, Elder Yanez told me that someone was coming to fix the hot water heater in our shower! I was super excited and said it was the best gift anyone has given me: hot water. I guess that shows how much the mission humbles you. We picked up Alex and took him to Zenaida's with us. She's not interested anymore so we'll drop her. I found a dude while contacting that was an escogido, but he lives in Pariachi, so he's for different Elders. I watched some kids get into a fist fight while playing soccer, so that was cool. Then we had some more entrevistas (interviews) at the church. After that we stopped by a store and this one actually had cereal bars! I tried one a couple of days ago and really liked it, but I can't ever find them in stores, so I was really excited. We went up to the Carlos' for what I thought was a lesson, but them and some other members actually threw a surprise party for me. They had a bunch of food and a cake. It was a good time. The members here are really awesome. Then we went down to Maria's where she had Inca Cola and Lomo Saltado waiting for us. Good stuff. She got a cake too, but we didn't have time to eat it because it was getting late, so we just took the cake home with us. I felt kinda bad about it.

Saturday

Well, we have added a new song to the overplayed list: "Have I Done Any Good?" by Alex Boyega. We listened to it 4 times in a row this morning, as with the past few days too. Speaking of music, the garbage trucks here have their own theme song. It's better than the ice cream trucks: Vecino, Vecina, cuida tu salud. Poniendo la basura en el recolector. (Neighbor, Neighbor watch your health. Putting the trash in the dumpster) It's catchy too. Today has been frustratingly unproductive. After lunch we went up to visit the Jamampa family for our 2:00 appointment we had set up. They live far up the mountain so it's an expensive bus ride. When we got there, they wouldn't answer the door. We knew they were home though because there was music playing and I'm pretty sure I heard voices. So then we had to take a bus back down and go to our apartment to let the guy in to keep fixing our shower. Turns out our mini circuit breaker is broken, so we had to go with him to get a new one. (Electricity heats our water somehow I guess.) But to replace it we have to flip the real circuit breaker, but we couldn't find the owner of the building to let us into that room. Long story short, it's a mess. Then we went to Pariachi 2 to get some baptismal clothes for Los Lomas. Mission rules complicate things. So we went on a adventure trying to find the Las Lomas missionaries and found them at their house. Elder Dahl is staying the weekend with them before he goes home on Monday. It's kinda crazy seeing guys like him as a new missionary myself. Then the shower dude came back and did some more stuff. The owner will have to finish it when he gets back though, which is hopefully soon because the lights only work in one room right now. Elder Yanez and I had very little time to contact, but we had good success. We got up at 5:30 this morning to play soccer as a zone.

Sunday

We went to church this morning. Surprise. But Miguel came to church! He payed attention and was pretty interested the whole time. Very exciting stuff. However, no one else came, including Christopher. His baptism was supposed to be this Saturday, but we'll probably have to push it back a week now. It's kinda frustrating. After church we went to lunch at a member's house, the Penas. Their son served in Guatemala Central, so we talked to him a lot. Lunch was super good. They had the good rice, potatoes and bistek. I thought it was weird when I first saw the natives putting ketchup and mayo on their rice, but now I do it too. When you have rice every meal, you get desperate for flavor. They had apple pie for dessert. From what I've seen so far, the apple pie here is pretty dang good. We went contacting for a bit and found some good potentials. Then we tried visiting a couple of our investigators, but had no success. The Carlos family had us over for another FHE tonight. They gave us some choufa and left over dessert from my b-day. We played that one chocolate game after. When Elder Monzon sneezes, it's like a marathon. The most I've counted him do at once so far is 14. It's pretty impressive.

Pictures of Elder White's apartment: