I heard the song Another One Bites the Dust while I was in a combi
(bus) the other day. I laughed a bit because there couldn't be a more fitting
song for this place. I'm hanging in there though. My new comp is Elder
Gonzalez from Colombia. He's cool. We work hard together, harder than
I've ever worked before. I'm looking forward to seeing the results from
our labors this transfer. Nothing else too new though. My Spanish is
pretty good now I suppose. I had a new gringo missionary in my area a
couple days back and it was interesting trying to talk in English after talking in Spanish for a week straight. I had to take my time a bit to
translate things back to English in my head when I was talking to him.
Peru is playing the US on Tuesday. People are looking forward to that
here, but I don't know if you guys back home even care about the match.
It's kinda funny I guess how some things are important here and don't
matter there or vise versa. We got into a conversation with a borracho
(drunk) yesterday, so that was pretty interesting. Have a good week everyone!
-Elder White
Monday
Today was my last day with Elder Yanez. It's sad to see him go, but I guess it's time for a change. I took another 400 soles to the bank today. I finally have all 35 of the coins in my collection. Now I'm only 4 short of completing a 2nd collection too. It only took like 2,000 soles too. I went and got a much needed haircut today. Ironically enough, I think that was the longest my hair has ever been. For lunch, we went to eat with la familia Guitierez. He ordered us pizza, so that was pretty dope. After that, we went back and deep cleaned the room. That place was super dirty. Then we went and (long story short after 2 hours of waiting) did a combined Carlos-Camacho familias noche de hogar. They had a bunch of snacks after too, so that was cool. The Carlos' were especially close to Elder Yanez so it was hard for them to see him go. They made him promise like 12 times that he wouldn't forget them. People get really attached to their missionaries. They gave him a pretty cool jacket, so that was nice of them. We hurried down after for the despedida (farewell) pizza night de Elders Yanez and Cabascango. Having pizza twice in a day was pretty great. Allow me to explain the difference between American and Peruvian pizza. Here, they spread the sauce as thinly as a vegan spreads his butter. Also, they might have let the vegan choose the cheese too and possibly the pepperoni because those are weird too.
Tuesday
Cambios were this morning. The bus came at 9 to get everyone. Hermana Evans and I are the only originals from that first zone. The other bus didn't come until like 1. To pass the time, Elder Campos and I talked a lot about El Salvador (where he is from), but mainly we talked about pupusas. I talked with the other elders too. Elder Caro is with Elder Lainez now. He's from Columbia as well. Neither have seen Shakira. That was one of the first things I asked them. First impressions of Elder Gonzalez? He looks like an American. But no one in the room can really speak English well enough to have any sort of conversation, so this cabio will be interesting. I can already tell you that I'm going to work my butt of with Elder Gonzalez. He seems kind of stiff. Hopefully he'll loosen up over time. As for how our day went, all of our citas fell through, so that was mildly frustrating. Rafael wasn't there either when we went for him. It's starting to concern me because his baptism is supposed to be this Saturday. We've got to find him tomorrow. So basically we just contacted the whole day. I really hope he'll loosen up soon. I'm struggling right now with some stress about being able to help everyone now that Elder Yanez is gone. Now I have to remember who needs what and who that is and where they live, etc. I'm just a ball of stress on the inside. So I'm trying to cope with that right now. I miss the other elders already.
Wednesday
It's kinda funny. Before the mission whenever a telemarketer called, I would just pretend that I only spoke Spanish. The other day Elder Aguilar got one. So I pretended to only know English. My, my, how the tables have turned. I'm wiped right now. We contacted for 2 1/2 hours and then had lunch. Then we contacted some more. We had a cita with Cristopher, so that was really cool. I love being able to talk with him. He might be my favorite person here. I love Alegandro and Diego too though. Paulo and Elias are pretty chill. After that, we were contacting. The Carlos' saw us and invited us inside because Elder Draney was there with his parents visiting. I was pretty hesitant because I didn't want to take away some of their time together, but they insisted. It was nice to see some Americans. They took a picture and sent it to my mom. I hope she likes that stuff. We contacted a bit and then went back to their house for a noche de hogar. That went pretty well. They're a pretty fun family. It was nice because we got Raquel and William there with us, who usually aren't home. We tried going to go visit with Rafael after, but he and Jan Carlos weren't home again. I'm starting to stress very much about that. We talked to Rafael's wife though. She's cool, but has to work Sundays so there's not a whole lot that we can do there. We had correlations after that. Elder Gonzalez talks pretty fast. But for some reason I can understand him. There's some Colombian slang he uses that's kinda weird, but it's whatever.
Thursday
Elder Gonzalez had leadership training this morning. So I got up bright and early to drop him off at the entrada. Our combi went the wrong way, so that was fun. I took Elder Hyde with me back to Huaycan. It's only his 3rd day here and his first real day in the field. That was pretty fun. He's not fluent in Spanish, so I did all the talking. I was fine with it though. It was interesting because when I was talking to him, I had to translate stuff from Spanish back to English in my head. I think I might know more about him than my actual companion. It's not that we don't get along, he's just all business. He lightens up when it's time to eat at least. I wound up just contacting mostly with Elder Hyde. Then we had to go pick up our companions. They told me some really weird name where we should pick them up. The dude sitting next to us was really nice though and told us where to get off. We went with Diego to go and check on Bety. She had a baby girl on Monday, so that's pretty cool I guess. But what's just as cool, if not cooler, is that they're finally getting their papers together to get married! 6 years of going to church faithfully has paid off for her. After that we went up to visit Elvis and Diego. That lesson went well enough I guess. We left there a little late and tried doing English class, but our key got snapped in half last week. I am continuing to be a giant ball of stress. I knew a mission would be hard before I left, but I didn't understand just how hard it actually is. Elder Vazquez is pretty sick. He seemed awful when we passed by.
Friday
We started the day off with weekly planning. Let me just say that Elder Gonzalez is a really good missionary. We're going all in. I'm looking forward to seeing the results. He told me, "Yeah, I wasn't expecting much since you're new and a gringo, but you know your area really well and you're pretty good at Spanish." I'm a lot better at Spanish than I thought I've learned. I'd say I'm an 8 1/2 or a 9. After lunch we had a baptismal interview. Liliana is pretty cool. She passed and everything, so they'll have her service tomorrow. We basically just contacted all day. Diego was with us for the day, so that was fun. He's a super cool guy. We tried visiting a reference, but the address was just an abandoned lot or something. It's mildly frustrating. We also tried visiting the Pena's and Rafael, but they all weren't home. When we passed by Rafael's though, we found his prima (cousin), Jurubi. We got talking to her and when I extended a baptismal invitation, she started to cry a little and didn't say anything. The spirit was super strong in that moment. She accepted the date we put on her so that was cool. We found a lot of escogidos (chosen) while we were contacting, so that was a milagro. There wern't any super cool stories about how we found them or anything, just that the people we talked to were pretty cool. Peru played Chile in a soccer match tonight, which is a big deal here. It's like the BYU vs Utah Rivalry, but even more significant. I heard that Peru won 3-0. Not a lot of people were out since the game was on. Elder Gonzalez has a weird laugh. It's like a "hehehe" kinda laugh.
Saturday
Well, we had district counsel this morning. The zone leaders showed up late though, so that kind of threw the whole day off. The meeting lasted longer than normal, so that didn't help much. When we got back, we went straight to Betty's after lunch. We took Cristopher with us. He worked late last night so he was nodding off in the lesson. It was kinda funny actually. After that we hurried up the mountain for a neche de hogar with Francisco and his family. We tried to go and get Elvis and Diego to come, but when we tried to pick him up he told us that his grandpa used to be mayor in another part of Lima, but he just got put in jail so Elvis had to take his papers in for him. So that was interesting. The noche de hogar went pretty well though. It was Francisco's birthday on Thursday, so his wife made a pineapple cake that we ate after. We passed by the Pena's and put a baptismal date on Davis. So that was cool. When we were contacting, we ran into this Buddhist dude. It was pretty interesting talking to him. I respect it though. It's a (semi) logical belief/thought system I suppose. Rafael wasn't home when we passed by to talk to him. I thought he'd be an easy baptism, but we can never find him anymore so I'm starting to doubt a bit. We tried meeting with a contact we made the other day at a cancha, but he was a no-show unfortunately. Today was really stressful, but I got through it I suppose. Peru is supposed to play against the USA in a soccer match on Tuesday. It'll be interesting to see how people treat me in this coming time due to that.
Sunday
We went and watched conference at 9 AM today since the ward couldn't really do it last week. It was cool to watch it again. Except none of our investigators came, so that was kinda unfortunate. I feel like no matter what we do during the week or how hard we work to get people to la capilla (church), they still won't go. I'm beginning to get pretty frustrated with that. When it was over, we picked up laundry and then went to the camache's for what I thought was a service project, but they didn't have any service stuff for us to do. So instead I introduced Elder Gonzalez to Jesus and Vanesa. Then we went and ate lunch with la familia Anjelo. They're pretty cool. Then we went and watched the 2nd session of conference at 3. There was less of a turnout for that one. We tried to visit Mariela after, but we found her pareja's dad instead, Fernando. He was pretty cool to talk to. His son Gonzolo, Mariela's pareja, was going to serve a mission. But then he had a kid. You could see how much it hurts him when he talked about it. He showed us some families that live by him after. We tried visiting the Pena's, but they weren't home. So then we went and picked up Jesus and Vanesa and tried to visit Rafael, Jan Carlos or Jurubi, but instead we found Jan Carlos' uncle named Mario. So we taught him a bit. Afterwards when we were thanking Jesus and Vanesa for coming with us, a drunk came up to us. Elder Gonzalez was like, "Hey, what's up? How long you been drunk?" They dude responded, "One day. How about you?" We all laughed and he was like, "What? You asked me so I get to ask you back." Later the Boracho asked my companion if he knew everything. He said nope so we asked him the same and he said nope as well. So I asked him how many days are in a week and he told me 5. I got him to introduce himself in English though, so that was interesting. He also asked my companion "What are you?" Elder Gonzalez said he's a missionary. The dude was like, "No you're not. You're an espiritu (spirit)."
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