Week 1 in Alameda

I'm learning a bit of Quechua here and there. There's a good phrase you all need to memorize and recite to everyone you know. There's a dog behind me that's snoring and it's super funny actually. We're a bit stressed out because we've got to find a new place to live before Friday. But you know, Yolo. I'm feeling a bit lazy right now, so I'm going to write in Spanish again. More practice for you guys I guess jajaja. Esta semana ha sido lo maximo! Elder Mayta y yo portarnos muy bien. Todo el dia nos reimos y disfrutamos trabajar juntos. Alameda is una area muy especial. El barrio aqui es muy muy fuerte. Estan haciendo todo para ayudar y animar uno al otro. Por ejemplo, cada domingo el cuorum de elderes reune para visitar a unos miembros que no fueron a la iglesia. Me encanta estas personas. Ayer pasaron bastantes milagros. Nuestro investigador vino a la iglesia con toda su familia e invito a su prima para venir tambien, y ninguno de ellos son miembros. Durante la noche pasamos por su casa y tuvimos una pequeña leccion y obtuvimos permiso para bautizar a el. Creo que haya una grande posibilidad de bautizar a toda esa familia. Ayer dimos 5 bendiciones de salud a personas. Antes solo habia dado como 3 en mi mision. Despues de las reuniones un grupo de mujeres vinieron para hablar con nosotros. Nos dijeron, "Esta es nuestra amiga. Su hijo salio en una mision hace 4 meses. Ella ha asistido estes 6 domingos pasados y esta muy ansiosa para bautizarse. ¿Ustedes puedan hacerlo?" ¡Por supuesto podemos hacerlo! Ibamos a salir de la iglesia, pero entonces una mujer vino a nosotros y nos dijo que ella quiere participar en la iglesia y unas actividades con su hijo. Eso fue muy chevere. Tambien durante la noche hicimos un contacto muy bueno para unos elderes de la zona campoy. ¡Hubieron suficiente milagros ayer para todo el cambio! ¡Estoy tan animado para estar aqui!

Hasta luego,

-Elder White
 

Translation:  This week has been the best! Elder Mayta and I get along very well. All day we laugh and enjoy working together. Alameda is a very special area. The neighborhood here is very very strong. They're doing everything to help and encourage each other. For example, every Sunday the quorum of elders gathers to visit members who did not go to church. I love these people.  A lot of miracles happened yesterday. Our investigator came to the church with all his family and invited his cousin to come too, and none of them are members. During the night we passed by his house and had a little lesson and obtained permission to baptize him. I think there's a great chance of baptizing that whole family. Yesterday we gave 5 health blessings to people. Before I had only given as 3 on my mission. After the meetings a group of women came to talk to us. They said, "This is our friend. Her son went on a mission four months ago.  She has attended these past 6 Sundays and is very anxious to be baptized. Can you do it?"  "Of course we can do it!"  We were going to leave the church, but then a woman came to us and told us that she wants to participate in the church and activities with her son. That was very cool.  Also during the night, we made a very good contact for some elders of the Campoy area. There were enough miracles yesterday for the whole transfer! I'm so excited to be here!

See you later,

Elder White

Monday
Today was my last day in Huaycan.  Elder Gonzalez and I impulsively decided to climb the mountain by our house, so we got up early to do that.  The hike was a bit longer and a bit harder than we expected.  The mountain doesn't look that tall.  It was super foggy for some reason.  Usually it's just foggy in the winter from what I understand.  Due to that, we could only see like 50 yards in either direction.  We thought we were almost there like three times.  Elder Gonzalez almost gave up, but I wasn't about to let some punk Peruvian mountain beat me like that.  We finally got to the top though about 50 minutes later.  I had wanted to see all of Ate from up there, but the fog kind of got in the way.  It was kinda nice though actually.  We were up high with limited visibility and the city sounds were quiet in the distance.  It kinda had a holy atmosphere to it.  So we hung out a minute, said a prayer, and then hiked back down.  After internet, the zone leaders told my comp and I to go all the way over to Chaclacayo to pick up a "gift".  We got there and Elder Silva handed me a letter from my grandparents.  He thought that there was something else inside, not a drink mix, so he was pretty excited and then disappointed.  I mean, it's awesome to get letters, but he wasted a lot of my time when it would have been easier just to give it to me the next day.  That was kinda frustrating.  Anyways, we went to go eat lunch with our haircut lady, a member named Lydia.  I don't know if it's just because I haven't had lasagna since I left, but that was super dang good lasagna.  She brought out ice cream after too, so that was awesome.  Then we went and deep cleaned our room in 2 hours.  Well, I packed mainly and they cleaned.  But I helped a bit.  We finished that up and then went out for the day.  It was mainly just my day to say goodbye to everyone.

 Saying good-bye to the Carlos and Camacho families.

I planned to say bye to the Carlos' at 6:00, but they were running behind.  So I went to say bye to the Camachos.  Long story short, we had Jesus and Vanesa over for the noche de hogar and started at 7:40.  That part of it got me a little stressed out.  But it was really nice to have everyone there.  They're all super great people.  After that I took Cristopher out to eat since he's my convert and a good friend.  He wanted pizza, so I gave him pizza.

 Pizza with Cristopher

It was nice to spend time with him before I left.  Then we went to have the traditional pizza farewell with Hermana Maria.

 Farewell pizza dinner.

I'm gonna miss all these people.

Tuesday
Today is Cristopher's birthday.  It kind of stinks that I had to leave on his birthday.  He was so cool.  He would call to ask if he could accompany us on citas.  But anyways, I got up, got ready, and then finished packing quickly.  Then we hailed a taxi to get me and my stuff to Ñaña for the bus to pick me up, or so we thought.  We got a call from Elder Silva telling us to take the taxi to La Molina since Elder Gonzalez would be training.  We got there and it turned out he was supposed to be there 2 hours ago, but Elder Silva didn't tell us that.  So that was frustrating.  I hung out there and met Elder Williams who is pretty cool.  I took the bus from that area, so I got to see what the other half of the mission looks like.  I only know the guys in Chacoacayo so I didn't really know anyone.  We got to the stake center in Vitarte and were starting to unload our stuff when the bus driver came scrambling back on exclaiming, "¡Policia!"  We had been parked illegally in the road.  It was kinda funny, but at the same time the fines here are absurdly high, even when you convert it to dollars.  We just dropped the rest of the stuff off down the street.  Since we're where the Hermanas used to be, and there's a young girl downstairs, we have to find a new apartment and move out in 10 days.  That'll be fun.  Hermana Daniels came here once on intercambios, so she came with us to show us where our house and the pension was, but otherwise we were on our own.  The pensionista and her husband are Celia and Alfredo.  They're pretty cool people.  We contacted a bit, but mainly spent the day exploring.  We found a member named Oswaldo and his mom  Zoraima.  We did a short lesson with them.  They're pretty cool.  As it got later into the night, we decided to go to the capilla for a farewell of an Elder into the field.  We started at one end of our area and tried walking to it.  Except we over shot it by like 2 miles.  I wouldn't be surprised if we walked completely out of our zone, because I know it was definitely out of our area.  The kid's farewell was pretty nice.  I already love this area.  I have a really good first impression of the ward and a couple of the members here.  I'm really excited about this place.  We hadn't even been here 3 hours when we received 2 pretty solid references.  Today was an adventure.  It was kinda fun being lost all day.

Wednesday
We had a consejo de distrito (district meeting) this morning.  They had a couple of trainings and I actually got a lot out of it.  It's a lot better ran than Chaclacayo was.  It's the biggest zone in the mission: 18 elders and 4 hermanas.  Elder Monzon and Elder Lopez are here, so that's really fun.  I also met Elder Wily, a Samoan from Utah.  He's a pretty funny dude.  I'm really enjoying my time so far with Elder Mayta.  We crack a lot of jokes together.  It's a good time.  We get along really well.

Elder White and Elder Mayta

Last night we accidentally told our pension that we weren't going to eat with them, so we went to a restaurant nearby.  It was pretty good actually.  At one point though Elder Mayta turned to me and asked, "Why do you eat with your eyes closed?"  That really messed me up.  I had never realized that I close my eyes whenever I take a bite or a sip of something.  So I tried doing it with my eyes open and it felt pretty awkward.  We contacted/explored a lot today.  Elder Mayta is learning it, the area, fast than I am.  Our area is one ward.  It's pretty small actually; it's about the size of 2 wards or so in Utah.

A map of our area

This place is a lot different than Huaycan.  There are actually plants here.  And a stream and a river go through our area.  And it's almost entirely flat.  I really like it.  The people here have a lot more money than Huaycan, but they're not necessarily rich.  Elder Mayta's area before this was a lot like mine, but with less hills I think.  We're just walking down the street and through the parks and we're just like, "What's this weird green stuff growing out of the ground?"  There's still a bit of dust here, but it isn't really comparable to Huaycan.  There's a couple of stray dogs here still, but they're only in a couple of parts and a lot more mild.  We tried visiting a youth named Jean Franco and his sister Yeni.  We passed by, but instead just wound up setting up a cita for tomorrow.  After that, we had the opportunity to go to a ward noche de hogar at the home of the guy that left on his mission.  A ward member gave a very well thought out lesson.  It was very well planned as an activity and had probably 25+ people there.  I was very impressed.  This ward has a lot of unity and is really active.  From what I understand, the elders quorum or other guys too will go and visit all the members who didn't attend church that same night at 5:00.  Those guys are awesome.

Thursday

Taking showers here is an adventure.  The water randomly will go from having little pressure, to normal, to having no water.  We have hot water though, maybe a bit too hot.  It'll scald you if you're not careful.  So you kinda just gotta turn it off and on while you're showering.  We had a multi zone conference today.  Elder Alonso from the 70 was there to preside.  I can't decide if it's good or bad that our mission has had so many general authorities recently.  Are they trying to hint something or do they just really like us?  At one point in the meeting, the maintenance guys were power washing the roof of la capilla.  It starting raining by the wall next to me in there.  I mean, it's not a huge problem because it never rains here, but still.  That was exciting.  They all gave some solid talks.  I'm pretty sure that that capilla is cursed though.  I had to go to the bathroom really bad again.  I didn't drink hardly anything (and it was super early too when I did) and I went beforehand too.  For some reason I have to pee bad when there's a general authority in that capilla.  There wasn't a rule about not leaving though, so I went when President Amato was talking.  Elder Alonso gave a good talk on finding people to teach.  At one point he was like, "Who here has any musical experience whatsoever?"  He told them to go into the hall, prepare a song, then come back in 5 minutes.  They sang Himno 2 El Espirita de Dios (The Spirit of God).  The spirit was so strong, one of the strongest times I've felt it.  Like, it literally froze me.  I loved that.  That night when we went back, we took a youth named Eric with us to visit Jean Franco.  Now Jean Franco has a fecha (baptismal date).  Come to find out, Eric is the Peruvian version of myself.  Everything from basketball to the same video games.  We were at the capilla and found a dad cat.  It wasn't just muerto (dead), it was muertaso.  Elder Mayta didn't want to touch it, so I was the one who had to throw it away.  When I nudged it, flies came out as well as the juices.  Easily the nastiest thing I've ever had to do.

Friday

Showering this morning was interesting.  When I said the water comes and goes, I meant that it comes for 2 minutes then leaves for 15.  I had the sense to start filling a bucket though.  So I showered this morning with less than a gallon of water from that bucket.  I heard that yesterday was Thanksgiving, which means last night was Black Friday shopping.  To celebrate, I bought a couple of things to make pancakes.  I had never made them before, so I had an adventure trying.  I only used eggs, flour, salt, sugar and a bit of milk.  They didn't turn out too horrible though, I  just made a mess of it.  We went to the Dentist in La Molina for Elder Mayta this morning.  It was kinda interesting to see the difference between him and my dad.  My dad has this nice 3D scanner thing.  This guy took an Xray OG style.  He took the foto and then developed the film in the liquid inside the magical box.  Dude looked like he was operating on a radioactive fish over there.  Super cool though.  Speaking of doctors, I had to talk to the health secretary about my feet.  That weird wrinkle stuff is on both feet, getting bigger, and starting to hurt too.

My now mildly concerning foot

He told me I have to wear 2 pairs of socks at a time now because apparently my feet aren't drying out.  I don't know how that's going to work out though because now my feet are super hot all the time.  Doctor's orders though se pongo. We contacted all day today.  We're getting to know the area pretty well, but sometimes we still get lost.  We tried meeting with a contact, but they weren't home.  While we were contacting, we ran into a couple of members.  So we went to their home and got to know them.  Super nice people.   They were actually kind of excited to have Elders.  Typically the usual reaction is a bit of disappointment when we tell the members that the Hermanas got taken out and that we're the new Elders now.  It's ok though.  We'll all get over it eventually.  I think we're doing a good job of earning the members' trust though.  The dogs here are super chill.  One came running at me and I was ready to go Jackie Chan on him, but he just wanted to play.  That was weird for me.  They don't chase motos or cars here either.  It was always fun to see them do that until you were the one in the moto and you look over to see a giant freaking grizzly bear trying to eat your leg that's hanging out the door since there's 4 of you crammed into the back seat.  Good times.

Saturday

I'm basically the king of breakfast now.  Look at how much I've evolved!  I started my mission by just eating straight bread, but eventually I got jam to go with that.  Then I made the decision of a lifetime and bought my sandwicher.  From there I made grilled cheese.  That was a good phase.  Then I moved to my egg sandwiches and now to pancakes.  🎵 Started from the bottom now we're here.  Started from the bottom now the whole team's...here. 🎵  Give me a couple months and I'll be making some French dish that has a name you can't pronounce for breakfast.  Today was a long day.  How do I know that?  Because I spent 2 hours in traffic traveling from one side of Vitarte to the other and back.  We did weekly planning today, which means that we started contacting after lunch.  After we had contacted for a while, we went to another area to do an ataque de zona (attack a zone).  It was actually Elder Mayta's first area, so I'm sure that was fun for him.  After we finished that up, we went with the zone leaders back to their house to get more passaje and what not.  While we were there, I saw a package with my name on it.  At first I was like, "Wow, that Christmas package sure did get here fast."  Turns out that it was a surprise package for Thanksgiving.  We got back late.  But we still took Eric with us to go and visit Jean Franco.  His uncle was there and tired to ask me why Joseph Smith isn't in the Bible.  I could see the path he was trying to lead us on so I was just like, "I'll tell you tomorrow."  Otherwise that cita went really well.  His parents showed up at the end and we got permission for him to be baptized, so that's dope.  Our area is kinda unique because it covers 3 districts: Ate (Vitarte), Santa Anita and El Agustino.  That makes things interesting sometimes.  Other Elders always teach the natives American slang, so I did Elder Mayta a favor and taught him a bit tonight.  I taught him to say, "Slay boy, Slay!  Slay the beast!"  to other missionaries whenever they finish talking to an Hermana or other random girl that they would have contacted.  That's pretty funny.  You can get mad at me if you want I guess, but you've gotta admit it's pretty funny to hear a native that doesn't speak a lot of English say that.

Sunday

Church was great today!  It's at 8:00, so I had to get up early and I'm super tired, but it was great!  The ward here is super awesome. We had more people come here than in Huaycan and this ward's not even 1/4 the area of that one.  The piano guy passed out and they carried him to the hospital, but that's basically the only bad thing that's happened today.  He should be fine though, no se precupe (no worries).  We did 3 blessings for sick people today; I did one for Mario (Jean Franco's dad) and Alfredo, and my companion did one for some other lady.  We had a great time with people coming to church.  Jean Franco's whole family came, and none of them are members.  They invited their cousin too and she was cool, so we got a cita with her too.  Then after church, a group of ladies came up to us and were like, "This is our friend.  She's really anxious to get baptized.  Her son left on a mission 4 months ago and has come the last 6 Sundays.  Can you do that for her?"  What do you mean can we do that?  Sorry, we're out of water, it'll have to wait a while.  JK, I'd love to do that!  As we were walking out, a lady from the street said to us, "I'd like to participate in your church with my son.  Do you have activities during the week that we can participate in?"  You sure bet we do!  At night we got hailed over by a lady in a taxi.  She's from Huachipa and met the missionaries a bit ago.  She didn't make it to church because she was traveling I think, but she wanted us to pass along her info to the missionaries over there.  Shoot man, we had like a transfer's worth of miracles in one day.  After lunch we went and ate at a member's house.  The people eat more that 3x for meals what we do in the States.  The biggest miracle is that they're all so small still.  After that we met with some guys from the Elders quorum to go and visit a CR family that hasn't been coming to church.  They're pretty cool.  We gave the mom and her son blessings for the sick as well.  Then we all walked around the ward looking for inactives and apartments for us to live in.  At night we went and visited Jean Franco.  We got permission for baptism, so that's cool.  All of his family is super awesome.  After the lesson, they invited us to stay for hot chocolate and bread with ham (all ham in Peru is chicken based).  That was some good stuff.  They'll be great friends of ours.

Last Week in Huaycan

Welp, I'm leaving Huaycan. I'll kind of miss this place. I'm off to Amaleda in Vitarte to open an area with Elder Maita. Should be interesting. But, I have another joke for you all. ¿Que dijo el anunciador cuando John Cena estaba jugando futbol?  (What did the announcer say when John Cena was playing soccer?) "¡Wacha! ¡Wacha! ¡Wacha! ¡R-K-Gol! ¡And his name is John Cena!" *Theme song starts playing* That's a pretty solid joke. You had all better appreciate that one jajaja. My last week in Huaycan went by really fast. I did intercambios (splits) for like 4 days, so that was interesting. It was fun though. I look a lot like Elder Condies cousin, so we decided to recreate the picture.

It turned out pretty good I'd say. You can't even tell which one is the original. I got bored yesterday and read the intro to the hymn book. It actually has some pretty cool stuff to say there. You should all go check it out. But anyways, have a good week!

-Elder White

Monday
Today wasn't Pday, but we had internet time like normal because that's what president told us to do.  I came up with a great joke.  ¿Que dijo Bruce Lee mientras estaba juganda futbol?  (What did Bruce Lee say while he was playing soccer?) ¡Wacha!  That one's a classic already.  We went out to work like normal after that.  We were going to visit Jimmy, but we found him drunk in the street.  So we couldn't really visit him.  That means we just contacted all day really.  Nothing too exciting today with that.  There was a testigo (witness) teaching us false doctrine that we couldn't get to stop talking.  I guess it's only just because I'm pretty sure Elder Gonzalez contacted a testigo missionary earlier in the day.  It's kinda sad how misguided people are sometimes.  Like just the other day I was talking to someone and I finished the contact and he told me, "Awesome.  I'd love to come.  I just need to ask my pastor first."  *Facepalm*  Why boy, why?  I think that later that some day I was contacting a woman and her kid was freaking out and crying because he thought that I was selling something and was mad at his mom for not buying anything.  Anyways, we decided to do intercambios (splits) with Lomas 1.  I went there with Elder Condie and Elder Vasquez went to my area with my companion.  Elder Condie is new, but he's pretty cool.  I contacted with him a bit and then we had a couple of citas.  The first one was with their recent convert and it went well.  Lomas 2 accompanied us for that one and the cita after.  The next cita was kind of a disaster.  A member brought her aunt and cousins to her house to have us teach them.  I think the other companionship ruined it.  They were too focused on telling the doctrine.  I tried to invited the spirit at the end and invited them to baptism, but Lomas 2 was like, "We're a little short on time.  Let's come back Friday."  That kinda made me really mad.  After that, we did a noche de hogar with a  family who's husband finally decided to marry his wife so that she can get baptized after 5 years.  Her son went on a mission too, so he's cool.  We were thinking that it'd be just that family, but before we knew it the bishop, 2nd counselor and 18 others were there.  We had to adjust and did a great improve lesson.

Tuesday
We did service this morning.  We had to take a moto along this sketchy dirt road up the mountain over a cliff to get there.  At least he wasn't watching TV on his phone while driving like I've had happen in the past.  For the service, they were going to have us work along side an excavator to clear out the mountain to make a lot, but it broke down right before we got there.  So instead we moved a whole bunch of wood and other crap from a demolished house that was a little higher up the mountain so that the excavator could excavate.  After that, we ate lunch and started our day of proselyting.  We had a lesson with this one crazy lady that lived kinda high up in the mountain.  While Elder Condie was praying, she yelled at her kids, "¡Ven!" (Come!) right in the middle of it.  When she finally got them all there, she uttered her own prayer under her breath while he was praying.  Shoot man, I couldn't get her to stop talking.  I'd ask her what faith is for her and she'd tell me that, how her kids are doing in school, how she met her husband, the typical behaviors of the stray dog down the street and how the weather affects her laundry.  I tired to cut her off so many times, but it didn't work.  When we finally get it to a close, we taught her how to pray and she was like, "Oh, ok.  I think I got this."  She disregarded everything we told her and spent 3 minutes praising God.  It had the same feel to it as a junior high kid trying to reach his word count.  I guess I should have known it'd be a weird prayer when she asked me who she wanted me to have her pray to.  We spent the majority of the day contacting though.  We had one more cita at night with a woman named Roxana.  She's pretty ready to get baptized, but she has a super weird working schedule where she'll not work for a while, but then will travel for a couple weeks at random for work.  So it's kinda hard to set a fecha (date) for that.  Going back to that one crazy lady, what drove me mad was when she said she couldn't understand us, even after I slowed down a bit to focus on pronunciation.  I know for a fact that my Spanish is really good.  I was thinking, "You racist.  You're not even trying."  Whatever though I guess.  We finished intercambios at 9:30, so I made it back in time to our pensionista for dinner.  It was an interesting intercambios.

Wednesday
Today was Pday.  Or it was supposed to be at least.  Today started off good, then it stunk for a while, but we ended on a good note.  We got up this morning early to go get haircuts.  When we walked outside, you could tell it had rained because everything was wet.  It feels nice to have a fresh cut.  Afterwards, it was raining ever so lightly.  It was as if the mist was falling down.  When we got back, we had to hurry and get ready for the day.  I tried doing something new for breakfast: an egg sandwich with hotdog bits.  It was a great idea.  Except I accidentally used too many eggs, so my sandwhicher over flowed a bit.  Then Hermano Espiritu, the building owner, came.  He came to fix the shower.  But to do so, he shut our power off, leaving my eggs half cooked.  I just had to put them in the fridge and we left right after because we were already running late.  A couple of weeks ago, I would have given my left arm to have hot water.  But now I'm just like, "I've lived here 121 days with cold water and you have the audacity to come and fix it when I have less than a week left here?  Sir, esfumate. (slang for whatever)"  The entire mission met in Vitarte for an emergency preparedness thing focused on natural disasters.  We were 20 minutes late, but the speaker dude was an hour late.  I knew it was going to be a long meeting because he started like this: "After the 6.8 magnitude earthquake in the year 1987, the legislature passed law number 29067.  Under subsection Owb part 2 paragraph 3, we are taught these 3 rules that..."  Blah Blah Blah.  I've never seen a room full of missionaries so bored.  All I wanted to do was eat some American food.  I even brought a bunch of money for it too.  But instead we went and ate a cheap Peruvian lunch at the temple.  We were supposed to have our session at 2:15, but the guy told us that the missionaries had already entered.  I guess they thought they could just do their's early.  But because of that, we had to sit around for an hour doing nothing.  The session was really nice though.  I think I learned a couple of things.  It was really nice to be in a place so clean and beautiful after living in Huaycan for more than 4 months.  We got back pretty late tonight.  I swear Elder Gonzalez ran into half the people he's met here today, so that was a tad bit annoying.  We went to correlations when we got back.  Cristopher got his temple recommend tonight so that was pretty awesome.

At the temple with Elder Gonzalez.

Thursday

Not gonna lie, I was really looking forward to that hot shower this morning.  I turned that water on and flipped that switch.  There was some nice, hot water.  I was feeling it with my hand. Then the light started to flicker and I saw a flash inside the shower head.  I had to sit there and feel as the water went cold again.  The freaking shower broke before I, or anyone else, got to use it.  I didn't even do anything wrong that'd break it.  I feel like that conversation between Vadar and Sidious at the end of Revenge of the Sith perfectly describes this situation.  "Where's the hot water?  Is it safe? Is it alright?"  "It seems that in your joy, you broke it."  "No!  It was hot!  I felt it!  Nooooooo!"  I think I'm just playing a game of "What unfortunate event will happen next" at this point.  We had a district counsel again this morning.  I brought my sandwicher again and we had another meeting of the grilled cheese club, which is really just me, Elder Hyde, Hermana Evans and Hermana Haughton.  It's fun though.  The counsel was fairly normal.  Nothing super unusual to report there.  We did intercambios afterwards.  Elder Aguilar came to my area with me.  Nothing really happened.  The citas fell through ( all 2 of them), so we contacted all day long.  I bought this snack that I kinda liked.  The only way to describe it is Styrofoam covered lightly in powdered sugar.  I think it was corn based though, so don't worry.  I feel like the people were especially hard hearted today while we were contacting.  Not a whole lot of success there.  There wasn't even any crazy people we contacted or any weird things that happened to keep the day interesting.  The Peru vs. Ecuador soccer match was on at night too, so the streets got almost completely deserted.  The day was long and boring.  At night though during dinner, we got talking to Lisa (Maria's daughter) and her boyfriend (Angelo).  They're pretty cool and fun to talk to.  Yesterday during the emergency preparedness thing, a new gringo on the back row in the gym ( a couple of rows behind me) let out one of the loudest farts I've heard right in the middle of the dude's presentation.  I'm sure that almost every head turned around to look at him.  It was pretty funny.  That pobrecito (poor) guy though.  It was probably the highlight of the presentation.

Friday

I was doing good, real good.  I hadn't said a "your mom" joke the entire transfer.  But I've had an out break of those the last couple days.  Elder Lainez has caught on too now.  I'm so proud.  Today was a good day.  Every day that I have tequeños is a good day.  I'm not even joking.  I don't know how it works, but it just does.  I could get shot in the shoulder and still tell you it was a good day if you brought me a plate of tequeños while I was in the hospital.  I helped Hermana Maria make them too and it turns out that they're actually super easy to make, which is nice.  Anyways we were supposed to meet with Ruth at la capilla at 7 AM again, but she didn't come.  I guess it was fair though because Elder Vasquez didn't get up when my companion did for the cita the other day.  We were supposed to have a lot of citas today, but I'm not too surprised that they all fell through because Elder Aguilar was pretty trigger happy to plan citas with contacts yesterday.  Let me tell ya somethin' Ernie, Elder Aguilar is a salty contacter sometimes.  But he's funny about it.  He tried to contact someone and they were like, "No me molestes, soy catolica."  (Don't bother me, I'm Catholic.") So he's just like, "Ok, nos vemos (see you)," and then turned and muttered to me, "en el dia de juicio (on the day of judgement)."  We did have a cita with the Carlos family though.  They were like, "It's been a while.  We were starting to think that you had forgotten about us."  I've tried leaving them alone more so that they could be self sufficient, but they were right.  I had waited too long.  I feel kinda bad about that.  We tried going to visit a reference deep in la "R".  When we got there and knocked the door, there was a dude with his friends walking by that told us no one lives there.  The neighbor outside of her house was like, "That's a lie.  He's the one that lives there."  So that was a fantastic waste of time and pasaje (passage).  We went to the chapel after to switch back from the cambios.  You know, I don't want to leave my area yet.  I like it here.  Next cambio is Christmas.  I want to spend that here with all the people I know and have grown to love: Cristopher, Hermana Maria and everyone else too.  I'd miss the small things, if I left, too.  Like the security guard out front of the Leña y Carbon restaurant.  I just always say hi to him when I walk past him on the way to the church.  He always says hi back and is happy about it. too.  I've seen him out there singing and dancing sometimes too.  It's boosted my mood every time I've seen him, especially on the bad days.  Tonight he made the effort to shake my hand.  What a guy.  I like him.

Saturday

Today was weird.  There's no other way to describe it really.  We did weekly planning today, so there's not a whole lot of exciting stuff there.  We had steak for lunch, so that was great.  After Maria told me that that might have been my last lunch with her.  Then I realized that we find out about cambios tomorrow.  That hit me like a truck.  After that, we contacted a bit.  Then we tried visiting a couple of inactive recent converts: Jamie and Patrick y Dyghorgy.  None of them were really able to talk with us though.  From there, we went to the church for baptismal interviews.  I've somehow budgeted like a boss this transfer, so I can spend a lot of it on food now.  So I bought some good snacks on the way down.  We had to wait around for the people to show up, so we cleaned the capilla in the mean time.  The two kids from Huaycan 1 showed up, but the dad of the girl from Lomas 2 canceled it.  I'll tell you more about that later.  But while my companion was doing the interview, Ruth came to the capilla for a cita.  She's so reliable, I love it!  She's only not showed up once and she always reads what we give her as homework.  We taught her tithing and fasting and she took it well.  We were talking more and we discovered she took 2 drugs on Thursday, so that's kind of not good.  Oh, I was teaching with Elder Lainez by the way.  There's a new rule in the mission where you need the approval of the bishop and President Amato when you baptize kids because they usually just go inactive really fast.  They got permission from the bishop, but forgot the last step.  So we had to make a couple of phone calls and wait around a while to get a response.  It was kinda awkward because Huaycan 1 had been about ready to start.  They got permission after 30 minutes though.  I went on a brief intercambios con Vilca and Vasquez, who were on intercambios themselves in Lomas 1.  I went with them on a cita and contacted.  My companion went with Lomas 2 to talk to the dad who changed his mind about letting his daughter get baptized.  We got permission to stay out late, since he gets home late.  I just kinda ate a bowl of bananas with yogurt (which is actually really good) while I waited.  Long story short, we didn't get back to the room til after 11, they didn't get permission and my companion was in a bad mood.

Sunday

Hey, I've got another joke for you.  ¿Que dijo el anunciador cuando John Cena estaba jugando futbol? (What did the announcer say when John Cena was playing soccer?) ¡Wacha! ¡Wacha! ¡Wacha! ¡R-K-Gol out of nowhere! ¡And his name is John Cena! *Theme song starts playing*  I think that's better than my Bruce Lee one.  Dang man, I'm pretty funny.  What does my family do without me?  In all seriousness though, I've got this whole kicking a rock between your comp's feet thing down to a science.  I'm starting to try trick shots now.  Behind the back, off the curb, backwards without looking, etc.  Did you know people here water their dirt?  I thought it was weird at first.  I was like, "What are you watering?  It's literally so barren here that not even weeds grow."  After a couple of weeks though, I realized they do it to make the dirt more compact.  That way dust doesn't fly up, especially when motos are driving by.  Anyways, no one came to church today, so that was kinda inconvenient.  Otherwise church was pretty normal.  Almuerzo (lunch) with a member today was good.  It was with the ice cream lady, so that's cool.  We contacted a bit and then went to la capilla to meet with Ruth.  Alejandro accompanied us.  He's cool, so I gave him one of my ties.  We basically just talked with Ruth about repentance for an hour.  It went well though.  While we were teaching, the church in Colegio Manuel Gonzalez Prada was having their reunion.  Their prayers are pretty interesting.  They have their own made up language for those.  It kind of sounds like one of those Hans from Night at the Museum decided to become a lead singer for a heavy metal band.  Then he was yelling into that mic, I would have thought they were devil worshipers if I didn't know it was a church school.  Then at the end of his prayer he yelled, "¡Wow! ¡Wow! ¡Wow! ¡El espiritu santo me esta golpeando! (The holy spirit is hitting me!)"  That was super funny.  After that, we went to go and teach a lesson to Patrick.  It was kinda chaotic because kids get distracted easily.  Then we did a noche de hogar with the familia Salinas.  Huaycan 1 was supposed to go too, but they were 45 minutes late.  So in that time we were just talking to Nicol because they kept telling us 5 more minutes.  The lesson went really well.  I regret not visiting that family more because they're super cool.  Welp, today was judgement day.  President received revelation that I am to go to Amaledo in Vitarte to open the area with Elder Maita.  There were Hermanas there until now, which is kinda odd.  It must have gotten a little more sketchy then or something.

Last hike up the mountain by my house this morning to say goodbye to my city.

 

 Out the front of my house. And that fog is normal in the winter, but strange now that it's summer.
 

 The world's best flower pot.

 

A Peruvian street dog. They're ugly little suckers.

Week 17 in Huaycan (Last Week in Huaycan?)

Hey guys what's up? I've been in Huaycan for 3 cambios (transfers) now, so it's almost guaranteed that I'm going to leave in a week from now. But I have the best joke for you that only like 2 of you will understand. ¿Que dijo Bruce Lee mientras estaba jugando futbol? ¡Wacha! Jajaja.
(What did Bruce Lee say while he was playing soccer? Wacha! Hahaha)  I laughed really good when I made that one up.
I want to take this opportunity to tell you all about a woman named Olga. We had just come back from a 7 am cita a couple days ago and were about to start our studies when we got a call from Doris, who is an old investigator that couldn't get baptized because she isn't married and her husband isn't interested in doing so. She told us that her mom was super sick and needed a blessing. I was like, well we're pretty busy today, but we can pass by around 6. Is that ok? She was like, no. I need you guys right now. We had to find a varon (male) to go with us though because there was only women there. When we arrived at their house though, they weren't there. So I called her and it turns out that they went to the hospital. I was like shoot. It's actually serious. We went to the hospital, but couldn't really do much because she was in the ER. So we left and went back later in the day. When we got there, we discovered that she was in a coma. Olga is kinda older for a Peruvian, about 75. I had the opportunity to give her a blessing of health. I was talking to the family after and asked when she went into the coma. When they told us, it occurred to me: They didn't call an family first. Or their neighbors. Or even an ambulance. They called us. Is your guys' faith strong like that where you would call us first? It was a really humbling experience for me. The next day while I was on intercambios (exchanges), I called my area to see how Olga was doing. They told me that she had passed away that morning. I felt pretty sad about it, but not guilty. I know that I am a worthy priesthood holder and that I gave the blessing according to promptings from the Holy Ghost. Looking back, judging from what I said in the blessing, I knew that she was going to pass away. I'm glad that I am living worthily, other wise I might be feeling really guilty right now. What if I was unworthy and the spirit had wanted her to live? I'd have to live with that weighing on me for the rest of my life. But fortunately, that's not what happened. I didn't know when I got up that morning that these things would happen. We never do. So I would ask of you that if there's something in your life that needs to be changed, do it. Because you never know when God is going to call on you to do something and you must be worthy to respond to his call when it comes. Please do all you can to be worthy of the priesthood and to live your life in manner that is pleasing to God. With that, have a good week!

-Elder White

Monday
My day started out as a list of inconveniences.  I tried changing bills into monedas but the guy gave me 100 de un sol and 500 de 50 centimos.  I have no use for those.  They just made my bag weigh a whole lot.  After internet, we went to Chaclacayo to pick up a movie.  Except the zone leaders forgot to bring it to the capilla with them.  So we had to go with them back to their house, which is almost in Chosica, to go and get the movie.  All in all, I think it took more time to get the movie then it took to watch it..  Almost the entire zone came to watch it with us.  We had a key break and get stuck in the clerk's door.  Long story short, we got the broken key out eventually, but we watched it on the TV instead of the projector.  We watched Brave (o Valiente, se Pongo).  Spanish with an Scottish accent sounds funny, just FYI.  After the movie, I was like, "Anyone need change?" Hermana Evans and Hermana Houghton were like, "Yeah, we do, why not?"  So I gave them 200 soles worth of 20 centimos.  It was a win-win situation.  It turned into a good day for coin collecting.  I had to buy that gross McDonald's cheese for my grilled cheese because they were out of the good kind.  We went way up into la 1 tonight and visited Jordy, Dina's son.  Elder Gonzalez was telling me that he almost cast out a devil once.  Like, an actual demon that was inside a woman.  But when the bishop and stake president asked her if she wanted it cast out, she said no and then turned around to look at the missionaries.  She gave them what can only be described as a demonic smile and said, "I like him."  Crazy stuff man.

Tuesday
I had a dream last night.  We were in a crazy gym class.  We were outside with yarn tied around our waists and the teacher was on a balcony thingy.  He was shouting commands at us such as where to sprint or what exercise to do.  When it was over, he came down and asked us, "Do you guys know how to knit?"  I looked behind me and we had knit a giant quilt.  Shoot man, that was kinda cool.  We had a cita with Ruth this morning.  We  got Jhon Diego to come along too.  It was a 7 AM cita.  We were about to leave the church, but then she showed up 45 minutes late.  The lesson went really well.  She's progressing really fast.  We got back were about to do our studies when Doris Salinas, and old investigator, called us.  She told us that her mom was super sick and needed a blessing or something ASAP.  I told her we were busy today, but could stop by at 6:00.  She told me it couldn't wait and needed us right then and there.  So I called Jhon Diego and got him to go with us.  He's a good sport.  When we got there, no one was home.  So I called and she told me that they were in the hospital now.  I was like, "Oh shoot.  It's serious."  So we went to the hospital.  We hung out a bit there, but we couldn't really do much so we left.  But we went back later.  She was in a coma and had been since about 10 AM.  I was listening to the story when I realized something: we were the first people they called.  That made me get thinking real good.  They didn't call the ambulance or their relatives.  They called us. They didn't get baptized because their husbands didn't want to get married.  But look at how strong their faith is!  This whole thing was really humbling for me.  I had the opportunity to give this frail 75 year old woman a blessing.  It was hard because I didn't know what to say.  I felt like I possibly held her life in my hands.  In the morning we went to got visit Jordy.  He had to go, but we talked his dad and his family into a  a cita en la capilla that night with Jaime.  When we showed up for the cita that night with Jaime, he wasn't there but the family was.  They had walked all the way there from their house, which is super far from there.  They don't have money for a a combi.  Dina and Anibal have already been baptized, but we put a date on 3 of their 6 kids: Mitchell, Josue y Julio.  Jordy wasn't 100% positive and their other 2 are too young. To finish the night off, we went and visited the son of a contact I made named Owaldo.  He's going through some serious crap.  He's been having problems with Seizures for the last 15 years and a lot of his family doesn't talk to him.  He wanted to kill himself.  We talked to him and put a date on him as well.  4 new investigators today after having none for a while.  ¡Milagros!

Wednesday
Olga, the old lady from yesterday, passed away today.  I'm not quite sure what to think about it.  Something told me that she was going to die.  Looking back at a lot of the wording from the blessing makes more sense now.  I'm not going to let myself feel like I did something wrong because I was worthy and did what I could.  It was never in my hands; it was in God's.  Elder Gonzalez and Elder Silva went to go share a message with the family because I'm on intercambios right now with Elder Vilca in Chacoacayo.  We had a district counsel this morning.  I'm always talking about my sandwiches and how awesome it is, so the Hermanas had me bring it so they could make grilled cheese.  Hermana Evans told me, "I thought you were exaggerating about it, but now I'm gonna have to seriously consider buying one."  We're going to make it a tradition for the rest of the one more meeting we'll have.  I was in charge of the capacitacion hoy (training today), so I decided to have the parable of the bulldozer.  It went well, but was kinda short.  I went with Elder Gonzalez to finish taking out money and then we did the intercambios.  Elder Vilca works with a lot of energy.  He's really animated when he contacts.  That's not really my style, but it works for him.  We contacted almost the whole day.  The mosquitoes here will eat you alive if you're not careful.  I didn't have too much success contacting, probably because no one wanted to talk to the Gringo fighting an invisible ninja.  The worst was when I went up to try and contact someone and a bug would fly in my ear or up my nose.  That's probably Satan's best tactic to hinder missionary work.  We were contacting in the park at night and stumbled upon a group of gringas.  I was kinda reluctant to contact them, but Elder Vilca made me.  Turns out that they're down here for Peace Corps training.  It was kind of an awkward contact.  Mostly  because I had never contacted in English and because you can't talk to Americans like you do Peruvians.  But honestly because it was a group of women about my age.  They weren't interested in coming to church.  We did a pre entrevista (pre interview) for a family that is going to get baptized on Saturday.  They're pretty cool.  On the way home, we were about to take a combi, but then saw a police check point checking everyone's ID.  So we had to walk around that since I still don't have mine.  It's fun being (almost) a fugitive.

Thursday
I took a hot shower this morning.  Nothing else that happened today matters.  Hey, Bromita bromita.  But seriously though, it was really nice.  I haven't had a hot shower since July.  Usually I take a while because it takes me a couple minutes to build up the courage to take a cold shower.  Then I take a quick one.  that wasn't why I took a while today though.  We were going to go do a service, but then Ñaña called and told us it was canceled.  Then right after that Elder Silva called and told us that we were going to end intercambios at 4:30 instead of tomorrow.  No one knows why we did, only him.  He's kinda hard to work with sometimes because he doesn't communicate well.  I enjoyed the intercambio though.  I'm gonna be honest.  It was a nice break from Elder Caro.  Before we ended intercambios, we worked a bit of course.  It was mainly just walking.  Their area is huge.  Even without hills, it was exhausting.  We couldn't really teach the first cita because we didn't have a varón (male) and she didn't want to come outside to talk to us. The next guy that we walked all the way to wasn't even home, so that was frustrating.  After that, we met at the capilla for his baptismal interviews.  I met up with my companion and we came back to our area.  That was the most crowded combi I've ever been on, and I was in the back with 2 big bags too when I had to get off.  So that was a party.  We had to wait a bit to get back into our room because Elder Gonzalez forgot the keys.  Then we had to go back to la entrada (entry) to pick up my agenda. From there, we went to go visit the Salinas family.  We found Nicol outside.  She told us that the adults were inside having a family meeting.  From what I heard, it was a pretty contentious family meeting.  But we talked to Nicol for a while.  Apparently Olga seemed fine the day before, so it was kind of a shocker when it all went down.  But hopefully this will help reactivate Nicol and encourage the rest of the family to grow closer to Christ.  On a side note, I'm probably gonna get hit by a car here eventually.  I've grown reckless when crossing the street.  The other pedestrians and their style of traffic here are bad influences on me.  Sometimes I don't even look both ways until I'm already in the street.  It's like playing Frogger, but in person.  I wonder if this habit will stick when I get back home.  I laugh some times when I think about what a stereotypical American would think if he was here and had to use the transportation and stuff.

Friday
Good night, sleep tight, don't let the bed bugs bite.  Because Pariachi had a huge infestation of bed bugs in the mattresses.  The pictures are nasty.  I check my mattress though and I'm ok.  On a similar but slightly unrelated note, I've had a bug bite in the arch of my right foot for the last couple of days that's been driving me crazy.  We went to the capilla in Chaclauayo this morning.  It was us, Elders Yañez and Hyde, the zone leaders and the Hermanas.  They told us there was an activity at the church put on by a local school and it would be a great opportunity to contact.  Turns out that it was a school talent show/dance thingy.  It's kinda hard to contact that.  So we decided to just set a table up at the entrance and hand out fliers like the testigos (witnesses) do.  Pariachi left early to go and get new mattresses.  I would have been pretty bored if I didn't have the Hermanas to talk to.  Their cultural dances here actually look pretty cool most of the time. But the cultural music here is strait AIDS.  It has the strangest ladies yelping/yelling/fake laughing in it sometimes.  And sometimes the dancers do the same thing while they're dancing.  The first time I heard it I was super confused.  But now I laugh most of the time when I hear it.  But yeah, we came back and worked like normal after that.  We spent the majority of the day contacting.  We didn't really have any planned citas that worked out.  We did have a cita while we were contacting thought with a woman we found named Estefani.  Everything went really well with it until the very end.  She didn't want to pray.  We don't know why and she didn't know why either.  We spent like 15 minutes trying to convince her to do it until she compromised to repeat the words of my companion while he prayed.  Her grandma only spoke broken Spanish because she speaks Quechua.  You've heard Spanish with a gringo accent, now get ready for Castellano with a Quechua accent.  The biggest thing I noticed was the "i" has the "ee" sound.  We went to la capilla for a cita with Owaldo, but he didn't come.  So instead we explored Huaycan 1's area while contacting.  We had another ward movie night tonight.  We didn't have a movie with us, so we sent the other Elders to la quince to buy Incredibles 2.  The ward movie night started slow, but ended in success.  A quick update on the toilet paper situation:  I am now half way through my roll.  Elder Caro on the other hand, has already gone through 6 or 7 rolls since the last time I updated you.

Saturday
Every morning when he showers, Elder Gonzalez listens to 1 or 2 covers of Be Still My Soul and 3 covers of Be Thou My Vision, but one of them twice.  So it's the same 5 songs everyday.  And he turns it up super loud, so I'm obliged to listen.  What's with Latinos and listening to the same songs over and over?  No tengo ninguna ( I have no) idea.  We had a cita with Ruth today.  She is definitely an escagido (scared).  We had the lesson on the Word of Wisdom, which is a lesson that applies to her.  She took it well though.  She always reads what we give her, so that's awesome.  I love to teach her.   You can see a literal change in her countenance now.  When we met her, she was pretty closed off and unhappy.  But now she's a happier person in general and is a lot more open with us.  It's amazing for me to see how the gospel is blessing her life.  After that cita, we decided to go and stop by la familia Salinas.  That lesson got real awkward real fast.  We were teaching the Plan of Salvation and that was going well, but Nicol was there and I somehow didn't recognize her.  I don't know how.  But yeah, that was awkward.  We tried stopping by a couple of contacts later, but they either weren't home or weren't interested in talking to us.  While I was gone on intercambios, Elder Gonzalez  and Elder Silva made a contact, taught her a lesson and put a feacha on her.  We brought Cristopher with us on the cita.  Rosalinda is 17 years old and is pretty open to the gospel, so that's pretty cool.  Cristopher made sure not to fall asleep for this one.  I've never seen him participate in a lesson that much before, including when we teach him.  After that, we went and stopped by Owaldo's house.  There's nothing much really that's new with him.  It really is sad to see a man in a circumstance like that.  It's kinda funny that all the milagros have happened at the end of this transfer.  I mean, it's nice they're happening, but I won't be in the area for any of the baptisms, which is kinda sad.  Oh well though I guess.  The summer here is really brutal sometimes.  It wasn't too bad today though.  There's days though where after I climb a hill I could shake my head and have sweat fly everywhere like I had just gotten out of a pool.  My right foot sweats a lot.  Sometimes I can fell the soggy squish when I step.  When I take my shoe off at night, the bottom of my foot is all wrinkled like fingers are when you've been in the pool for a while.

My foot on a slow day without a whole lot of walking.

Sunday
I had a dream last night that we went to the moon for our district meeting.  We got up there and I was like, "How in the world did the church build a capilla up here?  Why did they send us here for the meeting?  Wow, their budget must have really increased."  There were a couple of houses up there somehow too.  If you think about it, the moon looks a lot like Huaycán, but the rocks are different colors.  At the end of the dream, there was a big earthquake that broke part of the capilla.  Most of the dream though, I was concerned a lot with taking a good picture of myself with the Earth in the background.  Anyways, we tried going out again this morning to get people to bring them to church with us.  It didn't work out though.  It never does for some reason.  But Ruth came again!  She's super cool.  We had 10 conersos recientes (recent converts) come to church too!  Good stuff.  Jimmy came again too.  We tried passing by his house during the week, but was drunk/hungover when we did.  I'd call it a successful Sunday.  In 3rd hour, the main thing the Elders did was plan out their activity of cooking arroz con pollo (chicken rice).  That was mildly torturous to listen to since my companion and I were fasting.  I don't know why,  but I feel like it's almost easier to fast in the mission field than at home. Granted that the thirst does get ya sometimes.  But I guess that that just shows you the hand of the  Lord in our work.  Jesus is a great friend to have, in case you didn't know.  There were English songs on in all the combis today.  Not gonna lie, I kinda enjoyed it.  Another One Bites the Dust might be one of the greatest songs of all time.  But I'm probably biased, considering my area.  We ate lunch with a member family, just like we do every Sunday.  After that though, we had another lesson on with Ruth on the Law of Chasity.  She brought her sister named Ninosaka with her too, who's a recent convert.  It was kinda weird to teach that lesson to two girls my age, but they handled it well.  We had a meeting with the bishop today too to discuss the needs of the ward with him a bit.  Then at night we had to go to Chaclacayo to meet with the zone leaders about the borders of the areas.  There are two things of mine that I get very defensive of if you try to take: my tequeños (Peruvian cheese sticks) and my area.  Nothing changed too much though.  They did, however, make us go track down an internet that was 15 minutes away so that we could print maps of the areas off.  That was mildly inconvenient.

Us bored waiting for lunch yesterday when I realized I hadn't taken any pictures this week:

 

 Elder Lainez and I kept taking pictures of each other.

Week 16 in Huaycan (A Better Week!)

My Spanish is good enough at this point. But you guys need to learn Spanish too now. So I wrote the first part of my email in Spanish.

Que hayamos tenido mas éxito esta semana por lo general. Ayer en la capilla fue bien chevere. 8 conversos recientes de mi área fueron. Usualmente son 3 o 4. Y 2 antiguos investigadores fueron también. Y un investigadora! Fue una fiesta en la capilla! Estaba tan animado! Obtuvimos una investigadora esta semana que se llama Ruth. Ella tenia un poquito de un problema con drogas, pero esta bien ahora y no ha tomado drogas en como 3 semanas creo. Hubo otro milagro esta semana. El P day pasado, Elder Gonzalez perdió su usb con todos sus fotos de la misión. Buscamos mucho para encontrarlo, pero no sucedió. Decidimos hacer una oración personal cada uno para recibir apoya para encontrarlo. Después el me dijo, pues, no me importa mucho mas y no se porque. Y todo el día fue como normal. Mientras estábamos contactando, recibimos un llamado de la lavandería para decirnos que ella encontró la usb. No dijimos nada a ella sobre eso. Y la usb es muy chiquito. Realmente hay milagros pasando en la misión! Elder Gonzalez y yo portarnos bien, así eso es bacan. No se como escribir tildes aqui, asi perdóneme por favor por eso jajaja.

(Google Translation:  I think we've had more success this week usually. Yesterday in the chapel was very cool. 8 recent converts from my area were there. It's usually 3 or 4. And 2 former investigators were also. And an investigator! It was a party in the chapel! I was so excited! We got an investigator this week called Ruth. She had a little bit of a drug problem, but she's fine now and hasn't taken drugs in about three weeks I think. There was another miracle this week. Last P day, Elder Gonzalez lost his USB with all his mission photos. We looked hard to find it, but it didn't happen. We decided to do a personal prayer each one to receive support to find it. Then he told me, well, I don't care much more and I don't know why. And the whole day was like normal. While we were contacting, we received a call from the laundress to tell us that she found the USB. We didn't say anything to her about that. And the USB is very small. There are really miracles going on in the in the mission! Elder Gonzalez and I behave well, so that's bacon. I do not know how to write tildes here, so please forgive me for that.  lol)

Halloween was interesting. There was an anti Halloween parade that came marching along while we were contacting. There were little kids that ran out handing fliers that said you're a satanist if you celebrate it. There were a bunch of kids actually that dressed up. More than I thought. They actually went trick or treating too. I don't know how much success they had since the people here are super poor. But they had fun and that's all that matters. Have a good week y'all!

-Elder White

Monday
I can describe how I'm feeling right now with a Napoleon Dynamite quote:  "But my lips hurt real bad!"  These canker sores are killing me.  Elder Caro has already used his rationed roll of toilet paper, so he had to buy more today.  We all have only used the bathroom like 5-8 times since then, so we still have almost a whole roll each.  Elder Gonzalez had to sit him down and show him how to use toilet paper properly.  It is was mind blowing actually.  You really only need 2 squares to do the job.  Life changing.  Elder Gonzalez got a haircut after internet.  So I took Elder Lainez shopping with me.  There's a couple of shops that sell ties for 3 soles a piece, so that's a super great deal.  After that, we went and got burgers.  Then we went and just chilled in our room for the rest of the day until it was time to work again.  Somehow Elder Gonzalez got his friend from Campay (his last area) to come and accompany us on our citas tonight.  His name was Alejandro.  Our cita with Maria Ester fell, so we walked all the way from the bottom of our area (almost) to Davis (the top).  Even though he's 20, it was pretty hard for a guy that probably hasn't climbed a mountain before.  I don't know what to think about him anymore, meaning Davis.  He says he wants to be baptized, but he's not showing signs of progression.  I don't know what to think of anyone anymore actually.  Even the dogs.  They've been catching me off guard recently and have gotten me to jump a couple of times.

Tuesday
We got up at 5:30 this morning to go to the multi zone meeting.  It was actually a really cool meeting.  There were a lot of really cool trainings and I got a lot out of it.  There was this one guy that came and did an in depth presentation of the plan of salvation, so that was super cool.  I was talking to Elder Lopez and he had to leave his area for an emergency transfer.  When he was cleaning out his room, he found an extra plaque with my name on it that he gave to me.  So now I have two plaques that say Elder White.  Cool.  I was talking to some of the other Elders and I found out that Elder Castillo got sent home.  Part of it was bad behavior, but he didn't have a testimony I guess and just really didn't want to be here.  It's kinda sad.  The meeting got out super late and we didn't even get back home until about 7.  We had an appointment with a girl named Ruth.  We contacted her last week and she actually went to church.  I didn't think anything of it though because she didn't seem interested about it and she just goes with her sister sometimes.  But the cita went well though.  She accepted a baptismal date.  She does seem to have a problem recognizing the spirit sometimes.  She's also addicted to coke and weed.  But God will help us through it.

Wednesday
A couple of years ago, our mission was in apostasy, meaning the missionaries broke a lot of rules and didn't work extremely hard.  President Amato fixed that up though.  It's kinda interesting that it's a temptation to be lazy as a missionary.  I mean, we leave home for 2 years to work our butts off, and the biggest temptation is to not work.  I'm not lazy though, let's get that out of the way right now.  Before the mission, I was always so confused when I heard about a lazy missionary.  But now I understand, not that it's ok, but how tempting it is.  I hope to be able to say with confidence in 20 or so months that I worked my hardest every day.  And if the people didn't get baptized, it's their own fault because I was right there all along.  Nothing overly interesting happened while we were contacting this morning.  I spent almost $3 on a tube of chapstick.  My lips were just that bad.  It is garbage chapstick though because I have to apply it every 20 minutes.  In other news, Elder Caro has wasted yet another roll  of toilet paper.  We had a cita with Maria Ester and it went well.  We tried passing by the Peñas, but they weren't home.  They're kinda frustrating me right now.  Today was Halloween.  There was a lot of papel picado (translation: chopped paper--confetti maybe).  There was actually a church that had an anti Halloween march.

 It was weird, yet funny because there were kids in it and they gave us a felleto (pamphlet) with a very extreme view on the holiday.  Despite their best efforts, it was still celebrated.  Kids still dressed up and went knocking saying, "Dulce o truco."   Some kids said that to me.  Jokes on everyone else but them because I actually had candy to give them.  I don't know how well everyone did trick or treating because some people can barely rub 2 centimos together.  We went to go see Alejandro open his call tonight.  I was so excited that I literally ran down the mountain. 

He got called to serve in Guatemala Sur! (Guatemala South).  He also bore his testimony.

I'm so excited for him!  He'll be a great missionary.  We had correlations after.  I mostly just talked with a guy from Lomas named Rusio.  He needs a friend.  He's kinda older.  His faith amazes me though.  It's crazy how much I've grown to love the people here.

Thursday
Today is the start of no-shave November.  Hard core low key bummed that I can't do it this year.  Another miracle of prayer: on Monday, Elder Gonzalez couldn't find his SD card with all of his mission pictures saved on it.  We looked for a while, but found nothing.  So we each said a personal prayer.  After his prayer, I don't think he even bothered looking again.  He was just kinda like, "Oh well.  I don't care a whole lot anymore for some reason."  So we didn't look for it anymore.  Then yesterday while we were out, we got a call from Huaycan 1.  Our laundry lady found it.  It's a tiny little card and we didn't even tell her to look for it.  Truly a miracle.  We had interviews with President today.  He was running behind, so that throws things off a bit.  Here's basically how the interview went: How ya doin'?  I was pretty frustrated a couple of days ago, but I'm fine now.  How's the fam?  They're doing good.  Cool beans.  Any questions?  Nope.  You're a good missionary.  See you next transfer.  Basically that.  The assistants were there for some reason.  We went to take out money, but my card was being weird so I'll have to do it tomorrow or something.  A couple drops of rain fell today, so that was cool.  We had a pretty solid day of contacting today.  We were about to head in, but we decided to make a couple  more contacts.  This one lady wasn't interested, so we asked her if she knew anyone that needed Jesus.  She told us that the father across the street is in the ICU.  I hadn't walked 20 yards when I found Jaime.  I asked him how he was and he told me, "Awful.  My dad's in the hospital and he'll probably die."  Really sad circumstance.  But it was a miracle we found him and were able to teach him.

Friday
Yesterday was Dia de los muertos, so everyone was in the cemetery.  Today was Dia de los vivos, so there were a few more people than normal out today celebrating that they're not dead I guess.  We had a lesson with Ruth en la capilla this morning.  She read the folleto, which is good, but she didn't remember anything she read nor what we taught last time.  So that's mildly concerning.  We tried finding an ATM for me to take out money, but that didn't workout.  We contacted pretty much the rest of the day.  I don't think we had a whole lot of success with it.  Maybe a couple guys at the end of the day were good.  We went to the church to do an interview for Lomas 1.  After that, we went contacting with Alejandro.  I was talking to a dude and he asked me where I was from.  So I said, "Where do you think?"  He said, "Spain?  Italy? Ecuador?" Psych sucka!  I'm a Gringo!  When I told him he said, "Seriously?  But you have a perfect accent."  *In that one clone's voice.*  "Score one for the Republic."  So that boosted my confidence.  We also found this one lady that Elder Yañez and I contacted when I had just gotten here.  She told us she had been a member for 12 years, but stopped going to church about a year ago when she moved here because she didn't know where the church was.  We told her, but Elder Yañez and I never saw her again so we were just kinda like oh well I guess.  But tonight when we found her again she told us that she was actually attending the 9:00 church with Los Lomas.  It was nice to find out she's going to church again.

Saturday
Yeah, so Jaime's father passed away last night.  That made my stomach sink when we found out.  His dad wasn't that old.  I don't know what I would do if my dad passed away.  Any who, we had a cita with Maria Ester this morning.  She didn't read though, so we couldn't really teach her.  We tried visiting Dina.  We didn't have a cita, but we were talking to them and they seem cool.  After lunch, we had a couple citas planned.  I decided we should go see if Cristopher could come.  He's been cold recently.  When we got there, he told us about a dream he had last night.  Elder Gonzalez and I were in it.  Basically I (or we) just called him out on it.  We told him he was wasting our time when he canceled citas or accompanying us and burned him for not going to church and stuff.  Pretty much what we wanted to tell him but didn't for some reason.  I know that God talks to us in dreams.  Milagros my boys.  We took him to visit Carlitos.  We contacted a bit and then took him to visit Braulio.  That meeting went well, but Carlitos has heard a lot of anti doctrine, so that one was interesting.  Another dog bit my pants today.  Someday I'm actually going to drop kick one of them when their owners aren't there watching.  We stumbled upon the funeral of Jamie's dad while were contacting so we hung out there for a few minutes.

Sunday
I don't know if you've ever tried making stove top jello for your first time which was in a 3rd world country without a kitchen, but I did today and it turned out pretty good.  We tried passing by Maria Ester's before church, but it didn't work out.  Church was actually really good today!  Ruth came again!  And there were 8 recent converts from our area there!  Usually there's only like 3-4 RC's.  So that was great.  We ate lunch with Michael and Wendy today.  Before I get too ahead of myself though, guess who else came to church?  Jimmy and Elio! ¡Hay milagros en la capilla!  We had another lesson with Ruth today and it went well.  She's starting to recognize the spirit, so that's awesome.  Contacting today was rough though.   There were a ton of drunks, even for a Sunday.  And the people that were out and about had absolutely 0 interest in talking to us.  So contacting today wasn't all that fun.  We had another lesson tonight with a lady named Naomi that was really receptive.  We'll definitely go back to visit her again later.  Sometimes while we're out contacting, people will ask us "¿De que iglesia son? ¿Testigos de Jehova?"  Oh, come on.  We're a whole lot more iconic than they are.  It's like giving someone Reese's Puffs and then having them ask, "Are these Coco Puffs?" while they're still in the box.  I've got a name tag too.  And I taste better.  I hate it when people misidentify my religion.  I don't know what happened to Magaly.  She just stopped going to church I guess.  I don't know if I want to go back to her house because it's hard to get there and they don't show up for citas.

 What happens when you forget to sweep your porch for a couple days.

 

The only butterfly I have seen here.