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.