Week 5 in Alameda (Merry Christmas!)

Merry Christmas everyone! This week was pretty cool. It flew by super fast. On Saturday we had another baptism. Jherson is a pretty cool dude. It's kind of a blessing for people like him if you ask me. Since the church lost his registers and there's no pictures or anything, he had the opportunity to have the missionaries come to his house and teach and he was able to be baptized again. He needed it anyways since he was inactive too. I consider that a huge blessing. The service was really well. We continue to have success here in Alameda. I seriously love this ward and couldn't be happier than I am right now. Elder Mayta and I continue to get along pretty well. This week we went Christmas caroling as a zone a couple times in plaza vitarte and set up an info table sorta thing. I feel like that was a really great way to help share the gospel. I really enjoyed that activity. I did intercambios with Elder Dantas this past week too. We had a fun night of contacting in his area. The ccm came to our zone for an attack, so that was cool. I always really enjoy it when they do that. But yeah, other than that, not a whole lot else went down this week. It does stand out to me though how God has a way of having people in the right place at the right time. Have yourself a happy holidays!

-Elder White

Monday
Internet is always the fasted 2 hours of the week.  I got an email from William, so that was a pleasant little surprise.  He was a good friend for a long time, but then we kinda stopped hanging out after I moved.  I don't know why.  I regret letting that happen though.  I wonder what Tye Leavitt is up to nowadays.  Kinda of a similar circumstance there.  I emailed a couple of friends that are on missions and they seem to be dong well, so that's good.  Then we went to Plaza Vitarte to call home and arrange the Skype call.  My mom sent me her phone number in the email and I was kinda like, "C'mon.  Of course I remember your number."  But when I sat down, I forgot what it was for a minute or two.  That was the fastest 5 minutes ever.  It was nice though, a little awkward because I didn't know what to say.  I got pretty trunky after that.  On the way home, we stopped by Ceres, which is La Quince, but on 3 or 4 steroids.  I found this super cool soccer jersey shop.  I was looking at the World Cup ones and the dude was like, "We've got one from all those countries.  Where are your from?"  "Uh, the US."  We both kinda just sat there awkwardly for a minute then I just said, "Yeah....we stunk this year."  I'll go back there when I have money.  During lunch we went to a restaurant.  I asked for a mestrito, which is 1/8 of a pollo chaufa and fries.  But then the lady was like, "We're out of the 1/8 pollo.  We've only got 1/4 pollo.  You can upgrade to the mostro with 1/4 pollo for only 2 soles more though."  Many, I wasn't about to pay extra.  So I got something else.  Afterwards it occurred to me: You've got 1/4 pollos but not 1/8?  Something's not right here.  We came back to the room and found the dude drilled the 2 holes for our door.  Now if there's ever a bear attack in our room, we can successfully lock him in our bathroom.  We've even got the fake door handle to fool him.  I thought I was running low on my allowance, but I found 50 soles of it tucked away.  Merry Christmas Elder White.  I was thinking, "Shoot man, I swear I didn't buy that many cookies."  There's these really good jumbo cookies that this one bakery sells for 5/.70 whiles everyone else sells them for more than twice as much.  In the US it was, "Is this worth 3 pizzas?"  But here it's, "Is this worth 5 cookies?"  Revolutionary.  We went to go visit la familia Piña.  But the dad didn't accept fecha, so I just left a chapter in the good 'ole LDM for him to read since he hadn't read it before.  His wife and daughter are super good members but he's "Catholic".  We passed for the Astuhuaman's, but only Angie was there.  We got talking and put a fecha for 12 Enero (January).  We'll see if she sticks to it though.

Tuesday
Last night when we were talking to Angie, a 10 or so year old girl came up to their shop.  She handed Angie a 5/20 and Angie gave her a bottle of wine.  That was really surprising and odd.  We were like, "Chica.....What is you doing?  Why?"  She said with just a hint of sass, "Porque quiero (Because I want to)," and walked off.  Long story short, we need to review the word of wisdom with the Astuhuaman's.  This morning we had a consejo de distrito.  It was pretty boring.  We had a cita with Jherson today and we brought a friend too.  We asked him if he was excited for his baptism on Saturday.  He told us he was having some second thoughts and didn't feel ready for this week, maybe next week he said.  So we talked with him and did the pre-entrevista with him.  At the end we were like, "See man?  You're cool beans!  You're ready."  He responded, "Oh shoot, you're right."  Leave my investigators alone Satan.  Why don't you just go hide under that rock over there.  Jherson had had a lot of chores to do, but he stopped to listen to us.  So we helped him after.  One of his chores was to peel the potatoes.  The peeler was weird thought in the way that I had to use it lefty to avoid cutting towards my body.  Can anybody tell me why I was so much faster than everyone else?  All they eat are potatoes.  So  why did a gringo leave them in the dust?  Maybe I'm just a super human potato peeler.  My English class had a really good turnout.  We arranged a cita with a nonmember that came.  Afterwards we had a correlacion.  We had a rep from almost every auxiliary and it was super effective.  I seriously love this ward.  Question of the day:  Why is it so fetching hot here all the time?  Follow up question of the day:  And why does everyone keep telling me this is mild and that January and February are worse?  If you don't hear from me someday, it's probably because I got heatstroke and died.  I miss the cold.  Here's something cool:  There is power in Christ's name and in his image as well.  We'll use the dogs as an example.  When the dogs are barking at us, I'll just show them a picture of Jesus.  They'll always stop barking and stop to examine my tarjeta.  Then they'll almost always walk away without doing anything else.  Sometimes they'll take a step back and get even more aggressive, but that just means that that dog has a devil.  But yeah, that's some pretty cool stuff.

Wednesday
Today was pretty long.  Almost everything fell today.  Our citas weren't home.  We were supposed to have Jherson's entrevista hoy en la capilla, pero nunc vino (have Jherson's interview today in the chapel but he never came).  He doesn't have a cell phone or anything, so we couldn't communicate really.  So it got to be kinda frustrating today. We passed by Jherson's house later and said, "Dude, what happened?"  Apparently he was out Christmas shopping longer than he'd thought.  My man got so concerned about Jesus that he accidentally forgot about Jesus.  We had tried taking our laundry to the Ñaña earlier, but she wasn't home.  We figured it was ok and that we could bring it later since the ward NDH was at her house.  Long story short, that almost fell too, but instead we just started 40 minutes late.  I was in charge of the lesson.  I was wanting to share another story from the Bible, but then I was like, "Nah.  These people don't know the Book of Mormon well enough."  So I paralleled Nephi getting the brass plates to a guide of how to obey the commandments.  It was an ok lesson, nothing special.  Let's talk Christmas.  The nativity scenes are fairly popular here.  There are somethings off about them though.  The only way I could put it is that they're more catholic than normal.  That and for some reason they use an adult Jesus in place of baby Jesus.  If they really want to believe that he was born a 30 year-old man, I'm not going to stop them.  It wouldn't be the weirdest belief I've found down here.  On Christmas Eve, they start cooking at noon.  At some point in the night, fireworks start.  Like, a lot of them.  And they don't slow down 'til about 1 AM.  As soon as the clock strikes midnight, everyone starts eating their big dinner.  Then after dinner, they open their presents at 1 AM or so.  Almost everyone has decorations inside their homes.  But less have lights outside their house.  The people with lights usually pop up in groups.  The park out front of Oswaldo's house is crazy.  But yeah, that's the Peruvian Navidad in a nut shell.  I got tired of people forcing their doctrine on me in contacts sometimes, so I made a couple of sticky notes to defend the restoration or show them why their doctrine is wrong and put them in my pocket bible.  I'm not looking for contention, but if they start it, I've got some verses on stand-by ready to roast them.

Thursday
How hot was it today?  I sweat through all the clothing on my back, including the top of my pants and the first part of my backpack.  It looked like I had showered with my clothes on.  Sure can't wait 'til summer.  We went to the dentist again.  While I was waiting, I was readying Jesus the Christ.  At one point it occurred to me that I had read 2 chapters.  I was like, "Wow. they sure are going ham on him today.  Taking their time too."  I looked up  too see how he was doing and the assistant lady was heating the poky thingy, or the mini Captain Hook's hook, or more commonly referred to by dentists as the "explorer".  (Because they're exploring in a what way they can inflict maximum suffering.)  That dental device is feared by everyone of all ages.  Looked like they were gonna brand my man's mouth so that the other dentists would stay away.  I didn't stop them though.  I'm not about to get branded and unintentionally start and dentist gang war when I get home and have a checkup with my dad.  We contacted for the first half of the day.  Then we were kinda just looking around for antiguo investigatores (old investigators).  We found one girl named Mafer that seems to have some good potential.  After that, we went and had a cita with Charo and Carlos to get to know them better and see if they had any references.  They're a really cool family.  They have a daughter serving in Chile too.  Pictures with them and their family:

We swung by the capilla because it was open and found Jean Franco, Angii and some other youth hanging out and dancing a bit.  So I crashed the party with my dance moves.  I didn't really dance before my mission, but I enjoy it now though. We walked with Jean Franco and Angii back to their house for our cita that we scheduled.  As we were walking past my favorite bakery I mentioned the 5/.70 cookies.  They were like, ¿En serio? Vamanos!"  We got to their house though and Mario wasn't home.  While we were waiting, Jean Franco and I started fooling around with the soccer ball, juggling and playing keep away and stuff.  I'm still not a Latino when it comes to soccer.  Turns out that Junior ran away, so that's pretty depressing.   Mario got back kinda late, so all we did really was chat a bit and get them to sign the permiso for Angii.  At one point Elva asked, "Do I need one of these if I want to get baptized too?"  We didn't want to try and put a fecha on anyone though without teaching first, por si acuso.  That made me smile though.  When I got home and changed, all my clothes were just damp.  I had to leave my pants out to dry before putting them away.

Friday
First day of summer.  This is where the fun begins.  This morning we went to the stake center and we ate breakfast as a zone.  From there the zone leaders told us each to go find a room and do our personal studies and stuff like normal and then to meet back after.  They only gave us yogurt and cookies for breakfast though, so that was kind of disappointing.  After studies, we had a district testimony meeting as a zone.  That was pretty cool.  Some of those guys have some interesting stories.  After that, we went home and ate lunch and then went and stopped by Jherson's.  He was pretty sick, but we were like, "You ready for your entrevista in a bit?"  "Uh....."  "Awesome!  Let's go!"  His entrevista took a bit longer than normal because we ran into some unexpected obstacles, but we got it all sorted out and we're all good to go for his baptism tomorrow.  After the interview, I went with Elder Dantas to his area in Los Angles for an intercambio.  He's a pretty funny dude.  We spent the whole day contacting.  Their area has a lot of strip clubs, so that was an interesting change.  At one point in the day I made a contact and made a cita to go back and visit him later.  When we went back at night, we realized it was a fake phone number and address.  We were standing their when I young man with long curly hair wearing a trench coat said Hola to us from across the street.  My initial reaction was that he was high or something.  But we went over to talk to talk him.  Turns out he wasn't high, but his name was Jeremy and he used to talk to the missionaries here a couple of months ago.  So we went to the park and sat down to teach him.  He was pretty cool.  He accepted a baptismal date and everything.  We'll see if he goes to church though.  God has a funny way of having people in the right place at the right time.  For example, when we talked to Mafer the other day, she told us that her member friend had been talking to her about going back to church just the day before.

Saturday
Elder Dantas has an alarm for 2:30 AM.  He says it's for the satisfaction of being able to wake up in the middle of the night with the comfort of knowing that you still have several more hours to sleep.  He's kinda right.  I am still having inconvenient  issues with my stomach.  Oh well.  I bought an air horn this afternoon; let the pranks begin.  Probably some of the best 3 soles I've spent.  This morning we had a coro in plaza Vitarte carols in the plaza Vitarte). 

 We stood in the sun for a bit more than 2 hours though.  It was cool though because some of the lyrics really struck a chord with me.  It seems to have been a really effective way of getting people interested and take citas too.  After doing all that as a zone, we split up for lunch.  The zone leaders were going to make us go back to our area for lunch, but Elder Mayta and I were like, "No way, Jose.  We're too busy with too little time to do that."  So we got permission to eat there.  We had a CCM attack right after.  We all went to Amauta to do that attack.  I was with Elder McClellan.

 He's coming to our mission and is pretty cool.  We had to leave a bit early though for Jherson's baptism.  Good thing too, because there wasn't a whole lot of shade there.  Between that and the choir thing, I got sunburned decently bad all over.  I got crap from everyone the rest of the day.  It's not my fault that white people are basically chameleons.  The baptism was real nice.  The ordinance went really smoothly.  It's a miracle that Jherson was feeling better.  We had Abuid, one of his friends, perform the baptism.

 

Jherson's crazy uncle was there, but he didn't do anything too weird, so that was good.  When we had correlations on Tuesday, the ward council asked us if we had our number ready for the ward talent show.  There were a ton of people there, the entire ward I'd say and more.  Mafer went with her member friend too, so that was great.  Peruvians like really loud music.  It was less of a talent show and more of a party, so we almost got out of our duet since the environment wasn't right for Silent Night.  But they made us sing anyways.  Neither of us can sing though.  But it's ok because I got like 6 cups of hot chocolate after.

Sunday
I had the weirdest dream last night.  I woke up and I was in the CCM with no recollection of how I had gotten there.  And it was in Uncle Paul's basement.  Joe was with me though, so that was cool.  I was kinda panicking though because I was out of my area and not with my companion.  So I used Joe's phone to call Elder Mayta to tell him I'd be right there.  So I went outside and I saw that Uncle Paul was adding a 3rd story onto his house and that there were several houses around that were under construction too.  And they were all made out of brick.  Uncle Paul came up to me and said, "Man, I sure wish I had used wood to build my house."  I asked him if he could give me lift back to my area.  He agreed, so I said, "Do you know where kiosko azul is?"  (That's the bus stop for la capilla.)  He didn't so I asked him if he knew Vitarte.  He said, "Of course!"  I explained it was 30 minutes away, but I think it might actually be a bit father than that.  He was like, "We'll take the river.  It's faster."  He tossed the tarp off a jet ski and then literally threw it in the river.  I got on it with him and we took a rather exciting trip down the river to my area, all while I still had Joe's phone in my hand.  So yeah, that's that.  Church was pretty nice this morning.  Jherson got confirmed, we sang some hymns, and the same piano boy as last time passed out again as soon as the meeting ended.  He's probably ok though.  I guess this is the 3rd time it's happened.  We had a consejo de barrio to plan an activity for New Years.  For lunch we ate with Charo y Carlos.  They served everyone else aji de gallina, but they gave me bistek and french fries.  How awesome is that?  Then we went out and I got some good contacting in.  Then I got permission from my boy Elder Van Tassell to take something for my stomach.  From there, we all went to Plaza Vitarte to do another zone choir and sing for a couple of hours.

I enjoy these activities.  I fell like I'm just now beginning to grasp the significance of everything.  But anyways, Alfredo and Celia are out of town for the holidays, so Oswaldo's familiy (Herrera) is our temporary pension.  They had Dunkin' Doughnuts waiting for us.

I almost cried real man tears again.  Zoraima told us she'd make crepes tomorrow for dinner, which made Oswaldo rant for 5 minutes about all the cultural food they had in Venezuela and she wants crepes.  That was pretty funny.

In the ward counsel, we had all been in there for a long time and were pretty hungry. Some were more hungry than others so Oswaldo started hugging the paneton.

Ruth's baptism in Huaycan

Week 4 in Alameda

This week was pretty cool. One day a member surprised us each with a Krispy Kreme Doughnut. That might have been the highlight of my mission. Bromita bromita. We had that P day as a mission in Chosica. That was a lot of fun. Unfortunately though, Elder Mayta was one of the missionaries that got really sick from the mosquitoes. We had to go to the clinic, but he's ok now. The doctor told him that he had to work as little as possible for a few days to let his body recover, so it got kinda boring for a while jajaja. But we're all good here. We had another baptism this week with Jean Franco. His entire family is pretty cool. So now we're going to see if we can't baptize the rest of them too. But yeah man, the work is still going well here in Alameda! Have a good week!

Monday
Well, today wasn't P-day.  That's Wednesday.  The whole mission is going to get together in a park in Chosica.  It's gonna be lit.  But as for today, we did internet and then went about working as usual.  I emailed Elder Gonzalez to find out what ever happened with Ruth because he said he'd invite me to the baptism, but I never heard anything.  He was like, "Yeah man, she got baptized last Saturday.  I invited  you but you didn't come."  That was kinda bitter-sweet because I'm super happy she got baptized, but at the same time I'm super mad because somewhere there was a zone leader that decided not to tell me.  She was the only good thing that came out of Huaycan last transfer after all that work and I wasn't there to see it.  Otherwise nothing too exciting happened during internet.  We came back and started our weekly planning, but then got a call from the zone leaders saying that we were gonna try and take money out one more time. So we went all the way to plaza Vitarte to try again, but still nothing.  We were like, "Well, shoot man, we promised them money today.  We probably gonna die now."  So after lunch they sent us to the office.  There were problems with the cards so we just picked it up directly from the financial secretary.  The office is nice dude.  We picked up a boat load of money for us and a couple other Elders.  We got caught in traffic on the way back and missed our cita with Jherson.  We also tried to visit a contact named Ruth that came to the NDH last night, but we wrote her address down wrong.  Then we went for a cita with Jean Franco.  His family was getting ready to go to their cousin's birthday party, so we just set up a time for a entrevista (interview).  I managed to talk Angie into doing an entrevista too.  She still doesn't have a fecha (baptismal date), but we're optimistic.  I'll bring all her paperwork with me just in case.  As we were leaving, I was joking with Jean Franco about dancing at the party and I discovered that he can do the floss as well.  So we did a floss off.  He can do it pretty fast too, but there is only one master.  I can do it one hand, two hand, eyes closed, eyes open, walking forwards, walking backwards, while having a conversation, holding my breath, fast, slow or any mix of the above.  He's got my respect though.  We had started walking away when Elva called us back and gave us Aji de Gallina to take home with us from the party.

Tuesday
We paid the Guarantee last night and reviewed the contract with the owners.  It went well, but I can't help but feel like they're over complicating it a bit.  We pay them, we live here and have a few rules.  That should be it, right?  Why are you telling us about the premises of ley 37049?  And why do you want to know the name of the dude that represents the church that's going to sign the contract?  Were you wanting to add him on Facebook?  Sheesh.  We picked up the filled out contract to take with us to choir practice this morning.  As a zone, we practiced our little performance there for a couple of hours.  We came and worked like normal after that.  We had a cita with Jherson that went pretty well.  We were contacting and we ran into Roberto Guitierez.  What are the chances of that?  It was really nice to see him again and talk for a minute.  I hosted the English class again tonight.  Not as great as a turn out.  Ruth was the only one that came really.  We were teaching her a lesson after the class too.  She seemed so perfect; she wants to come Sundays, participate in the ward choir, be a member, have more peace, etc  But she was all too content with her Catholic baptism.  Shoot man.  I think she still plans on participating though.  Nothing else really went down today.  Let me tell ya something Ernie, Elder Wily has some pretty exciting family and family history.  His grandpa was a policeman in Samoa.  But all the native islanders have to wear a lava-lava on the job and he didn't like that.  So he did some family history and found out that his biological dad is actually German, so he isn't 100% Samoan.  Long story short, he translated his family's last name to English just so that he could wear pants.  Now if only Jaxon would follow his example.  Elder Wily was also telling me about how his great great grandpa was one of the first members of the church in Samoa.  The persecution of the church there by the other people got to be pretty bad. It got to the point where they were like, "If you don't deny that church we're going to kill you and your whole family."  But he wouldn't deny it.  So the next day a mob showed up with torches.  He told his family to change into white and then come to family prayer.  They were praying as their house was burning down around them.  Then a cloud came just over their house out of nowhere and the rain put the fire out.  It rains about as often there as it does here.  Needless to say, they left his family alone after that.

Wednesday
The worst thing in the world might be waking up 30 minutes before your alarm and having to go to the bathroom.  Because you're like, "it can wait," but then waste 10 minutes trying to go back to sleep.  But since you can't, you have to get up and go and loose another 10 minutes.  What are you going to do with that extra 10 minutes you have left?  It's the worst.  We left early this morning to meet up in Vitarte to go to the activity.  We found an almost empty combi that the entire zone piled into.  We saw zone La Molina in a combi next to us on the way up, so that got lit.  About 20 minutes in I had gotten like 20 bug bites.  It occurred to me that at that rate, by the end of the day I'd die from loss of blood.  I made a comment about it to Elder Shumway and he was like, "I got you bro."  So we snuck around back for a second and he smothered me in bug spray like I smother my potatoes in gravy.  That's how you know if you've got a real friend.  To start it off they gave us all a hat, so that was cool.  I was thinking that if I work all day in the sun without sunscreen and never get sunburned, I shouldn't have to worry it now especially since I had a hat.  I will pay dearly for that mistake.  We did a lot of activities, mostly with eggs.  They were fun.  It reminds me of that time in Chaclacayo when we egged each other for our P-day activity.  Good times.  The activities were kinda fun.  We had a couple of minutes, so I played volleyball, and then basketball.  I was worried to see if I could dunk still since there's no hills in Alameda.  I threw down the soccer ball I found pretty easily, but it hurt my back, which is kinda concerning.  They gave us burgers for lunch, which was great.  Some of those missionaries got a ton of bites.  Once of them looked like a kid with a peanut allergy that just finished swimming in peanut butter.  Then it was time for the zone's presentations.  Almost all of them sang.  We were last too, so everyone was kinda just like "we've already heard this song 6 times."  Sorry bro.  At least we sounded good, I hope.  I got a card from Emma, so that was a pleasant surprise.  We all got a small gift bag with American candy and a tie, so that was cool.  It was nice to be able to see all of my friends from the mission and Chaclacayo.  Elder Yañez, Hermana Houghton, Elder Droubay, Elder Morris, Elder Gonzalez, and all the rest of them too.

 The zone performance.

 

 

 Burgers with Elder Mayta

 Reunion with Elder Yañez.

All in all, it was a really solid day.  In part because I had like 10 popsicle/ice creams.  After the almost 2 hour commute back, we had just enough time to pick up la familia Astahuaman and go to the ward NDH.

Thursday
I was a fool for thinking I was stronger than that gigantic ball of burning gas in the sky that we call "the sun".  Sunburn + sweat + collared shirt = the unholy trinity.  My sunburn isn't that bad actually; I've had it worse here.  The best part about the noche de hagar lasts night was Oswaldo trying to do the floss.  That was pretty funny.  We wet to the dentist this morning and ran into the zone leaders in the waiting room.  Elder Moreno is from Argentina.  He was telling me that in some parts there the mosquitoes are the size of quarters.  When they bite, the welt after is the size of a watch face.  And they can bite even through jeans.  No one is safe.  Today we had a cita with Jherson.  Everything's cool there.  After that we went straight to the capilla to do the interview with Jean Franco.  Elder Mayta stayed there with Elder Dantas and I went Christmas caroling with the rest of the district.  We went caroling to the CR's and investigators in San Francisco.  We had plans to do it for the whole district, but that didn't really work out.  It was still fun though.  When we got back, I found out that Jean Franco passed his interview.  Angie, however, didn't.  She doesn't have a strong testimony of Joseph Smith.  Then Elder Dantas said, "She also drinks and smokes every once in a while."  I was like, "Haha.  Oh. ¿En Serio?  (Seriously?)  Oh."  She's only just barely 15.  Elder Mayta was telling me about how one time he knocked a door in San Gregorio and a 16 year old answered.  She was living with her 20 year old boyfriend and their 3 year old son.  Welcome to Peru.  I had gotten a call from Oswaldo asking if we could stop by his house, so we went there right after.  We got there and saw that he had a couple of Krispy Kreme doughnuts waiting for us.

I almost shed some real man tears.  I hadn't had an American doughnut in I don't know how long  Dang good doughnut.  I love that family.  After that we went to a cita with a reference, be he wasn't home.  I had been looking forward to that cita, mostly because the dude is named Ignacio.

Friday
Milagros are always in the making here.  The other night, I was praying and Elder Mayta started snoring super hard.  I was kinda like, "Well crap.  As appealing as it'd be to stay up all night listening to that, I'd like to fall asleep really."  So I kinda asked in my prayer if he could stop snoring.  As I was about to end my prayer, he was still snoring, so I kinda reiterated it.  Not even half second later, it stopped completely.  That was cool.  I'd like to present to you 2 words in Spanish: Pata means paw and Palta means avocado.  Pata also means "dude' or "best friend".  Except I can't always hear the difference.  I don't know if it's much better to hear people calling each other avocados than feet though.  We had a consejo de distrito this morning.  Nothing too crazy happened.  Afterwards we played a version of the signs game though.  It's a fast paced version where you pass and receive the signs and the dude in the middle has to tag the dude that currently has the sign.  It got lit.  Turns out that Elder Mayta is super sick.  He was talking to the secretary of health and Elder Van Dassell asked him, "Did you get a lot of mosquito bites?"  That's an understatement.  Those mosquitoes drank my man's sangre (blood) more than the ancient Philistines ate cake as an empire combined between the years 802 BC to the time they were conquered in 734 BC by Tiglath-pileser and were annexed to the Persian Empire.  I don't actually know if those dudes ate cake, but the point is that my companion got eaten alive.  I mean, really we're eaten alive by mosquitoes a little every time they bite us if you think about it.  But anyways, he was told to call Hermana Amato and from there he got put on bed rest.  Apparently a bunch of others that got a bunch of bites as well are pretty sick too and have had to go to the clinic.  So he might die, but probably not.  So we came back and I ate lunch while he just watched.  After that we had a cita with Olga that went pretty well.  Then we came straight to the room.  The San Fransisco elders came by and I gave him a blessing and he's been sleeping since about 4:30.  So I'm pretty bored right now.  Update: We called Hermana Amato and she told us to take a taxi to the clinic in La Molina.  You know it's real when they tell you to take a taxi.  Trying to hail one is always a good time.  It was pretty fun trying to tell the driver where to go in a language I don't really speak, in a city I don't know, to a place I'd never been.  We got there though.  They gave him a shot and some medicine and sent us on our way.  We left at 8:20 and got back at 10:50.  I'll tell you more tomorrow.

Saturday
Elder Mayta was the 9th missionary at the clinic yesterday.  Elder Van Dassell had been there since 11 AM.  We were pretty lucky to have had such a short stay.  They did tell him though that he can't work for 4 days, so this will be interesting.  Elder Carrera had been there since 7 and probably wasn't going to leave til midnight or later.  Pobrecito (poor baby) was all IVed up.  We got talking about Huaycan 2 since that's where he started his mission as well.  Apparently there used to be 3 wards there.  I was thinking, "No way.  Those wards are struggling.  That's not possible."  But there was a cas capilla in la R with an attendance of 90 each week.  But I guess there were some big time apostate missionaries and one thing lead to another and President saw fit to close the ward down 2 years ago.  Sad stuff.  I always wondered why there were so many inactives over there.  We really just mostly sat around today.  It was pretty weird.  We had Jean Franco's baptism to look forward to at 6 though.  There was also a little girl from the ward that was going to get baptized too.  It was just the ward mission leader and the 2 of us until 6:30 though.  But I think I've finally figured out Peruvian time though.  When Albert Einstein published his theory of relativity, they were all mind blown.  These people are very simple  They just couldn't handle it.  They were like, "Shoot man, if time really is relative then we can show up an hour late and still be on time."  What they didn't understand though is that that's a relatively foolish way to think.  Everyone applied it universally though, so they didn't realize they were wrong.  So the people came tonight, but they were all pretty late.  We had about 30 people there though. I can't stop looking at the photo we took.  I look so much like my dad when he was my age.  Except I know mullets are unattractive.  I also can't stop watching my Polar Express video but that's different.

We got Erick to baptize Jean Franco.  They were both babies getting into the cold font, so that was funny.  The baptism was really nice.  The member girl's forehead poked out, but she got water up her nose and refused to do it again.  Her family didn't even try to support her.  They just said another day she'll do it.  So that was unfortunate.  Oswaldo is a YouTuber.  He was looking at his videos and I was like, "I'm a YouTuber too ya know."  "Really."  "Nah, just kidding.  I've got some Spanish project videos though."  So we watched those.  I knew that egg would come back to haunt me.  He thought they were funny though.

Pictures from Jean Franco's baptism:

 Me, Angie, Mario, Erick, Jean Franco, Elva and Elder Mayta

Sunday
Church was a little bit less fantastic than normal today, but that's ok.  We got Jean Franco confirmed.  Jherson arrived just a minute after they closed the doors for the sacrament.  So long story short, we might not be able to baptize him on Saturday.  We had a ward council after church.  The lunch we had with the member today was pretty solid, but there wasn't a lot of it.  So I popped a bag of popcorn when we got back to the room.  It was good, but greasy.  It brought back some memories.  When I was a kid, our babysitters were always Jessie and Maddie Christensen.  I don't remember which, but one of them like to add extra butter and salt to the microwave popcorn and I didn't like it.  So I resorted to telling her that I was allergic to butter.  Probably the worst lie I've told.  Last week the owners came and installed a glass door for the bathroom in our room.  We were pretty grateful because it would have been awkward to see each other taking care of business.  *Next day: "Bro!  Close the door!  I don't want to see that!"  "Bruh.  It's already closed."  "Oh shoot, you're right.  My bad."  A couple of days later he came and installed a door knob with a lock.  Wouldn't want to accidentally walk in on my companion, so I'm glad he prevented that.  Note:  He just came back and installed a tint thing so that you can't see through the glass.  The lock is still useless because it doesn't have that metal shark fin thingy.  When I was at Shelley Elementary, we had a heated rivalry with the grade above us.  The lunch was scheduled though so that we'd only have lunch recess together every other year though.  That just made it more intense on the on-years.  Lunch recess was always them vs. us.  There were tons of us on that probably almost full sized field.  That's where me and my friends were everyday: Kai, Kallin, Landon, Marty, etc.  I remember mostly winning.  Sam was always our goalie.  One time one of them got this sweet header against us to score.  We tried not to count it, but he was like, "You guys are just jealous."  He was right.  Good times.  Tonight we went to a stake choir concert.  We all sang as a zone there and nailed it.  You could hardly tell we planned it out 15 minutes beforehand.  Our ward sang too and they and they sounded pretty good as well.  Update:  When we got back, we found out that the owners put a sliding lock on the door, but there's no hole to slide it into.  There's also a lock on the outside of the door too for some reason.  *At some future point: "Lock the door man, don't forget."  Locks door.  "Elder let me out!  Why'd you lock it man?"  "But you told me to."  "I was talking to myself dude."  "Oh.  My bad."  I'm running out of sarcastic things to say about this door.

Week 3 in Alameda

This week went super well. We had a baptism, which was my first one in a while, so that was super nice. She asked me to perform the ordinance for her, so that was super special to me. It was my first time being in the water in the mission. The family of Olga, the lady I baptized, are all members now except for the husband. We plan on trying to work with him here soon. But the coolest part is that Olga has a son that is serving in Colombia right now. He always talked to her about getting baptized, so she finally decided to take lessons from us. Saturday, the day she got baptized, was her son's birthday. She didn't tell him though that she was taking missionary lessons, so he's just going to get one heck of a surprise when he opens his email today. How cool is that? Also, Ruth from Huaycan got baptized last week I found out, so that's pretty cool. I hope you're all participating in the light the world campaign. The church is doing some pretty cool stuff! Have a good week everyone!

Monday
We play nose goes as missionaries for prayers and stuff.  Let's just say that it's a lot more efficient to play that now that there's 4 elders instead of just the 2 of us.  Yesterday while we were contacting in the park in Tilda, I saw a kid that was goalie doing the floss.  So I did it back at him.  It quickly became a duel to see who could do it fastest.  It was pretty epic.  I won, just FYI.  I always win, even when I lose.  Whoever said the floss wasn't a vital skill to have on your mission?  We went and did internet today like normal.  Mondays always make me kinda trunky.  But it's a nice rest in the week (most of the time).  So it's really kind of a bitter sweet day for me.  There's no snow here at all.  I definitely miss that about Utah.  It's 160 days into the mission and I'm still yet to see a llama.  Come to find out, Elder Mayta eats them in  his country, and some of the people here eat them too.  What kind of monster would eat an animal so cool like that?  No wonder I haven't seen any.  Darn Bolivians are eating them all!  After internet, everyone went to Plaza Vitarte to take out money.  Except no one had the full amount that they were supposed to take out on their card.  Bit of a problem there.  There were a bunch of Western Unions nearby, so I tried changing some bills into coins.  But no one had sencillo!  That was mildly depressing for me.  It might be a good break though.  I've seen this whole coin collecting business turn good missionaries greedy and obsessed.  Oh well.  We went and got burgers at district.  Other than the fact that it took an hour to get them, they were good.  Then we all went and watched Rio at a member's house in Los Angeles.  I remember when that movie first came out, Jaxon and I would watch the trailer over and over again.  Then the member brought out a cake to celebrate Hermanas Daniel's and Peterson's, Elder Wily's and her daughter's birthdays.  We came back and tried one more Western Union, but still no luck.  Elder Mayta got a hair cut.  We tried to visit someone from the open house, but he wasn't home.  We had to go back to an internet to send some documents to the office.  Then we went and made some copies of the keys so that the other Elders can have a pair.  I bought 20 pays for breakfast for only 10 soles, which is dope.  We had a lesson with Jean Franco and his family tonight.  We taught the commandments and they received it well.  They gave us these hot banana smoothies after, so that was cool.

Tuesday
That garbage truck song is pretty solid.  Until they come around past midnight to get the basura (garbage) of yours.  Turns out every district has its own garbage truck song.  Ate has 3 songs though, but the original is the GOAT.  The milkman has a song too it turns out.  It's not quite as catchy though.  There's a couple of songs that Elder Mayta and I sing everyday: the garbage truck song, Pen Pineapple Apple Pen, and as of 3 days ago What Does the Fox Say?  All classics.  This morning we went on another field trip to the dentist.  I liked how Elder Mayta prayed that he'd "have fun there" and "be safe" before we left.  On the way there I saw a sign for tacos.  Then I realized it's taco Tuesday and got set on and excited for buying a taco on the way back.  We got there and it turns out that the tacos were really expensive.  But I had my heart set on buying food, so I bought an over priced milkshake instead.  I like La Molina.  It's real nice there.  Olga wasn't home when we passed by, so that was unfortunately unfortunate.  We went with a member named Yune though and visited a handful of families in the ward.  In the afternoon we had a cita with Jherson.  He's the dude who was inactive until recently and whose records got lost.  He's kinda lucky actually in my opinion.  I wish the same had happened to me so that I had to take missionary lessons.  Would have been cool.  Jherson's a great guy (17 year old) and the lesson went well.  Tonight we tried holding an English class to see how it would work out.  We put a chalk board out front with a sign on it to see if we could get a couple of people from the street to come in.  We had a super good turn out.  We had Jherson and a handful of members attend, as well as 3 guys from the street that walked in.  It was good stuff.  Magic happens when you have an authentic gringo teaching the class.  I think I was teaching myself too in a way.  haha

We saw this crazy dude while we were coming back from the dentist in La Molina.

Wednesday

We had  a consjo de distrito this morning.  It was pretty normal.  Things are pretty smooth sailing right now.  I'm cautiously optimistic.  I got a package from my parents today.  I wasn't able to take the package home with me though because I'm on intercambios right now.  I came to Los Angeles with Elder Lopez from my MTC district and Elder Dantas went there with my companion.  I'm kinda curious about what's in that package.  I'm debating whether I should wait until Christmas or not to open it.  Today was kinda really long.  We didn't have any citas so we just contacted the whole time.  I feel like that usually happens on intercambios.  Another thing that's basically bound to happen is that you forget to pack something.  For example, this time I forgot my PJ's.  There's not as many people in the streets in this area and they're definitely not as receptive.  Elder Lopez lets a lot of guys walk past him though, so that doesn't help.  At one point in the day, we came to this park and Elder Lopez was like, "Let's just walk around the edge.  Inside is freaky."  He was right.  There was a ton of transgender people there in the park and a couple other chuando la Piña. Other than that, nothing too exciting happened today.  The other day I saw a 40ish year old woman in a skirt trying to ride a skateboard in the park in front of our apartment.  That was kinda funny.  Today we were walking down the street and a pack of 25+ dogs came along.  They weren't looking for trouble, just a bunch of dudes all following the same female dog.  In Huaycan I would've gotten eaten alive.

Thursday

Today we got a call saying that we were going to finish taking out our money.  When we got there, and I still had only 47 soles in my account.  I need 530 more.  Kinda a problem there.  Especially since the rent lady is starting to get a little mad at us.  There's a slight chance that we might have to live in the church for a couple of days.  JK, I hope.  She's called or talked to us 5 times today.  I still don't have your money!  It's not my fault!  Leave me alone!  The zone leaders won't call us back about the whole thing.  Remember that smooth sailing bit from yesterday?  That went down in flames real fast.  I'm stressed and ticked off.  At least I got to chat with Elder Shumway during the whole ATM fiasco.  We ended intercambios after that.  Someone in the ward had a wedding today, so that kinda threw a big 'ole wrench in a lot of the plans for today.   A lot of our citas didn't work out due to that.  Oh well though.  There's worse things to throw your day off than that.  We weren't able to have a cita with Olga though, which is fine, it just means tomorrow is do or die.  We did have a cita with Jherson though, and it went well.  It was super hot today.  I keep my contact cards in my shirt pocket.  So contacting today was basically like, "Here's a damp card of baby Jesus.  Wanna come to church?"  We get contacted by other missionaries.  Elder Mayta is always the victim for some reason.  The other day he tried contacting a testigo, but she contacted him right back and tried to give him a magazine about life after death.  That one was kinda funny.  Tonight we were about to go eat dinner when this lady, from Aguas Viviente, I think, contacted him.  I let him sit there a minute then went to go rescue him.  I let her talk to us a bit because just in case I ever have an investigator from that church I'll know the doctrine I need to cover.  She was crazy dude.  She tried to tell us we were supposed to worship our Heavenly Mother instead of Heavenly Father.  I told her to show me a scripture where it talks about that and she showed me a bunch of super random, unrelated scriptures.  She had a bunch of other garbage to try and teach us like that the Sabbath is Saturday.  Jesus didn't create the world and a whole bunch of other nonsense that I'm not going to go into detail on.  I actually started laughing on accident because of how wrong she was.  It was kinda frustrating because I knew scriptures that explicitly contradicted her, but I didn't have the location memorized so I couldn't directly prove her wrong.  People need to actually read the Bible.

Friday

Well, we were supposed to eat breakfast as a zone this morning, but then we got a call from the zone leaders saying we were going to do a service project bright and early instead.  We helped his lady move down the street into the 2nd story.  She had like 5 sewing machine-table hybrid thingies for some reason.  I was on the lower end carrying one up the stairs and a ton of oil came running out of the machine.  I was holding the table as high as my head because it was heavy and easier that way, so I took a solid shower in oil.  It got all over the front of me. Took me back to my Jiffy Lube days.  Good times.  Any who, we had a cita with Olga today.  It went well.  She's ready for the baptism tomorrow.  And she asked me to perform the ordinance for her, so that's pretty cool.  I'm excited.  She still hasn't told her son that's serving in Columbia that she's gonna get baptized.  It makes me smile to picture him opening up his email on Monday to discover that his mom got baptized on his birthday.  What a happy day!  When we had ended that cita, we got a call from the zone leaders telling us to go to Plaza Vitarte to take out the rest of the money.  When we got there, we found out we still didn't have any money on the cards.  A quick call to the financial secretary later we found out that the mission is out of money until Monday from what I understand.  So the zone leaders went to their house to give us all of the funds so that we could at least pay half.  Rainbow ice cream is amazing BTW, just thought I'd throw that in there.  But that rent lady is pretty ticked off and has 0 trust in us.  We gave her the rent and told her we'd have the guarantee for her Monday.  I know we're late, but we're doing everything we can and it's not our fault.  She was not being very nice.  While she was talking to my companion, I was just looking at the stairs thinking about how Taylor (a friend and co-worker) always joked about diving headfirst into the pit (at Jiffy Lube).  It was mildly tempting at the moment to do it if it meant I didn't have to listen to that lady talk more.  We had a cita with Jean Franco tonight.  He passed the pre entrevista (pre-interview) just fine, but he says he needs to repent more still for some reason.  He surprised everyone and brought a puppy with him when the lesson started that he got from his friend.  That puppy's my new BFF.  Today is Elder Wily's birthday.  He tried to keep it low key, so I threw a surprise party with just the 4 of us here.  I used all the stuff that my mom sent me for my birthday for him.  It was lit.  Those brownies were heck good too.

Elder Wily's surprise birthday party.

Saturday

We went to go talk to the owners about  the contract this morning.  I was expecting the worst, but it went smoothly.  That was a miracle.  We went to the chapel to get things ready, but the baptism room was full of stuff that they had at the wedding they had last night.  We ran into Hermano Yure and he told us that he had already filled the font and that they'd have the room ready to go for the baptism in a couple of hours.  So we were like, "Cool beans," and went to go eat lunch.  We contacted a couple of hours.  Then we went and picked up Olga to take her to the capilla.  When we got there, everything was ready to go and looked super nice.  Elder Dantas came to do the interview.  We were talking after because we had a couple of minutes.  The baptism was super nice.  We had like 35 ward members come.  I seriously love this ward.  I got kinda nervous and messed up on the prayer a couple of times.  That was kinda embarrassing, but that's whatever.  The whole service was orchestrated really well.  You could feel the spirit there the entire time.  It was awesome!  It couldn't have gone any better.  After the service we went and visited the familia Vera.  They're doing pretty good.  The whole family is actually pretty sick still, so that's not good.

Pictures from the baptism:

Sunday

There were more votaciones (votes) today like back on October 7, so we didn't have church today.  It's super weird to have church canceled.  They weren't voting on candidates this time, bur rather law and policy.  Since there was no church, Olga got confirmed yesterday too.  The zone went and met in the stake center this morning to practice a song mini program thingy that we're gonna present to the mission on Wednesday.  We were there a long time.  It sounded good at the end though.  Traffic was horrible, but that was expected.  Yolo.  When we at lunch with a member, she brought banana bread out for desert.  That was real good.  We spent the afternoon with Oswaldo visiting members and PF's.  We gave an hermana a blessing for the sick.  Then we went to the capilla for a cita, but he was a no show.  So we helped with this toy drive thing there instead.  Then we went to Jean Franco's house (la familia Astuhuaman) to do a noche de hogar with them and a couple of other people.  You get pretty good at this whole improv thing as a missionary.  Give me 5 minutes of prep time and el Espiritu Santo (the Holy Ghost) and I'll give you a pretty bomb lesson.  The family still hadn't named their puppy yet, so I'm going to keep using the name I gave her last time: Elder White Junior, or Junior for short.  I hope it sticks.  But yeah, the noche de hogar went great.  Eric and Jordy came with 2 girls that we had contacted the other day at the end, so that was cool.  We've got a cita with them later.  The family brought out sandwiches and hot chocolate at the end, which was awesome.  Sundays are always a good day in Alameda.  Elder White really likes the train.  Whenever we're near the tracks and hear the horn, we'll hustle over there so that he can see it.  Little kids stand by the road and try to get cars to honk their horns.  Elder White stands by the tracks and gets trains to blow their horns.  You gotta take joy in the small things.  Elder Wily is a pretty funny dude.  Everyone in his family is Samoan.  He's got jokes about his mom throwing her slippers at him when he's misbehaving.  One time his mom threw her makeup bag at his brother from the other side of the pew in church because he had nodded off.  She whispered, "Wake up!"  Then said to the other family, "Can you make sure my son pays attention?  Also, could you please put my lipstick in the bag for me."  Samoans are awesome.

The noche de hogar with the familia Astuhuaman.

Week 2 in Alameda

This week went pretty well. Elder Mayta and I continue to get along really well. Elder Martinez came and worked with us for a day. We worked pretty hard that day and spent the whole day just contacting really. We had to move on Saturday because there was a soltera (single girl) living in the same apartment as the hermanas. We got the move done just fine, but that was an adventure, that's for sure. You should see my planner. I have like 25 se alquila (for rent) info things written down. We almost didn't find a room in time, but we got it done in just the nick of time. It's kinda really inconvenient to move like that, but it's whatever. We're going to have a baptism this Saturday with our investigator named Olga. We've only been teaching her since Thursday or so I think, but she's super escogido (chosen) and is definitely ready for this baptism. Her kids have been members a long time. It sounds like half the ward is going to be there to support her, so that's pretty great. Yesterday we had another day of milagros. A lot of potential investigators came to church and we found another guy who is almost a guaranteed baptism that we're going to meet with on Tuesday, so that's awesome. We did a district attack in the hermana's area and did some awkward Christmas caroling to end it, so that was really fun. While we were there, we got a call from a member who was like, These two girls just passed by and want to know more about the church and when we have reunions and stuff. We didn't get a chance to go to the church right then, but the member got them to go to the church Christmas fireside. So we went there with them and they really enjoyed it so we set up a cita for later this week. I think that our plan de trabajo (of work) will just be wait for Sunday, because that's when all the miracles happen jajaja. But I seriously love this area. I couldn't be happier. Have a good week everyone!

 -Elder White

Monday
Another Pday come and gone.  Internet happened.  There was a dog snoring super loudly behind me and it sounded funny.  But let me tell ya what normally goes down during internet.  In the internet cafe, there's usually 2 people on Facebook and the rest of the 15 are split between Fortnite and League of Legends with the majority on Fortnite.  There's always this one guy no matter where you go that is shouting into his headset.  First I write to President.  Most of the time in English, but sometimes I get bored or feel creative and do it in Spanish.  I usually copy and paste parts of that email and put them in my group email.  From there I'll update info on converts and then email the people that emailed me in no particular order.  Sometimes it's nice to get a lot of emails, but other times it's nice to take my time with the few I got.  Today was a companionship Pday.  Except there's nothing to do in this area. So we came back to the room and he took a nap.  I did a couple of random things and then cracked open the scriptures.  I read some great passages in Romans about circumcision haha.  Then we went and headed back out.  We were determined to get pizza, but it was closed.  Our area is actually twice as big as I let on.  It's just that half our area is covered by El gran Mercado Mayorista de Lima (Lima's big wholesale market) and it's not worth our time to work over there.  But we decided to go over there to check it out.  I was expecting something cool, but in reality they were selling normal stuff.  That was really disappointing actually.  We were looking for a place to eat on the way back.  The pizza place we had been eyeing all week was having a Pday of it's own.  We found another one though.  The picture looked really good, so I was excited.  My actual pizza can be easily described by Kevin as "hot garbage".  I unfortunately had to learn a  hard lesson there.  We came back to the room and chilled for a while again after.  I retaught myself how to do a bit of calculus, so that was fun.  It'll be interesting to see how well I pick back up on that stuff when I get back home.  We had a cita tonight with la familia Piña.  It was more of a get to know you kind of lesson.  All the family are members except for the dad.  We did some more house hunting tonight and finally found an apartment that's super nice and set for a reasonable price too.  I actually really love that place, so let's hope it gets approved!  Here's a fun fact for you: we do exorcisms sometimes in the mission.  Like, a group of Elders will get together and actually cast out a devil.  President likes us to keep quiet about that kind of stuff though.

Tuesday
Today is my 5 month mark of the mission.  Sometimes it seems like it's flown by, while others it seems like I've spent a lifetime here.  It's an adventure; that's all I can say for sure.  Not too much happened today.  Let me tell ya about it.  We had interviews with President today so they told us to be in La Molina at 9:20.  President got there at 10:30.  I'm not sure if he was running behind or if they just wanted us to be there an hour early.  President showed us this video that the mission is going to launch for Christmas.  I liked it a lot and have high expectations for it helping others come unto Christ.  I actually didn't finish my interview until 6 or so.  What did I do in the mean time you ask?  Good question.  I talked to Elder Shumway about sports on all levels for a while.  Its got kinda later, so I went to the gas station down the street and bought a bag of butter cookies.  I should have know better because the natives all swarmed me when I opened that up.  After that I drew some force diagrams and derived velocity formulas related to air resistance.  It took some remembering, but I've still got it.  I don't know why I love doing those so much.    Then I talked to Elder Staats for a while.  He's a cool guy.  Then a transgender dude (or lady now I guess--there's actually a lot of them here) came in and gave us a sob story I didn't understand and then asked us for pasaje.  Except we're not allowed to give people money.  I don't know how they worked that one out because I finally had my interview with President.  The interview with him went well.  We got back to our area at 7 and went straight to a cita with Jean Franco.  It was short because he didn't read.  His twin sister Anji has been going to church for 6 meses (months), but still doesn't want to get baptized.  It doesn't make sense because she's always in la capilla with her friends.  We tried visiting CR's, but it didn't work out.  Elder Costa called us about the room we found tonight.  He didn't like that it costs 1000 soles instead of 800 and tried to tell us to keep looking.  Except I've written down every phone number on the se alquila (for rent) signs and this is literally the best and last option.  There's nothing that costs less than 1000 and all the other rooms we looked at were garbage so that made me mad.

Wednesday
Today Elder Martinez came to our area for an intercambio of sorts.  We rocked the trio.  He's only got 12 days left.  Guys like that have 2 types: super trunky or super wise and still working hard.  He's the latter.  Our laundry lady in named Ñaña, which I find funny since that's an area in Chaclacayo.  She's super cool thought.  She gave us a nice tall glass of cold pineapple juice.  Good stuff.  We took Elder Martinez to check out that room that we found.  Long story short, there's a bunch of solteras (singles) there among other things.  So despite how nice it is, we can't live there.  I was kinda frustrated about it.  During lunch, Elder Martinez asked our pensionsita if she knew a place.  Another long story short, we went there and like it and we got permission to live there.  I was starting to think we'd have to camp out in the park for a couple of days.  We contacted all day.  It was good contacting too.  The sidewalks here are made with slippery concrete for some reason.  So you've got to really watch your step if you're stepping on a driveway or something.  The other day I was contacting just like, "Hola, buenas.  Buenas noches. ¿Que tal?  Buenaaaaas."  That was pretty funny when I slipped.  Sometimes people are really rude to us when we're contacting.  It just makes me think sometimes: What are all these people gonna do when they realize we're right?  I hope they repent someday soon.  When we were walking back from lunch, we saw this huge pillar of black smoke coming from by where our room is.

 The black smoke we saw.

As we got close to home, I got more and more worried, but it was a block away.  At night we did a ward noche de hogar.  I got put in charge of the message.  My go-to of Ephesians 6:10-18 is pretty solid.  The ward noche de hogar went pretty well I'd say.  We don't have an extra mattress here, so Elder Martinez had to sleep on the floor.  I felt kinda bad about that.  You know, Peruvians don't really take good care of their country.  Alameda isn't quite as bad as Huaycan when it comes to to that, but still.  In Huaycan, all the cars blow smoke.  Even a Yaris will blow out thick black smoke.  So pollution here is actually a super huge problem.  Sure fog is part of it, but it's mainly the pollution that makes it so that you can't see far.  Also, when their eating something, they'll just drop their bottle or wrapper on the ground right where they're standing.

Thursday
We had consejo de distrito (district council) this morning.  I'm starting to read Jesus the Christ whenever I have a minute.  That book goes really in depth.  James E. Talmage is one super smart dude.  Before the consejo started, I was talking with Elder Shumway and Elder Armstrong.  We talked about Avatar the entire time.  That's one dang good show.  Such a great story too.  I taught Elder Shumway how to throw cards while we were bored on Tuesday.  He was like, "You shouldn't have taught me to throw these.  Yesterday these 2 teenagers ticked me off, so I launched a card at them after they walked away and I nailed one of them on the back of the neck.  I also just throw them in windows now when there's not anyone to contact."  What a guy.  I'm so proud.  We have train tracks in the middle of our area, which I really enjoy.  There's a train that passes by every odd hour.  This morning there was a train running by and we didn't want to be late, so we ran in front of it.  15 yards short of getting hit by a train.  What a way to start the morning.  When we got back from consejo, we went straight to a cita with Olga, the woman who told us Sunday that she wants to be baptized.  Fue una cita bien bonita.  (It was a pretty nice appointment.)  We plan on doing it on the 8th, which is also coincidentally her son's birthday.  It's really cool that after years of telling the missionaries, "I'm catholic," she's decided to be baptized.  Miracles happen.  We ate lunch after.  Then we just contacted all night.  We did have a noche de hogar though with the Oswaldo y su familia.  That was pretty nice.  We found a group of 15 year-olds sharing a blunt in the park, so that was new.  We confirmed when we passed by that we're going to rent that room.  I was starting to stress because we didn't know for sure and no one would answer their cell phone.  A bunch of people sell pie in the street and I've always wanted to try, but couldn't because we can't buy food like that in the street.  While we were contacting I saw a sign that says, "se vende pay de..."  I was like, "What the heck is pay?  Oh, pie.  Hahaha."  It's super cheap and super good.  Not as good as real pie, but still.  Peruvian TV is pretty garbage.  There's only ever 4 things on; soccer; Caso Cerado with this crazy judge lady names Dr Anna Maria Apdi; this one obstacle course show that gets pretty interesting sometimes, but is mostly repetitive and boring; and the same super cheesy soap opera drama with an actor that looks like Daniel Radcliffe grew his hair back out an is trying to reclaim his Harry Potter role.

Friday
It's been an adventure being here after the Hermanas.  We've found some interesting things too.  I found some playing cards.  Those aren't allowed in the mission.  They left behind some perfume bottles with, well, interesting names to say the least.  They also left behind a box full of tea, so that's interesting.  What we thought they didn't leave behind was the teaching and baptismal records of 3 CR's  We were panicking about that, but then Elder Mayta found them buried in a bag of trash they left behind.  Mini miracle there.  This morning we did weekly planning and then started packing all of our stuff and all the other stuff up in the room to prepare for the move tomorrow.  I hate moving.  Let me tell ya though, I really like the Pensionista.  Why?  Yesterday they asked me my favorite food so I said tequeños.  They told me, "What's that?"  It was at that moment that a single tear fell.  But for dinner she had a couple of tequeños that she tried learning how to make.  That was awesome.  We really just contacted most of the day.  We had a cita with Jean Franco through and we brought David along, who's Oswaldo's brother.  The lesson went really well about the plan on salvation.  The spirit got super strong.  I almost invited his mom to baptism, but I didn't because we want the dad to be there to accept a fecha (baptismal date) as well.  Afterwards she made us each a strawberry milk drink thing, which was great I'm sure, but it's against mission rules to eat strawberries.  So while his mom was in the kitchen, he (David) drank all of them so that we'd all have an empty glass to show.  He downed the first one, slowed down on the second, and looked like he was sick when he got to mine.  It was kinda funny to watch.  Just the look of utter defeat on his face looking down into his half-eaten glass knowing he had to finish it.  David and Oswaldo both served their missions in Venezuela, which is kinda a crazy place right now.  So they've got a couple of stories.  San Francisco (the ward that shares the capilla with us) hosted a capilla abierta (open chapel) tonight.  I wasn't expecting a whole lot when we went to help, but it was actually super organized and really successful.  They had 2-3 guys in the street contacting everyone that walked by and inviting them in, which were surprising not small in number.  Inside they had people guiding them to and from classrooms.  Inside the which they had members talking about each church auxiliary.  It was very well thought out.  We had a lot of success and references to work with.

Saturday
On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me: una freaking mudanza (moving) (that even has 1 syllable, so appreciate that).  I have decided that I don't like moving very much.  We stayed up late last night to pack, and then got up early to finish packing and getting things ready for when the truck was supposed to come at 7.  From that alone I am exhausted.  Fun fact: I can't walk straight when I'm super tired like this.  It gets interesting sometimes.  We had a good chunk of the zone and a couple of guys from the ward come to help us out, so that was nice.  San Fransisco and we got moved in ok.  We finished carrying in boxes a little past 11.  The room is pretty cool; it's big and looks nice.  We spent a long time deep cleaning everything and getting all of our crap unpacked.  We're renting the room from less active members. The room actually belonged to their son, but he's in the army stationed in Iquitos right now, so they moved all his stuff upstairs.  At one point today, Elder Mayta was unpacking a box from the Hermana's and sorting trash and what not.  He showed me something and was like, "What the heck is this?"  I just said, "You're kidding, right?"  "Nope."  Well you see, when Hermanas have that certain time of the month..."  He hurried and threw that tampon in the trash.  That was super funny.  I don't know what it is, but my stomach has been giving me problems for the last week or so.  Nothing too, bad, just having to go to the bathroom 5 times a day instead of my usual 1-2.  Today though, my stomach started hurting, especially around lunch.  I ain't dead though yet, so I'm not worried.  The room was pretty dirty. I spent like 10 or 15 minutes just knocking down cobwebs.  And I spent an hour cleaning the windows in the big room.  It got kinda sketch leaning out of those windows so much to clean them.  I didn't fall though, so that must mean it was safe despite how it seemed.  I'm actually really happy with the way that the room turned out.

Once we had gotten everything mostly settled, we went out to contact.  Nothing much happened there.  We saw a big 'ole group of testigos (Jehovah Witnesses) outside of a CR's house, but he left them and joined us just like Katniss Everdeen.  Team Peeta is actually team Jesus.  Today was the end of no shave November.  I didn't have time to shave this morning, so I just kinda looked at myself in the mirror a bit.  I looked old.  What could have been.

Sunday
Church was amazing again.  Jean Franco, Anji and Olga all came.  It was fast and testimony meeting today.  The ward had a huge nonstop line of people bearing their testimonies and we ended 30 minutes late.  So that was pretty great.  We got a couple of really solid references during church.  There was someone who brought a friend, an inactive lady that came and said her husband is interested in lessons, someone else came that was a nonmember, etc.  There was this 17 year old that just got back after being in Argentina for 2 years.  Some how his records got erased or something, so he needs missionary lessons and stuff and to get baptized.  Interesting circumstance, but I'm down.  We ate lunch with Paul and his parents, who happen to be the pension for San Francisco.  Not quite sure how that works, but whatever.  The worst part about my stomach right now is that I have to go really bad out of the blue.  But half the time I wind up not be able to go.  Slightly inconvenient.  We went and did a lesson with Olga today.  It went really well and the spirit was super strong.  I love lesson one.  She's super excited for her baptism on Saturday.  After that we went and did a district attack in Tilda, the Hermanas' ward.  Elder Mayta and I contacted this one street really good for an hour.  Then we all went to a a big park to contact.  There were a bunch of people chupando la Piña (sucking pineapple) if you know what I mean.  The hermanas told us to tell the people in the contacts that we were going to sing hymns.  The time came and no one went to the spot to hear us sing.  We sang 2 Christmas hymns and then went over to the playground to sing more hymns there.  I love doing things that make other people uncomfortable in the awkward way, even if I feel awkward too.  I'm YOLOing (You Only Live Once) it hard out here.  We got a call from Paul saying that there were some curious people that stopped by the church, but we weren't able to make it.  When we got back, we taught Luis a bit, who's a recent convert.  He wants to go on a mission super bad, but can't because he's 27, so that's kinda sad.  After that we decided to go to the church's international Christmas broadcast.  There were some great hymns as well as some good talks.  I loved President Nelson's at the end.  The two girls that Paul was talking to came to the broadcast, so that was cool.  We set up a cita with them for later in the week.

A sunset I saw this week: