-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.
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:
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