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.
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