Week 10 in Alameda (Farewell Señorita)

Hi everyone. Nothing too much happened this week. Our bus almost got hit by a train, so that was pretty exciting. Not overly weird though. We also almost got into a lot of car crashes while we were in the bus and while crossing the street. But that's also normal. We're helping this dude named Juan Carlos marry his girlfriend that's a member so that he can get baptized. We're pretty optomistic with that and they're a super cool family. Our other investigator Arlet is doing really well and is ready for her baptism for the 9th of February. We did a zone attack this week and did a zone intercambios for it too. I went with my CCM comp Elder Villanueva, so that was fun. They closed off major parts of one of the busiest parts in the mission, so traffic is horrible now. Rumor has it that they're gonna start building a much needed subway. But everything is good here in Lima. Every day's a party, a spiritual party that is. Have a good week everyone!

-Elder White

Monday

Where do I start?  Today was a rough day.  When I got to internet, the first thing I did was glance at my emails.  I quickly found out that Señorita Taylor (my close friend and high school Spanish teacher) passed away yesterday.  When I found out, it took a minute for it to sink in.  Then I kinda went into shock.   My brain stopped working and I don't think it's back to normal still.  I'm eternally grateful that I sent her that caution tape and note at Christmas.  She really liked it I guess.  I had a lot of people tell me that she had passed, and I cried each and every time I read it.  I was on the verge of tears pretty much all day.  It was so draining.  I'm not the kind of guy that cries at all either.  Señorita was a great friend for me and big impact on my life.  I guess Jaxon (my brother) got pretty close to her too and ate lunch in her room every day.  I enjoyed every minute of every class I had with her over those 3 years.  In my patriarchal blessing, it says that "I will prepare myself well to go into the mission field."  When I got here though, I realized I hadn't really done anything to nourish myself spiritually.  It wasn't until late that I realized that that "preparedness" was coming into the field almost fluent.  And it was all thanks to La Bruja (The Witch).  I still think about her class all the time.  We started off on the wrong foot at the end of sophomore year, but at the end of my senior year she told me that I was one of her "most favorite students".  So many fond memories in that class.  The first time I met her, she freaked all us sophomores out because she had memorized some of our photos, names, parent's names and addresses.  She was always at sporting events.  One time after one of my games I saw her in the drive through at In-And-Out.  There were always so many jokes we cracked in class, too many to name.  The foreign language fair was always fun.  The project videos we made were always really fun too.  Then I evolved into Señor Blanco.  The subs always got confused because my name was Señor Blanco on the roll too.  My spray bottle got famous with me too.  Then senior year rolled around and I became Spanish Club President.  I hung out with her a lot and she developed a lot of trust in me.  So many good times senior year.  In the language fair our language bowl team almost won, but our school did win and I delivered to her that trophy.

Crossing the line of death was a once in a lifetime opportunity.  She was there at my graduation.  The last time I saw her was at my mission farewell.  While it's extremely tragic, things ended on a good note between us and I have complete faith in the Plan of Salvation.  Today we had burgers for lunch, played soccer, ate ice cream, had a cita with Arlet and celebrated Oswaldo's birthday at his house.  But all I wanted today was some time alone.

At Oswaldo's birthday party.

Tuesday

A call for emergency transfers came in last night.  Elder Puildo is going to Vitarte with Elder Garcia.  Pobrecito (poor baby) Elder Pulido, good luck.

 

Me with Elder Pulido and Elder Mayta

While I was praying last night, I broke down again.  I prayed for comfort and I thought at first it didn't work.  But then I realized I had to let Jesus help me.  As soon as I realized I didn't have to keep crying, I felt a great peace.  Pero todavia estoy de luto (but I am still mourning), but I'm not as sad if you know que quiero decir (what I mean).  This morning we met in the stake center as a zone.  The zone leaders did a bit of a training and then gave us a bunch of chocolate milk and snacks.  For the multi zone we were asked to sing a song.  We're going to sing Paz en Cristo (Peace in Christ) so we practiced that.  I impulsively volunteered to direct it and for some reason they agreed.  Little do they know though that I'm pretty inexperienced at drawing invisible triangles in the air.  When I stopped to listen to the lyrics, I felt the spirit comfort me.  It's a beautiful song.  Señorita wouldn't want me to mourn too long or dwell on it, so I've got to do my best to refocus completely on missionary work.  But as for Señorita, que descansar en paz (rest in peace).  Obedcia, obedezco y obedecere (I have obeyed, I obey, I will obey).  We had a lesson with Juan Carlos today.  We're still just working on this whole marriage thing.  From there we had to go drop off Elder Pulido's money with Elder Dantas.  We spent a good part of the day trying to contact references we got from the zone attack, but we unfortunately didn't have any success there.  There wasn't a whole lot of success in contacting either.  We went to la capilla to do correlations, which consisted of just us and Oswaldo.  There was a ward English Connect class after that, but we're not allowed to help with that.  Daniel came in for an interview with the bishop, so we sat down and talked with him for a bit.  After that, Nelson came in and so we decided to get in know him and talk to him a bit too.  He's a really cool guy with a surprisingly strong testimony.  While we were doing our nightly planning session, we watched a dude play (or watch) Minecraft on on his huge TV in a building across the park.  After all the stuff that's gone down in the last 2 weeks, I'm just super emotionally drained.

Wednesday

We had a dentist appointment this morning at 9.  Elder Mayta told me we had to get up at 7 to leave at 8.  So I got up at 7 like I normally do and got all ready to go.  At 7:40 I went into the room to see if he was out of the shower and ready to go, but he was in bed still.  Long story short, we left at 8:30.  But anyways, I finished Our Search for Happiness a week ago and now I'm reading True to the Faith.  On the way home in the combi I heard the train.  It sounded close too, so I got excited.  Then I realized we were going to cross the tracks.  I was just kinda like, "Uh..."  The combis have to cross the tracks slowly, otherwise it'll destroy the underside.  While we were on the tracks, I looked out the window opposite of mine.  The train was right there barrelling towards us, full steam ahead.  Everyone shouted "Tren!" but I was just there petrified and thought, "Well, crap.  I wonder what it's like to have your bus hit by a train?"  We made it off the tracks just in time though.  5 second more and we would've been pankekes.  I got a text from President today.  He said that he got an email from my mom.  He said he was sorry and that I could take 20 minutes to write to Jaxon about memories I have of Señorita Taylor for her funeral.  I appreciated that.  It was so little time though to write 3 years of memories.  I wish I had written more about her class in my journal than just "Spanish was normal."  We went to go visit Juan Carlos and Evelyn again.  They seemed pretty gun-ho about marriage.  It's been a roller coaster with them so far.  We went to go visit Arlet today too.  She read the chapter we left her 3 times.  It's a pretty amazing blessing to have this absolutely golden investigator fall into our lap.  She loves coffee, but I said no, so she said she'd drop it.  No problem.  It was a roaster today and we had to teacher her in the park.  I just thought, "I could really go for some shade right now," and almost immediately the only cloud in the sky (pretty small and thin too) blocked the sun completely for the rest of the lesson.  Then it left as soon as it was over.  We did a noche de hogar at Rosa Leon's house with Arlet, Nelson and Jordy.
 

I mentioned I was craving tequeños, so she fried some up real quick.  That was awesome.  I taught Ether 6.  They all shared their testimonies and it was super cool.  I'm just straight up exhausted still.  It's been hard to work these last few days.

Memories Elder White shared about Señorita Taylor:

Here's a few thoughts I had: I remember the fist time I met Señorita Taylor.  Spanish A3.  I walked into the class and my first thought was, "There's no way this white lady speaks Spanish."  Come to find out, she not only knew Spanish, but she also knew our names, our parents names, addresses, where we were born, our parents phone numbers, what we did that summer, and probably our social security and credit card numbers too.  That was a crazy first day.  She seemed kinda weird and feisty at first, but the more I got to know Señorita Taylor the more I realized how awesome and caring she actually was.  She always had her students' backs.  If we were hungry, she had food.  (She actually pulled some ketchup and mustard packets out for me once when I mentioned my hot dog was plain.)  If we were exhausted, she had a corner of blankets and stuffed animals, which is where some people really made themselves at home.  Like I was saying, she always had our backs. She was always there for us to talk to if we needed it. I felt like she was always there for me in all my big moments. I felt as though she genuinely cared about me and my well being. She made Spanish fun in a way I don't think other people can. Even in the disclosure documents Señorita would add jokes to make it more fun and bearable. She always encourage us to be ourselves and that brought out what I believe to be the best of us. There were some crazy things that went on though. B5 my junior year especially. The made a whole bunch of communist jokes and stuff. That was around the time of Harambe too, so they dedicated a Harambe Jueves to chuck animals around the classroom for the first 10 minutes and called it Jarambar. The only rule she really had was that you respect her and the other people in the class room, and it worked really well. Also, just don't cross the line of death. For the AP test, she wanted us to do our best so she told us she'd get whatever food within reason we asked for. Isaiah asked for croutons. She didn't know what kind was his favorite so she got like 3 bags of 3 flavors. After the test we just looked at memes about it for like 30 minutes.  One day when I went into class junior year, she was a little bit sick. She couldn't talk hardly at all, so I jokingly volunteered to teach the class. She actually took me up on it though and had me do it. So I wrote Señor Blanco on the board and that's how that nick name was born. As a Spanish 4 student I taught the combined 4-AP class how to use subjunctive and made everyone call me Señor Blanco the whole time. But the name just kinda stuck after that. She loved In-n-Out. She also loved the shakes from Burger King and usually joked that it was because the one she liked to go to in American Fork was kinda ghetto, so they probably put cocaine in it or something. She came back with funny stories about that place sometimes. When ever someone was sleeping in class, she would always sneak up on them and oink her pig really loudly. 

That was always hilarious. Senior year was pretty great. I volunteered to be Spanish Club president, so she knighted me president as if I were a knight. Senior year was pretty much a huge roast session against me every class. She would either always join in with everyone and gang up on me or she would roast the guy that roasted me (usually Isaiah) even worse than he got me. We weren't allowed to have parties, so instead we just had cultural activities. Those were always fun. I remember there was one time my sophomore year when someone made a comment about how the doodles in the Christmas vocab were kinda bad. She went off on that kid and told us this huge extravagant story about how her sister had been this hugely famous artist, but in a car crash lost her arms. So she was trying to draw with her feet and those were the drawings from her sister. She had so much detail and even fake cried on us. So it was pretty surprising and funny at the end when she told us that she had made the whole thing up. That was pretty funny.  But yeah, those are a few of the memories that I have of her.

Here is a video that the school released as a tribute to Señorita Taylor:

 

Thursday

 I had to get up early this morning to go to the multi zone.  Due to that and other factors, I've come to develop recently some pretty noticeable bags under my eyes.  We got to the stake center 30 minutes before we were supposed to, so we chilled in the nearby Tambo with the AC going full blast on us.  We practiced our song as a zone before the meeting started.  Nothing too exciting happened the first half.  Snack time came and they made us let all the ladies go first.  So all the elders crowded around the doorway entrance and created a pathway for the Hermanas to walk through.  As soon as the last one was in, we all formed a mosh pit trying to get in.  Afterwards, we had a couple of trainings.  One was with the Hermana leaders, Hermana Garcia and Hermana Young.  Then it came time for lunch, which was bistek a la pobre.  Let me tell something Ernie, I never thought that I'd consider ketchup and mayo to be luxuries.  But now whenever I have the the chance to put them on my rice, I get excited.  After lunch it came time for us to sing.  I taught myself how to conduct.  You could hardly even tell.  It's easy: 4/4 = 1, which means that you only take 1 breath per line or something.  I also figured that that means I wave my hand in a smooth, four-sided triangle.  The lines up and down in the music is where the beat drops, so that's when I move my hand down too to let everyone know.  You could barely even tell I had almost no idea what I was doing.  We nailed the song; it turned out real nice.  President talked for a bit on what we need to do at home to remain converted.  Then it was time for the people that are going home to share their testimonies.  Elder Mabalot was one of them, I have a lot of respect for him.  He has to translate from Tagalog to English to Spanish.  He straight up hacked life.  He just said, "God gave me agency.  That means I can choose to be happy all the time."  He will forever be famous for always saying "Maximo poder!  Maximo energia!  Yahoo!  (Maximum power!  Maximum energy!  Yahoo!)"  It was a pretty good multi zone.  But when we got home and it was time to work, I couldn't find my motivation to work hard.  I wanted to want to work, but it wasn't happening.  We just contacted the rest of the day.

Mulit zone conference.

Friday

Apparently there was an earthquake last night at midnight.  I was awake, but I didn't feel it.  They changed the garbage truck song to just the overly repeated song of ringing a big bell, so that's really unfortunate.  Someone needs to be fired.  Well, today was her funeral.  I wish I could have been there, but the mission is a better place to be.  Señorita Taylor always joked that when she died or retired, that I, Señor Blanco, was to take over the classroom and teach in her stead.  It's a good thing she didn't die behind the line of death though, because I don't know how they would have done the funeral.  She will definitely be missed.  I've happened to read a few chapters in my personal study of the Book of Mormon the last couple of days about the resurrection.  That was a tender mercy.  It was really hot this morning.  I was walking along and was just like, "Huh.  That's odd.  I don't seem to remember going for a swim since getting out here."  We went to collect our laundry, but instead they invited us in for lemonade, bread with cheese, and ice cream.  The members are starting to trigger me.  They keep pestering me about being an assistant for English connect or being their person tutor.  And they don't accept no as an answer, even when I say President Amato said no.  We had another cita with Juan Carlos and Evelyn.  They're in the process of getting their papers together, so that's exciting.  We taught the restoration after, which went well.  The spirit was there.  Juan Carlos isn't afraid to ask questions, so that's good.  He left his job recently, which frees up his Sundays a lot better.  Let's just hope he doesn't pull a Mener on us and start working Sundays.  After that, we had a cita with Arlet.  She read the introduction and all the testimonies twice.  She even remembered dates and names.  Why can't every investigator be like this?  She accepts everything we tell her really easily and has no problem leaving behind bad habits.  Super cool.  After that, we went to go visit Angelica, a CR, but only her friend was there, so we told her we'd be back in 10 and left.  We went back and they were both there.  We got talking to them and then focused more on Agelica's friend, Roxana.  Turns out she's an old investigator.  She said she's looking to go back to church and maybe get baptized and wants the missionary lessons from the start again.  Ok. Why not?  Bruno didn't get permission for us to teach him, so that's unfortunate.  There was the wedding of the Piña girl at the chapel, so we passed by to use the bathroom to see if they'd give us some cake.  It didn't work this time.

Saturday

After lunch, we stopped by a member's house because they invited us yesterday.  I saw the member walk into the kitchen with 2 empty plates.  I told them we had just eaten and requested very little food.  But they're Peruvians, so they gave us those potatoes, rice and a 1/4 pollo each.  If you've every prayed for strength to finish food because you're too full, it's probably because you were a missionary in Peru.  Because of this and other situations like it, I now carry a little baggie in my backpack to sneak extra food into.  I wasn't hungry the rest of the day.  We went to go visit Jherson today.  That lesson went pretty decently well.  We went to have the cita with Roxana, but Angelica wasn't there for some reason so we didn't actually do it.  When we consulted to the good 'ole carpeta de area (area folder) and talked to her some more, Roxana didn't seem as cool as we thought.  People in the street haven't been as willing to listen lately, so that's unfortunate.  At night, we went to go visit la familia Astuhuaman with Oswaldo.  Jean Franco and Angi were at EFY (or FSY I guess they call it here) all week with the rest of the youth from Lima East, so they were on that spiritual high.  They have the PB&J line dance in Laino EFY too I guess.  That's pretty cool.

Sunday

Today is my 7 month mark.  This last month has really flown by.  Elder Sanchez is super sick and threw up all night, so they stayed home today.

Poor Elder Sanchez

We were a couple of minutes late to pick up Arlet, but we ran into her on the way to her house. She was on her way to church with her little sister.  That was cool.  Juan Carlos and Evelyn came with their kids, so that was cool too.  Very few of the members come on time and the transition between the wards is chaotic, so that frustrates me a bit.  The stake president was there today.  We were on the front row and Arlet's 4 or so year old sister was all over the place.  That was kind of awkward.  For lunch, we went and ate with la familia Herrera.  They hit us up with those Venezuelan burgers.  They're the bread, patty salchicha (sausage) of some sort, and an egg.  I also added onions, lechuga bamba (lettuce), papas al hilo (french fries) and a whole lotta sauce.  I'm a saucy guy.  The real talent I had thought was to not make a mess of it.  Lunch was pretty fun.  We were about to go to a zone attack when we got a call from the bishop saying that there was a family in the capilla looking for a bendicion de salud (blessing of health).  So we went there and then back to their home, where the husband was super sick.  They got a contacted in la Molina the other day and saw that the name on the card and capilla matched, so the wife wandered in.  So we taught lesson 3, gave him a blessing and left.  For the zone attack in Vitarte, we all did mini intercambios.  I went with Elder Villanueva (my companion from the CCM).  We weren't able to find the people they asked us to, but we tried, and worked good too.  When I was walking, I saw Alejando from Huaycan in a combi, so that was cool.  He'll be a good missionary.  Getting home was a nightmare.  I've never seen so much traffic in my life.  They closed down a big chunk of Ceres, which is a spot where all the combis in the region pass through.  Rumor has it that they're gonna start building a subway.  Due to that, we were more than just a few minutes late to our cita with Jherson.  I may not be the best at soccer now, but I used to be super good in elementary school.  There's one season I remember in specific when I was in 4th grade or so.  Our coach was this middle-aged black dude--I didn't think he was anyone's dad.  We had a super good team with good chemistry.  That season I averaged (not my team) 2 goals or so per game.  I could use my left foot when I needed and could put the ball anywhere I wanted.  I burned people with my speed too.  I remember one time I was dribbling down the sideline and got to the corner.  I pointed to my teammate and crossed it while running to him perfectly and he kneed it in.  We played the team of Bronco Medenhall's son once and smashed them.  My coach told me at the end of the season that he looked forward to seeing me in the MLS.  I think I was on track to make it.  I don't know why I didn't decide to do more with soccer.

Photos Elder White's family received this week from a ward member in his area:

 (Lovin' the hat!)

Week 9 in Alameda

We had a baptism this week for Maria Fernanda. She's pretty awesome and it was a great service. We also picked up a mini missionary named Elder Pulido during the week, so we're in a trio now. We had some miracles in the making and got a couple of new investigators. I found out today about the death of one of my close friends from back home. Even though I am super sad to hear about it, I take comfort in knowing that God has prepared the Plan of Salvation for us. Tell your friends and family you love them, because you never know if something might happen. Have a good week everyone.

-Elder White
 

Monday

My dad told me once that he prays every once in a while to be humbled.  He said that he hated it in the moment, but was always thankful after.  I was always just like "Oh heck no!  I ain't about to pray to have misfortune!"  But I got thinking about that and started praying nightly for that.  When God heard that, he just said, "It's about time boy.  You've got 19 years of extreme pride to make up for." And then hurled this freight train of a situation at me.  But then he saw that Elder White can barely  lift the caboose, let alone all the freight cars.  So he sent Arnold Schwarzenegger to help out.  Then he finally took it away today.  Elder Mayta and I started off right where we left off yesterday.  So when we went to internet I marked my email to President urgent in hopes that he'd read it before the interview we had scheduled for 6:00.  I was very frank with my feelings.  I had an extra minute at the end of internet, so I downloaded Fergie's National Anthem.  It's a hymn, so it's technically allowed.  I also found the remix version.  While it was pretty funny, I couldn't justify downloading it.  After lunch, we got a call telling us to go in to meet with President at 3:00.  It was a long interview.  The three of us talked it out.  Elder Mayta talks to me now!  President gave us some chocolate and the assistants gave us a slushy that they couldn't eat because they were fasting.  That was nice.  It was good to have our unity back too.  It's still a bit awkward at times, but we're much better.  The very first contact I made was a lady who just recently got reactivated.  She started telling us about how now her husband had recently started talking to her about baptism.  While that is super cool, they still need to get married.  So we'll see what happens in our cita.  I made another contact right after for this family that seemed genuinely interested.  You've always got to wait 'til the cita to get excited though.  The noche de hogar that we were going to do tonight got canceled.  So instead we went to Oswaldo's house.  We helped him put together his new chair, and then I roasted a dude in English that was sending Oswaldo hate mail over his YouTube channel.

Tuesday

Well, we're almost back to normal now.  We joke around like we used to, but every once in a while there's a bit of an uncomfortable silence.  But I'm glad we're at where we're at.  I was starting to worry an emergency transfer was coming our way.  It's kinda weird though because I'm less happy than I was when it was going down.  I was out contacting when I noticed that, and that I was kinda bored too.  It wasn't until just a couple of minutes ago that I figured out why.  I got what I asked for in my prayer:  God humbled me to the dust.  Literally.  To get through that I had to turn to Him in every last thought.  I learned to find the good in every single situation.  I was genuinely happy despite how miserable I could have been.  Today I unfortunately wasn't as anxiously engaged on that as I could have been.  So now here I am; thankful for this spiritual locomotive that plowed me over.  Now if only I could humble myself that much without challenges like that.  That would be happiness in its purest form.  It's kinda interesting how all this works.  We went out and contacted this morning and then did the same things after lunch.  We've been contacting a lot recently.  But God has also blessed us exceedingly recently:  For the last week, the weather has been overcast with wind 90% of the time.  Otherwise I'd look like a burnt chicken nugget.  Carlos and Charo invited us to talk to one of their friends that's 17 at their house.  It quickly became evident to us that she didn't believe in God and was only there because she was obliged.  But they didn't get the hint.  They kept talking about church and then even started talking to her about serving a mission.  That got kinda awkward.  We had Mafer's baptismal interview.  While we were waiting, a drunk dude came up to us.  We had seen him a couple of days ago.  He had been talking to Elder Mayta, so I tapped him on the shoulder and we walked away while he was confused.  Couldn't do that today though.  He was pretty funny.  He started speaking in broken English, "I am from Salt Lake City, Idaho."  He asked us where we were from, so we all made up a country.  Except for Mafer.  He was like, "No, you're Mexican."  He called me "Carne blanca" (white meat).  That was a first.  He wanted to whisper me a secret, but while he was, someone interrupted him.  So he turned and whispered in English, "Shhh.  Shut up."  That was super dang funny.  Mafer passed the interview perfectly.  After that we did our correlations.

Wednesday

Today was interesting.  It was really a classic example of "This day went nothing like how I thought it would."  I was at the district meeting and Elder Carrera had me go with him for a minute.  He was just like, "So when are you guys going to go to the office?"  "Why would we go there?"  "To pick up the mini missionary."  "What mini missionary?"  "You guys are going to be in a trio now.  Did the assistants not call you?"  Nope.  That did not.  All that happened 1 1/2 hours before we met our new friend, Elder Pulido.  We got out to pick him up kinda late because the zone leaders were busy burning everyone.  But we arrived just in time to say hi to his mom.  We took a taxi back to our house with all of his stuff.  It was the first time in over 6 months now that I've worn a seat belt.  Everyone uninstalls the seat belts in their vehicles here for some reason.  The dudes from the office came an hour later with a mattress for Elder Pulido because we didn't have stuff for another dude to be living here.  Elder Pulido is from Santa Felicia in La Molina.  He's pretty shy and doesn't talk a while lot.  He'll be with us for the rest of the transfer and then will have a week or two at home before heading off to his mission in Piura, Peru.  We all met up with Aylin and David and went to go visit a CR named Neli.  She's pretty cool.  She's a bit older and in bad health, so she hasn't been to church for a while though.  We went looking for a couple of references that we had gotten, but we didn't have any luck there.  Since we were in the area, we decided to visit la familia Astuhuaman.  We talked for a minute and invited them to all the church activities that are going down this week.  They gave us this fruit called granodia, which is fitting because it kinda looks like granada.  We got a cita with Bruno, Jean Franco's friend, tomorrow.  He seems pretty interested in the church, so I have high hopes.  They we passed by Evelyn and Juan Carlos, my contact from the other night.  The lesson went pretty well and they were receptive.  They told us that they were going to talk and get back to us on the whole marriage thing the next time we visit.  Tonight when we passed by to get  our Venezuelan pastries, the dude gave us each a free tequeño too.  I almost cried real man tears.  It was my first authentic Venezuelan tequeño.  It's like a churro, but with cheese and a bit of flavoring and without the sugar obviously.  So good, so good.

Thursday

"Los ricos helados a un sol."--the little kid in the moto taxi that sells ice cream.  Iconic.  Elder Wily stole an extra Pizza Hut pizza from Elder Sanches' two week training a couple days ago and we enjoyed eating it last night.  We went to the dentist again this morning.  It seems like Elder Mayta's mouth was destroyed more so than usual.  Maybe his mouth will be ok someday eventually.  It's kinda cool being in a trio because you never need to worry about finding a varon to go with you on citas.  We went to go and visit Jherson today.  He just got back from his trip to Huancayo.  He's not sick anymore, so that's great.  After that we went and visited Bruno, one of Jean Franco's friends.  He was pretty cool.  His mom came in though and sorta took our attention away from him while we were teaching.  Elder Pulido taught for his first time and didn't do half bad.  I extended the baptismal invitation to Bruno and not his mom.  Partly because she told us she's catholic, but mostly because the spirit told me to.  He was about to say yes when his mom said, "No, he's already been baptized.  He's catholic."  It took some self control not to retort, "Your mom's a catholic."  I wasn't talking to you lady.  Is your name Bruno?  You told us when we started that it was up to him to choose what religion to follow.  That got me kinda triggered.  But we talked her into talking to Bruno about it.  Then we went to Erick's house.  His mom had invited us over to try tequeños de aji de gallina.  While they were good, I was a little disappointed that they weren't better.  Regular Tequeños are the best.  While we were there, we used the opportunity to talk to Erick about a recent covert we haven't been able to help super well.  From there we went straight to the ward movie night activity.  Church activities rarely go as planned from what I've experienced.  Before the movie, we had to hurry and pop the popped corn.  While we setting it all up, we realized that the sound cable was broken, so we had to go on a quest around the ward to find one that would work.  The movie night was still a success though despite all the complications.  We met Nelson finally.  He's a CR that's friends with pretty much the whole ward.  He works as a chef on a cruise ship, so he's not really around a whole lot.  I saw a Venezuelan girl that I see all the time walk in that's not a member, so that was good.  But then her clone walked in right behind her.  I had no idea that there were 2 of them.

Friday

We had to get up early this morning to go to an emergency zone meeting.  When we got to the stake center, everyone was quiet and studying.  That was kinda odd so I asked what was up and they told me that the assistants were there.  It was at that moment that I thought to myself, "Did I really get up at 6:30 to come to an early morning roast session?"  Before that though,  we had interviews with the assistants and zone leaders.  They were pretty lengthy.  We got there at 8 but didn't have our interviews until around noon.  (We were last.)  I did it with Elder Madruga and Elder Carrera.  They wanted to know how the area was as well as how well we were working.  I was honest and told them all the stuff we need to change.  They they told me about how great my area is and about future plans of dividing the wards of Alameda and San Fransisco into 3 and about plans of a new stake possibly.  It was pretty chill.  While I had been waiting I just talked to Elder Shumway and my other friends to pass the time.  Then came the roast session.  They only burned us only a little bit actually.  It wasn't quite as bad as the one in Chaclacayo.  I enjoyed it actually.  We had a cita with Mafer today.  While we were there it rained lightly.  It was a lot more than just a drizzle.  The runoff was super dirty with dust and got my sleeve all dirty.  People tend to freak out when it rains here.  The news will do a story on it and everything.  But some people really just need to put a roof on their house.  Before Mafer, we visited a member named Patricia.  We visited the Astuhuaman's tonight.  We knew that they'd try to feed us, so we said we had to go, like 20 minutes early so that we could get to our next cita on time. But we were still 15 minutes late to the next one, which was Juan Carlos and Evelyn.  The main thing we talked about was their marriage.  At first they were kinda like, "Eh...," but at the end they were down to do it.  So we don't know what to think.  At night, Alfredo was watching the news and they had a part on weird things Maduro (Venezuela's president) has said.  Here's some of my favorites: "Yo trabajo duro las 35 horas del dia." (I work hard 35 hours a day.)  "Uno puede encontrar la felicidad cuando es feliz." (One can find happiness when one is happy.)  "Simon Bolivar se quedo huerfano de esposo."  (Simon Bolivar stayed an orphan husband.)  Then he was talking about a shortage of food or something and made a relation to Jesus with the bread and fish.  Except he accidentally said something completely different for bread that I can't repeat here.  That dude's crazy.

Saturday

I think I have termites.  I've found a couple on my arms and even one in my hair.  I don't know what part they're eating, but I'm honored that they think I taste as good as authentic Peruvian wood.  I know that we actually have a termite problem with our wardrobe, but I hope they don't spread to anything else.  We did weekly planning this morning.  How bored did I get, you ask?  Bored enough that I took my lighter and started singeing my arm hairs to entertain myself.  Today we had a zone attack in my area.  It was the first time I've had one in my area before, so that was cool.  I got it organized pretty well.  We got everyone sent to their spots and then we went to contact too.  I had a couple of really good contacts actually that have some good potential to progress.  When we got back to the capilla, we collected all the references.  There were a TON.  We got probably like 15, which is super awesome!  We had Mafer's baptism right after the attack.  San Fransisco had a ward baptism right before, but they cleaned up fast, which was great.  There were a lot of ward members out of town, but Mafer fortunately invited a lot of her friends.  She was kinda self conscious about the white dress we had for her, but then Oswaldo came out looking like the albino Teletubby and she was fine after that.  We had Elder Pulido give one of the messages.  He has a bit of a fear of public speaking and talking to strangers, but he'll get over that fear real quick.  Oswaldo performed the ordinance for her.  Everything went pretty smoothly.  Mafer has a really strong testimony.  I realized that Carlos is probably going to tell every youth he meets to serve a mission.  I mean, it's cool and all, but sometimes it scares people.  Before the baptism we got a call from Hermana Houghton.  That was odd.  They came in at the end of the service with a girl.  Mafer got to chose the last hymn, so she asked us to do a trio and sing "Noche de Luz".  I don't know why though because we were horrible in the ward program.  But I don't think we sounded all too bad tonight, but maybe my ears are broken.  After the service we talked to the Hermanas.  Turns out that their investigator moved into our area.  And apparently she's pretty awesome too.  It seemed hard for the Hermanas to say bye.  But that's how they work I guess: they teach with love and we teach with authority.  After the baptism we went looking for a contact that I had made.  We weren't able to go into their home to talk because their baby was sleeping, but they seemed cool.

Mafer's baptism:
 

Sunday

Another adventure is in the books.  We were supposed to pick a dude up this morning, but he wasn't home when we passed by.  No one that was contacted went actually.  But all of our converts went today, including Bruno and Arlet, the girl from Tilda.  All is good in Alameda.  After church, Rocio told us that Titi's mom was in the hospital and that he was crying.  So we took him into a room and tried to comfort him.  He's about 24, but he's also kinda special.  He was crying uncontrollably and somehow cried himself to sleep while we were talking to him.  We were just kinda like, "Well, that was kinda weird," and stepped out to talk about what to do.  I noticed that he was starting to drool a lot, but that's normal I guess.  But then he started to fidget a bit, and then a lot.  Nimord was just like, "I got this," and laid him down and used alcohol to wake him up.  He was telling us, "Yeah, he had a seizure at a JAS dance once too.  We didn't do anything at first though because we thought he was dancing like he was being electrocuted," because that's just how Titi rolls sometimes.  People here in this ward have a lot of practice with this kinda stuff I guess.  Titi was pretty normal when he woke up.  We had a brief panic when it came time for lunch because the relief society didn't have anyone assigned to feed us.  But then, thankfully, the same family from last week stepped forward to feed us.  After that, we went and had a cita with Juan Carlos and Evelyn.  They had some family in town that are members, so that was cool.  They told us they decided to get married, so that's exciting.  When we asked them when their goal was they said, "We don't really know, but before the end of the year though." 😐 ¿En serio?  (Seriously?)  Fortunately their brother stepped in and said that Elder Erickson got them married in less than a week.  So I think that made them understand better.  After that we came aback to the room to change into our suits from the fireside in La Molina with all the CR's in the mission that could make it.  When I put those suit pants on though, they were tight enough that I had to undo my button to wear them.  I've got some weight to lose I guess.  The only CR's that came with us were Nelson, Daniel and Jordy.  There were well over 1,000 people there; it was crazy.  I felt the spirit strongly when President Calderon was talking throughout the whole talk, so I know the CR's testimonies were strengthened because mine was too.  All my converts from Huaycan are inactive, but I saw Alejando, Yolada, Nicol and Doris (whom Elder Gonzalez is helping get married).  I also had time to talk to all my friends in the mission too.  It was a really fun night.

Stacking contact cards.

Reunion with Elder Monzon

 Happy to see Elder Yañez

Meeting up with Nicol (left) and Doris (right) and Elder Yañez.

Week 8 in Alameda

Turns out that there actually are llamas in Peru. But you have to go to the zoo to see them, so I don't know if that actually counts. But yeah, guys! I saw a llama! The zoo was pretty fun. I contacted a monkey, so that got pretty interesting. I used a card and everything. Some stats for the mission came out. In December we got 206 baptisms, which is the most our mission has ever gotten in a month before. In the year 2018, we got 1,947 baptisms. That's pretty cool. To celebrate we had another baptism. Angii got baptized and it was really special. The spirit was definitely there during the service. But yeah, that's me this week. Have a good week y'all!

-Elder White

Monday

Internet was pretty normal.  I found out that Cristopher is inactive though.  That made me kinda sad to hear.  When we went to pay, the lady gave Elder Mayta a rare collectable coin.  I've only received them by trading since getting to Alameda.  I've had really bad luck with it and he's had really good luck.  We didn't eat lunch right then because we weren't hungry.  As a zone, we met at the zoo in Huachipa.  This zoo, fortunately, was more than just a dairy farm like the one in Huaycan.  It obviously wasn't the biggest or best kept zoo in the world, but it was still cool  They had a couple of animals that you don't find in other zoos because the Amazon is just a big hop, skip and a jump away.  Then there were some animals that I recognized from the coins.  The tapir is a lot cooler in person.  The sister missionaries stopped to pose and take a pic with what seemed to be every animal enclosure.  Girls will be girls even in the  mission I guess.  We stopped by one of those things where you poke your head through the wall so that you're an animal.  I almost got my head stuck in that.  Would have been a legendary story if I did.  As we were all walking by the monkeys, one jumped on the fence of his cage and stuck his hand through.  So Elder Costa shook its hand.  Everyone was like, "He's an escogido! (contact)"  I was like, "If he really does love Jesus he'll take a contact card.  Let's see."  En la mision Peru Lima Este testificamos todos, ¿no?  (In the Peru Lima East mission we all testify, no?)  So I contacted the monkey.  He grabbed the card so we were all like, "Yep, he's an escogido all right."  But then he pulled the card inside the cage.  At that point I was like, "Well, crap."  

 

He looked at it a second and then tore it in half and ripped it to shreds and even started eating it.  He took the whole Jesus is the bread of life and eating him thing a bit too literally.  After being in Peru for 6 months, I finally saw a llama for the first time.  And I had to go to a zoo to see it.  How sad is that?  When we got back to the area, I had a super late lunch/dinner.  I ate a bunch of bread and drank a kilogram of yogurt.  Drinking that much yogurt in one sitting never ends well.  But every once in a while it gets really tempting, so I've gotta do it to remind myself why I shouldn't do it for at least a week or two.  We went to Oswaldo's to have a lesson with him and his friends, but his friends never actually came.  So we helped Oswaldo message a girl he likes while we waited.  I don't know why he would ever take advice from me; I don't know anything about that.  We went to go do a NDH with Carlos and his neighbors after, but no one went.  Josue gave the message though, so that was cool.  Pictures we took at the zoo:

Tuesday

We had interviews with the President today.  We all went to the office for some reason to do it, but I wasn't about to argue with that.  We got there at 11, but I didn't have my interview until almost 5.  In the mean time, I hung out with all the other Elders.  I don't really remember what we talked about, but I wasn't ever bored.  I found Elder Van Dassell and told him, "I'm gonna eat all the lechuga, fresas and ceviche so that I can call you."  I walked into President's office and it was actually a little bit chilly from the AC.  That was the best thing ever!  We talked for a bit and then he told me, "You're a great missionary, Elder.  I don't know when, but I'd anticipate being a trainer soon."  I'd be down for that.  THen I had a coupole of questions that we discussed.  We got talking about some deep doctrine.  At one point the Jews got brought up and he told me, "Ya know, you look just like a Jew actually.  I know quite a few and you look like them."  You learn something new everyday.  After that I shared a concern I have about Elder Mayta with him.  He walked me through on how to do it.  He told me that he'd let me take care of it so that I could build my leadership skills.  He said, "You've only got 2 weaknesses as a leader:  you think everyone should be self sufficient and you don't like to confront people."  Man, I have no idea how he knew that.  I love interviews with President Amato.  I was so happy the rest of the day.  I couldn't tell you why, but I couldn't stop smiling.  I don't remember the last time I was so happy.  When we got back, we went to the capilla for Angii's interview.  I was happy to hear that she passed.  Everything is all good to go for Friday now.  Yure brought an inactive teen to the church with him that seems super cool.  I hope he decides to come back to church.  After the interview, we did a correlation and planned a bunch of stuff out.

Wednesday

Here's some stats for you: in December, we baptized 206 people, which is new mission record.  We achieved 1,947 baptisms in 2018.  That's a lot.  I wonder how that stands compared to other missions in the world.  I think about the Millennium a lot.  Man, I can't wait!  The zone leaders had emergency cambios, so now Costa is gone and Elder Carrera is here.  I'm kinda happy about that actually because Elder Carrera is super awesome.  We had a consejo de distrito this morning.  I learned a couple of new things that I'll be able to put into practice to be a better teacher.  They also released another enfoque (approach) that puts greater emphasis on the Book of Mormon  When we got back, I made the resolution to contact super hard today.  I handed out a ton of contact cards.  There was this one dude who asked me after giving him the card, "Who is this?"  I had already implied it was Christ so I was like, "Uh...It's Jesus."  "Are you sure?  How do you know what Jesus looks like?"  "He's just an actor man.  It's just supposed to convey the idea."  He's actually Elder Shumway's neighbor, really.  I wanted to badly to be sarcastic with that dude, but I didn't.  There was another contact I made with a Venezuelan that made me speak in English with him.  It was interesting because it was the first time bearing my testimony in English since I left.  It felt kinda weird.  That dude's got some changes he needs to make, but I hope he can come to church.  We had a cita with Mafer today and brought Aylin with us.  The cita went really well.  Aylin is pretty awesome.  She's got just about everything ready so that she can submit her papers as soon as she turns 19.  She's also pretty reliable, which is something that's hard to come across down here.  We had the noche de hogar at Luis' house tonight.  When we got back to the room, Elder Wily said to me, "You ever noticed how Elder Mayta smells like ketchup when he's all sweaty?"  I have never noticed that.  But it did remind me about how one kid on my football team always smelled like applesauce when he was sweaty.  I never could figure out who it was though; I just always smelled it in the team huddle.  Even though I've always had a pretty active lifestyle, I've never been one to wear cologne or deodorant.  No one has ever told me that I smell bad or anything, so I just assume that if it was a problem someone would have told me about it by now.  I wouldn't buy it here though because A: most of the people here have poor hygiene, and B: that's stuff is expensive.  What better?  To smell good, or to have a dozen Venezuelan pastries?

Thursday

Elder Willy and Elder Sanchez left this morning to do a service.  They came back 20  minutes later with Elder Wily all bruised up and covered in dust, scratches and cuts.  I was like, "Bro, what happened with the service?"  He just casually told me, "I fell through the roof."  These ladies asked him to fix something up there.  The roof was tin, so he tested it first.  It seemed sturdy so he went for it.  But then he fell through.  He may have sprained his ankle.  Elder VanDassell told him 3 days of rest, so he said, "Ok," and totally ignored that and worked today like normal.   My man's a straight G.  We went to the dentist again this morning.  Elder Mayta's mouth is horrible.  He had a root canal done today.  After lunch, I decided I needed to talk to Elder Mayta.  I was going to wait until tomorrow to talk, but I prayed and Alma 8:18 came to mind, so I talked to him.  I tried my best to talk to him in the most humble, nonthreatening way possible.  It didn't go well.  Today we had a cita with Daniel to see if he had any friends that he wanted to bring to church.  Then we took him and went to visit Erick's mom for the same reason.  There was one dude that I contacted today that asked what church we're from, so I told him.  He was like, "You Catholics?"  "No, we're Christians though!"  "But that picture?"  That Bible video Jesus is ours boi.  "We're not Catholics, we're from the Church of Jesus...." "But are you Catholics?"  "Nope.  Do you want to come to church?" *Offers card again*  "I don't worship images." "Dude, it's just to put on your wall or something."  Long story short, he didn't take the card.  I ran into a Venezuelan lady that seemed pretty interested. But then she started talking in English.  Everyone knows that Gringos can't contact in English.  It's way too weird.

Friday

Well, today should have stunk, but it didn't because I didn't give it permission to.  Jesus got me through the day.  I started out with enough positive energy for the entire city.  It was hard to hold it high all day, but I did.  I called President this morning because he had asked me to do so after I talked to my companion.  In the call he told me to get Elder Mayta to call him.  So I had to bring up our talk from yesterday again during weekly planning.  He took it worse than the first time I did it.  Elder Mayta is super mad at me.  We have a great friendship built.  I talked to him because I love him.  Anyways, we contacted a ton today.  I got some good ones in too.  Angii's baptism was in the afternoon.  We had a pretty good turnout.  It was a really nice service.  Her good friend Paul performed the ordinance for her.  Coincidentally, he has a similar personality to my Uncle Paul.  As they were coming out of the font, the first things Angii said was, "I felt something."  She later talked about how she felt "it" cleaned her and gave a really strong testimony.  While they were changing, I was asked to share my testimony.  I've never shared a testimony so powerfully before.  The spirit filled the room.  I felt like if there were a nonmember there I could have told them to be baptized and  they would have said yes.  Elva was there and bore her testimony too.  She talked about how proud she was of her kids and how good she felt in the church and how she knew that it was true.  Why doesn't she want to get baptized then?  It pains me a lot.

 Pictures from the baptism:

Saturday

Welp, today was harder than yesterday.  We went and contacted in the morning.  Elder Mayta is still really mad at me.  We did intercambios with Elder Meyers after lunch and I went to LA with him.  Before actually going out to work, I sat down and talked with him for a while about Elder Mayta and how to help him.  Elder Meyers is struggling with his companion too so it was nice for us to just sit and talk for a bit.  I really enjoyed the intercambios.  Elder Meyers is really fun to pass time with.  We mostly just contacted the whole time.  We finished the intercamios at the end of the night.  When I got back, Elder Mayta was still really mad at me.  Anyways, Here is one contact that I had today:  I said, "Do you want to learn more about Jesus?"  The dude just made the action of slitting his through as we walked by.  Interesting to see people blessed momentarily with the gift of prophecy to be able to predict their impending spiritual death like that.

Sunday

Welp, Jesus got me through the day.  Otherwise one of us might have died.  I mean, today should have been straight up horrible, but I was super happy for some reason.  It was really weird because I knew my joy was straight from God, and that if I did something to take the spirit away I'd be miserable.  But I love God so I am ok, at least a little ok.  Elder Mayta is still really mad at me and won't talk to me or look at me.  So all four of us went together and picked up Mafer.  We had stake conference today.  They transmitted it to our building and it started at 10, so that's a plus.  They used Skype to send it to all the buildings.  In one of them, the dude did split screen accidentally and couldn't figure out on how to fix it.  So we all just kinda watched him awkwardly filming a selfie for 5-10 minutes.  That was pretty funny.  We went to eat lunch with memebers and gave 5 blessings for the sick.  I made a special extra prayer that God would accept them even though there wasn't unity between us.  We had a noche de hogar with la familia  Villafuerte tonight, so that was fun.

Week 7 in Alameda (Happy New Year!)

Our friend Oswaldo is a YouTuber and he put us in one of his videos. I'll put the link at the bottom for you guys to watch if you want. We have one recent convert named Jherson that we baptized a couple of weeks ago. He got kinda sick a couple days before, but he went through with it still. He only got more and more sick after. They took him to the hospital and found out that he has a swollen liver or something. But he's come to church every week since we started teaching him and has seemed fine there. He'll say he doesn't feel the best though if you were to ask. We couldn't pass by his house at all for like a week because his grandma says he was way to sick. We finally talked her into letting us stop by to give him a blessing yesterday though. He looked like he might faint while we were talking to him beforehand. But as soon as we started talking about Jesus and preaching, he looked like his normal self. He even acknowledged that he for some reason always felt good enough to go to church when it rolled around, but would crash hard afterwards. It's really awesome to see the power of Jesus so evident in his life like this. He is super sick, but when it comes time to talk about the church, he's fine. It's just so cool! What a blessing it is for me to be able to witness. It is a strong testimony to me that God will help us if we really make the effort to be better and live our lives like He lived. Always try harder to be better.

-Elder White

(Elder White and his companion appear around the 3:17 mark and then Elder White shows off his mad Flossing skills at around the 5:00 mark.)

 Monday

During internet, Elder Mayta got an email from a gringo that ended when I started.  He just got engaged.  When I talk to members they'll be like, "Yeah, I got baptized 5 years ago by Elder So-and-so.  Now he's married with 3 kids."  Where the heck will I be in 3 years?  We came back and deep cleaned the room after.  Elder Mayta was determined not to almorzar (eat lunch) until we were done though, so we got a really late lunch.  We went to a local Chifa and ran into Owaldo and his dad, so that was fun.  Let me tell ya something Ernie, mostrito is one of the best meals money can buy.  Guar-an-teed.  We were coming back and this older guy in a sweater called after us.  I was thinking, "Ah crap.  Another testigo?"  But he was just drunk.  We were like, "Can we help you?"  He told us he needed money and then put his hand in his pocket.  I thought he was going to rob us, but he didn't.  Elder Mayta declined.  He then asked why I was tall and he was short.  I made up an extravagant story about how my mom dropped me on my head, which broke my spine.  He accepted it so I said, "Gotta go.  Chau," and walked away.  San Fransisco still wasn't back when we returned so I put some of those poppers in the creases of Elder Artega's folding chair so that they'd pop when he sat down.  I also taped two to the bottom of his chanclas (sandals).  That was down right hilarious!  Apparently it's illegal to burn muñecos now, but some people don't care.  Some meñecos have sarcastic fake quotes about things they've done that are pretty funny.  

 An over the top muñeco someone made.

I bought a whole bunch of poppers tonight; they've got to last the whole year.  Everyone was selling yellow underwear today.  That was really weird.  Peruvians aren't just a little skittish, they're superstitious.  They say if they wear that tonight they'll have good luck through out the year.  We had a cita with Mafer tonight.  We got Diego, a less active, to come with us.  Mafer is so easy to work with.  It's awesome!  After that we went and visited the ex-obispo (ex-bishop) from la familia Lopez.  They seem pretty cool.  Then we went and visited Rogelio y Rocio for a second.  We ended the night by going to visit Oswaldo and his family.  While we were there, he started filming a video for his YouTube channel out of the blue.  That was pretty fun.  We did a noche de hogar with them too.  It was pretty solid day.  A couple of days ago, Elder Mayta asked me, "Have you seen Robot Chicken Star Wars?"  It was at that moment that I knew this friendship was complete.  There's been less of a build up to midnight for fireworks, so I'm thinking they'll come all at once.

Happy New Year from Peru!

Tuesday

There were even more fireworks than on Christmas yesterday.  It was really cool  Except they never completely stopped.  I laid there trying to fall asleep, but couldn't.  I gradually started to feel sick.  I figured that maybe if I used the bathroom I'd feel better.  Then my stomach got even more upset and I ended up throwing up until I couldn't anymore.  I spent about an hour in the bathroom.  I didn't fall asleep until after 2.  I got up like normal and called the man, my man, Elder Van Tassell.  He told me to take a pill and go back to bed.  I wasn't about to argue with that.  I went back to bed at 8:30.  Elder Mayta woke me up at 1:30.  I might have never woken back up if he hadn't.  We missed the breakfast Rogelio had invited us to at 10, but oh well.  I don't feel super sick, but I'm definitely not 100%  I can't think straight though.  I have been sick all year.  We went to the capilla because that's where lunch was.  There was supposed to be a huge ward activity that lasted all day, but not a ton of people went.  Due to that, there was a bunch of extra food.  Don't ask me how or why, but I had 3 plates myself of the Peruvian trinity.  I was hungry man.  YOLO.  We stayed and visited for a bit and then came back to the room.  There were still some lingering fireworks lit throughout the day.  Some of them are actually bombs though, I swear.  They don't go into the air at all and they just blow up super loudly and make car alarms go off.  Elder Wily's trainee is Elder Sánchez from Ecuador.  He seems pretty chill.  After hanging out a while in the room, we took our clothes to the laundry lady and then ate dinner.  It was lamb and a really good drink call soya or something, so that was a good mix up.  Some people started partying last night and they didn't stop until it got dark outside tonight.  I don't know how that's humanly possible, but I respect it.  Unless there was alcohol, in which case I'll have to drop a palabra de Sabiduria folleto (Word of Wisdom pamphlet) off for them.

Wednesday

Today was a super long day.  Everything we had put together fell apart: Mafer left unexpectedly, Jherson is sick still and went to the hospital (they just gave him a shot though because that's their solution for everything from a paper cut to dislocating your femur), and the ward movie night thing got canceled last second.  Canceling that really threw us for a loop because we had already invited a ton of people and it was the one thing we thought was guaranteed in our schedule.  I was reading in Jesus the Christ this morning and it really stood out to me how James E Talmage really ripped other religions a new one, especially burning the Catholics.  This was just his summarized version too in a chapter.  He wrote 176 pages about that in another book.  What a guy.  We did nothing but contact from start to finish today.  Here's an actual contact I made this morning with a 25 or so year old dude:  "Hello, good morning!  Are you interested in hearing something about Jesus Christ?"  "My parents are Christians."  "Oh, that's cool!  We're Christians too; we believe in Jesus.  Does that mean you want to learn more about him then?"  "No. My parents are Christian."  "Yeah...ok.  Have a good day then!  Take care!"  Hey man, you want a donut?  No thanks, my uncle is a vegetarian.  Boy what?  I is confusion.  I hate it when people tell me they're in a hurry when I contact them.  Some day I'm just gonna break down and say, "Lady, I know for a fact that you're not in a hurry.  No one in this country is.  Y'all arrive 30 minutes late if you say you'll be early.  Sit down with me and let's talk about Jesus."  On a similar note though, the members here are woke.  We'll plan something with the leaders and then announce that it starts 30 minutes to 1 hour before it actually does so that people will be on time.  But somehow they know we do that, so they'll show up about 30 minutes to 1 hour after the time we want it to start.  For example, we'll have something at 5, so we tell them 4, but they arrive at 6.  That's just how things work here I guess.  I don't know how I forgot, but we had to teach the Sr. primary during church because the teacher didn't come.  We somehow talked about goals and Christmas for almost the whole time.  There were only 6 or so kids though, so that was easy.  The last 10 minutes I broke down and introduced them to spiritual hangman.

Thursday

We had a district meeting this morning.  I was talking to Hermana Houghton to catch up and her dad just got called as a mission president in Australia.  So instead of going home to Colorado, she's going to Australia when she ends.  Since she's studying at BYU she'll go there for school though.  Not gonna lie, that'd be kinda rough.  Good for them though.  We took money out afterwards.  There was this one dude that was really grumpy because we were taking a while.  They security guard set him straight though.  He told him how we had already been there 30 minutes before him, we were in line, and we had as much as a right to it as he did (the ATM).  He was quiet a couple of minutes.  Then a lady, which I am assuming is his wife, randomly said, "There's no way you're called of God."  Then he started calling all of us sinners.  Shoot man, they really got us.  We broke the lesser known 11th commandment: "And if thou art a missionary, a servant of God, take thee heed; Thou shalt not use an ATM on the fifth day, at the third watch of day, lest I smite thee; thus saith Mr. Grumpy Pants."  All of our citas fell again for the 2nd day in a row, so that was dandy.  I made the resolution to make the same satisfied "Ah" that LeBron James does every time I take a sip of Sprite for the rest of my life.  I'm very proud of that goal.  Elder Mayta was like, "Yeah, that commercial is cool. But have you seen the Old Spice commercials?"  So after that we screamed like that dude who's name I forgot.  What more does this friendship need?  We had a small correlation with Carlos, Caro and Josue.  They shared a chocolate bar with us, so that was awesome.  Josue is my spirit animal (he's 14).  He wears chanclas (sandals) everywhere he goes: church, shopping, sports, etc.  He even wore them when the ward choir sang on live national television on Christmas Eve.  What a dude.  It's partly because he has a minor foot problem, but don't let that distract you from the fact that he's legendary, and that the Warriors blew a 3-1 lead in the 2016 NBA Finals.

Friday

Last night there was a dude alone in the park out from of our house, so I threw a popper at him from the window.  He was mildly confused.  I did it again a couple of minutes later and he was even more confused.  He was joined by a friend and they starting smoking on the bench, so I repeated it twice more.  By the end they were looking around frantically.  That was pretty funny.  We went to the dentist this morning.  I finished Jesus the Christ while we were there.  I read it in about a month.  I'd say its a pretty dang good book.  I don't know what to do with myself now though.  JK, I just started Our Search For Happiness by M Russell Ballard.  Today I was arguing with Elder Mayta about Donas should have a "t" at the end like it does in English "Donut".  But then I realized I was fighting against everything I stood for.  With the Utah accent, we don't pronounce that "t" even thought it's there.  My mind got broke.  I wasn't about to give up like that though.  Got too much pride for that.  Alfredo had an uncle die, so they're on a an unprecedented trip for a while.  So we're our own pensionistos for a bit.  #Mostritoforlunch.  We took Oswaldo and David with us to go and visit Olga after lunch.  She doesn't have a ton of spiritual knowledge, but she does have a lot of faith in what she knows.  We swung by to pick our clothes up after, but we wound up staying a bit to get to know them.  They told us about these older investigators in SF.  The husband had a very simple nose surgery that was nonthreatening to his life, but they gave him too much anesthesia and he fell into an irreversible coma.  That was 2 years ago and in a coma he remains.  Scary stuff man.  Elder Myers (Elder Dantas) came to our area to come with us on a couple of citas to meet our investigators.  Our cita with Mafer went well.  She's awesome enough that when we had just stopped by yesterday, she asked for homework.  We passed by Angii's but she was home alone so we couldn't really do anything.  President changed the food rules so that we can buy in the streets if the preparedness looks clean.  There's this one Venezuelan food stand we had walked by, but tonight we tried it out.  It was so. dang. good.  It was like a deep fried pizza pocket, but infinitely better.  Honestly the best part of Peru is Venezuela.  Elder Wily was out contacting tonight and dropped a card.  When he reached down, he ripped a huge hole in his pants.  It was on his busiest street too, pobrecito (poor guy).

Saturday

I was awoken this morning by a loud beeping noise.  I tired sleeping through it, but couldn't.  I thought to myself, "What idiot is playing that sound and why so early?"  I got up to look for ear plugs and I quickly discovered that it was our smoke detector.  There weren't any batteries I could take out and I tried all the buttons, but it wouldn't stop beeping.  So I gave up and chucked it out the window with extreme prejudice.  I slept very little the rest of the morning, but at least the sound was gone.  I went out to go retrieve it in the morning and somehow it still worked and had stopped beeping.  No regrets.  We did a weekly planning this morning.  I drank water in excessively healthy amounts to try and prepare myself for fasting in the Peruvian summer, but it didn't work.  Or maybe I'd just already be dead if I hadn't done that.  We ate mostrito for lunch today again.  We went to a zone attack in Tilda 1.  We got there early and the rest of the zone (almost) got there like 30 minutes to an hour late.  We got horsing around with San Fransisco and had some fun, but then Elder Wily tripped and got a semi-nasty cut on his hand.  But we enjoyed it while it lasted, so that means it's ok.  The attack was long and boring because their area is kinda small, so it was super saturated with missionaries.  Plus there weren't that many people in he street to begin with anyways.  We visited Mafer when we got back.  She's super ready.  I like making up stories when people ask me a question I don't know the answer to.  She asked me why we're called Gringos, I told her it's because we go green when we get sick (hence Green-go) and that the Mexicans thought it was really funny when they saw it for the first time, so they called us that and the name stuck.  Paul called and asked us for Angii's address because he wanted to visit her.  We went there like 30 minutes later and found them there with Ailin too, so that was cool.  We did the pre-interview with her and she seems more ready than I thought, which is great.  Elder Mayta and I decided to go buy some of these pasteles Venezuelans for dinner tomorrow.  It was crowded by a bunch of Venezuelans, so that's how you know that it's authentic.  One of them was as high as Snoop Dog, and he kept talking to me.  He wanted to know more about religion.  So while mine were frying, I taught him a super brief version of the Gospel and the Atonement of Jesus Christ.  He seemed pretty interested and got asking when and where we meet and all.  He'll probably forget everything and not go, but it'd be super cool if he did.

Sunday

8:00 church is kinda rough for me if I'm being honest.  Why so early?  The way they worked things out this year is that San Fransisco will start at the same time as us.  They do sacrament and we do classes then we swap.  It was kinda chaotic, but it worked.  We picked Mafer up this morning on the way to church.  We hung out with the youth since there's no gospel principles.  Jean Franco brought his 2 friends again and Jordy brought his sister.  Then there was a couple that walked in last second that aren't members.  So that was all great.  In this ward, it's a race to get to the stage so that they'll have time to bear their testimonies.  It was actually one of the things we talked about in ward council after, which is a good problem to have if you ask me.  The consejo (council) lasted for what seemed like an eternity.  We ate lunch with the Rojas family afterwards, so that was fun.  We had a cita with Jherson today.  He's been super sick with a swollen liver since his baptism, but somehow he's managed to always come to church.  When he's there and when we're teaching, he seems fine.  But the rest of the time he looks like he might die.  It's really cool to see the power of God helping him so evidently like that.  We gave a blessing to him and then to his grandma.  I'll never forget how his crazy uncle made them turn on a crazy song for a couple of 6 year olds to dance to at the ward Christmas party.  That was one thing I never thought would happen.  We contacted for a while.  It was kinda rough because the people didn't want it tonight and I was at the point where I was about to sleep standing up.  We had a noche de hogar with the Herrera family.  Elder Mayta told me that Oswaldo was going to do the message, but when we got there, I found out they expected a message from us.  It was my turn, so I pulled out numbers 22 on them.  I figured it'd just be a really chill lesson, but when I finished I realized that I had burned them a bit.  Oh well, they still love us.  Oswaldo published that video that we're in.  It's not getting as many views as normal though, so he teased us about that.  Sometimes when I'm bored, I'll walk directly behind Elder Mayta.  He'll look over his shoulder, so I'll side step.  Then he'll do the same with the other side.  It always mildly panics people, so it's kinda fun.  So then he'll do a 360, except then I'll be walking right next to him and ask, "What's up Elder?  You lose something?"  We both enjoy it.

A picture a ward member sent Elder White's family this week.

Week 6 in Alameda

Transfers came in last night and I will be staying put with Elder Mayta for another 6 weeks. We're pretty excited here. Christmas happened this week. That was really fun. Peruvians celebrate with a lot of fireworks. I mean, a lot of fireworks. We were encourage to visit as many people as possible from the ward and investigators for the holiday, so that's what we did. It was a party. We ate a whole lot of paneton (a bread similar to fruit cake that I don't like very much) and hot chocolate. We had a lot of potential investigators that we visited this week, but none of them really accepted a baptismal date, so that was hard. President Amato announced a 6th mission in Lima called Mission Peru Lima Tambo. It'll happen in June, so it'll be interesting to see what goes down with that. What I can say though is that the Lord's work is progressing rapidly here and that this truly is the work of God on Earth. Have a good week everyone!

Monday
What's the best and easiest way to describe Christmas here?  Christmas + Thanksgiving + New Years + 4th of July + a touch of cocaine = Peruvian Christmas starter pack.  It's sounded like Vietnam out there since about 10:00 tonight.  I don't know what they put in these fireworks, but some of them are super loud.  We did internet like normal this morning.  My stomach is feeling better today so that is a relief.  We came back to the room and hung out a bit after internet, then went to eat lunch with the Herrera's.  She made chicken cordon bleu, except it was really just fried chicken, so it was better.  I like Venezuelan food a lot actually, mostly because it's greasy.  While we were at lunch, we got a text telling us to bring P-day clothes to the zone activity.  Elder Mayta said he didn't want to participate in that game, which is fine, but I did so I let him know.  We got out of lunch a little later than planned.  He walked for the road I and I walked for the room.  I told him I was going to play even if he wasn't and that to go back we'd only be 5 minutes late tops.  He tried to say we didn't have time, so I reminded him that he he continued to talk even after I tried to end it.  He grudgingly followed me to the room.  This wasn't usual for Elder Mayta.  His attitude came out of nowhere and he wasn't normal again 'til 7:00.  Guess what.  We showed up with everyone else 15 minutes late.  We did a white elephant as a zone.  Elder King won "best gift".  I got this really weird Winnie the Pooh piggy bank from him.

I brought a bathroom sign with a bit of food and some toys.  Afterwards we played soccer.  The weather was cool and cloudy.  The mist came at the end of the day, so that was cool too.

We went and had paneton and hot chocolate with Rogelio and Rocio Rojas.  After enjoying our time there, we went and spent the night with la familia Astuhuaman and ate the same. 

They brought us a small dinner after too and then gifted us some sunscreen.  That was nice.  Then we went and ate dinner at our temporary pension.  I was so full at the end of the night.

Tuesday
At about 11:55 last night, it started to sound like Armageddon outside.  I wasn't going to sleep anyways, so I got up to watch the show.

It was the coolest thing.  Every where I looked there were fireworks.  They're making the 4th of July look like child's play.  I might come back every year for Christmas just for the fireworks.  I went to bed at 12:20.  But today was Christmas, even though it didn't really feel like it.  I got up early to open my package.  There was a bunch of really cool stuff.  The highlight of it though was the custom tie that Jaxon made with photos of the 2 of us.  That was dang nice.  There were some nice cards in there too from family.  I got up early yesterday too to give myself a haircut.  Not too bad if I say so myself.  We had a district counsel this morning.  President Amato made a bombshell announcement in this weekly video: there's going to be a 6th mission in Lima.  La Mision Peru Lima Tambo.  Everyone got excited.  I mean, that's great news and all, but my first thought was if missionaries would be transferred from our mission and if our borders would be changed.  I guess we'll find out in June.  Other than that, it was a normal meeting.  After lunch, the Roja's invited us over for a second lunch.  A second meal is always a risky move, but it was good today.  After that we went and visited Mafer.  She took the lessons a year and a half ago and wanted to get baptized, but she lacked permission from her parents.  Then she told us how she stopped going for a bit and her friend talked to her about it.  We showed up the next day.  She was like, "I love the church and the way I feel there.  And how it's evident God wants me there too."  She was excited about baptism, so we put a date on her for January.  She'll turn 18 by then too.  Then we went back to Oswaldo's house to Skype home.  It was nice to be able to see the family and talk to them again.  I got Oswaldo to do the floss with me for them, so that's all that matters.  We went to go visit Jordy, a CR.  He's cool and wanted his mom and sister to be there, but everyone in the house locked themselves in the back.  So we really just got to know Jordy.  His sister came out at the end.  I shared a thought based on a quote my dad shared with me on if there's room for Jesus in our inn.  The spirit was super strong.  We have a cita with her tomorrow.

Wednesday
The weirdest part of talking to my family was that they called me McKay.  I almost didn't respond to it.  I was kinda like, "Who the heck is that?  My name is Elder White."  I found a bunch of HLJ (CTR) rings at the bottom of my package.  I was deciding which finger to wear one on when I decided left ring finger.  But yeah, today was pretty normal.  We had a cita with Jherson.  It was pretty normal.  Afterwards they gave us both a huge slice of watermelon.  I didn't like it a whole lot before my mission, but I'm starting to like it though.  But what I've come to learn is that whenever I eat something with a strong water base like that or a cucumber, my burps will taste like it regardless of what I eat after.  We had a cita with Jordy and his sister Nicol after.  It went fairly well.  We put a date on her for January 26, but we need to check her desires more still.  I think she's good though.  Jordy really wants his family to accept the gospel too.  We were supposed to have a correlation tonight, but they were all like, "Nah man.  It's the Christmas season."  But you told us tonight because y'all didn't want to do it yesterday.  We went to the ward NDH after that.

Oswaldo Sr. made us some salchiha burgers that were pretty good.  During lunch though, Zoraima brought out a salad.  It consisted exclusively of carrots, green beans and broccoli.  I didn't take any obviously, but after a minute Zoraima took the bowl and have me 3 huge scoops and said, "Eat up.  You need to be healthy."  I looked at my comp like Jim looks at the camera in The Office. I'll just die thanks.  I ate my carrots and then hurry and agave my comp the rest of it when she went back into the kitchen.  We help each other out like that.  My parents gave me a dog chaser for Christmas too.  The product is Chinese, so it has instructions in Chinese and English.  I don't know who's in charge of translating, but they need to get someone new or stop using Google Translate.  It's pretty funny though.  For example: WHen you encounter the dog which is trying to attack you, please come up with this "super weapons".  Or:  The longer stay in the position, the greater harm to him, which left helter-skelter.

Thursday
6 months down now.  I lent my dog chaser thing to Elder Wily today because he claims to have beef with a couple of dogs in his area.  He hates their pension's dog.  It barks a lot, so he'd use it whenever it would start to bark while they were there.  After a couple of times, the dog threw up right by his shoes.  They weren't kidding around when they said "super weapon".  We went to the dentist this morning again.  I looked over at Elder Mayta and it looked like the dentist was making a bomb like they do in Mythbusters.  Whatever that cocaine-bomb thing was, he put it in my comp's tooth.  We came back and ate lunch, which was spaghetti.  It was real too, not the chicken Peruvian ripoff.  So that was good.  Frying bananas is popular among Venezuelans it seems, but I'm not a big fan of it myself.  All the kids are on summer break now.  School won't start back up until March or April.  We went with Eric to go and visit Olga.  Her husband was there, so we tried setting him up for a baptism.  He didn't really want it though, which is unfortunate.  Then we went as a district to Tilda 1 to do an attack there.  They also have us a PF to look for.  We didn't find him though, we we really just wound up contacting the whole time.  We all met back at the church after to report our progress.  A couple of days ago Hermana Daniel told me that she'd start reading Jesus the Christ too.  She still hasn't started though, so now it's my job to give her as much crap as possible until she starts readying.  She always promises to start reading and she asked me to hold her accountable.  When we got back to our area, we went and had a cita with Mafer.  It went really well.  She understands everything really well and is excited about it too.  Then we went to la familia Astuhuaman.  We tried to help Mario and Elva accept a baptismal date, but they declined.  They said "Mas adelante (later)" still.  I don't know why.  Especially with Elva.  She's the one that's dragging the whole family to church to arrive on time so that she can take the sacrament because she likes the way she feels when she does.  I think she feels the spirit stronger than I do sometimes.  What else needs to happen for them to accept a baptismal date?  I was in a depressing mood the rest of the night due to that.

Friday
Today was the Peruvian April Fool's day.  Except no one tried playing any pranks, so that was disappointing.  I did a bit of my own though.  On Christmas Eve, I found some members selling fireworks.  They also had those poppers that explode when you throw them at parades and stuff.  So I bought a box or two.  Come to find out, Elder Arteaga scares easy.  So at a couple of points in the day I threw one around him.  He jumped and let out a high pitched "Aaagh" or yelp.  That was pretty funny.  They say that New Year's is even bigger than Christmas in terms of festejaring, so I have that to look forward to.  For the holiday, it turns out that there's a popular tradition of burning piñatas of politicians.  I asked Elder Arteaga why since he's from Trujillo and he just casually told me, "Because everyone in the country hates them, that's why."  It's wild here man.  It was super hot today.  We hadn't been outside 5 minutes when I was already drenched in sweat and feared a sunburn.  I don't know if it was due to that, but I had no energy today.  So that stunk.  There was a zone attack in LA today, but we didn't go because we had a cita scheduled with a reference that we received from SLC.  He seemed super cool over the phone.  There was just one tiny inconvenience: we went to go track him down and it turns out that he lives in the Hermana's area.  On the bright side though, they got a really good reference.  A ton of the people we tried to visit today weren't home.  We were able to find Daniel though.  He's a JAS (YSA) CR from the Hermanas that has gone cold.  He's a really cool dude.  I hope we can get him to come to church again.  That little girl that wasn't able to get baptized from Jean Franco's baptism turned 9.  We ran into her dad and uncle in the street a couple of days ago and they invited to come by tonight to talk to her, so we did.  The lesson went really well and at the end we asked, "So do you want to get baptized?"  She said, "Yup."  So we started talking about dates.  Then her whole family was like, "No!  She's not ready yet!"  I was just like, "You tried baptizing her 2 weeks ago.  You invited us specifically to talk about baptism and she told us she's ready ready.  Are you on crack?"  That was pretty frustrating.  We gave a couple of blessing for the sick and then left.  Today didn't go like how I thought it would at all.  But then again, I feel like I can say that about every day I've had since leaving the CCM.

Saturday
The garbage truck and limpieza publica (public cleaning) are back to making their rounds.  Good thing too.  In the days they had taken off, the streets were filled with litter and there were big 'ole piles of trash on every corner.  Alfredo and Celia got back from their trip and are back to giving us pension.  In the morning we had a cita with Mafer.   The leaders tried to get us to go to another coro instead, but we were like, "No way Jose. You can't impulsively decided to to a coro and then tell us to cancel our cita.  That's nonsense."  I need to find someone here named Jose so that I can say that more.  But the cita went really well though.  She's a great investigator.  After lunch we got a call from Paul to let us know that Elder Mayta has to gave a 5 minute talk on ministration tomorrow and that I have to give a 10 minutes one about missionary work.  So we're stressed about that.  I've got a few notes written to expand on.  So basically I'm winging it in the most prepared way possible.  We went and did a district attack in San Fransisco today.  There's a ton of Venezuelans in our areas, especially in theirs.  There was a Venezuelan lady that is a member we talked to that gave us a reference for San Fransisco.  I ran into a Venezuelan dude yesterday that speaks pretty good English that's also a member, so that was fun.  Nothing much really happened during the attack though.  There was a cement truck that we watched spill a pile of concrete almost the size of my dad's infamous piles of bark.  They just left it there in the middle of the road without doing anything.  So pretty soon those motos will have a speed mountain to drive over.  We had a cita with Erick today to see how he's doing and see if he has any references.  His mom brought us each  a bowl of peaches.  It's kinda interesting because I swear everything here is peach flavored, but this was my first time actually eating peaches.  We got Erick to agree to go to the cita with la familia Astahuaman with us, so that was dope.  We did a lesson on the restoration.  At the end we were asking her questions to see if it had helped her testimony of it.  She gave us some really vague and contradictory responses.  I'm not so sure how confident I am in her baptismal date.

Sunday
Turns out that tequeños are Venezuelan.  I guess that means I don't like Peruvian food that much then.  My Latino identity in Venezuelan.  Some of them are pale like me, their food is awesome, the song Burrito Sabenero is Venezuelan, their culture is cool and we both speak Spanish.  I was talking to some guys at church and apparently everyone (almost) burns those meñecos on New Years.  They even have Venezuelan politician Muñecos.  They dress them up in clothes and everything before they do it too.  Mafer and Angie both came to church today.  I also gave my talk.  I was concerned about filling the time, but I did good.  At the 13 minute mark, Yoseman gave me a note that said, "Time."  My talk went well.  For some reason I liked getting that note.  I started with a pretty fire joke.  I was like, "Well, I'm a gringo so my Spanish is bad.  So I'm going to give my talk in English."  So I talked for 20 seconds in English.  They all looked so lost.  Then I was like, "Oh Pucha.  No entienden noda.  Voy a hacerlo en Español entonces."  (They don't understand.  I will give it in Spanish then.)  We all got a good laugh out of that.  Some of the members had jokes about my joke or taking too much time.  I love it here.  Jean Franco brought 2 of his friends, so that's cool.  After church, I had the privilege to give him the priesthood and to ordain him a teacher.  For lunch we went and ate lunch with Nimrod and Keyla.  Keyla served in Boise, so it was fun to talk to her about the states.  We had bistek and tequeños; it doesn't get much better than that.  We went and visited to Villafuerte family tonight.  They're pretty cool.  Their son left to serve the same night we got here.  We went to the church after and found the bishop there, so we had a meeting.  Super awesome dude.  In his 13 years as a member, he's been a bishop of 10 or 11 years.  Calls for cambios (transfers) came tonight.  I'm staying here with Elder Mayta, Elder Wily is going to train and LA is the same.  The hermanas are getting changed up.  Hermana Houghton is coming to the district, so it'll be nice to have a friend from Chaclacayo here too.

A drawing Elder King did of me and him.  I am the one on the left.