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!)