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.
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.
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