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.