Week 14 in Alameda

Training is an adventure, that's for sure. I think I'm training myself just as much as I'm training him sometimes jajaja. I've got to learn everything super well since to start I had to do all the work and gradually ease him into it. We get along well though and enjoy the adventure. We had a pretty slow week this week. It was kinda hard on Elder Cabral. We weren't able to find any new people to teach despite having a lot of good contacts, references and potentials. I feel kinda bad that things aren't going well for us since he is starting his mission like this. We're working super hard and being obedient, but we haven't been able to put a fecha (baptism date) on any escogidos (investigators). We're gonna keep working though. God has tried my faith before and he's welcome to try it again, even though I'd rather just find a bunch of escogidos if you know what I mean jajaja. There were some cool experiences that happened though this week. I really liked Hermana Amato's training on the Book of Mormon from the multi zone. I decided that I was going to use the Book of Mormon or refer to it whenever possible while I was contacting. There was this one dude I got talking to that brought up that there were a lot of impurities in the Bible due to people changing stuff over the years and what not. Suddenly I remembered Nephi 13 from when we had to read it for the Preach my gospel challenge. I told him, "What if I told you that there were ancient prophets here in the Americas that predicted all that that you just finished explaining to me?" He got super intrigued and I read to him a couple of verses from that chapter. He liked it a lot, expressed a lot of interest in the Book of Mormon and said that he'd love to have one. Due to that I was able to take a cita (an appointment) down with him. After the cita we realized he wasn't an escogido, but it was still cool to see the power of the Book of Mormon in play like that. There was another time that we went to go visit a girl for a second cita after talking with her and her mom, but she wasn't in her house when we passed by. The neighbors told us that she left to walk her dog. We decided to go looking for her with faith, but weren't having any luck finding her. I decided that we were going to say a prayer to ask for help. We found her just a minute and a half later. It turned out that she didn't have real interest, but it was amazing that God helped us all the same. And from that our accompaniment introduced us to one of his friends that we ran into. So even though we couldn't find anyone to teach, we were still able to see the hand of God helping us. Have a good week everyone!

Monday
This morning we met as a zone to watch a video of the assistants reading a letter from the first presidency about the new rules about communication.  Interesting stuff.  There has been a lot of changes in the church recently, that's for sure.  I honestly don't know what to make of it all though.  This I do know: people got trunky this morning, especially the Hermanas.  I think just about everyone called their families this morning when we did internet as a zone.  It'll be good for some people I think, but I feel like this change was made more for our families back home.  The computer I was using was being really weird and wouldn't let me upload or send any pictures.  But somehow the screen saver on the computer got changed to a photo of my journal.  I couldn't figure out how to undo that, so now some random Peruvian kid that's there to play Fortnite is gonna plug it all into Google Translate and know exactly what I did yesterday.  We went back to the capilla and played soccer until the ball somehow got kicked over the super tall fence.  But it was probably a good thing though, seeing that I was doing bicycle kicks and sliding and slipping on the concrete among other exciting things.  I had 3 goals though.  Then we went and ate lunch as a zone.  Nothing too exciting there.  After lunch I thought we were going to watch a movie, but the zone leaders had something else in mind.  They had invited these two Peruvian siblings to come and teach some form of Brazilian dance fighting.  I was kinda like, "Oh cool!  It'll be like Jumanji."  It was nothing like Jumanji.  Of the 2 hours, the first hour and fifteen minutes was just straight up rigorous conditioning.  I don't know why or what we did to make the zone leaders think we deserved that.  Then they taught us how to do some kicks and made us practice kicking each other.  That was interesting.  But they taught us how to do a cartwheel!  I had never done a cartwheel before.  I was kinda like Creed.  All in all, it was a weird P-day.  My body ached the rest of the day.  On the way home we stopped in Ceres and bought my comp an extra towel.  We did a noche de hogar with la familia Astuhuaman and with la familia Alvarado.  We taught about faith.  It went decently well.  The room is pretty interesting because I'm starting the training of Elder Cabral and Elder Peterson, who is 1 transfer out of his finishing training, is training Elder Sanchez.  It's weird that I'm the oldest there.  Elder Cabral is really protective of me crossing the street.  He'll actually grab me sometimes if I go to cross.  I know I've got bad habits, but I still haven't been atropellado (hit) if you know what I mean.  More than anything though, I think we just need to let natural selection run its course.

Tuesday
We got up at 4 AM this morning.  There was no traffic at all (which was weird) and we found a combi fairly fast, so we arrived at the office at 5:30.  I dozed off at bit, but then started getting worried at 6:15 when we were still the only ones. But soon enough a big van full of kids from the CCM pulled up and we hopped in.  I had to go with them to Interpol, which is unfortunate because I planned on sleeping in the office.  That depressing moment when you realize it's only 9 AM but you've already been awake as long as you were asleep the night before.  My body was extremely sore today too, especially my legs.  So between that and being super tired, I had like a penguin waddle kinda walk going on.  I actually don't know why I'm up still; I'm a go to bed.

Alight, I'm back.  I'm gong to write as if I didn't just take an 8 1/2 hour nap.  It was interesting to be at Interpol again.  They made me sit outside on a bench though since I already had my DNI.

Interpol

There were some Americans there, but I didn't talk to them.  Talking to Americans is scary.  It was kinda interesting to hear the CCM kids and then went with their leader to the parking garage office in Miraflores.  We finished there in record time as well and then were on our way back home.  We were home in time for lunch.  We went to go visit Jordy today to see what's new with him.  He's still super cool.  Elder Cabral got to practice L1 and Jordy gave us a reference to one of his friends, so that was dope.  We also had a lesson with Arlet tonight.  She's pretty excited now to be able to go to the temple.  We were gonna have a cita with Anjii and her friends, but her friends weren't able to go I guess.  The Astuhuamans are super cool though.  They're always inviting all their friends to go to church with them on Sundays.  What great people.  There were some good contacts that we had today.  There was one where there was this lady walking along.  I said hi to her and she turned into a restaurant.  I was just like whatever.  We were 10 yards away a few seconds later and Elder Cabral said to me, "Elder White, look!  The lady!'  I turned just in time to see her exit the restaurant and go to walk in the same direction as us.  But then she noticed I was watching and awkwardly turned around and walked in the opposite direction.  We got a good laugh out of that one.

My comp was asleep and I wanted to see what would happen.

 The parking garage office in Miraflores.

Wednesday

This morning we had to go to the stake center to have an interview with the zone leaders.  It wasn't all that exciting really.  Our numbers are a bit low right now, but we're doing our best to fix that.  I still feel super lost sometimes on what I'm doing, but improvising as gotten me this far.  God too.  Always gotta give him credit.  We were walking along contacting today and I noticed that this car wash we always walk past was shut down.  The sign said something about a safety risk.  I don't know what those guys were doing back there with their power washer, but whatever it is seems exciting.  We spent most of the day contacting as per usual.  I don't think that there were any contacts that really stood out though.  At night we went to go visit a contact named Alejandra.  We found her and her mom, Bianca, in a park.  They're Venezuelans and Oswaldo was with us, so they talked about Venezuela a lot.  The cita was really hard for me to keep under control.  Bianca seemed really cool, but Alejandra might need a bit more help.  Between having a  group of Venezuelans and a less experienced companion, the cita lasted like 90 minutes and was a mess.  I hope that doesn't throw them off.  To give you an idea of what was going on, at one point Oswaldo and Bianca were talking about arepas (a Venezuelan dish), Elder Cabral turned to Alejandra to ask if she wanted to get baptized.  "Ahhhh!"  She said no.  After that cita we had to sit down and talk for a bit about how we can improve.  When I asked him what I can do better, he was just like "You're perfect."  "Ahhhhh!"  I'm not perfect.  Far from it.  All my other comps have had 16 months or more, so having someone brand new is a hard adjustment sometimes.  Today was Mafer's day off, but she wouldn't answer her phone.  That was frustrating.  We went to go visit Juan and Evelin tonight.  They popped some popcorn and we watched Mormon Messages for a while.  He's having doubts about baptizing Johan, so I'm gonna have to talk to him about that.  He's still got some doubts.  I see a lot of my old self in him.  On a different note, People. Won't. Stop. Freaking. Giving. Me. Vegetables.  It's starting to happen all the time.  They're starting to grow on me literally.  They're going to make a fungus in my stomach and kill me.

Thursday

Last night we were playing with my dog tazer in the room.  There's a laser on it when you push the button.  We saw a pack of street dogs, so we pointed the laser at them to see what would happen.  Pretty soon we had all of them chasing that mysterious red dot.  That was pretty funny.  The zone was called to assemble again this morning.  Traffic was slightly worse than usual.  I wish that I could see what they were doing to build the subway.  We got a bit of a training this morning on how to discern an escogido.  It was a good reminder.  Then we practiced a song that we're gonna sing tomorrow for the multi zone.  They asked me to direct it.  Fake it til ya make it kids.  "Why?" someone asked.  "Because he knows how and he can sing," replied Elder Moreno.  You are certainly entitled to your opinion my friend.  He made me show them how to sing a part though.  That let me secret out:  I'm a soprano, not a bass.  JK, I don't even know what that means.  Hermana Black was in the zone today on intercambios.  That raised some jokes from some of the Elders.  One of the CCM kids from Interpol knew her and they had jokes for me too.  Elder Shumway was talking to me and was like, "Hey, remember that one Israelite lady we contacted?  She was crazy dude.  Remember how she told us about how God killed everyone that wronged her?"  She was crazy indeed.  Today was pretty rough for me.  I kinda got depressed at the end of the day.  We had a cita with Olga today, but we went primarily to talk to Dante, her husband.  When Elder Mayta and I talked to him a bit ago he wasn't too interested.  But then he almost died and just got out of the hospital after 2 or so weeks, so we went there with high hopes.  The lesson went well; he was humble, the spirit was strong, and he even accepted the baptismal invitation.  When we tried to put a date on him though, he just told us he'd do it in July sometime and was pretty set on that.  Bruh.  Why?  That cita was the only of the 6 citas we had today that actually worked out.  Everything else crashed and burned.  We got a reference from Elder Garcia and the lady was pretty cool when I called.  The address was kinda confusing.  I thought it was in our area, but then realized it was in the Hermanas' area so I sent all the info over.  But then I was like "Scrap that, that is our area."  But it actually wasn't and was in the Hermanas'.  What looked like a super busy night was actually empty.  I'm doing my best and I feel like were doing everything right, so I don't know why the Lord isn't blessing us with investigators.  It's kinda hard for me.

Friday

The hermanas put a fecha on that reference from last night, so that's good.  We had a zone conference this morning, so we had to get up kinda early.  But I feel like the majority of the things that we talked about were a direct response to how I was feeling about yesterday, so that was great for me.  Hermana Amato gave a good training about using the Book of Mormon, which I enjoyed.  President had some good stuff to say about faith and working with a good attitude.  Elder Hugo Montoya from the 70 and his wife were there.  Hermana Montoya told us to  make sure we taught super clearly.  Elder Montoya had a lot of good stuff to say about working with animos (encouragement), being happy and out going and how to best help people.  Good stuff.  Most of my friends in the mission were there, so that was fun.  Today might have been my last time seeing Elder Yañez, so that was kinda sad.  *Elder White gets motivation to work out to get a 6 pack after Monday.  *Sees that his companion didn't grab a plate of food for lunch.  "Hey man go get a plate anyways and give it to me.  I'll eat it."  This is my life now.  I got us lost a bit on the way home so that was exciting.  We took a different combi than normal.  They told me they were going to avenida La Molina, but they were going to a different part of it.  It's ok though, we just went in the wrong direction and had to walk 20 minutes to where we could take a combi.  It was an adventure.  As soon as we got into the room though, we went running back downstairs because the ricos helados moto (the ice cream motor bike) with the kid was driving by.  Good stuff.  The first time I tried these, Elder Mayta and I had ran into it like 3 times already that day, so I said if it happened a 4th time I'd take it as a sign I was to buy ice cream.  God wanted me to have ice cream.  I made a point of using or referring to the Book of Mormon whenever possible in contacts.  I'd say it went well.  There was this one dude that was saying how the Bible is altered and imperfect, so I just said, "What if I told you there were prophets that prophesied about that?"  He was really intrigued so I explained a bit about the Book of Mormon and opened up to Nephi 13.  Now we have a cita for tomorrow.  We had a cita with Arlet today.  She's still cool.  I called to confirm the cita with Bianca, but she just got a job and will be working Sundays and was working right then too.  So we took David and went looking for Alejandra.  Her neighbor said she was walking her dog, so we went walking looking.  After a bit we said a prayer and then found her 5 minutes later.  Even though she didn't want anything, it was still cool God helped us find her.  We finished the night off with correlations.  Nimrod is a good fit for his calling.

Saturday

I love Alameda, let me start by saying that.  It really stood out to me today how much I love the people here.  I wouldn't mind staying here the rest of my mission.  I didn't really have space to write about this yesterday, but after we talked to Alejandra David introduced us to one of his amigos.  He's going to take her to church on Sunday, so that's cool.  There's always at least one good outcome to every problem or trial.  We did weekly planning this morning.  I got kinda bored and started moving random facial muscles to see what would happen.  Long story short, I figured out how to flex my nose by moving the top of it down without moving the rest of my face.  Elder Cabral cracks up laughing every time that I look at him and do it.  There were a lot of fallen citas today, but it didn't bother me all too much for some reason.  I could never really get into my contacting groove though.  We had a cita with Jorge today, whom I contacted with Nephi 13.  As we talked, it became clear to me that he's still not ready for the gospel to be accepted into his life.  When the cita ended he mentioned he was going to go out and buy a Book of Mormon.  I thought about it a second and then decided not to give him mine.  Here's my reasoning: since he's unwilling to act, the more he learns the more condemned he'll become.  So it'll be better for him to read it when he's ready.  I don't know if I'm right or not, but that was kinda just my thought processes.  It was kinda slow contacting during the day.  Things got real exciting at night though.  We were walking along and I saw a Venozdada I'd talked to a couple times before named Virginia.  I stopped to talk to her to see how she was.  Apparently there's some pretty serious crap going on in Venezuela right now.  Guaido is trying to send aid and medicine, but Maduro just shuts it down when it gets to the border.  People are dying because he won't let them be helped.  Virginia was obviously very troubled by this.  We talked to her about it a bit and then Elder Cabral shared Alma 60:13. (For the Lord suffereth the righteous to be slain that his justice and judgment may come upon the wicked; therefore ye need not suppose that the righteous are lost because they are slain; but behold, they do enter into the rest of the Lord their God.)  She got kinda teary eyed and we got her to commit to going to church.  We finally found Aylin's mom and set up a noche de hogar with them.  We were on our way to go visit Angii when this group of Venezuelans hailed us over saying they wanted us to share something with them.  They said they were gonna go to church tomorrow too.  Things are looking pretty optimistic.

Sunday

Garlic bread for breakfast.  I win.  What else do I need in life?  I have Jesus and I have garlic bread.  I'm arguably the most well-off person in the world due to this combo.  Power!  Unlimited power!  Sheer would be proud.  I thought church was going to be pretty great this morning, but it wasn't as awesome as I was planning on it being.  We didn't have a single contact or other person we can work with come.  That's always fun.  One of President Amato's counselors, President Hurtado was there today.  Definitely not my best moment for him to be there.  He kind of burned me a bit for not knowing a couple of things about the ward.  In my defense though, some of them were things I didn't know I needed to know.  I guess Elder Cabral is kinda down and frustrated.  He broke down crying while we were praying in the room.  Shoot man, they didn't train me on this.  I kinda just told him our faith is being tried right now and that things'll get better.  We ate lunch with Rocky, Daisy and Peruvian Meredith (turns out her name is Alejandra and she's from Mexico).  Elder Cabral really enjoys talking.  The conversation turned to politics and gun rights so I elected to stay out.  It came to be time to leave so I was looking for a way to end it.  Elder Cabral motioned to his watch and then went right back to talking.  A couple of minutes later he did this same thing.  He was the one keeping the conversation alive.  A lot to learn, you still have my padawan.  I was eventually able to end it.  We gave them each a blessing and then took off.  I felt prompted to promise Rocky something rather peculiar: he was concerned about his job as a miner, so I told him that every day he read the Book of Mormon he wouldn't have a lack of energy that day.  Cool promise.  There is real power in that book.  Today got to be kinda rough for me.  The people seemed to be particularly hard hearted, so we didn't really have success.  Elder Cabral for some reason somehow scheduled a cita for tomorrow at 5 instead of confirming it for today at 5.  Bruh.  Tomorrow's P-day.  We tried looking for the bishop to talk to him about the things President Hurtado talked to us about.  It was kinda hard to find him though because he ran off to the stake center without telling us.  But we did find him eventually.  Unfortunately, it appears that consejo de barrio (ward council) will stay at 7 AM and that we're gonna have to start going to that.  That makes me mad, but whatever. 

 I almost got hit by a train in that pic. Living on the edge man.

 

Week 13 in Alameda (Training a new companion)

This week was pretty interesting. My trainee is named Elder Cabral from Brazil.  I've never trained before, but I think I'm doing ok at it so far. We're both patient with each other and I think that's really good. Elder Cabral is super awesome. He's already taking initiative in contacts, talking to members, etc. He was pretty involved in the missionary work in Brazil I guess. His Spanish ain't half bad either. He's got some learning to do still of course, but he's already a great missionary with a whole lot of potential. We're going to work really hard together. We will be our best to be as obedient as possible, to contact every person possible and to be great missionaries.  You've heard of Juan el Bautista (John the Baptist), now get ready for, Juan el bautizado (Juan the baptized)! We had a wedding and a baptism this Saturday, so that was pretty cool. It was a really stressful week between training, planning a wedding and baptism, not receiving all the help I wanted from the ward, and having to give a last minute talk in sacrament meeting, but we made I made it through. There were some milagros (miracles) in the making this week that strengthened my testimony. The first one we were out contacting and then went to a cita (an appointment) late at night, but the dude wasn't there. We had been contacting almost all day, so it would have been easy to get discouraged. The zone leaders had showed us the un grado mas (one more degree) video during the consejo de distrito (district meeting), so I decided that we were gonna do it. I told him that we were going to make the extra effort to stay out as late as we could and contact as many people as we could. So we did it. One of the last contacts of the day I contacted a girl that turned out to be an antigua investigadora (former investigator) that I had looked for in the past. Her dad was in prison and she seemed really willing to talk about the church again, so we took a cita down for the next day. God makes it so that we're in the right place at the right time. On Saturday before the wedding started, Elder Cabral was super sick and was in and out of the bathroom every 7 minutes. He requested that I give him una bendicion de salud (a blessing of health). I told him he needed to be patient for a bit and that he'd be better by the end of the night. He ran to the bathroom one time more and threw up a lot, but after that he was normal the rest of the night. It really boosted my testimony of the power of blessings. Everything is good here, we're working hard. Have a good week!

Monday
Today was kinda boring actually.  Not a lot happened.  Yesterday though, I got to confirm Arlet.  That was pretty cool.  Giving a blessing is always interesting because for that moment, it's not me that's talking.  It's God talking.  I try to do my best to be 100% guided by the spirit when I give a blessing.  Good stuff.  Nothing too exciting happened in internet.  After internet we went to say goodbye to Mafer.  From there we went all the way to the other side of San Fransisco so that the other Elders could check out an anime store.  It wasn't even a store; rather, a shelf in a store.  Elder Mayta and Elder Sanchez bought some action figures.  I'd consider it a waste of money since I think anime is kinda stupid (not Avatar though), but whatever.  From there, we went to mercade mayorista (wholesale market).  We ran into Mario and Jean Franco selling their rice, so we stopped to say hi.  I've never seen so much rice before.  There were easily 2 dozen stoves, like theirs, that had big storage trailers with rice stacked 30 feet high almost.  Spoiler alert: I didn't buy rice.  What I did buy, however, was S/27.50 on 6 kilos of tutti-frutti yogurt.  YOLO.  From there, we went to go eat lunch with the famous Hermana Mechi in San Fransisco.  It was nice of her to give us lunch, especially tequeños, but I don't know if I like her.  She loves the missionaries to a fault.  The missionaries in that area appear to be wasting a ton of time by visiting her just to talk and eat food.  Then she gets mad when an Elder realizes that and tries to stop visiting all the time.  After lunch we came back and spent the rest of the day cleaning the room, or I did at least.  From there we went and had a noche de hogar at Alfredo's house.

Almost all of our converts came, including a bunch of the families from the ward that we're friends with too.  That was really fun.  When 10:28 hit, we had to take off running.  My time in Alameda has flown by.  It doesn't feel like the same amount of time I was with Elder Yañez.  We've had some good inside jokes in the zone: #no_te_vayas_campañero (our dear Elder Peray Parraga) and AMAUTA ? We had jokes in the room too.  They called me a giraffe, but that's nothing new.  They call Ecuadorians monkeys because they eat a lot of bananas over there.  So ever since I found that out we've been making non stop mono (monkey) jokes about Elder Sanchez.  Good stuff.

Tuesday
We had to get up fairly early this morning because I had to be in La Molina at 7 so that I could get trained on how to train.  Basically just be nice and don't invent new rules.  Easy enough I guess.  The new guys came in, so we had the 2 lines going cheering them on.  I remember when I walked in when I was in their shoes; I got over whelmed and reality hit me and I started to freak out.  It gook all my concentration to not break down drying.  I don't know why.  Freaking punk.  I know a bunch of the other trainers: Elders Broadhead, Salway, Aguilar, Gonzalez, etc.  Fun guys.  The first part of the training we just sat there kinda bored.  Then came the breakfast intermission.  I like those.  I had like 4 slices of chocolate cake as well as 3 cups of yogurt.  After that we did the speed dating thing where we meet our new trainee.  My comp is Elder Cabral.

Sister and President Amato with Elder Cabral and I. 

He's from the north east part of Brazil, but I forgot what the city is called.  The rest of the training was super chill.  When we got up to talk about our area, my companion said he'd get 25 here in Alameda.  That's actually very possible here.  So later I told him we'd get that, but we'd need maximum obedience and faith and diligence.  We're gonna work our butts off this transfer.  We're gonna have good success.  The rest of the training was kinda boring for me, but it was necessary for all the new guys.  Lunch was pretty good.  The training ended a lot sooner than I was expecting though.  Mine had lasted until 3:00 and theirs ended at about 1:00.  It was kinda scary hailing taxis in Spanish by myself, but we did it.  When we got back, I took my dirty clothes to the laundry.  Then we went to internet so that Elder Cabral could tell his family that he's not dead.  It turns out that my CCM teacher Hermana Parraga was his missionary that baptized him.  That's pretty cool.  He got baptized just a little more than 2 years ago.  He's a really cool dude.  We contacted a lot, but he did good.  We went to visit Juan and Evelin today.  I had to break the news about the 50 soles to them.  That was really hard for them.  It seemed like they were trying not to cry.  Juan lost his job right after we started visiting them, so they're in a tough spot.  He told us he just got hired though.  But the thing is, they were given 300 soles by their family.  They decided to get married with 250 and buy food to live with the other 50.  We met with the bishop about it later and he said the ward would help them out.

All the new missionaries and all the trainers.

 Grandpa, son and grandson (Me with my trainee and my trainer).

Wednesday

We met this guy today while contacting named Elmer Blanco.  His name is basically the Great Value version of mine.  Elmer Blanco meet Elder White.  We all thought that that was pretty funny.  We were really good about working diligently and being obedient today.  I honestly have no idea how to train or anything like that, so I'm basically just winging it.  But hey, what's new?  Elder Cabral is doing really well.  My first week especially was rough, but he's loving it.  He doesn't have any fear to talk to people, so for me that's super impressive.  My idea of a contact my first 3 weeks was "Here's an invitation.  My companion's gonna tell you about it."  He's contacting everyone though even when I'm on the phone.  That's great!  He has a great testimony and a respectable desire to share it.  His native tongue is obviously Portuguese, but it turns out that he still has to learn Spanish.  People in Brazil don't speak Spanish I guess.  He uses like a 50/50 Spanish/Portuguese dialect, so it's possible that I come out of this speaking a bit of Portuguese while thinking it's Spanish.  Portuguese is basically Spanish with a gringo pronunciation and French accent.  Some words are the same, but others are totally different for example, he might say "We need to focus on Jesus," but in Spanish it's like, "Why does Jesus want my light bulb?"  Or, "Can I have some popcorn?" "I don't see pigeons you weirdo."  The gift of tongues is definitely real though, for him and me.  Sometimes he'll be talking to someone and they don't know what he said, but somehow I did so I'm able to translate.  Cool stuff.  Today we had a cita with Arlet.  Holy crap, she's awesome.  Nelson had recommended reading the Book of Mormon from the beginning so that's what she was doing.  When we were done, I asked if she had any questions.  She put her chin on the back of her hand, which was on the table, and stuck her lips out to think.  I decided to mimic her.  Shoot man, she laughed for like 3 minutes straight.  We had a really solid day of contacting and found some good potentials.  Juan had his interview tonight.  He passed everything alright, so that was a relief to me.  Now we just need two witnesses for the wedding and to invite Elder Mayta.  We went to go visit la familia Astuhuaman tonight.  Mario and Angii weren't home, so instead we talked with Elva and Jean Franco.  That was nice.  This whole water carnival thing is crazy.  People go hunting their friends with water balloons.  It's even crazier on Sundays, mainly because on Sundays they fill the water balloons with paint.

Thursday

Every once in a while I'll wake up in the middle of the night and my right arm will be totally limp and I can't move it.  I remember the first time it happened I just sat up and was like, "Huh.  That's not normal."  I find it really interesting when it happens.  It's all fun and games though until a guy breaks into my house at night and I need to sucker punch him.  We'll just have a reenactment of Saka as that circus girl again (from the TV show Avatar the Last Airbender).  Today is Valentine's Day, or diu de Amitad, as they call it here for those who are living in the friendzone.  We had a district meeting this morning.  It seems like there's quite a few people staying for a 3rd transfer.  While we were discussing our investigators, Hermana Houghton shared a funny story about how they found their investigator.  Apparently she goes to the temple every day to shower in the visitors center place thing.  She doesn't want to use hers because her husband won't clean it, so it's all dirty and stuff.  So instead she spends s/3.40 of passaje there and back, as well as the 20 minute ride there.  It'd be funny if she got baptized because that's a pretty funny story to tell when someone asks how she met the church.  The sidewalks here are super slippery some times, especially when there's a ramp.  I like sliding down those.  Elder Cabral saw me do it and tried doing it himself, but he slipped and fell.  We both got a pretty good laugh out of that.  We had a lesson with a contact I made named Ilda.  The lesson could have gone better because there was a barbershop on both sides of her house that were both blasting their music really loud.  We'll see what happens tomorrow.  We went to go visit Jherson.  He's not reading the Book of Mormon, so that's kinda concerning me.  Late at night, we tried to go and visit another contact.  We couldn't find him though so that was unfortunate.  It came to be the time in the night when we usually stop for the day and go to eat dinner.  But instead, we decided to give a little more and work even later.  We didn't have any where planned to contact, so we went guided by the spirit.  We went ham on the contacts trying to get as many in as we could before we had to go in for the night.  The last contact I made before the designated time we had decided to head back in at was an old investigator named Valeria.  She's going through some challenging times with her dad in prison among other things.  We set up a cita for tomorrow.  I know everything happens for a reason.  There are no coincidences.  God made us plan that cita that fell and then blessed us with desires to work more just so that we'd find Valeria.

Friday

I made a contact the other day with a dude that had been inactive for a while, but then just recently decided to come back to church.  I thought it'd be a good idea to visit him to see if we could get any references.  As we were waiting for him to walk down the stairs, I looked down and saw that I had a blob of pigeon poo on my stomach.  What did I do to deserve this?  And how in the world did that bird pull that off without me noticing?  These pigeons are out here practicing witchcraft and crap.  I kinda just had to hold my book in an awkward position the whole cita.  He didn't have any references, but it turns out that Nelson shares that floor with him and that he's the one that reactivated him.  So now we know where he lives.  I had fun changing my shirt when we got back.  We had a day filled with citas, except it doesn't seem like a lot of them where super effective.  People keep asking me about how the wedding is going to go.  Buddy, your guess is as good as mine.  I think they're gonna sign a paper and then we're gonna eat some cake after.  But I don't know.  I'm not really married myself and I think Peruvian weddings are a bit different than American ones.  I just hope no one does anything too crazy.  We were walking along and we saw this one dude starting to get aggressive with what I'd guess to be his 20 year old daughter.  His wife was between them.  We were watching like, "What do we do?  Hopefully it doesn't get serious."  It went downhill.  The girl yelled at us to call Serenazgo so we took off running.  We didn't know how, so we asked someone.  He looked at them and said, "Eh. They're women.  It's normal.  Don't worry about it."  That was pretty sexist.  Serenazgo had a hut on the corner, so we went knocking on that.  No one answered, but we saw the dude walking away down the street so we walked away too.  Peru's messed up man.  Olga wasn't home when we went to visit her.  From there we went to visit Ilda.  The lesson went decently well and I gave her a Book of Mormon.  But when I went to talk about church on Sunday, she told us she works every Sunday.  Ah!  You told me differently, otherwise I wouldn't be here right now!  Anyways, we took Aylin to talk to Arlet about seminary.  She was pretty excited about it and even said she wants to serve a mission someday!  The Peruvian Meredith in the ward tried to burn us for not giving the couple she lives with a blessing.  Elder Mayta didn't tell me.  So we passed by to do it and they weren't even there, they were traveling or something.  So we gave her husband a blessing, said there's other priesthood in the ward too and left.  We stopped by Juan real quick and had to find 2 testigos (witnesses) for tomorrow real quick.  Valeria wasn't home.  We were supposed to give Aylin's mom a blessing but she wasn't home either.

Saturday

Weddings are stressful.  That's why I'm going to let my wife plan everything.  This morning we had a meeting as a zone.  We were going to have it in the estaca (stake), but while we were on our way there we got a call saying they changed it to Tilda.  When we got there I received a surprise package from Grandma and Grandpa Haacke so that was super cool.  They gave us a pretty cool training on how to contact better, which is always something that I appreciate.  The ward failed to come up with 50 more soles, so I talked to Elder Carrera to see if I had permission to pay it.  So he called the marriage guy because it really should only be s/250.  When he got off the phone he told me it was, indeed, s/250.  I'm not gonna name names, but it looks like Ezequiel was trying to rip us off.  The zone leaders stepped out for a minute during the break.  The Elders took a look at an arch of balloons left over from Valentines and were like, "Let's see if we can pop them."  So they were all throwing tarjetas (cards), then I come along and actually popped one.

Our zone in front of the arch of Valentines balloons.

We got real excited and into it after that.  Fun stuff.  We also played the clapping signs game.  That game gives me so much stress.  But guess what?  I won!  I've never won that one before so I'm actually really proud of myself.  We came back to our area and then went to lunch.  Elder Cabral ate too much and got feeling pretty sick.  So we came back and I let him rest a bit.  I was way nervous about being able to make it to the wedding, but we got there right at 5:00.  There was a scare about there not being water to fill the font, but we got it covered.  The wedding dude didn't arrive 'til 6:00, but that was probably a good thing because Elder Cabral was in and out of the bathroom every 10 minutes.  I gave him a blessing and then he threw up and felt fine, which is kinda what I described in the blessing looking back.  The wedding was kinda boring really.  They just signed a paper and Ezequiel read some super official sounding Peruvian-style legal stuff.  Elder Mayta came down with Elder Hyde.  Juan insisted that I baptize him even though I wanted the bishop to do it.  It was a really good service.  Juan kinda has a hard heart, but is trying his best.  He said he felt something and that it was nice.  Afterwards the ward threw them a nice reception.  Nelson even made a bunch of fancy plates.  Everything turned out well though.  Pictures of the wedding and baptism:

Sunday

Last night at 10:20 I got a call from the bishopric.  They asked my companion could gave a 5 minutes talk in sacrament meeting on member retention and if I could give a 10  minute talk on reactivation.  The fetch?  Why such late notice, especially for such a weird topic?  I didn't prepare anything though, just an opening joke.  I told everyone to take their hand and touch their chest, then I said, "Now you can't tell me after that your heart wasn't touched today."  That must have not made sense in Spanish because only Oswaldo and like 2 other people laughed.  That was pretty awkward.  I basically just told the members that it's their job to reactivate their friends, not ours, and then gave them some tips.  There were a a handful of nonmembers there today, so that was cool.  I had talked with the Bishop and told him that he or another member should confirm Juan so that he gets more attached to the ward, but when the time came, the bishop made me do it.  That's kinda frustrating for me.  He's been hard to work with these last few weeks.  We finally got a ward mission leader though: Nimrod.  He's a good guy, but is super busy all the time.  We met with him after church and talked for a bit.  Elder Cabral kinda went off. I was just thinking, "Boy, you've been here 5 days.  Let me do the talking."  Due to that the meeting lasted a lot longer than it should have.  I called the relief society president to confirm lunch with her, but she had forgotten.  So that was kinda awkward.  We still had lunch there though.  I was out contacting today and someone tried pulling the that's-no-Jesus-that's-a-dude-dressed-up-as-an-Arab-How-do-you-know-what-Jesus-looked-like?-There-weren't-cameras-back-then card.  Yeah, no duh Sherlock.  That's Elder Shumway's neighbor.  People these days.  While we were out contacting we got a call from the Personal Secretary saying that we have to be at the office at 6:00 AM Tuesday morning so that Elder Cabral can go to Interpol.  RIP.  We also got a message from the zone leaders saying that tomorrow we have to be in the Stake Center at 8:00 AM.  3 early mornings in a row = RIP x 3.  That meeting is probably about the announcement that came out saying basically that we can have more communication with our families.  Everyone was pretty excited because word got around pretty fast.  As for me though, I'm fine with emails.  I knew what I was getting into and accepted not talking to them a lot.  I'm going to stick with emails.  This thing's just gonna make everyone trunky.  All our citas fell today, so that was fun.

Some funny signs I've seen this week:

Translation: Friends, did you know that drinking, robbery, violence, pornography, witchcraft, and rudeness are sins that God repulses.  Repent!  Hell burns.

This is advertisement for a disco dance on Valentines Day.  "Night of blessings".

Week 12 in Alameda

I'm in a pretty good mood today. Cambios came in last night and I'm going to be staying in Alameda and training a new missionary from the CCM. I'm super excited for this opportunity that God has given me to train a new missionary. I've been praying for this a bit so it's an awesome answer to my prayers. God really always does answer our prayers. That's something I've learned on the mission. It's the coolest thing; we get to pray to the most powerful being in existence, who also happens to be our literal father who also loves us, and he wants the best for us and will do his part if we only choose to follow him. How amazing is that? I feel so blessed to have this knowledge. I'm also pretty excited to have another transfer here in Alameda. I'm not kidding when I say that this place is the promised land. I look forward to working extremely hard with this new missionary to achieve even more baptisms. Speaking of which, we had that noche blanca (white night)  on Saturday that turned out to be a big success! Arlet got baptized along with 4 others. Presidente Amato came with his family, so that was really special for me. I did the almost all the planning for that, so I was stressing out a bit. I'm super thankful it turned out as well as it did. The spirit was so strong during our missionary musical number. I saw that Presidente got moved almost to tears. It was awesome! Distrito Los Angeles is on track to become Estaca (Stake) Alameda (or estaca (Stake) Los Angeles, whichever you like more jajaja). It's so cool for me that 26 years ago this part was only a family group with a brand new casa capilla (church house). Because now we have 2 super awesome wards of Alameda and San Fransisco and are looking at a 3rd and we also have an incredibly beautiful capilla. Elder Mayta and I have had good success here in Alameda. We're also ending on a good note together, so I'm thankful for that. I loved the chance that we had to go to FSY again this week. It's pretty much my favorite thing in the world. This time when I did my presentation thing, I decided I wouldn't plan anything and that I'd be guided to know what to say. I went in there and talked about the Holy Ghost and all these milagros (miracles) and experiences I've had in the mission. The holy ghost filled the room the entire 20 minutes I was given to talk. I wouldn't change a single thing about what I said because I know I touched every  single one of those kids. The Holy Ghost and being able to feel and use it all the time is my favorite thing about being called to serve my Lord. Story time: Yesterday we had a zone attack and I went with Elder Shumway, so that got real fun real fast. We found this member that told us this huge story about going inactive and being an Israelite for 10 years. Long story short, now she's a temple worker. Crazy lady.

Monday
I keep having dreams that my name is still on the schedule at Jiffy Lube and that i need to go to work, but I'm obviously not showing up, so that makes everyone there mad.  It's not even a dream really, just more of a thought I get while sleeping that gives me anxiety.  But then I wake up and remember that I'm a free man.  Well, sorta.  San Fransisco invited us to go with them to go eat breakfast with them at a member's house.  I was expecting something small, but she gave us fried bananas and a whole lotta rice.  It was hard, but I got though it.  The member was cool though.  At one point Elder Sanchez coughed once, and so she turned right into a Latin Dumbledore from the Goblet of Fire and said, "¿¡ Elder has estado durmiend con el ventilador!? (Have you been sleeping with a fan?)"  Any time we cough (which isn't often), they ask that.  To be quite frank, the answer is yes.  It doesn't cool down at night that much and I need it if I'm gonna fall asleep.  They chastise me saying, "You're gonna get the flu, develop asthma, turn blue, get diabetes, lose your fingers and contract AIDS if you don't stop."  All I say is YOLO.  We went to internet after that.  There was this kid next to me that was watching some Goku anime.  That's some weird stuff man.  Everyone down here loves it though.  We came home and chilled for a bit.  I finished the last 4 of my Truman Madsen talks.  I'll have to download more next P-day.  Then we ate as a cuarto (apartment) at Kelley's, a chicken restaurant.  I don't know why, but they had cartoon chickens holding up "K"'s in groups of 3.  So all over the restaurant it said KKK.  That was pretty funny.  The fried chicken was good too.  From there, we went to LA as a district and watched Monsters, Inc.  I had forgotten that it's actually a pretty funny movie.  All those old Disney movies are classics.  What happened, Disney?  When we got back to the room, I gave myself a haircut.  Not too shabby.  Tonight we went out and visted Mafer.  Whith how much she's working now, I think we need to make a better effort to make sure she doesn't go inactive.  After her, we also went to go visit Juan and Evelyn.  We had an in depth discussion with him about each of the Ten Commandments.  That was kinda interesting.  I'm immature so I always laugh when I read Mosiah 13:24.  (Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his man-servant, nor his maid-servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbor’s.)  Whenever people here talk about Dia de Reposo (day of rest), they always say, "Remember: it's Domingo (Sunday), not Dormingo."  I think that's really clever and was jealous that we didn't have something like that in English.  So I did some brainstorming and had a time of reflection and here's what I came up with:  It's called the Sabbath Day, not the Nappeth Day.  I'm pretty proud of that.

Tuesday
We returned to the dentist this morning.  We spent a while waiting and then Elder Mayta was only in the chair for 20 minutes.  I'm sure that Elder Mayta appreciated it though.  During lunch, all of Delia's and Alfredo's grandkids were watching TV.  While they were, Attack of the Clones came on.  I don't even try to pretend that I wasn't watching.  I love Star Wars too much.  Before I left on my mission, I had decided that if the occasion permitted I'd spend my whole farewell talk relating Star Wars to the gospel.  It would have worked really well: there's a lot of biblical themes.  Instead I just quoted Shakira and Star Wars in my talk a bit.  We tried talking to Keyla's friend who came on Sunday, but I don't think she really wants anything.  We also went to visit a couple how owns the Chifa we like to eat at.  They're convivente (partners) and he's a member while she isn't.  We heard they separated as we were going there, so we got really excited because she wants to get baptized.  But when we got there, we found out that they were still together.  We taught them both.  But then they were like, "But we've got plans to get married."  So we got excited again, but it turns out that those plans are in 4 years or so.  Freaking Peruvians.  You've lived together for 12 years and have 3 kids.  What do you mean you don't know each other well enough?  That's more extreme than these 2 were, but it's a similar situation.  From there, we went and picked up Arlet and took her to her baptismal interview.  She passed everything perfectly, so that's awesome!  She's all ready to go for Saturday.  When we were out contacting we ran into San Fransisco's Pensionista's daughter, who's 12.  She told me how Elder Wily fell down a bunch of stairs and she had to buy some bandages because he was bleeding pretty good on his elbow.  Silly goose needs to stop falling all the time.  We also ran into Erik tonight.  He's gone inactive.  I decided after examining him that I don't like what he's become since we met him.  So I kinda told him, but he just made fun of my accent.  So I told him to read Alma 5 and walked away.  He made me mad, but mostly sad.

Wednesday
I've come to learn that the food here in Peru isn't exactly always super flavorful or good.  But there are a couple of things that are really good.  Namely, juice and yogurt.  They just know how to do juice really well here.  The yogurt is good and thin.  I think that they lace it with cocaine or something though because once you start it's hard to stop.  I finished reading True to the Faith yesterday.  It's a small dictionary that does a really good job of breaking down church doctrine.  I have to focus more on reading Precided mi Evangelio capitulo (Preach My Gospel) 3 and all those scriptures in it now though; it's taking longer than I thought and I'm a bit behind.  This morning we had a consejo de distrito.  It went pretty well.  We're planning a noche blanca that we'll have as a district on Saturday.  We have Arlet, Hermana Houghton has Arlet's 2 cousins, Hermanas  Young and Garcia have 1 and then San Fransisco had someone that fell into their lap a couple of days back that's probably going to get baptized too.  There was some initial contention about where it would be, but then I talked the Hermanas into doing it in our capilla.  The whole zone is going to go I guess.  Come to find out later, President Amato accepted  our invitation to come.  That certainly makes things interesting.  We just have to plan real good now and hope it goes according to plan.  Then we went back up to FSY after.  They had us a lot better organized this time.  We only had to talk for 20 minutes too to convince  the kids to serve a mission.  I had a group of 25 14-16 year olds.  I put my full trust in God that he'd tell me what to say, so I didn't prepare anything.  My thing went really super well.  Last week I had some Ammon-King Lamoni stuff going on with a couple of them, but no one nodded off today.  I did a much better job keeping them engaged.  I wound up talking about the Holy Ghost the whole time and related a bunch of stories from Huaycan.  Everyone payed attention and even laughed when they were supposed to.  I maintained the spirit at an extremely high level the whole time.  I know I touched everyone of them, so I wouldn't change a thing.  President Amato addressed everyone after.  What an amazing experience!  I love EFY.  We went and visited Juan and Evelyn tonight.  Evelyn gave us her last paper, so we've got everything now.  The lesson went good and all, but then afterwards they told us that they wouldn't have the money for a bit since Juan is currently unemployed.  I told them that while money wouldn't fall from the sky, God would help them if they had faith.  Not even 15 minutes after we left, we got a call from them saying that Evelyn's mom was going the s/250 for the marriage.  God proved me wrong.  Money fell from the sky.

 At FSY

Thursday
Last night we had a NDH at Oswaldo's house.  Zoraima roasted my haircut real good.  She was like, "Where did you get it?   You need to never go there again.  I hope it was free."  It was kind of awkward when I had to tell them that I cut it myself.  Since Elder Mayta is going to finish his mission soon, we went to La Lomina early this morning so that he could have his self-sufficiency training for when he gets home.  Elder Gonzalez is from his group so he was there too.  In 3 months all of my comps will be in their houses.  Oh well I guess.  While I was waiting for another missionary to show up so that I could leave with him, I got talking to all the other missionaries.  I wound up running off with Elder Bitencourt, who's a zone leader in Santa Anita.  We went back to his area.  He's from Brazil and is super cool.  I learned a lot from him about how to improve my contacts in the few minutes we talked beforehand.  When we got back to their place, we did studies for a while.  Elder Kimball from my calc class shares the room with them, so it was cool to run into him again.  At Jiffy Lube, we would always tell each other not to go chasing waterfalls.  Little did I know, however,  that my face was going to be a waterfall someday.  It was so hot today.  I was constantly wiping the sweat out of my eyebrows so that it didn't get in my eyes.  I was never really one that sweat a whole lot when I exercised, so this is new for me.  Elder Bitencourt and I contacted most of the time.  He works hard, so that's good.  We had a cita with a contact he made yesterday and put a fecha on him, so that was cool.  We went back at 6 to pick up our companions.  Let me just say, there's a reason why they call it trunky training.  It took a really long time to get back because of traffic.  When we did get back though, we used the couple of minutes left in the day to have an in depth planning sessions for the baptism on Saturday.  Before it was just gonna be fun and stuff, but now it's super stressful since Presidente will be there.  For dinner Alfredo made us lomo salado, but instead of french fries there were green beans.  I thought I had escaped this nemesis of mine for 2 years.  There were lots of them too--like half a Peruvian plate's worth.  But due to the culture here, I ate every single one.  If you don't hear from me tomorrow it's because the beans put me in a coma.  At my funeral, my extra money is to be used to buy beans, which are to be burned in a giantly righteous bonfire.  I really hate beans.  They say there's opposition in all things, but this was too far.  You leave my food alone Satan or so help me!

Friday
As soon as I got my job at Jiffy Lube I realized something:  days are pretty short.  24 hours isn't a very long time.  Sure there's some days that seem to drag along, but they're still all relatively short.  As soon as I turned 16 the days started flying by.  My first 15 weeks seemed to go slow at times, but since 16 it's been on full throttle nonstop.  I feel like I'm 16 or 17 years old still, but that was like 3 years ago.  This morning we had an extra zone meeting in Vitarte.  It was training that I had already seen Elder Carrera do (on my birthday even), but it was still really cool.  It helped us as a companionship and as a zone.  Elder Carrera is a great leader.  Afterwards we practice a musical number of Con el Salvador al Lado and Cuando me Bautice.  It took us a while to get that organized, but en fin lo hicimos (we did it), and it doesn't sound half bad.  We almorzamosed.  Hehe, Espanglish.  We went to go to visit Arlet tonight.  She's pretty hyped about her baptism tomorrow.  We wandered around (it was planned wandering) contacting for a while.  We tried visiting Jherson, but he's starting to study so he wasn't home.  From there, we went and visited Juan and Evelin.  We watched The Prophet of the Restoration with them because we felt like that was the weak point of his testimony.  I think he helped a bit.  They had some family from Huachipi that are Elder Erickson's converts.  They're really cool.  Elder Erickson is a legend in the mission.  He's legit probably the best missionary that the mission has ever had.  He left the day I arrived.  Anyways, it was Johan's, Juan and Evelin's kid's birthday.  So they gave us a bit of chicken and french fries, but also a slice of cake.  That was really fun.  We were talking about the wedding and Juan was just like, "The first time you guys asked me about it I thought you were joking.  I didn't think it would go this far."  jajaja.  Elder Mayta has his own dishes that he uses--a bowl, a spoon and a cup.  He uses them all the time, but it just occurred to me that I've never seen him wash them.  That's probably why they look kinda gross.  He doesn't get sick though so I guess it doesn't matter.  Back at the beginning of the transfer when I was sick, I was kinda out of it for a couple of days.  For example, I kept doing "hang loose" whenever I meant to do "thumbs up"  Well, now doing the hang loose sign is a habit.

Saturday
Today was interesting.  We started it off by going to Chosica. It's kinda far from here.  It's kinda green there though, so that's yeet.  We went there to go talk to a member that helps missionaries out with marriages when they come along.  We gave him all the papers and the s/250.  Except I guess it changed recently and now it costs s/300.  There's always another obstacle.  Or as Qui Gun Jin said, "There's always a bigger fish."  When I walked outside this morning and started sweating automatically I said to myself, "The crap?  It's kinda cool out here.  Why am I sweating so profusely so early?"  My body kinda just replied, "My bad man.  I forgot it has to get hot first.  It's kinda just a natural reaction to walking outside.  Ya know?"  Yes, I know exactly how it is.  I finished planning the baptism for tonight.  That has caused me a lot of stress recently.  It's not like normal stress though in the way that you don't feel that iconic dread.  I figure it's righteous anxiety.  Elder Wily thinks that the atonement works in that way that Jesus only suffered for those that repent.  I hate confronting people.  I felt it was necessary though so that he doesn't go around teaching false doctrine.  He wouldn't really listen to me though, so that was kinda frustrating.  Any who, we got the capilla cleaned up real good and then waited.  7 o'clock came and Arlet wasn't there still, so we started panicking a bit.  We ran to her house, but she wasn't home.  She arrived like 15 minutes late with her cousins, who're also getting baptized.  Mini heart attack there.  It's probably a good thing that Presidente Amato and his family got there 40 minutes late.  I assigned Angii to do a talk on baptism.  She was fine with it, but then started freaking out when she saw there were a lot of people there.  She was evidently nervous when she did it, but she did good.  She was self conscious after so I explained how the spirit works simply.  Angii had a big fear of public speaking, but we got her through it and she was happy.  Nelson was the one that baptized Arlet.  It took a few tries to get her under.  I noticed that he was saying "el" instead of "del" each time.  The time I finally got him to say "del" was the time that we got her under.  I don't know why I didn't make more of an effort to correct him.  But, coincidence?  I think not!  We sang our 2 primary songs after the 5 of them got baptized.  The spirit was strong and I noticed we almost made President cry.  He told me after that the service was nice, so that's good.  His kids are fun to talk to.  Luigi is into sports, so he keeps us updated.

 Myself, Arlet, Nelson and Elder Mayta

 The ward at Arlet's baptism.

 The missionaries and all those who were being baptized.

Sunday
Today was a pretty solid half birthday.  Last night I misplaced my book and I didn't get it back from the zone leaders until the tarde (late).  A missionary cares as much about his book as Obi-Wan cares about lightsabers.  Last night an RM from SF asked if everything was cool between me and Elder Mayta.  He was pretty woke to have noticed, so I respect him for that and because he offered me help if necessary.  Elder Mayta and I ended on a good note though, so that's what's important. Last night there was a big party across the street with really loud music.  So I prayed that the music would stop.  And BAM!  The music stopped immediately.  That was nice.  Church was good this morning.  Juan and Evelin actually beat us there.  The power cut out in the middle of the first hour, so things got a bit toasty without the fans.  After church we waited around 2+ hours to try and meet with the bishop to talk about the wedding on Saturday.  For lunch we went to eat with one of the more humble families.  It reminded me of Huaycan a bit.  Be careful what you write kids, because Satan can read.  He saw what I wrote about beans the other day, so he inspired the family to make us salad with noodles, carrots, peas, green beans and apples.  If you're reading this Satan, what I really hate are big juicy American style burgers with bacon, caramelized onions, cheesy fries with fry sauce and a fat peanut butter milkshake.  So whatever you do, don't give me that.  We had a zone attack in San Gregorio.  Elder Shumway and I got paired up so that was hype.  They gave us a list of members and told us to find PF's.  There was this one member lady we found whose tenant is inactive, so we agreed to sit down and talk with them.  We talked a bit and then the first lady started telling this huge story and I had no success cutting her off.  She was the relief society president and bought a 2nd house, but then people made fun of her.  She threw a chocolatada (hot chocolate party), but during that a dude ripped her dress down the front.  She didn't fail to mention how God supposedly killed everyone that wronged her.  But she left the church and became an Israelite pastor for 10 years.  Then she had a dream 5 years ago, came back to church and is now a temple worker.  Crazy story.  When we got back, we had a cita with Juan and Evelin.  Today was judgement day at 5.  Every time the phone rang today I got a huge rush of anxiety.  But then Presidente actually did call us.  Elder Mayta is DL in Chaclacayo.  Buena suerte (good luck) to all those guys.  Then Presidente talked to me and told me that I'm gonna train a new guy from the CCM.  I'm super excited!  I can best be described by "How the Empire Strikes Back should have ended."  Presidente heard Elder Wily likes dogs, so he's off to Huaycan 1.

Week 11 in Alameda

This week was pretty interesting. It was kinda rough having to wait a longer time for a p day, but being able to go to the temple is definitely worth it. I love being able to go there. The spirit is so strong and I enjoy the spiritual recharge that it brings. We were at a district counsel, but then the ZL's came and told us all that we were leaving to Chaclacayo (which is in my first zone) to go and talk to the kids at FSY (latino version of EFY) about being a missionary. We each had to individually teach a group of like 25 kids for an hour. That was really fun even though I had a couple fall asleep on me jajaja. I loved EFY when I went so it was awesome for me to be able to go and talk to them. The spirit was strong there too. We marched into the auditorium where all the kids were at, and we singing Llamados a Servir (Called to Serve). The kids all started cheering super loud when they saw us and I couldn't help but smile. It's so awesome to feel loved like that. That was something that I'll never forget. We did a zone attack in Elder King's area yesterday that turned out pretty cool. My ward is super awesome. We've got a couple where the wife is a member but the man isn't. We're only missing the partido de nacimiento (birth certificate) from the sister and then they'll get married and he'll get baptized. That's super exciting to me. We're also going to have another one of our investigators get baptized this Saturday. Our area is literally the best and I'm happy everyday to be able to work here. We did a service the other day where we carried 3000 bricks and a whole bunch of sand up to the 4th story of a house to build another floor. That was long and hard, but fun. Here's some culture for ya: Down here there's something called a cortamonte. It's basically a piñata on steroid for adults. They put all of these gifts and stuff up in a big tree. Then they take turns swinging an axe at it to knock it down. Then when it falls, they all run and get all the gifts. It sounds pretty exciting. Well, that's all from me for today. Have a good week everyone!

-Elder White

Monday

Elder Wily told me a funny story the other day.  In Lima there's a few abandoned cars in the streets.  He and Elder Sanchez saw a member come home for the night and go to get into her house.  They decided to scare her.  There was one of those abandoned cars in front of her house, so they hid on the other side and opened and slammed the door.  They repeated it twice more.  After the 3rd time, an old homeless dude on the inside sat up real quick, threw down the broken window and yelled, "Hey!  What do you want?  I'm trying to sleep!"  They went running into the member's house.  That surprised them real good.  Today wasn't P-day.  Elder White needs a P-day.  He's mostly dead right now.  Regardless of that though, we did internet this morning.  Señorita's funeral was the most Señorita Taylor thing possible, so that was cool.  Nothing else too exciting to report though.  Arlet wasn't home when we tried to visit her.  We went to go and visit Juan Carlos and Evelyn.  They're still working on their marriage papers.  We had to be marriage counselors for a bit because they were in a bit of an argument, so that was kinda weird for me.  We taught the Plan of Salvation.  Juan Carlos asked a question about every point we taught.  It's great that he's got this curiosity, but it's kinda hard to feel the spirit when there's so many questions asked.  From there we went to Oswaldo's house to have a lesson with Mafer.  Oswaldo wasn't home, but David and Zeroima were.  That lesson went pretty well.  Mafer got a job so she's home a lot less now.  After that we went and did a noche de hagar with la familia Rojas.  Nelson brought his son to it too.  It got a bit chaotic at times because there were a bunch of kids, but it was fun nonetheless.  Situations like this really made me wonder:  Will they be quiet and chill, or will they be the kids that every nursery teacher fears?  From what I understand, the stuff in Venezuela is starting to get interesting.  After the corrupt election, the other candidate declared himself president.  So from what I understand, there's 2 possible outcomes: a re-election or a civil war.

Tuesday

Yesterday I received a reference from a contact from a missionary in  Lima Central during internet.  That was kinda interesting, so we went to go look for her.  I don't know what kind of people they're working with in Lima Central, but long story short, she's not ready at this point in her life to receive the gospel.  I am developing a deep hatred for Peruvian bugs.  I find spiders or other insects crawling on my shirt all too often.  The mosquitoes here have turned into nocturnal predators.  They leave us alone for the most part, but they've been really getting us during the night recently.  We were sleeping with the window open, but now it's closed.  It gets really hot and stuffy at night now.  I've got bites only on my legs really for some reason, especially my feet.  They're all big and nasty too.  Also, the termites fly here.  They're all over the place.  They're nasty.  I'm worried they might get into my scriptures and other study materials.  I'm not even going to bring up the flies in Huaycan.  Hermano Terre-Alba asked us to stop by his house today, so we did.  I'm not sure why, but they gave us Inca Cola so I wasn't about to argue.  It was especially hot the first part of the day.  Gotta love sweat dripping while you're walking.  As it starts to dry and get kinda crusty, making my forehead kinda stiff and forcing a bit of a scowl.  We tried to visit Arlet again today, but she wasn't home.  Later, we went and visited Daniel to see if he was going to invite his lady friends to church.  The dude's a total slayer.  He opened up his messenger app and it was chucked full of read and unread DM's from girls.  I teased him about it and he was just like, "Yeah, I only talk to about 10 of them though."  In all my life I don't know if I've texted 10 girls.  I've got some major practice to do when I get home.  We were out contacting and got a call from la familia Astuhuaman saying that they were busy doing stuff and that we'd have to visit them some other time.  I always appreciate it thought when people call to let us know; I get really triggered when they aren't home and don't tell us, especially when it's for a silly reason.  We were kinda discouraged about that cita falling, but we went about contacting normally.  As our plan B we were contacting in a park.  I saw a dude on a bench that I decided to contact.  I was just like, "Hey, what's up?  How are you?"  "Bad, very bad."  So I sat down to talk to him.  Come to find out, he's got a bunch of crap going on in his life.  So we sat down to talk to him.  We invited him, Alfredo, to baptism and set up a cita for tomorrow.  It was a great example to me of how we can have something good in mind, but the Lord will have something better.  Alfredo really needed us.

Wednesday

I've had at least a thin layer of sweat on me for the last 2 weeks straight.  It just never stops being hot.  Today was another classic example--maybe the most extreme example--of a day going nothing like we planned or even considered.  We had consejo de distrito this morning.  Everything was going as normal and we were like 1 1/2 hours in when the zone leaders told everyone that we had to end early because there was an emergency.  They got us all together and told us now they had just gotten off the phone with the assistants.  We were to go to FSY (Latino EFY).  They told us that we were going to each be in charge of teaching a group of 20-30 kids.  Not with our companions, but solo.  They also told us that it had to last an hour and that our goal was to inspire them to serve missions.  We had 1/2 hour to prepare something and then we had to leave because the FSY was in Huampani in Chaclacayo.  We drove past Huaycan on the way up; that place is crazy.  I got to sit by Elder Shumway on the way up, so that was fun.  His companion is Elder Villanueva, my CCM companion.  The FSY was at this super nice club. They had all the kids in this giant tent-pavilion thing.  They turned on Llamados a Servir (Called to Serve) and we all came in marching in from the back up to this stage singing.  When the kids realized we walked in, all the 1000 kids or so got really excited and cheered really loud.  That felt real good.  Shoot man, it was hot in there though.  I don't think I've ever been hotter in all my life.  All the Latinos made fun of me for sweating so much.  I know it was hot because it was a relief when I walked back outside and the normally blistering heat was a relief.  Then it became my time to teach.  I was put with 2 dozen 14-15 year olds.  I went in there with the plan of giving them a spiritual round-house kick to the face because that's how my first EFY changed me.  It didn't really go according to plan though.  A couple of them even fell asleep on me.  Oh well though.  We were going to eat lunch with the FSY kids, but they were serving pork.  So instead President bought us all chaufa at this nice restaurant at the club.  President and his family sat down at our table, so that was fun to just talk to them.  

There was a llama at the club, so we all freaked out a bit about that.  He was on the verge of spitting at a couple of Elders.

 
When we got back, Alfredo was a no show to the cita unfortunately.  I was in charge of the ward NDH.  I did the lesson based on something that Doug shared that I liked about Lehonti vs Moroni on temptation.

At the Noche de Hogar

Thursday

P-day!  At long last today was P-day.  It was pretty hard to go 10 days without a P-day, but fortunately no one went MIA (Missionary In the Abyss of despair).  To celebrate, we went to the temple.  I had heard that they had made some changes to the sessions, but this was my first time in it since then.  I was fine with the changes.  I love being able to go to the temple; the spirit is so evidently there.  I noticed the same spirit when I stepped into FSY yesterday.  It was a nice spiritual recharge.  I love being able to attend the temple.  What a blessing it is!

We went shopping a bit afterwards.  Then it came to be the moment that we were all waiting for: Holly Food--All you can eat American food.  We had been hyping about it since Oswaldo told us about it last transfer.  We got LA and SF in on it too.  The thought of being able to eat there was the only thing that kept us all going at some points, especially in the last week.  We prepped by not eating breakfast.  We got there with speed and walked in with joy.  But then we were filled with tears when we realized that they were renovating that day and weren't open.  That, my kids, is what you call true disappointment.  So instead, we went to Subway.  It was good to have an American sandwich again.  After that we went to the Americanized convenience store next door.  I already had my mind set on spending a lot at Holly Food, so for that reason I spent more than I should have there.  But YOLO.  We keep almost getting in car accidents.  These Peruvians are out to get us man.  At night, we went and had a cita with Juan.  We decided to reteach the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  It went super well.  While I was teaching about the Holy Ghost, the spirit got super strong.  Juan was able to recognize it too, so that was super cool.  We've run into some unexpected problems with getting all their marriage papers together, but we're still working on it.  Then we went and visited Arlet.  Yure was nice and let us do it in his house.  Arlet is now done with all of the lessons.  All that's left is to wait 9 days for her baptism.  I had a bit of free time today, so I listened to 3 hours of Truman Madsen's talks.  He goes into great detail about different aspects of Joseph Smith.  For example, today I listened to the First Vision, Attributes, Spiritual gifts, and trials.  I really enjoy them and they're a great testimony builder.

Friday

I got up like normal,  1/2 hour early, so at 7:00.  I was about to shower when Elder Wily asked me, "Are you not going to the service?"  "What service?"  I asked.  Come to find out, last night we got a text from the zone leaders saying that we were to go to a service in Amauta at 8:00.  Elder Mayta failed to inform me.  He was still in bed and wouldn't get up for nothin'.  I took his blanket, called our phone with SF's phone, blasted my air horn, but nothing worked.  I called Elder Dantas to let him know we might be late.  He gave me a few ideas and told me to keep trying.  I mean it was 7:15, not 3 AM.  Why fight so hard?   What finally worked was when Elder Wily literally picked him up out of bed and walked with him.  It is not worth confronting him though, not again.  For the service we hand carried bricks and sand up to the 4th floor of a house so that they could build another floor.  The pile of sand was probably a bit bigger than one of my dad's iconic piles of bark.  After some quick calculations, I determined there were 3,000 bricks maybe a few more.  Each one probably weighed about 2 kilos or so.  We had 12 guys there, but 2 were sanding the whole time.  Over the course of the 4 1/2 hours, the other 10 of us got all the bricks and like 1/2 the sand up (there was a hired dude to help us with the sand, but he stopped so we did the sad too).  I completely sweat through my shirt  I also got pretty sunburned.  She was good to give us drinks throughout though and even gave us lunch after.  We were all pretty wiped after that.  I'ma hurt tomorrow.

That is us by the huge load of bricks.

When we got back we showered and then went out to contact.  We didn't really have a lot of success though.  Later we stopped by Jherson's to see how he was doing.  After him, we went to go do the same with la familia Astuhuman.  After calling our contact from the other night, Alfredo, it turns out that he impulsively moved back to the jungle with his family.  While it is kinda disappointing, I know it's ok because I did everything the Lord asked me to do to help him even if he didn't really act upon what we taught him.  Or just not acted yet at least.

Saturday

Today was interesting.  In the morning we moved right from personal study into weekly planning.  Then we ate lunch early.  My body hurts from yesterday and I'm super tired still.  The kids from the CCM came to our chapel to do an attack in San Fransisco.  On of the Hermanas from the CCM walked in with pants on.  My first thought was, "Did she run out of skirts?  Why did she come in P-day clothes?"  But then I realized that they were dress pants and that Hermanas are allowed to wear pants now.  Apparently the girls at the CCM wear pants now more than dresses.  That's pretty weird.  We were going around in a circle introducing ourselves and an Elder that looked familiar stood up.  It took a second, but then I remembered him.  After Elder Dether sat down I said, "Your name in Kimball.  You went to Shelley Elementary and your first grade teacher was Mrs. McGee."  Everyone was like, "Whoa, how do you know that?"  What I should have said is that I have the gift of revelation and rattle off all the other memories I have of him.  Unfortunately though, I was honest and told them he'd been in my class.  It took him a bit, but then he remembered me too.  There's some people you run into sometimes that you never thought you'd see again.  For the the attack, I went with a missionary named Elder Owens.

He was a pretty cool guy.  He's 23, so you know he's here to take care of business.  Cool guy.  It was a bit of a longer attack--3 hours.  After the attack, we went to go take out money.  We were fortunately able to get it kinda quick.  When we got back, we went to go collect people to go to Tilda's baptism.  Arlet wasn't home, but we got Juan and Evelyn to go with us.  We're only missing one paper from Evelyn and then they're ready for marriage.  How cool is that?  Tilda's baptism turned out pretty good, but it wasn't super organized.  They asked me to dirigit el himno (direct the hymn).  Venid a Cristo (Come to Christ) is pretty popular in English, but not too much so down here.  I was kinda singing and leading normally.  But no one else was really singing, so the Hermanas motioned for me to sing louder so that they would sing louder too, hopefully.  It didn't work though, so instead I just sang a super loud solo.  The whole district was there and all the other Elders were in the back matandose de risa (dying from laughter).  After the service, they started bringing out all this food and even cake.  For a fasting Elder, that's pretty cruel.

Sunday

I've been pretty tired today.  I'm tired of all the members coming 30 minutes late too.  That's a quarter of the time that we're supposed to be there.  They're missing out on a lot of spiritual nourishment.  Arlet and Juan both came, so that's pretty cool.  Keyla also brought 2 of her nonmember friends, so that's pretty great.  The sacrament meeting didn't start until like 9:25 because SF ended late.  The sacrament ended at 9:45.  Because our ward is our ward, people wouldn't stop getting up to bear their testimonies until the bishop told them to.  So we didn't leave until 10:30 or later.  Elder Wily was talking to Elders Sanchez and Mayta and found out some interesting information for me.  They ranked my accent a 5 or 6 out of 10.  I feel like I have a really solid accent for the most part.  I'd rank it a 7 personally,  maybe an 8.  But I guess I know what I have to improve now.  They did say, however, that my grammar is a 9 or 10.  I'd give myself a 9 though because I'm aware of all my screw-ups when they happen.  We went to go eat lunch today with la familia Villafuerte.  They gave us a big plate of the Peruvian trinity with corn, then chicken soup, then una tuna, and then a granadilla, with a whole bunch of Inca Kola throughout.  Hermana Charo told us that she'd give us candy if we stopped by, so we passed by to say hi because why not?  She gave us each a big bag of candy and then a big 'ole bag of cheese puffs to share.  Then we went clear over to Elder King's area on the other side of the zone for a zone attack.  There's this water carnival thing going on in South American, but it's not too big here.  As we were on our way, we saw part of it called a cortamonte.  It's basically a huge piñata on steroids Peruvian style, and mostly for adults.  What they do is put a bunch of stuff on a tall tree.  Shoes, blankets, buckets and other stuff too that I'm sure is cooler.  Maybe there's stuff in the buckets.  But anyways, what they do is take an axe and then take turns copping at the tree.  Sometimes people miscalculate where it's gonna fall and they get crushed and die.  But I guess that just makes it more exciting.  It looked like there were 8 trees they were doing that to.  I don't know how they found trees to do that to, but whatever.  For the attack, I went with Elder Tigse.  We basically just contacted the whole time.  It was only the 2nd time I've worked with a missionary with less time than me.  Their area is kinda like Huaycan, but with not dogs, less people, less dense and a lot smaller.

 The chapel in Elder King's area.

I tasered Elder Monzon in this picture and it was pretty funny.