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.
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