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