Monday
What's the weirdest things that happened yesterday? My sweat tasted like lemon juice. Don't ask how I came to figure that out, but rather glory in the oddness of the situation with me. How cool is it that if I had found the extra time, I could have made lemonade with my sweat. Just add sugar! I got wrecked hard by the mosquitoes last night. Even after I closed the window they continued. I laid there mortified as the mosquitoes taunted me with the buzzing of their evil little wings in my ear until the early morning hours of nearly 1 AM. I had no success falling asleep, so I decided to shower. After that I was finally able to fall asleep. Internet was normal this morning; nothing exciting to report there. From there thought we went straight to the stake center for our zone P-day. We got there early though, so we went to Plaza Bitarte so that Elder Cabral could change his Reales into Soles. But they charged him a 30% fee! I have no idea why he agreed to that. During internet, my mom asked if there was anything she could pray for to help me. Nothing came to mind, so I just told her to pray that a nice plate of American food would fall from the sky. I don't know if my mom's got her prayers on speed dial or if God just intercepted that digital messenger pigeon or what, but for lunch there was a member that cooked each of us two real nice burgers. God is basically the coolest dude ever. He's always got your back, even on the small stuff. The zone leaders took a while to set stuff up, so in the mean time we entertained ourselves with signs (Shumway style) and killer frog. The Elders even started doing the Hokey Pokey. I present to you a group of young adults with little life experience here with some 3K miles from home that will turn your life around by helping you get to know Jesus: the Elders. We did some interesting games that led to us having a water balloon fight and then covering each other in flour. We had a powerful LO with a YSA named Lucero tonight. The spirit was strong and she was cool and she also accepted a fecha for April 6. Elizabeth canceled the cita so I had to burn her a bit. The church doesn't have the records of another youth in the ward named Flormira. We went to go visit her and explain and she ironically doesn't have a super strong testimony and is unsure about baptism. She goes to church though, so we'll see how it plays out.
Tuesday
Here's my opinion on people in a situation like Jherson was and Flormira is now. It might seem a bit odd that they'd have to get baptized again, but if there's no physical evidence, people are better off safe than sorry just in case it didn't actually happen. I think God actually makes a purpose in it though. I think he does it if maybe something went wrong in the ordinance the first time and no one caught it. But also, the people that have had to get re baptized that I know of have all been inactive (or at least a super weak testimony in this case), so maybe that has something to do with it. Today we had a district meeting. There's some interesting rumors going around about kids back home receiving their calls and having them say that the amount of time they're going to serve will be announced in the April General Conference. People say that people will get to choose between 6, 12, 18, 24 or 30 months. I don't know though. Hermana Amato straight up roasted the entire mission for not keeping our rooms cleaner and announced that she's going to start doing random room check ups. Needless to say, when we got home we cleaned a bit. Jordy accompanied us all night last night and was there with us too almost all day today. He also told us to call him up tomorrow today. What a guy. He'll be able to leave on his mission around August. We went to go try and talk to Arlet for a bit, but it turns out that right before we got there she got into a fight with Marcelo, her 14 year old brother, and ran off to her aunt's house in Tilda. Marcelo was still home though, so we went inside and talked to him. From what I understand, he's always with his friends, so that's why he's never home. He seems to be a cause of worry in the family; he's kind of a punk, but he was chill with us, but also not super talkative. We're gonna go back later to talk with the whole family (I hope) because there seems to be some general family contention. We went to go visit Lucero after. The first vision is always the most powerful part of all the lessons. She's doing pretty well, but I might have gotten after her too much for not reading the folleto all the way. We were on the way out and we ran into Norma, her mom. She was just kinda like, "Oh shoot, you're leaving? I was hoping to listen too." Hermana Amato said there'd be blessings to have our room clean. I credit that milagro to her. From there we invited her to the NDH tomorrow. She seems pretty cool. We went to go and teach Jeannina after. That went well, but there was a bit of a problem with Robin saying that he actually wants Ricardo (his brother) to baptize his daughter. We'll see how it works out though. We went to Alfredo's to meet with his friend, Luis, but Luis showed up 50 minutes late. So I explained we had to leave in like 5 minutes and asked him to show up on time next time. He made a bunch of excuses and then said, "But let me tell you 1 thing," and then told us the huge story about how back in the day he was 1 of 8K dudes hired to be a vauquero (cowboy) and why they had dogs and the bulls and stuff. I have no idea why he took 10 minutes to tell us that. I kept waiting for a plot twist or a good message to take away, but nothing came. We also went to got visit Jherson tonight.
Wednesday
We had interviews today. *Drops pen and walks away* That's literally basically the only thing that happened today. We were scheduled for 2:00, so we ate lunch and did studies like normal and then went to the office in La Molina. We were scheduled to be last, with the hermanas being first at 10 AM. But when we got there, the hermanas were still being interviewed. They always take forever. It was at the moment that I knew I needed to get comfy because I was going to be there a while. There was a lot of talking, seeing as there wasn't much else to do. We made a lot of jokes about Peruvian ideas about health. "Elder, you can't drink cold water! What? It doesn't matter that it's hot! You'll get sick!" *Coughs* *Peruvian gasps and wine glass falls and shatters* "Elder. Have you been sleeping with the ventilator?" Also, if you get anything from a paper cut to losing a limb to cancer, manzanilla (chamomile) will cure you right up. Don't even worry about it. I spent a good hour trying to reteach myself how to do my favorite physics problem: the skier on the icy slope with only air resistance to slow him down. It was a bit of a struggle, but I did it. The office is cool and all, but we were there a super long time. President actually canceled the interviews of the 2 other Elders and moved them to tomorrow. I didn't enter mine until 7:15 or so. It was a fairly normal interview. He told me about a couple of things that I need to start doing. He told me, for example, that I need to have the mentality of a bishop and take care of the ward like such since that's my responsibility now, and also because it's practice for when I'll be a bishop later. When he said that, I was just like, "...." I was looking at some stuff in the office, and saw that 2015-2017, we got 950 baptisms or so per year. But then as soon as President Amato arrived, our numbers began to sky rocket. We more than doubled the baptisms when he arrived. He also told me in my interview about how many wards in the mission are splitting, how there's a new stake in each of the Lima missions soon and how they're already planning for a 7th Lima mission when Tambo still wasn't open for another couple of months. The Kingdom of God is being built at an unprecedented pace. I like it. I was kind of on edge during my interview though, I don't know why. He noticed it too. Oh well though. Elder Cabral had a decently long interview. It ended in him calling home to his family. That was good for him because his parents don't know how to email and they're not there to Skype him on Mondays. President's kids brought him some food--a veggies burger from his wife. He was eating it and talking to me (we were the last ones there) and he offered me a bite. He's the coolest dude I know. We left there at 8:45. President had us close it up because he was in a hurry. We took a taxi and went straight to the ward NDH. We were an hour late, but that means someone else gave the message. There were a bunch of members there and Jordy took Lucero, so that was awesome.
Thursday
This morning we had to go to a mandatory physical activity at the stake center at 6 AM. That means that we got up at 5 AM today. Getting up used to be probably my biggest weakness. But with the Lord's help, He makes it easier for me to get up early than for your average Jośe. I decided to get up half an hour early everyday. Then with Elder Mayta, I soon learned that if I didn't get up, he wouldn't get up. I also just decided at one point that it wouldn't be hard. Miracles happen. The first thing Elder Cabral said when he got up was, "I hate soccer." At that precise moment in time, I made the goal to never say anything negative again. It's a lofty, but good, goal I hope to do my best to achieve. The first thing we did was play soccer. This guy right here got the first goal. Too easy. haha. We played this weird version of dodge ball with only 1 ball after. It was fun. Then we played volleyball. I should have played that in high school, but oh well. We had a cita with Mafer today for the first time in probably 6 or so weeks. She's doing ok, but she'll be better once she finally quits her job. Today was pi day. To celebrate, I ate a pie. Crazy, right? I respect that in American we make holidays like this sometimes just so that we have an excuse to eat something. People say to me sometimes that there's no such things as American food. Barbecue my dude. Also fried food. None of these fools have ever had the privilege of eating the glorified deep-fried Twinkie. Legend has it that it's so American that if you listen closely, you can hear Niel Diamond singing the Gettysburg Address accompanied by Nirvana with fireworks and red necks screaming "Murica!" in the background. We went looking for Flormira, but she wasn't at her cousin's house. So her cousin led us to her house. Except she brought her dog with her, and every dude dog on the way followed that chica dog. It was pretty exciting shooing all those dogs away because those dudes were SUPER desperate. By the time we got there, we just took a cita and then took off running. Elder Cabral lost his plaque in the moto, so that's kinda not good. We had a cita with all of Arlette's family, except her. She's still at her aunt's house. It was a rather interesting cita. They have a lot of problems in their family. We were digging deep to try and find the source of the problems, but we just found more and more problems. There seems to be a lot of contention and general unhappiness in the home. While Jessica does seem to have a lack of motivation every time we asked Henry what he can do better, he would just point back at Jessica. We entered as missionaries, but we couldn't teach, and we left as marriage counselors, even though we found out later that we can't do that.
Friday
What kind of guy is my companion? He's the kind of dude that says a 20 minute long prayer when everyone is fasting and is blessing the food to break the fast. That's kinda hard sometimes. This morning we went and helped la familia Chagua to paint the 3rd floor of their house. They put me in charge of painting all the corners up there with a hand brush that they gave me. Holy Virgen De Rincones there were a lot of corners to paint. I don't know super well how praying to the Virgens works actually. Do they each have a different function like the Greek Gods, or do you just pick a favorite? I'm not even going to mention though how the Bible explicitly says not to worship idols. Any who, the paint here in Peru is super watery. That means that we had to paint a spot like 5 times to actually get it white. It's cool though because I got plenty of that brush action practice. Daniel Son, where you at? I'm the real karate kid now, boy. If there's one thing Hollywood has taught me, it's that if you do a surprise ice bucket challenge with the local bully and then let him beat you up, the local old Chinese dude will come and beat him up for you and then teach you karate after. We ate lunch with the family afterwards. From there, we came back to the room and showered and stuff and then did a bunch of the 12 weeks stuff with Elder Cabral since we're kinda behind. Then we went and did an attack in Tilda as a district. We did the mesa misional again. We had a lot more success this time than when we did it in my area. Elder Myers bought us all an ice cream after too, so that was awesome. He and Elder Shupe came with us back to our area after to accompany us to our cita with Lucero. She's pretty awesome. She takes initiative and confirms the citas with us. She's progressing really fast. She read the chapter in the Book of Mormon that we left for her to read and said she felt good while reading it and felt good while praying about it after. There's very few things that will make a missionary happier than to hear that. We were supposed to have correlations right after, but only Rocio was there on time. That means that some people are going to get burned on Sunday. Buy the time we got a couple more, we only had time to talk for like 20 minutes. That was frustrating. We mostly talked about Arlette's family. Turns out that Arlette got a surprise job at the Venezuelan pizza place by the church. Rogelio, Recio, Kayla and Nimrod came with us. The kids aren't in school yet after 2 weeks, so they tired to help with that. Henry wasn't there. We left a Family Proclamation and taught Jessica how to pray.
Saturday
Today as one of those days that was just destined to be crazy. It all started with a phone call from the Hermanas. That was kinda interesting because we're not really supposed to call each other (turns out they had permission though I guess). Today they threw on this whole apollada. Hermana Houghton and Hermana Peterson are helping this couple get married and baptized, but they don't have money so they made plates of chicken, potatoes, and salad to sell to earn money to be able to have a wedding. We all helped sell chicken. Hermana Houghton was telling me yesterday that the lady accidentally bought 100 chickens when they were planning on selling 60. So they started frantically trying to sell apolladas yesterday. We were planning on just passing by at 10 to pick up and drop of our chicken, but when they called it was 9:30 and they hadn't even started cooking yet. They had gotten up at 6 AM, but among trying to start a fire for an hour to cook them and other problems, they needed help. So we went as a district. Elder Shupe was studying in culinary school before, so he was the grill master in charge of cooking the chicken. The rest of us found things to do like peel/cut potatoes, fill bags with Aji/jugo, etc.
For some reason, they boiled the potatoes before peeling them. That means that they were hot. That's ok though because I peeled them with my fingers. #YOLO. We went and delivered all the 7 chickens that we sold to people in our ward. Then we went back and ate as a zone there to help out. These people better stay active. We all smelled like smoke after, but we didn't have a lot of time so I just changed my shirt, washed my face and put on a bunch of Old Spice. Flormira seems really unsure about getting baptized again. For that reason I really hope that we're able to find a foto because I dunno what'll happen otherwise. We went and taught Jeannina today as well. She's doing well and Robin is down and already interviewed to baptize her. We tried passing by for Jessica and Henry, but Henry wasn't home so we couldn't go in. We were walking along and saw Arlette working her stand. She was so happy to see us, but when we tried to talk to her, she was kinda quiet and sad. That was hard on me. It reminded me of when I was in the attack the other day. I met a woman, who turned out to be an inactive member, desperately searching for her 12 and 13 year old kids that went missing early Monday morning. I don't know what I would do if that happened to me. The world is a sad place sometimes. Fasting wasn't too hard today. There was a party in the capilla for the Relief Society, but instead we went to have a cita with Elizabeth. Turns out that she's not an escogida though.
Sunday
Well, we were supposed to have ward council bright and early, but when we arrived at the church at 7, it was still locked. I was going to burn them for not being at correlations, but they didn't show up there either. So instead I just burned the stray dog that was chilling with us. Half an hour later, we were able to sit down with the bishop and a couple of other dudes. Elder Cabral called the bishop out on that and other things as well. Everyone's respect for Elder Cabral went up including mine. It was something no one else was willing to do. Last night when I was calling people to get them to come to church, I came across a contact I made named Guicela that I noted that I had to text. So I did and she seemed really excited and was down to have us pick her up. So this morning we swung by just as she was leaving. She said that she was leaving early so that she'd have time to get to know people there. She's 44 years old and a gym trainer, so that's dope. Apparently she liked church too. Rocky came back from his work trip. He told me, "It worked. Your promise worked. I did it every day, and so did 62 others." Then he told me about how with his group of 63, they did the work of a full group of 80 despite the bad weather conditions. And they had the highest production and safety scores of everyone at the mine. I don't know if everyone was reading the Book of Mormon or Bible as well, but Rocky was sharing his experience and spiritual thoughts to boost the 62 others. How amazing is that?! All this because I acted on a last second spiritual prompting that I almost disregarded (since it was Elder Cabral that gave the blessing). We ate lunch with la familia Herrera. A couple of days ago we slid them an extra 20 soles and told them to make extra tequeñas and pasteles.
If I left their house with anything short of a heart attack I would have been disappointed. But we had all of that and Venezuelan lasagna too. Good stuff. Today we went to a zone attack in Amauta. It was pretty cool. It's always interesting for me to go back to a poorer part. We went to what looking like the end of the world road and took some cool pictures on that cliff.
You could see half the mission or more from up there. We went to go visit Juan when we got back. Johan, Jeannina and Poalo Lozpez's kids are going to get baptized this Saturday. I'm curious to see what'll happen to Juan when I leave. I hope that the ward will do their job. Tonight we had a meeting with the bishopric and Nimrod to talk about the converts and retention. I'm tired of these late nights. We haven't eaten dinner at the pension since Tuesday. This week was so. dang. busy.
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