Week 23 in Alameda

Peruvian psychologist and the Church

You've gotta give these emails an interesting name sometimes to get you guys to want to open it up jajaja. I have been told that I opened up my mission call more than a year ago now. That's pretty weird to think about. This week we got a new investigator named Michael. He's a psychologist. We got the reference to him from one of his friends through the internet. We went and were like, so why did you decide to listen to us? He told us that he had been helping people his whole life as a psychologist, but felt like something was missing from his own life. He decided that that thing was Jesus. So he talked to his member friend and got super interested. We had a powerful first lesson and he decided to get baptized. Not only that, but he wants to get the whole family this special message that we carry. When we went back for the second appointment, we were excited. When we asked him if he had read, he said he did and he really connected with it and gave us a super in depth analysis of it, probably better than I could pull off jaja. We had left him Alma 41 since he told us that he had a cousin pass away that really affected him. He even said he liked it more than the Bible. Throughout our citas with him I've felt the spirit reveal things to me about him and have been told things that I needed to tell him. He's an amazing guy and a real blessing to have as an investigator. Don't forget to read the Book of Mormon daily! Have a good week everyone!

Monday
Rider called us this morning at like 7:15 or so.  He wanted to confirm that we were going to pass by tonight to teach him.  He talked to his brother and they both have interest in learning more about the Book of Mormon.  Cool stuff.  For breakfast I fried myself a tequeño and two pasteles.  This is where it ends.  I've maxed out.  There's no foreseeable way to improve breakfast.  I like it.  They say that you can't buy happiness, but I did.  It's sold for 50 centimos ($.16 US dollars) cada uno (each).  Three words, eight letters.  Say it and I'm yours.  Te que ños!  Where's Jaxon when I need him?  He would love that joke if he had a tequeño.  P-day was a no go today.  We're going to the temple on Friday.  We're toast man.  I had a severe lack of energy and motivation today due to that.  We went to internet this morning for just a bit to send emails to President and to tell our families that we'll call them on Friday.  We started the day out with a lot of positive energy ready to work.  But holy crap my dude, the rejections were hard today.  I don't think that I had a half decent contact all day long.  I'll take this as a sign; Mondays are sacred and specially reserved for P-day, and that's why not a lot of stuff happened today.  The shoemaker that works in Kiosko Azul went to church on Sunday with his family, so we stopped by to say hi and see if he was interested in learning how to obtain more blessing from Jesus.  He was down, but he needs to talk to his wife first because the Hermanas went there a while back and she wasn't having it.  He turned to Elder Cabral and said, "Do you want to know what your name means in Spanish?  Gay.  You can use it as slang to say that you're gay."  That's the first time that we've heard that so we don't know if it's totally true.  It was funny though.  We went to go visit Juan again today.  I know he has always had a bit of trouble feeling the spirit and stuff, but I had no idea that he had so many doctrinal doubts and stuff.  We spent a while trying to reestablish doctrinal truths, such as the resurrection or that God is a person.  He's out of a job right now too, so Elder Cabral talked to him a lot about the autosuficiecia stuff since he knows a lot about that.  Rider sent us a text to let us know that he wouldn't be able to meet because he had to run his mom to the hospital since she was in a lot of pain.  Understandable, so we fixed a cita for tomorrow.  We met with the Villafuerte's tonight.  They were all like, "Jherson hit 5 months the other day."  Shoot man, I was here when that dude left.  In our apartment we have a white board where we write random hashtags of things that happen in the week.  It's pretty funny.

Tuesday
This morning I fried my pasteles and tequeños again.  I put them on my plate and then walked away.  Elder Cabral came and put my hot oil directly into the plastic "taper" (I forgot what it's called back home) and he walked away too.  We both walked back in a saw that the oil had completely melted through the bottom of it.  I was like, "Dude!  What were you thinking?"  He just told me, "The taper said it was microwave proof.  I thought it was ok."  *Facepalm.  There's oil all over everything right now.  My boy was tryin' to deep fry plastic containers for breakfast.  What is Brazil up to these days?  That is why they lost 7-1 against Germany in the World Cup a couple of years back.  This morning we went and did a service for the President of the Elders Quorum.  He's building a place to live on the 3rd story of a building in our area.  The way he made it sound, I thought we'd be painting.  Turns out that we sanded for 2 hours straight.  I got some serious wax on wax off action going.  He had us in a room where they had put this white primer/putty stuff on the walls and had us smooth it out and knock off all the extra.  It was slow work because he gave me a 360 grit.  I found myself an 80 though and it was real nice after that.  After we finished that room, he sent us into another completely unfinished room and had us sand the concrete.  There was sand flying everywhere.  Oh, how I miss power tools. 

We had a cita with Jherson today.  Nothing too exciting happened there.  We're gonna see if we cant take all the recent convert to the temple here real quick before one of us leaves.  There's this dude in our area named Ivan.  He's an RM.  He went inactive and stuff for about a year, but he came to church on Sunday and is ready to come back.  We went to go visit him because I can see how he can be vital piece to help the ward and he's also got a bunch of PF's.  He served his mission in Mexico and had a lot of cool stuff for us to hear about questions that we can ask people and stuff.  He's a great guy.  We tried going to visit Rider, but he wasn't home again.  We were kinda surprised.  We had a meeting with the Presidency of the Elders Quorum.  They're probably the weakest of the groups in the ward here.  We were looking for ways to help them and the quorum.  In reality though, we mainly just talked about ministering the whole time.  My chair for my study desk is currently being held together by only duct tape.  I guess that I was sitting a little to aggressively in my chair.  There's this dog by our house that's almost always chill, but will freak out on us every once in a while.  On those nights I just look him in the eye and say, "Eat a Snickers bro.  You're not you when you're hungry."

Wednesday
We had a consejo de distrito this morning.  The zone leaders always say that they've got a bunch of surprises for us.  Sometimes it's churros and sometimes the surprise is that there actually isn't a surprise.  Elder Cabral and I were in charge of the training for our district.  We both felt like we needed to review how to filter people.  I felt like we did a pretty decent job of teaching filtering people.  We were doing practices at the end when Elder Topham walked in.  The assistants coming was definitely a surprise.  I was thinking that we were just gonna take another group picture at the end or something.  I'm just glad that he wasn't there when I delivered the training.  After the practices and during the actual consejo part, he had some really great advice to share with us.  They delivered a training to the zone after about being humble.  They didn't really burn us, but it was good what they said.  After lunch we went to visit Jherson for just a few minutes to prepare him for the temple.  San Fransisco got a reference from the internet, but it turns out that he actually lives in our area.  So we went to go visit him today.  He was a pretty cool dude.  Single and late 20's.  He works as a psychologist all over Lima.  He just felt like even though he was constantly helping people fix their lives, he feels something was missing in his.  So he talked to his member friends and the next thing ya know, he's getting baptized May 25.  He was super open with us.  One of the spiritual gifts I've noticed God has blessed me with is the gift of discernment.  From looking someone in the eye and talking to them for a few minutes, I can tell you whether or not they're really interested in coming to church.  Sometimes I even know if they're married or not and how many kids they have.  In the cita with Michael he told us his parents were divorced when he was 12.  At that moment the spirit explained to me that that was super hard on him and he had felt super lonely, so he became a psychologist to help people not to feel bad the way he did.  I even confirmed it with him.  I don't know if that is considered revelation or discernment or what, but it's pretty cool all the same.  We applied what the assistants taught us today and we took down 4 citas from contacts.  We need to have them swing by more often.  We swung by Dante's.  Tuesday we'll see if he needs another operation or not.  Fingers crossed and prayers are up.  We taught him the commandments.  He accepted pretty well.

Thursday
We did weekly planning this morning.  That wasn't very eventful.  All of the citas today, which were all contacts from yesterday, fell down and crashed and burned and I just watched our hopes for the day deteriorate.  You can't let a good fire go to waste though, so I pulled out my marshmallows and enjoyed the occasion.  Or in other words, I went contacting.  I contacted this old dude, about 84.  He started talking to me really.  In Quechua too.  So I was just like, "Ima watsutiko?"  He got excited and talked more in Quechua.  That was a mistake on my part.  Turns out he knew Spanish though.  He had some pretty strong opinions about Jesus.  It was kind of hard to understand him though because half was in Quechua and the other half in Spanish.  It didn't help that he only had 3 teeth either.  Long story short though, I don't think he's coming to church on Sunday jeje.  We went to an attack as a zone in Amauta.  While we were waiting for everyone to arrive, I noticed that there was a pirated movie playing in the street.  Anyone that knows me knows that I'm an anti-spoiler fanatic.  But we'll see how well I can do I guess.  The people here like giving spoilers out too if you're not careful.  The attack actually turned out pretty cool.  I went with Elder Salway.  We also went with Elder Napier and Elder Orteta and the hermanas.  We contacted in this big park/market area.  It was a great place to contact.  Instead of having him contact, we instead had Elder Salway sing the whole time since he's pretty much David Archuleta Jr.  He got a couple of people interested.  More than anything though it was just nice to be able to listen to someone singing while I was working.  There was a golden retriever that I petted and it followed us the rest of the night.  Even after we got separated and were far away he still found us.  I liked that dog.

Friday
P-day.  At long last, p-day.  We had to wait 246 hours for this moment, but who's counting?  Today was also P-day de temple.  That's always a great P-day.  We had our session at 9, so we got there bright and early.  It was pretty nice.  They say that you learn something new every time.  There were some connections I made, but it'll take some more pondering to see how they apply.  Afterwards we met up with Elder Costa and Elder Kimball by chance and our Brazilians decided to go to Rodizios, which is kinda expensive at 60 soles cada uno.  But I told Elder Cabral that I'd go where ever he wanted to since it was his first temple p-day, as long as he would pay his part.  We got there and saw that it was actually 65 since it was the weekend.  But those Brazilians were set on eating their meat.  They got Elder Jensen and Elder Lainez, who share the room with them, to come with us too.  You feel less guilty blowing a lot of money when there's a bunch of you doing it.  Drinks were extra too, so we'd all just occasionally steal a sip from our water bottles.  That was some pretty good meat though.  The dessert was good too.  We had a lot of fun. 

After about 2 hours of making the occasional rounds, we started to slow down.  I didn't stop because I was full, I stopped because I was starting to feel sick.  I narrowed it down to 2 possibilities of why:  I accidentally ate a bit of pork or maybe some of that medium rare steak was a little too much on the rare side of things.  Eating under cooked meat in a 3rd world country usually ends badly, I'd imagine.  The food was good though.  We went to internet when we got back to our area.  Turns out that Suki (our dog) almost died from an infection during the week and had to have an operation.  (Note: It was actually that Suki's hind legs weren't working and we didn't know why.  It turned out that she had a lesion on her spine and had to undergo surgery to fix it.)  She can't really walk still.  When I heard about that, I got really sad.  I almost didn't get to say goodbye to her.  I called home.  It's kinda funny the difference between now and Christmas.  Then it was super hyped and today it was just like, "Oh, hello again."  It was just my second time calling home since then too.  I can't imagine the other Elders who call weekly.  We had correlations tonight.  We also had a cita with Michael.  It was dope.  We were gonna go to his mom's house to teach them both, but it turns out she lives in Tilda.  He came here in a moments notice.  He already loves the Book of Mormon and says he connects with it.  We taught the Plan of Salvation.  He wants his whole family to hear the gospel.

Saturday
10 months.  Crazy stuff.  Double digits.  We went to the stake center to practice and organize a skit as a zone that we had to do for a stake talent show.  It took a long while to get it planned out.  I think that it was pretty funny though, I think and hope.  The 4 of us went to Plaza Vitarte to look for a place to eat.  I don't trust those Peruvian shop restaurant things in markets, but we wound up having to eat at one of those anyways.  But hey, I'm not dead (yet), so that must mean it was ok.  Those things would be shut down 22 1/2 times over by an American food inspector.  But we're in Peru now, which means our bodies adapt to Peruvian standards, right?  We had to go straight back to the stake center though because there was a CCM attack.  It was a pretty big attack though, so we took our dude back to Alameda with us.  His name was Elder Redding who's from Nebraska.

He's about as Nebraskan as it gets, down to the way he talks and moves his mouth when he does.  I liked it.  We tired visiting Rider's mom, but she wasn't home.  We spent the majority of the time with him contacting.  He wasn't half bad.  We went and visited Angi to get her ready to go to the temple  Not the most exciting cita ever, but it is what it is.  We tried visiting Dante, but he wasn't available.  Elder Redding was a pretty cool dude.  He liked those combios haha.  Elder Carrera told us all a story about how he and his comp had 4 with fecha, but 5 was their goal.  It was the end of the month, so they did a fast.  The next day they received an internet reference about a dude wanting a Book of Mormon.  So they wen there, met a teenager that requested it and long story short, got baptized.  Then he told us that even though he lost contact with his convert, he was a cool dude.  And then he said, "But he's here.  Elder Montero and I spent the day together."  What a story!  The talent show turned out pretty well.  There was some talented people.  Paul, for example, sang and danced with an old lady.  There was a rock band at the end; they weren't that good and couldn't sing.  I think they were looking to have a gig.  haha

Sunday
Guess what I did this morning.  I went to church.  Not only that, but I also went to ward council in the morning before.  We went to go pick up Michael to go to church together.  There were some good talks and classes.  The members went out of their way more than usual to present themselves and talk to him.  That was cool.  He said that he liked church, so that's always good.  The attendance at church has really dropped.  At the start of March we hit 173.  Today we were at 107.  I'm dying on the inside due to that.  Last might I got bored.  Elder Rodriguez is a pretty good pick pocket and due to that, he's hard to get.  But I managed to take his plaque without him realizing it.  Twice.  Each time I gave it to another missionary.  It took him some time to notice both times.  So then we all stole each other's plaques and held them hostage.  Good times.  Elder Anieves and Elder Rodriguez are my Mexicans.  We came back to the room and broke the fast.  Another hermana sorta bailed on us, so we went to Mari Caris for almuerzo (lunch).  That was pretty good.  We stayed there a bit and then left to go visit Arlette.  She didn't pass her interview for a temple recommend, so we taught her about he Gospel and repentance and stuff.  She, and all the other recent converts as well for the most part, have been dropping off as of late.  It's really concerning.  There was a zone attack in Vitarte today.  I went off with Elder Rodriguez and Elder Jones, who are both missionaries in their training.  The goal was to have everyone preach on the same mountainside.  The only downside was that they only scheduled it to last an hour.  But it started 20 minutes late or so and it took us 10 minutes to get there.  When we did though, I pointed to the top of the hill and said, "See that pink house?  We're gonna baptize those guys."  Then my Huaycán instinct kicked in and I sprinted 60  yards or so up the stairs in a bit over a minute, only stopping once to make a contact.  They weren't home really, but it was fun knocking doors. 

A kid's homework from the ward. It asked for his schools name, except he didn't know it. The school's stamp is in the corner of every worksheet. Rodizios.

 A photo I found from the airport in Atlanta on our way to Lima.

Week 22 in Alameda

Elder White was short on time today since his Pday this week was moved to Friday.  But he was able to send his journal over. Here is his week:

Monday
Today was zone p-day.  We all ate lunch together.  There were donuts there, so that was cool.  On the way back to the stake center, I was walking and talking with Elder Winder.  We walked past this 70 or so year old lady standing on the side of the road and said, "Buenas tardes."  She responded by exclaiming, "Guaplo! (Good looking!)"  That was super funny.  I turned to Elder Winder and said, "She was talking to you."  He's 20, but he's balding already so he looks a lot older.  We played a bunch of fun little games and soccer.  We had a water balloon surprise attack.  I accidentally  nailed Elder Peterson down low.  He was a bit mad.  I'm humbled that you think I can aim where I'm throwing.  I just huck it their general direction and hope for the best.

Tuesday
Yesterday during the P-day, Elder Pereira told me he was going to come to my area with me on a 3 day intercambio.  It was kinda of a huge insult to me honestly because to do that is a to imply that we're disobedient missionaries who don't work and require major changes.  So I was mad.  Then Elder Pereira called last night and said it would only be 1 day.  Prayers answered!  This morning we were getting all ready to go and ate lunch and everything.  I called to confirm the intercambio and he told me that it wasn't gonna happen because they were at the doctor.  Even better!  I planned mostly contacting for today.  There was this one Venezuelan dude about 50 years old that was dressed up as an Amish that I tried contacting.  He kinda just did a short rant about Jesus, Venezuela semanu santa and some other stuff I didn't catch, and then just walked away.  I realized today that I'm bilingual.  That's pretty cool I guess.  One of the songs that I frequently have stuck in my head and singing is Secret Prayer.  It's a mess though because I only know it in Spanish, and the chorus only too.  I try to sing both parts because that's just how it needs to be.  I think I've got it down though.  We counted on having a cita with Rocky and Daisy today, but crap happened again.  It's unfortunate looking like Daisy is going to have to divorce him.  We went to Zorayma's house and helped her map out where all the recent converts, investigators and that kind of stuff is in the relief society.  We grabbed David and went to a cita with a contact that Elder Cabral made named Darlene.  (It's pronounced like a gringo though.)  She's 18 and studying.  She's pretty cool.  It took us forever to find a solid problem in her life for the gospel to fill.  Then I felt prompted to ask her about her grandparents because I remembered what Elder Villanueva told me while we were in the CCM.  That did the trick; one of her grandma's passed away when she was younger that she was pretty close to.  We had a really good lesson with her.  In the end she was still really open, but wasn't ready to leave her other church just like that because she's an active Evangelical.  I think she'll accept our message though.  Aylin was in the park with her puppy Lucas, who kept running over to us.  That was kinda funny.

Wednesday
You know what's weird?  Today was the half way mark for the hermanas in the group that came in after me.  And here I am still in my second area. hahaha.   I don't think I'll ever leave Alameda.  We had a consejo de distrito this morning.  There are some birthdays in the zone this month, so we had some cake.  Alfredo and Lelia went to Jaunja on a month long trip early this morning, so I had to say bye to them yesterday.

Daniel, their son, is cooking for us now.  I like it, I like it a lot!  "I declare this food to be delicious!"  Arroz con pollo, hamburgers, one of the best ají de gallinas I've ever had and easily the best lomo saltado I've had.  We tried to have a cita with Norma today, but she left us hanging again.  We'll have to stop teacher her now until she can show interest and dedication.  We went to go talk to Jeannina and her family, but only Ricardo was home.  So we talked him through a couple of questions and then left.  Our next cita was with Dante and Olga.  We got there 15 minutes late and they were like, "We were starting to think that you guys had forgotten to come."  It's cool when they're waiting like that.  Dante read what we had left him too.  You could kinda tell he was loaded up on these pain meds though because he was mildly out of it.  We had a pretty solid lesson about temples though.  Turns out that he was in a coma for 5 days.  He legit almost died.  All because of these 5 neglected pebbles.  That has some great spiritual applications to it, but I'm not going to explain it all out right now.  Maybe later.  It's basically just the idea of evading sin and getting rid of problems when they occur.  We were going to do a noche de hogar with the Elder's quorum president  and his family, but his wife had stuff going on, wo we just talked to him a while at the door.  Pro tip:  If you ever want to break into a Peruvian Apartment building, just push the intercom button.  When they say, "¿Quién?" just say, "Yo," in a slightly drawn out voice with a mild hint of boredom and annoyance.  that's how everyone does it here.

Thursday
I am making important life decisions right now:  Elder Cabral and I bought 50 tequeños and pasteles to fry up because that's how many you need to buy to get them cheap.  So I've got breakfast planned for the next however long 34 will last me.

We went to the office in La Molina for interviews with President today  We were scheduled to be one of the last, and when we got there, he had just finished the first few, so it seemed like we'd be there a while.  When he walked out for the next one, I happened to be standing by the door so he called me in.  I completely skipped everyone that had already been waiting for 2 hours.  It wasn't a very exciting interview.  Elder Van Dassell has to go home today to receive American medical treatment.  It's kinda sad.  Hopefully he'll be able to come back though after.  I forgot to talk about his before, but we ate breakfast as a district this morning before the interviews.  It was fun and tasty.  I played Elder Petersen in Jenga.

 Elder Petersen

I've pretty much hacked that game.  We ate lunch and then really just contacted all day.  We decided to do our fast early this week because tomorrow we are going to have a zone attack here and we want extra spiritual help with that.  Tonight we were able to find Mafer and teach her a bit.  We had to use a bit of fire because she's not doing any of the things she need too.  Every time that my mom emails me, she tells me to put on mosquito repellent before going to bed.  So last night I opened the window and dared them to eat me.  I defeated them with my own will power: not a single bite.  Good thing too for them, because I was going to drink some rat poison and let them die after trying to eat me.

Saturday
Blaze it!  Yesterday was pretty normal  We had a cita with Jeannina.  It was kind of a weird cita.  They had family visiting.  There was an odd luck of the spirit so we finished quick and left.  We had a zone attack in our area.  However, it was Good Friday.  That's kind of a big deal here.  Everything closes down, more than for Christmas.  They don't really celebrate Easter here from what I understand.  Due to that, there were very few people in the street.  I had kinda lowered  hopes, but we actually received a lot of really good references that I think we can work with.  We had a brief correlation meeting.  I was starting to feel really sick at the end of the night though.  I had had a constant headache all day.  (I'm fine now though.)  When we got back to room, Elder Cabral fried us both a tequeño.  I felt like throwing up, but I took one look at that blessed thing and said to myself, "I wouldn't mind eating that a second time."  But I went to bed early, so that's why I didn't write last night.  This morning we got up early to go to a service as a zone.  It was basically a juvie/orphanage/refuge witness protection program center place thing.  I taught a short message with Elder Agurlar to a group of 7 deacon age kids.  It could have gone better, but, ya know: deacons.  It's actually a really nice facility for Peruvian standards.  It was a cool experience.  Most of them seem like normal kids.  It's kinda sad that they're at where they're at mostly due to their parents.  We came back and did a couple of things and ate lunch.  Then we went to a zone attack in Tilda 2.  It wasn't all that eventful.  Elder Cabral and I just followed the garbage truck and contacted everyone that came to take out their trash.  Give them a chance to throw out their trash and their sins too.  We had a cita with Dante about the Restoration.  That went pretty well.  I had another run in with Elmer Blonco; dude needs to come to church already.  We were just walking along in the street and there was a 50-60 year old dude 20 yards ahead facing us.  He straight up dropped his pants to his ankles.  That was something I won't forget soon.  This other dude asked to borrow my pen.  He wrote down his new buddy's number on his black motorcycle seat.  He gave me my pen back and was like, "Thanks.  Sorry man, I'm just a drunk Peruvian."  Yeah, I can see that.  Almost all the citas that people made for us from the attack didn't workout.  At the end of the night though, we taught Magino and his brother, Rider.  Their mom has cancer.  Rider seems promising for some reason, so we'll see what happens with him.

Sunday
Today was pretty eventful.  A bit too much so for my liking.  We were going to pick up Darlene this morning, but she gave us a bunch of excuses when we called to confirm.  So instead we just picked up Rider.  He's pretty chill.  The JAS class started 30 minutes late though, so that was kind of uncomfortable.  The attendance today in church was super low: about 122 or so.  We talked with Rider a bit after to clear up some questions/doubts about the Book of Mormon.  The Astuhuaman's were gonna give us lunch, but they were on a trip, so we ate with Mari Luri instead.  As were eating, we starting talking about her family.  She's got a lot of crap going on.  That's really sad.  We were just about to start teaching something that would help her, when her 86 year old part deaf previous bishop father-in-saw was there.  I had one of the oddest contacts today.  I met a legit Satan worshiper witchcraft dude.  He was an evil dude.  He was telling me he enjoys messing with people's lives for his gain/entertainment.  He converses with demons.  He told me he can control bugs, dogs and women.  He acknowledges Jesus exists, but he chooses Satan.  He said it's because he likes the power and he wants more of it and likes sin.  There were a lot of other things he told me he could do.  I felt the spirit powerfully testify to me that even though he had a lot of power through the Devil, he had no power over me and I was more powerful than him through Jesus.  I basically told him not to do that stuff anymore and he walked away.  We were going to go visit a reference from the attack, but instead wound up having a cita with Jordy.  Lucero is his girlfriend I guess.  We went to go visit Nimrod tonight to plan a few things.  We had a cita with Juan.  Turns out he actually has little faith in God.  So I shared some super personal things and told him to pray.  I'm concerned for him.

The infamous niña head that the owner took down.

 The last photo of Elder Yañez before he went home.

Week 21 in Alameda

Dante

This week was a pretty normal week. We had a cita with our investigator named Dante. As I mentioned last week, he's having a bunch of health issues and is still going to the hospital for regular checkups and will have another surgery soon to take out his bladder I think. We were there to teach him a bit and to see how he was doing. He's better than the last time we saw him, but obviously still not super great. We decided to teach him about the Plan of Salvation. During the lesson he was kind of looking down the entire time. I couldn't really tell if he was bored or just really pensive. At the end of the lesson I explained the blessings that Jesus has for us in the celestial kingdom of heaven. The spirit got super strong, stronger than I had ever had it get while teaching this lesson before. He looked up and there were tears in his eyes. I asked him what he was thinking and he said he was thinking about Jesus and his family. I didn't want to disrupt the spirit in that moment that was so special for all of us. Years ago he had a sour experience with a member of the church. He had refused to have anything to do with the church. As the years went on though, his family gradually became members. He was still kinda not having it though when I got here. But over these last 5 months the Lord has completely torn him down and has put Elder Cabral and I in charge of building him back up and showing him the love that Jesus has for him and the blessings that the gospel will bring him. It's amazing the love that you develop for people out here as you serve them. I want you all to know that this is the Plan that God has created for us. It is a plan of happiness. It is the Plan of Salvation. I know that God loves each and everyone of us and that each of the trials that we go through here is for our eventual benefit. We need to do our best to renew our covenants and live in a way that shows God that we love him. I share this things with you in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

Monday
Bruh, deez mosquitoes need to take a chill pill or two.  A week or so will pass without them consuming my flesh, then there'll be nights like last night where I had all the doors and windows closed and somehow got 3 bites all on the left side of my left foot.  Why do ya gotta be dis way?  At least bite me on a fixed schedule so that I know which day of the week I need to apply mosquito repellent.  Internet was pretty good this morning.  I had a lot to say about my experiences this past week.  Spiritual stuff.  We were just chilling around when I got a call from Elder Muzin, the personal secretary.  He informed me that tomorrow we have to be at the office at 7:00 AM so that Elder Cabral can go to migraciones (migrations).   After lunch, I bought a pineapple.  That's another thing I never thought I would do; I didn't like them before I left.  But I've been craving it recently.  Good stuff.  Don't hug it though because it turns out that the outside is pretty poky.  The district met at our chapel to play soccer.  Elder Shupe gave me my music USB back.  I had given it to Hermana Houghton yesterday so that we could share music.  I've gotten a lot of music from my comps and she gets a new USB with music every time her parents send her a package.  I got 590 more songs, and most of them are new ones.  It's a good things I got my music back because I was going through major withdrawals.  I start my music at 7:10 AM and listen to it until like 9:30 AM.  It's so routine for me that I felt awkward without it.  We played soccer for an hour or so.  The court is huge though and it was super hot, which is weird because it gets cooler at night now.  We decided to go inside to watch a movie.  We got 15 minutes into The Croods when it stopped working.  Elder Shupe and I played a serious game of Jenga.  That tower should have fallen 20 blacks before it actually did.  I won, just a small FYI.  We had almost all our citas fall.  We did have a cita with Marcel though.  But he wasn't seeming super interested, so we told him to come to church and then we left.  Sometimes as missionaries we find ourselves in awkward situations here and there.  For example, yesterday we were contacting late and saw this couple in the street really chuparing (sucking) that piña (pineapple), so we were like, "Ah!  Fornication!  We have to teach them Jesus!"  As we got closer, we realized that it was Robin with a random girl.  That went from 0 to 100 real quick on the awkwardness scale.

Tuesday
No man should ever be awake for 19 hours.  I'm gonna sleep and finish this tomorrow.....Alright, we had to meet with Elder Carrasco and Elder Salway in Ceres at 6:15 AM so that I could take their comps, Elder Anieves and Elder Rodriguez, with me to the office.  We got there and they all piled in the van to go to Miraflores.  There was a CCM attack in Vitarte at 8 and Elder Muniz tried to have all us trainers go back to that.  I didn't want to though because A, that'd be really inconvenient and B, I was tired and wanted to rest a bit.  So we both made some phone calls we got to stay.  Elder Taylor and I got to hang out with Elder Van Dassell, Elder Wall, and Elder Tenney all morning.  We went with them back to their room for a bit and then went to the office with them.  Elder Wall told me about how Parker Maine, a kid I went to school with and knew, is getting married to his girlfriend, Jessie Stout, whom I was friends with and sat next to in seminary.  They graduated the same year I did.  Crazy stuff.  They're getting sealed in the temple too.  The office is a very trunky place, I learned.  While I was there, I got a phone call from a random number.  I answered and it was Elder Cabral.  I was joking around with him like, "Elder Cabral?  Who's that?" and he was like, "Dude.  They left me here.  I'm all alone.  I don't know where anyone is.  I'm using a police officer's phone."  I started laughing super hard and hung up to call Elder Muniz.  "Hello, is Elder Cabral there?"  "Yeah, do you want to talk to him?"  "That'd be great if I could."  *In background*  "Elder Cabral?  Hey guys, where's Elder Cabral?"  *Three seconds later*  "Fetch...."  "Yeah, he's kind of alone at migrations."  The dude was so busy reading his Book of Mormon that he didn't get in the car with everyone else.  And it took him 10 minutes to realize it too.  So I teased a few people when they got back.  When we got back we had a bunch of citas that didn't work out.  We tried to get Nelson to come to a cita with us but he was 30 minutes late, so that was kinda frustrating.  We went to go visit Marjory.  She's still crazy.  She asked if I had brothers, so I was like, "Yeah, but they're all younger than me.  The oldest is 17."  "That's ok, give me his number anyways."  "But your 20 and he's 17."  "That's ok, he'll be legal in a year.  When's his birthday?"  *Face palms myself so hard that I fall out of my chair*  She's really set on this whole marry a gringo thing.  We did a noche do hogar with Camila and Arian in Luz's house.  They're still cool, but their mom doesn't want to give them permission and she isn't really interested in talking to us.

Wednesday
Elder Cabral did another one of his fasts today.  He sometimes gets kinda grumpy at night, but especially when he fasts.  It's kinda frustrating for me.  Not a whole lot happened today.  Elder Pereira called us probably close to 10 times throughout the day.  I'd say only 2 of those calls were actually necessary.  It got to the point where on #7 I just breathed super loudly into the mic for 30 seconds.  He got pretty confused, so that was funny.  It was annoying that he called so much though because it felt like he was babying us and not showing trust in us.  I know how to be a missionary pal.  It was super random and irrelevant stuff too.  Why do you care how old Norma and Jessica are?  Why do you need to know what we studied this morning?  Why are you asking me when and where the next cita with this person is?  Does this mean that you're going to randomly show up while we're teaching?  You'd better at least bring cake if you do.  Today we had a cita with Lucero's mom, Norma.  She showed up an hour late, but I really wanted to meet with her and we didn't have any other citas to get to really.  It was a super long cita though, almost 2 hours.  It was super vital information about her and her 2 kids though, so I didn't cut her off.  She basically started from the time she was 18 until where she is now and talked about all the hard things she and her kids have been through.  It was great info, I just wish we could have gotten it faster.  She didn't really think that it was a good idea when Lucero told her that she was going to get baptized because Norma was Evangelical or something like that.  But she saw the good changes that the gospel made in Lucero.  Norma really enjoyed Lucero's baptism.  Then she really enjoyed watching General Conference too.  She agreed to prepare herself to get baptized for May 4th.  I don't know how confident she was though, so we'll see what happens the next time.  She seems to be good though.  We did it in Zorayma's house and she gave us cinnamon rolls after, so that was awesome.  There were some citas that we had planned out for the rest of the night, but they didn't really wind up working out at all.  We went to the chapel and hung up a banner about the noche de cine (movie night).  Duct tape is the best.  The Latinos here had never seen duct tape before though.  That's just one of the many pros to being an American.  I just hope some random dude doesn't come in the middle of the night and steal the tape that I put on the banner, or the banner too.

Thursday
Remember that one time a bit ago that I said at night in this park in front of our house there's either futbol, fronication or fumadores (smokers) [Triple F]?  Well when we got back we saw this couple on the bench chapardoing that piña.  I was debating whether or not to shout when I was like, "Oh.  Wait, is that....Oh no...."  It was Robin with that same girl again.  They've been there for at least an hour.  It was pretty awkward trying to do the nightly planning with the 2 of them right there out front of our window.  Robin, we've gotta stop running into you like this pal.  We had a consejo de distrito this morning.  Nothing overly exciting really happened.  The zone leaders told us that there were a bunch of surprises, so we should come prepared.  It was surprised alight, it took them 30 minutes to take a picture of us.  I was even more surprised because they wanted the picture even though we were missing 3 companionships.  It's ok though because they have us churros after.  Why don't we have churros in Utah?  Costco churros are fake.  I never understood Chuck's excuse about churros in San Antonio making him fat until I got down here and tried one.  Good stuff.  We really just contacted pretty much all day.  It was Nelson's last day here in Alameda before taking off to go work (in Utah I think he said), so we took him with us to go visit Jherson.  I'm concerned about Jherson because he's been working Sundays with his Aunt recently.  So we talked to him about it for a bit and he said he'd come to church on Sunday.  Cool beans.  We went hunting for antiguo (old) investigators, but we didn't really find them.  We did find out more about when they'll be home and stuff though, so that was good.  Well, I had planned to meeting with the ward counsel tonight for a mini correlations/confirm plans for tomorrow night kind of thing.  Except no one showed up. Hehe, that's always fun.  We ran into the bishop though, so we took advantage of that and talked with him a bit.  Nimrod came with the HHJJ president and bit later.  Maybe the 5 reminders that I've sent out these last few days weren't enough to remind the rest of them.  Erick walked into the chapel.  I hadn't seen him for a while.  It was nice to be able to talk to him again as a friend.  He didn't call me Timmy, so that was good.  For dinner we went to go eat at Elliot's Chifa.  That was some pretty good food.  He wound up not charging it to us too.  I like it.

Friday
Elder Yañez went home today.  That's a depressing thought.  He was a great friend to me and I'm sad to see him go.  First him, then Elder Gonzalez (and Elder Mayta) and I'll be companionless except for Elder Cabral once May 7 comes around.  Today was a peculiar day.  We did weekly planning this morning.  It actually went really well and I felt super productive afterwards.  We did a practice where I took the role of a contact I made a while back where basically his life was falling apart all around him and there wasn't a whole lot he could do about it.  I got so invested into my role that I felt depressed after.  I can't think of anything worse than having my family fall apart, and that was only half his problem.  Sad stuff.  But despite all the problems we go through, living the Gospel of Jesus Christ will bring us happiness, sí o sí (yes or yes).  It's something that I hope I'll be able to implement successfully in my future family.  After planning, we went to go visit Maria Curi, the relief society president.  We planned on just passing by to get to know her and her husband better and to see if there was something we could do to help her in her calling.  Her dad is in the hospital right now and is poor in health.  She was very shaken up.  So we gave her a blessing of comfort.  She was all alone making 3 kilos of popcorn for the movie night, so we helped her out with that and talked about the relief society at the same time.  All I'm gonna say is this: people have a lot of crap going on in their lives.  We went to the church and got things ready.  The laptop wasn't working super well, but I got it figured out after a bit.  We had scheduled it to start at 7:00, but when 7:30 rolled around there was only an eleven year old girl member there.  Then it turned 8:00 and she had her friend come, then Norma came, and a mom with her kids from the street came in too.  So we started the movie, which was Los Testamentos (The Testaments).  At the end of the movie we had a bit over 50 people there, almost 10 of which were nonmembers.  Even though we had that brief moment of panick, I'd say that all in all it was a solid success. The people seemed to really enjoy it too.  Something happened 2 or so years ago and now I get super involved in movies.  We only watched the last few minutes, but the spirit was strong when Jesus came.  I found myself relating a lot with the dad and almost cried when Jesus healed him.

Saturday
I gave myself a crash course in cutting pineapple this morning.  I had no idea what I was doing, but hey; What's new?  Pro tip: don't eat half of a pineapple in one sitting.  You might die.  Eating piñas is exciting because it's a game of how much can I eat before this thing eats me?  We tried looking for old investigators today, but it didn't really wind up working out.  Fasting is an interesting things in a physical sense.  I always get myself super hydrated before hand.  So yesterday a dude came and starting installing stuff so that we could take hot showers.  That was pretty exciting.  Today he came to finish the job.  We had to let him into our house so that he could do it.  He was kinda late though, which was rough because we had to go to a cita.  Norma was a no show to the cita though, so it didn't really end up mattering, but still.  When we got back at night I tested the water and it was indeed warm.  I'm excited to shower tomorrow.  Let's just hope that we don't have a repeat of the Huaycán incident.  We went to the church because there was an activity with sports with a combined young men and young women and we were invited.  Supposedly that's why most of them went.  It wasn't super organized though.  We got there well before any leaders and had to set up the stuff for the sports.  Then we gave an awkward spiritual thought before they started.  We couldn't really participate thought in the partidos (parties) because that's against the mission rules.  I did, however, dunk the volleyball while in my proselyting clothes.  I thought that that was pretty cool, but everyone else was just like, "Eh."  We just contacted the rest of the night.  While we were in the room, I got a chance to practice my Jedi training.  Elder Sánchez would throw a card at me and I'd try and block it with the broom.  I'm ready for those storm troopers!  Just as long as they're only storm troopers though, because I couldn't actually hit anything. #4/17

Sunday
Today was my Dad's birthday.  He supposedly turned 46 I believe.  But if I'm really 29 like people here say I am, then that means that he's actually like 56, which is what he kinda looks like.  Hahaha.  I need to be careful saying that though because I have all his jeans.  And his genes too.  We had consejo de barrio this morning.  Gotta love those 7 AM meetings.  We were almost late though because I was really buen provechoing (good profiting) that hot shower this morning.  Oh how I missed that.  I had kinda forgotten that hot showers were a thing.  We left the consejo early to go pick up this contact last night that we made.  She seemed really cool last night, but when we got there her roommate told us that she wasn't home.  We were pretty sure her roommate was lying, but there was nothing we could do about it, so we started to walk away.  But then I noticed that the girl pulled up in a moto.  So we went to go see if she was ready and she went inside.  We were waiting a bit and a couple of minutes later she leaned out the window and told us that she couldn't go.  She told us that the lock on her door to get into her room of the apartment was broken, so she couldn't come.  There were a lot of excuses and I got frustrated.  We had to teach the young men today because the teacher didn't show up; it wasn't half bad actually.  For lunch we ate with Maritza.  At first we were like, "Who's that?"  After a bit of asking around though, we figured out that it was Tréysha's mom.  They're both super cool, but only Tréysha is a member.  Her mom is always at all the activities though and is there at church every Sunday.  While we were almorzaring (lunching), we frequently turned the conversation to the church.  I was super sleepy, the kind where you're afraid to blink because you might nod off.  But then we unearthed some family problems and they started to cry.  All that sueño (dream) left these ojos (eyes) real quick and I was like, "Jesus time."  We taught a powerful lesson on the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  The spirit was easy to recognize.  It went really well.  Maritza said that she will talk to her daughter about her decision to get baptized.  But cross those fingers boy!  FYI, Norma didn't come to church today, so that was unfortunate.  We went to go visit Dante this evening.  He's recovering well, but returns to the hospital often for this checkups and will probably have another surgery to remove his bladder (maybe gallbladder).  They had to take those pebbles out though through his mouth by the way.  We taught the Plan of Salvation.  When I explained the Celestial Kingdom the spirit got strong and he got teary eyed.  When I asked why he said he was thinking about Jesus and his family.  A couple of years ago he didn't want anything to do with the church.  Then the Lord decided to do a 180 on his life.

 Which is it? Kelly's Chicken Restaurant, or an undercover Peruvian KKK hideout?

 

When the thug life chooses you but you still gotta choose the right.  (CTR nose ring top, CTR earring below.)

 

Week 20 in Alameda

The Power of the Book of Mormon

This week was pretty incredible. I don't even know where to start. In the Month of March, we shattered the mission record of baptisms for a month with 301. Before the record was 215. That's super amazing to be a part of! Conference was amazing. I loved the chance to be able to hear from the prophet and apostles. They have such amazing counsels for us that we can follow and find more happiness and peace. There were a lot of things that stood out to me. But one of the things that stood out to me was the word "covenant." I just feel like I heard that word in specific like 2 dozen times. It really made me reflect on the covenants that I've made with God and what I can to do better to understand and live by them. This week I had 2 experiences with the Book of Mormon that were super cool. Earlier in the week, we had discovered that our pension's (our cook's) 14 year old grandson hadn't been baptized because his parents were inactive. So we had a cita with him and he was super awesome and super desirous to get baptized. So we gave him the permission paper and explained that we needed his parents to sign it. We returned a day later to talk to him and his parents about it. His parents didn't give him the permission. The live in the 3rd floor of my pensions house and we were there on the first floor, so we asked him to see if his parents could come down and talk to us for 10 minutes. They refused to come down though. I was left really frustrated after it was all said and done. I was eating dinner and I felt like it was one of those times where if I opened the Book of Mormon to a random page, the first verse I saw would be a message from God to me that would help comfort me or improve the situation or something. So I opened my book and saw Alma 41:6, which says "And so it is on the other hand. If he hath repented of his sins, and desired righteousness until the end of his days, even so he shall be rewarded unto righteousness." Even though his parents won't let him, I know that if he does his best to live righteously, God will still reward him until the day he can finally get baptized. Back in December, I baptized an hermana (sister) named Olga. She and her husband, Dante, were super Catholic. But then their son left on a mission. Olga started going to church and I baptized her. Her husband was still catholic though. I've visited him periodically during my 4 cambios aqui (transfers here). He had some health problems and had to go to the hospital about a month ago. After a while there and avoiding a potentially serious health problem, he came home. We went to go visit and he said he'd get baptized, but in July or something. So he started coming to church and stuff. A couple of weeks later he went to the ER after sacrament meeting. He was there in the hospital for like 2 and a half weeks in critical condition. We couldn't go there though because it was in 2 de Mayo out of the mission. But we sent a couple of dudes from the ward there to give him a blessing. He got back home a couple of days ago. Last night we had a cita fall, so Elder Cabral suggested that we pass by to see how he was doing. We passed by just to chat for a minute to make sure he was ok and to see if we could help them at all. He was telling us all about how he had these stones in his gall bladder and showed us the huge and nasty incision that the doctors made in his stomach. He was doing better, but has to go back today for a check up. It was the most friendly and open I had ever seen him. I felt prompted to share a scripture with him. I thought "baptism" so I went to go open up 2 Nephi 31, but the spirit told me to go to Mosiah 24 instead. That talks about God supporting us in trials, so I was like "ok" and opened it up. I started reading in verse 12, but stopped when I finished verse 13, which reads "And it came to pass that the voice of the Lord came to them in their afflictions, saying: Lift up your heads and be of good comfort, for I know of the covenant which ye have made unto me; and I will covenant with my people and deliver them out of bondage." There was that word again, covenant. I didn't remember that being there. So I explained to him how he needed to not only continue praying to God, but if he really wanted to fully receive the help of God he needed to make the covenant of baptism. He agreed to be baptized the 4th of Mayo. Olga's eyes got kind of teary when we talked about it. The spirit was super strong. That was 100% the spirit teaching, not me. I had no idea what was going to happen or what we were going to share when we walked in. It really strengthened my testimony of how the Spirit really will guide us when we are continually virtuous and do our best to live by His spirit. I know that this church is true and that the Book of Mormon is what is helps us stay on the covenant path to return to live with Christ. I love having my testimony grow like this every week. I share these things with you in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

Monday
This morning we went early to get haircuts from Hermana Mari Curi, the relief society president, who apparently gives Elders free haircuts.  Good stuff.  It looks good too.  We didn't have a lot of time after that, so we only did internet for an hour.  I just remembered that on Saturday in Lucero's baptism, I chose to sing the hymn Creo en Cristo (I Believe in Christ).  It was another one of those cases where we have a hymn in English that's super popular, but that no one down here really knows.  I had flash backs to the Tilda baptism.  Let's just say that those were some really awkward and painfully long 5 minutes.  But any who, from there we went out to take out money.  We met at Plaza Vea, which is a super market.  I decided to duck inside real quick.  It was magical to be able to see a super market again.  We all took a surprisingly concerning amount of interest in looking at the pens isle.  A year ago I was trying to decide whether to play Pub G or Battlefront.  Now I'm examining and comparing pens at a super market in a 3rd world country.  What has my life come to?  For lunch we met up as a zone and went to a convert's chicken restaurant where they gave us a lot of really good food for cheap.  Then we went to the stake center and watched Coco.  That had some pretty good Spanish translations.  Afterwards we went and did 30 more minutes of internet.  We had a cita with a recent convert named Monica when we got back.  She got baptized a couple of months before Elder Mayta and I got here, but the 2 of us where never able to meet with her.  She was pretty cool though.  We went and visited Gabriel, Alfredo's grandson.  He was pretty cool and excepted a fecha readily, but apparently his inactive parents are pretty stubborn.  We have hope though.

Tuesday
A lot happened today.  We were just kinda in our room finishing up getting read for the day when we got a call from Jean Franco.  He informed us that the abuelita (grandma) had passed away.  We went to their house in a hurry.  We sat down with all of them, including an aunt and Elva's parents.  Elva was crying a lot.  But her mom was super normal about everything.  She was like, "I'm just gonna sit by my mom," and plopped herself down on the bed where the body was laid.  She would pat her occasionally too.  We had a good talk about the plan of salvation and baptisms for the dead.  Our talk went well.  How much more will it take for Mario and Elva to get baptized?  From there we went to a district meeting.  On the way there we picked up an electric stove for Elder Cabral.  The meeting was pretty normal though.  I went on an intercambio today to LA with Elder Shupe.  I've never had a gringo companion and before had only done like 6 intercambios with a gringo, so it was an incredibly treasured time for me.  They don't have a pension, so he made us lunch.  Good stuff.  The one and only things that will get me feeling trunky is talking about American food.  I mean, family's cool, but have you ever tried going 9 months without an American hamburger, pizza or milkshake?  It's rough sometimes.  We were walking along and saw this huge traffic jam in the highway intersection.  We were talking to a Venezuelan moto dude and he said that another dude (like him) got hit by a combi.  It wasn't anything overly serious, but the cobrador (debt collector) and moto driver got into an argument.  The cobrador, a Peruvian, grabbed a rod and beat the driver in front of his 5 year old daughter, who was in the moto.  The other Venezuelans obviously got mad and the police came and there were some very racist things said to the Venezuelans.  They suffer so much discrimination.  It's so sad.  We had 2 citas today.  One of them was this super escogido contact that they had made.  His family had basically fallen apart and was seeking divine help.  He accepted baptism super readily.  The other one was with the 17 year old investigator Harley.  We were reviewing the 10 Commandments and Elder Shupe asked if he remembered some of them.  Harley was like, "Yeah, no mataras, no hurtaras, santificaras las fiestas (you will not kill, you will not steal, you will sanctify the holidays)."  He was serious about it too.  Elder Shupe and I just looked at each other then got a good laugh.

Wednesday
Before I forget to say this again, my parents sent me a package on Saturday.  Good stuff.  We were going to have a multizone this morning, but it got canceled, so that was disappointing.  But instead, the whole mission will get together on Friday.  I'm super excited, mostly because now I'm going to be able to hear Elder Yañez and Elder Gonzalez's final testimonies before they go home.  We went to go finish taking out money this morning because we only took out part of it out last time.  We switched back from intercambios last night.  Elder Shupe told us this morning about how last night that President Nelson came and whispered in his ear, "You're going to Lima Tambo."  So basically his destiny is sealed now.  For lunch we had ceviche do pota, so that was pretty dang good.  SF got booted out of their pension, so they'll be eating with us now.  I'm the only one that eats dinner with them now though.  Everyone else decided that they aren't hungry at that time or something.  We contacted most of the day today.  Jordy's dad suffered an accident last week.  He literally got hit by a truck.  So we went to go see how he was doing.  He was distracted by the TV, so we basically just invited him to church and left.  We went out front of the house and saw Colegio (School) "Mi Peru".  Elder Cabral pointed to an open window and was like, "I bet you can't get a card in there."  There was a wall and tree in the way, not to mention it was the 3rd story window too.  I waited for the street to empty and then launched a card.  It had a few crazy twists and turns, and it somehow snuck through the window.  We heard one of the kids say "Ow. ¿Que?" followed by some confused chatter.  So if there's a young teen that walks into church on Sunday that wants to get baptized because an angel threw a card at him, you'll know who to call.  That was pretty legendary, not gonna lie.  We had a cita with Arian, Angi and Camila tonight.  They had a lot of energy when we went to start the lesson, but they calmed down when it was time and the lesson went super well.  I felt the spirit super strong when talking about repentance.  They all accepted a fecha, but Arian was a bit more hesitant.  They all need their permission forms signed anyways.  We're hopeful.  We went to go talk to Gabriel again.  His parents don't want to sign the permission form.  They refused to come down and talk to us too.  That made me really frustrated since they're less active and Gabriel is super cool.  While I was eating dinner, I got the feeling that if I just opened by Book of Mormon to a random page, the first verse I saw would help me.  And so it was.  Alma 41:6.  That really comforted me about Gabriel.

Thursday
I'm super excited for conference this weekend.  I tell all the people in the street that I can about Conference.  Yesterday I decided to start a count down.  When I finished the math, I realized that there were 66 hours and 6 minutes left.  That was weird.  After 5 months of asking, we finally were able to get Alfredo and Celia to let us come and do a service for them.  The 4 of us went and cleaned their house for 2 hours for them.  Celia has had diabetes her whole life and, up until a couple of days ago, had refused to take medicine.  For the last 2 or 3 weeks she's been in really bad health due to that.  So that's why we went and cleaned with her.  They have us some pineapple juice after, so that was great.  After lunch we came back and did a bit of weekly planning.  From there we went to contact for a while.  No overly exciting contacts today.  Alameda is a bit too tranquil sometimes.  It's good, that's for sure, but it lacks some excitement sometimes.  We had a cita today with a contact that Elder Cabral made named Laura.  She's a 30 year old with 2 kids and has been living with her parents.  Her husband was working, so we took her and her kids to the park to teach them since they're 2 years old and 8 months old.  I asked her how she was and she said, "mas o menos (more or less)."  When I asked her what was going on, she told me that her husband was cheating on her.  I was kinda just like, "Well, do you want to leave or fix it?"  She said that she'd like to fix it if possible.  I thought that that was pretty good.  Come to find out a couple of minutes later though, the other lady is pregnant.  Oh....they didn't teach us this in the CCM.  She was just like, "I didn't do anything wrong.  Why is this happening?  Why is there so much bad in the world why?"  What do I say to that?  I just told her, "Do you think that you'd be here with us right now if this hadn't happened?  God sometimes gives us trials to humble us," and then we taught part of the Plan of Salvation.  Why is a 19 year old that's never even had a girlfriend talking about this?  "#dificil (#hard)" -Elder Cabral.  We went to al capilla for a bit.  We were waiting for a couple of people to come, so we snuck into the JAS activity.  Lucero got there super late though, so we weren't able to really talk to her.  We talked to them about inviting people on social media to come to church.  Then we met with Nimrod for a minute to cover a couple of things.

Friday
We had multizone as a mission this morning.  #Lit.  The first thing we did was take a picture.

While I was walking around, I saw Elder Simonasi.  He just pointed at me and held up 4 fingers.  If there's one thing that this has taught me, it'd be that if you make fun of someone for staying 4 transfers, then you should also plan on staying a 4th.  Karma's real.  Turns out that he's in Huaycan 2 now.  Apparently that area blew up after I left because Elder McKinney, my replacement, told me that he got 10 baptisms while he was there.  That's good to hear.  They wouldn't tell anyone how many baptisms the mission achieved in March.  We all figured that we broke the mission's record of 215.  We all went into the gym and watched a video about it.  As a mission, we got 301 baptisms!  How awesome is that?  They had a bunch of confetti cannons; I was still washing bits of it out of my hair when I went to shower later.  That was pretty exciting.  However, we're gonna have a bit of a relapse in April, so we talked a lot about how we can maintain this high standard of excellence.  For lunch, they bought us all Domino's.  It was 1 large pizza for each companionship.  That was dang good stuff.

I was kinda like, "heck yeah!"  Then we got another 1/4 pizza and I was like, "Cool."  Then we got even more and I was like, "Ok..."  I ate the equivilant of 1 pizza by myself and I was satisfied in body and in mind.  But then I had 1 more slice and just thought, "If I die, I die a happy man."  Spoiler alert:  I didn't die.  Not yet at least. hehe.  Legend has it that back in my prime I once ate a full Little Ceasers pizza during a Jr. Jazz game and still finished with my normal stats.  Good times.  We did a face to face thing, but with President and Sister Amato.  That was super cool.  Someone asked them about Lima Tambo and President was just like, "Don't be sad because you might go, be happy because the work of the Lord is expanding," and went through stake by stake and explained the plans of expansion for what seemed like half the wards in the mission.  Cool stuff.  I tried talking to Elder Mayta to show him we were friends still, but he wasn't having it.  I had to say bye to Elder Yañez today.  That was pretty sad.  He plans on going to LDS business college though, so hopefully I'll see him again.  We tried visiting Laura, but we were late and she wasn't home.  We went to go visit Juan tonight.  Then we went to la capilla to do correlations.

All of Elder Gonzalez's companions and friends.

 

Saturday

We did an intercambio today.  Elder Cabral went with Elder Pereia to watch conference in Portuguese and I went with Elder Shupe to watch it in English.  The two of us went to Vitarte to watch it since that was where all the other gringos where watching it.  Conference is basically the best thing ever to a missionary. I really enjoyed it.  There were 5 other Elders and the 4 hermanas that were there watching it in that room.  That was pretty fun.  We all broke out big bags of American candy to share while we were watching.  Good stuff.  There were two talks  that I think stood out to me during the morning session.  There was one by Becky Craven about being on the right path, and the other was Henry B Eyring talking about pride and the family.  After the first session, Elder Shupe and I went to a restaurant to eat and then went back.  To start the second session, there was an amazing rendition of I Stand All Amazed.  It left us all speechless.  In the afternoon session, there were two more talks that I really liked.  One of them was by David P Homer when he talked about having the Holy Ghost.  I'm pretty sure that Jeffrey R Holland went into that building tonight with the goal of roasting all of Peru.  He talked about a lot of things we need to do for church on the Sabbath.  Good stuff.  After that session ended, Elder Shupe and I were kind of in an awkward situation because if we had wanted to go back to one of our areas, we would have only been there for like 20 minutes before having to go back to the stake center to watch the priesthood session.  So we just stayed there in Vitarte and wandered around a bit trying to keep ourselves busy.  Priesthood was pretty cool.  Gary E Stevenson talked about a couple of pro athletes that are members.  I had no idea that Bryce Harper was a member, but all that was super cool though.  Dallin H Oaks had a super savage story about a dog that killed a squirrel.  Don't let the dog kill the squirrel in your life.  Russell M Nelson ended the night with a bang by calling the entire priesthood body to repentance.  We all need to repent daily.  At the end of the night, we ended intercambios and we had about 6 of the JAS come and contact with us in Kiosto Azul for an hour.  That was pretty cool.

Sunday

Today is conference part 2.  I was  more excited for this conference weekend than a Brazilian is for Carnival.  However, I had to watch it in Spanish this morning because the only computer Alameda had was being used to broadcast the transmission.  It's just not the same in Spanish.  To be quite frank, I didn't get a whole lot of it due to that.  Russell M Nelson's talk seemed good though from what I got out of it.  It's just kinda hard to get stuff out of it after listening so close so long.  It's just not the same.  We didn't get Arian, Angi and Camila to church because they all left with family, so that was frustrating.  Oh well though.  For lunch we went to Carlos Alvearado's home.  I thought that he and Charo were having serious marital problems because she kind of just disappeared and the family didn't really want to talk about it.  Turn out that she's in Rome actually, not in Trujillo.  That is why it was secret.  They made us some super good bistek and churasco for lunch.  We tried picking up the 3 kids again, but Angi was still gone, and Camila and Arian played the homework excuse.  We decided to go to Tilda so that I could watch the afternoon session in English.  On the way there, we stopped by our capilla to see if there was anyone inside and we found Norma.  We sat her down with Zorayma and marked a cita and then were on our way.   I feel like I heard the word "covenant" 3 dozen times during conference.  We all got trolled though.  They didn't announce a single change.  There were a bunch of Elders expecting a change in the time they serve.  Joke's on all us though.  We were going to go visit Marcelo tonight, but it didn't work out.  Elder Cabral suggested that we go visit Dante since he got home from the hospital a couple of days ago.  It was the most social and open I've seen him.  He had this huge nasty cut all along his rib cage and he had a tube dripping his urine into a bag, all because he had a few pebbles in his gallbladder.  I felt prompted to share a scripture and I thought "baptism", so I went to go open 2 Nephi 31, but the spirit told me Mosiah 24.  I started at verse 12, but stopped when I finished 13.  There was that word again, "covenant".  So I explained how if he wanted to Lord's blessings, he would need to enter into the covenant of baptism.  He agreed to get baptized on May 4th.  Olga's eyes got kinda watery.  Dante is going back to the hospital tomorrow so we gave him a blessing.  Then we went to visit Mario and Elva.  We did a perfect job of combining the Plan of Salvation with the Gospel of Jesus Christ and relating it to their situation.  The spirit was super strong.  I know we all felt it.  But he still said no.  I think he's scared of the commandment/responsibility but I also think its just still not his time.

Extreme Peruvian sanding and painting.

Week 19 in Alameda

Yeah so Lucero got baptized this week. She was pretty cool. I don't really have time to say much else. Have a good week everyone! Enjoy General Conference!

Monday
Today was interesting.  Like I said last night, I sorta told half the ward already that I was going to leave.  So today I had to kinda awkwardly tell them that I'd be staying.  I'll be there 6 months in Alameda.  That's 1/4 of my mission.  It's kinda crazy to think about.  Last night when we were with the Astuhuaman's they asked us for a blessing.  If I remember right, it's Elva's step grandma that's super sick.  She's like 94 too.  We went up there and she was saying stuff like "Perdinamic Padre" the whole time.  I gave her a blessing.  I was halfway through a sentence of saying something about being healed when before I could get to that part of the sentence, the spirit constrained me not to.  It's an interesting and difficult situation.  We just have to remember that when we're praying or giving blessings, we have to do so guided by the spirit.  We're not trying to change the will of God when we're praying or giving a blessing, but rather to get blessing s that God already wants to grant but that there are conditions on us working towards and asking for.  That's why we have to unite our will with His, and is why vain and repetitious or selfish prayers do not work.  But anyways, internet was good today.  Turns out that my bracket is near the top in all of the standings that I'm in.  That's pretty dang funny because I didn't watch a single game, nor did I even know the seeds.  It probably won't last though.  For lunch we went and ate tenqueños and pasteles with Oswaldo and his family.  Good stuff.  It feels good to have high cholesterol again.  During internet I  put a picture of Kim Jong Un on my USB and then took it to a photo place to have them print it off for me.  I didn't get any weird looks, which tells you something I guess about the crap they see everyday.  Then i took that photo and hung it on Elder Peterson's wall by all of his other pictures to see how long it would take him to notice it.

He noticed after a couple of hours though.  Today was P-day de limpieza (P-day of cleanliness).  There was a lot to clean.  I cleaned nonstop from 3:30 until 6:30.  Elder Cabral was feeling a bit sick so he took a nap for a while.  I was kinda bothered by SF because they didn't get back until 5:00.  And when they did, the cleaned for 1/2 an hour and then went and took a nap.  We had to take pictures of what we cleaned and then send them to Hermana Amato.  I was going to do a NDH in Alfred's house to despedida (say farewell), but instead it was a regular NDH.  I told almost everyone before that thought that I wasn't actually leaving.  They all seemed happy to hear that.  But also due to that, I think that's why not a lot of people came.

Tuesday
This morning was weird.  We actually had time to do all of our studies completely without being distracted by meetings or citas or anything.  It was nice to have that for once.  We finished weekly planning this morning since we didn't have time last week. After lunch, we contacted a bit and then went to a cita with Elliot and Lisbeth.  They're really cool and all, but they still want that big wedding.  They've actually got enough money to get married and have a normal sized wedding, so I tried to talk them down a bit.  But they're really set on that big wedding, so it'll have to wait a few months.  They've got a chifa, so they're kind of a wealthier family.  As for me, I don't want to spend a whole lot on my wedding.  Why would I spend 7000 soles when instead I could pay for a week of college?  The new district leader called me and informed me that we're doing intercambios (exchanges) tomorrow.  We had a cita with Daniel to see how he was doing.  Then we went to the chapel  for a cita with Lucero.  We've got all the lessons finished up and she's super excited for her baptism on Saturday.  After we finished talking to her, we went and found Flormira after her seminary class down the hall.  We got David to come with us.  During the lesson, Flormira couldn't stop laughing.  It was David; he wasn't doing anything, but for some reason something about him was just super funny to her.  But even though it was kind of distracting from the lesson, I didn't mind it so much because it was the first time I've seen her genuinely happy.  Afterwards she asked to see the pictures from the baptism.  So I showed her and then teased her by taking some more pictures of her.  She reacted like a normal girl her age would.  But after that she directed us in a mini photo shoot.

That surprised me, but was fun.  It's good to see that we've gained her trust more.

Wednesday
Today marks 9 months.  That seems like a long time, but it also seems like 59 days ago that I completed 7.  My my, how time flies.  But really though--the months are flying by.  I've been gone long enough that one of my friends or family back home could have a baby now and I wouldn't even know it.  But think about it like this: there's missionaries out here that don't know the whole Fergie National Anthem incident.  I could be missing out on things like that back home.  But YOLO.  I'm not trunky.  We had a consejo de distrito this morning.  They were all like, "Elder Simonsi reincarnated!  You gonna buy your terreno yet?"  I mean, I gave Elder Simonasi more crap than anyone else did when he stayed a 4th, so it's only just I suppose.  Everyone that was with me that 1st transfer here is gone now.  There weren't a whole lot of new people that were there in the zone, but one district didn't come that's full of new people that are training too.  Interesting stuff.  Elder Carrasco is in the zone now, so that's a party.  One of the first things he asked me about when he found out I was with Elder Mayta was about the DVD player.  Apparently Elder Brume, their district leader, burned him hard about that right before he came here with me.  Elder Mayta told me that no one had ever brought it up with him before.  As time goes on, I'm still uncovering more about the situation.  I'm still confused about how it ended, but I'm trying to forget about it.  Elder Napier is the new zone leader.  He's from the group after me and seems pretty cool.  After the consejo, Elder Prereira, our new district leader, came with me to my area.  He's good.  The day wasn't all that bad.  We contacted almost the whole day.  We had a cita with Jeannina and her family.  Everything seems good there.  Lucero left work late so we weren't able to meet with her.  We tried picking up Arlet and her family, but they were all busy.  So instead we went to the ward noche de hogar alone.  Apart from Luz and her boyfriend, only Rosa and the Rojas were there.  People need to stop planning other activities at the same time as this.  Oh well though.  When it was over, we tried meeting with a contact, but she was a no-show.  But yeah, that was my day.  Whenever I do something cool or smart or lucky or something simple they don't understand or anything like that and someone asks me how I did it, I always look at them and say "Brujeria (witchcraft)."  But then the other day I cracked my Bible open and did some light reading and read Exodus 22:18.  (Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.)  I'm gonna have to lay low for a while. jajaja

Thursday
We got back to the room tonight and San Fransisco was just like, "President and Sister Amato are coming to look at them room tomorrow morning."  Well, fetch.  Maybe if you guys had actually cleaned on Monday we wouldn't all be panicking right now.  Ah!  Why couldn't you have come Tuesday when things weren't dusty and dirty and things were less disorganized?  Why do you notify us and let us suffer in despair?  Why not just come by surprise and see the room how it normally is and burn us then?  Why am I writing instead of cleaning?  Ah!  We were going to have the interviews tomorrow, but they just got canceled.  Tomorrow's schedule!  Ah!  At the rate things are happening right now, President's gonna call us and give us cambios de emergencia (emergency transfers).  *Starts knocking profusely on all the woods I can find.*  We finished intercambios this morning.  By the looks of it, we're going to be doing intercambios a lot.  He did an intercambio with San Fransisco today already too.  I respect him though.  It might be a good thing that we didn't have cambios; I realized today that Elder Cabral doesn't actually know the area as well as I had thought.  I don't know how, but he doesn't.  We got Diego to come with us on some citas today.  First we went and visited a contact named Wendy.  She's this super tall Venezuelan lady that's almost taller than me.  She was in the military up until just a couple of months ago and arrived in Peru just 4 days ago.  She was pretty cool.  When we extended the baptismal invitation she accepted.  After that cita, we went and visited Jherson.  He's starting to concern me more because he's in the process of becoming deactivated.  One of the problems is that their phone is broken.  When I told Jherson he told me that there's only 1 ring.  So I put it on speaker phone and called to try it out.  His grandma answered so we chuckled a bit since she was in just the other room and we could see her.  But then she said, "Hello?" a bit more insistently and loudly.  We were all laughing pretty good.  She didn't even figure it out.  Then we met with President Hurtado so that he could help us help the ward better.  Then the 3 of us met with the Bishop.  He was kind of how teachers are when they principal walks in for their evaluation.  We ended the night by doing a pre-interview with Lucero.

Friday
I found out that the church arrived here in Peru just 62 years ago.  That's a lot of impressive progress for such a short time.  Elder Cabral and I got up at 6:50 to start cleaning everything and organizing everything even more.  In the end though, it turns out that Hermana Amato didn't even come.  It's ok though.  We basically just had a 2 1/2 hour long wholesome recleanatimal activity.  We finished our studies and then did weekly planning.  While we were doing that, Lucero called us and told us that she didn't think that it would be a good idea for her to get baptized tomorrow.  We were just like, "What?  Wait, why?"  Then she told us that it was because she was on her period.  It was just like, "Oh...I'm gonna have to call you back."  So I called Elder Shupe in a mild panic.  I mean, that's a legit thing.  And I don't have the hermanas.  How am I supposed to know what to say?  I don't know the first thing about that kind of stuff.  In the end I called Lucero and told her that we were going to seguir adelante con fe (go ahead with faith) and still do the baptism tomorrow.  That was an awkward phone call.  We passed by to visit Jeannina and Jean Franco a bit.  We're all good there.  I'm gonna see if we can't organize a trip to the temple with us and all the recent converts.  Lucero had her baptismal interview tonight.  The circumstance required that she call President Delgado, one of President Amato's counselors, for the interview.  It was a long phone call, but she passed everything ok and is already to go for tomorrow.  There's an attack tomorrow in Santa Clara, but the bishop was trying to get us on board to go and do a service in the morning.  They changed the time so I called Elder Preira to talk about it and mentioned something about service maybe after lunch.  He then proceeded to yell at me for a couple of minutes about doing a service after lunch.  I got tired in the middle of it and put down the phone for a minute.  I gave Elder Cabral that look and picked it up again.  When he was done, I said, "Ok, we'll be better," and hung up.  We went to a restaurant to eat pizza tonight.  Dang good.

Saturday
I showered normally this morning when at 7:30 we got a call from the zone leaders.  They told me that they were outside the house and to let them up.  I thought that they were there to do Hermana Amato's check up thing.  They looked around a bit, but then they did interview with all of us.  That was a surprise.  Yesterday Elder Cabral came to me and told me that he needed to repent for the way he had been thinking of me and his attitude.  He was super regretful and said it had been parting the spirit.  I didn't even know he had a problem with me.  But that came up again this morning.  Let's get this straight:  I didn't do anything wrong, but I have habits that he let annoy/bother him.  But we got it sorted out.  We had to go to internet this morning to send some fotos  The internet we happened to use was 1 sol for the 14 minutes I used.  I thought that that was pretty outrageous.  I gave them a 20 and they gave me my change.  In my change they gave me a Machu Pichu.  That got me super excited.  I'm not even mad that they ripped me off.  We went to a zone attack in Santa Clara this morning.  Nothing too exciting went down there.  I'm kinda sad that the gringo squad got broken up though.  I think Elder Pereira sent the zone leaders to our house this morning.  That kind of annoys me.  He doesn't really socialize with the other missionaries; he just sits in his corner doing his thing.  He's kind of over bearing.  He called and asked about the cita with Wendy.  When I told him she had to work early and wasn't there, he started ranting about how she wasn't a chosen investigator and what we should do.  Thanks bud, 9 months of experience left me with no idea what to do.  Oswaldo had come with us to visit Wendy, but since she wasn't there we went and talked with him because there's some problems going down in his family.  From there we had correlations with the Holy Ghost, because no one else came.  SF had a baptism at 4:00.  Paclo Lopez was supposed to baptize his daughter at 5:00 or 5:30, but that didn't start until almost 7:00, which is when our was supposed to start.  They had a party after with cake and half the ward was there, so ours didn't really start until 8:15 or so.  But Lucero's service was really nice.  Once it started, everything went smoothly.  I forgot to bring extra garments for when after I baptized her, so that was interesting.  Baptism really is a miraculous gift from God.

Sunday
We got up early this morning and went to consejo.  I forgot to set my alarm though, so I happened to wake up at 6:30 and realized what was happening and yelled, "Elder!  It's 6:30!  We gotta leave in 20 minutes!"  That was exciting.  Except no one was there in the consejo.  We just kinda sat there with the bishop and his counselors just chilling for a while.  Since it's the 5th Sunday, everybody in the ward was in a combined class.  Josemar kinda just roasted the whole ward about the sacrament and explained why it's important and how you need to be on time.  I enjoyed it.  I looked around though at a few of the people that were there for the first time though and thought to myself, "Sorry, it's usually not like this."  Luz Bengoa brought some of her neighbors with her to church today: Arian, Angi and Camila, who are 14, 13 and 11 respectively.  They all seem super cool.  It's kinda funny because it seems like Camila is the one in charge jaja.  Sometimes it hits me how much you mature in the mission.  It's just the way you carry yourself now.  You can see a difference between the new missionaries and the dudes that have been here a while.  It's almost scary to me sometimes.  But as I was thinking about that in the street, a couple of triple M dudes walked by and said, "Que Dios le bendiga (God bless you)," to which I responded by saying, "Que le gendiga (to bless you) your mom!" and dabbing.  Nah, I think I'm safe.  We went to eat with the Lopez family for lunch.  Nelson was there and he was the one that was cooking.  I had never had his food before.  Let me tell ya somethin' Ernie, that was probably the best dang good chicken I've ever had.  I told him that he has to fly to Utah to prepare all the food for my wedding.  That'd be pretty cool.  We had to go to a zone attack in LA after.  It kinda started an hour and half late, so that was kind of unfortunate for them.  But out front of the church there were these two llamas in a trailer.  There was a dude that put a bunch of corn husks in there for them to eat.  Some fell on the ground and I picked them up and fed them to the llamas.  I was pretty sure that they were going to spit on me, but they didn't.  It would have been cool if they had though.

There was a youth conference thing and we were gonna teach those 3 kids, but there wasn't a varon so we didn't.  We came back and contacted.  I'm exhausted.

Awkward selfies of the week: