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:
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