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.)
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