This week was pretty awesome. I'm already loving it here in Manchay 2, and a good part of it is because it reminds me of Huaycan 2 a bit jajaja. I hard core love going up and down hills all the time now. Elder Lainez and I are a great match together. We get along well and we already know each other kinda well since we were in the same room in Huaycan. We've got a bit to practice getting our contacting and teaching styles to mesh better I think, but there's great things going on here. We had a marriage and a baptism on Saturday for our now convert named Nora. Her situation is bien complicado (very complicated), but she's got a super powerful testimony. Basically what happened was 10 years ago, her son then 6 years old walked in on Nora's then 16 year old sister and now ex pareja (partner) cheating on her. I don't know how it turned out this way, but the entire family got super mad and put all the blame on Nora. To this day there are still bad feelings. Her family was at her wedding, but two of her sisters, who're also active members, left without saying a word. Nora has tried getting forgiveness for forever, but these two sisters, who even live in the same ward won't even talk to her. Not a word. We're at a loss on how to help the situation. But anyways, we've got 3, maybe 4 people if we're lucky, lined up to get ready this week. We've also got one other potential that just needs permiso (permission) right now. So we're hoping for that. This ward and area are both super awesome and I'm excited to be here! Have a good week!
Monday
Cosquilloso (ticklish). What a funny word really. In Vitarte there were a lot of Elders that were pretty ticklish. I like those kind of people. If you're ticklish I like you. I have been saved from Lima Tambo (knock on wood because there's still emergency transfers sometimes). Elder Sanchez is going to Ando Huaylous in Santa Anita, which is literally across the street from San Fransisco, so he didn't really see much from combios. Elder Peterson is receiving Elder Lopez from my group. Elder Lopez is probably one of the trunkiest dudes in the mission. It'll be a rough transfer. But I'm hyped. From what I understand, I'm basically going back to Huaycán. I was talking to one elder and he told me there's 4 areas in Manchay. The lower bit is green, but after that there's a ton of hill and dust. No paved roads. Hopefully lots of dogs. I'm getting an adrenaline rush just thinking about it. This transfer went by so fast. It does not seem like 6 weeks. This morning we went to internet. After, we went back to the room and cleaned/packed. Oswaldo called and told me that Elder Mayta was there with him and invited me to go and say bye to him. He seemed happy, but he's a good actor when he's around other people. So I'm hoping we ended on a semi-good note. We went to go eat lunch while we were out and about. Then we went back and finished stuff up. I wasn't in the mood for a big despedida (farewell), so I just went to go visit a few converts. The first one was Juan and Evelin. It was Evelin's birthday. We talked a while, I told them to endure to the end, Evelin cried, and then I left. When I came here I didn't imagine getting attached, me or them. I went to go visit Jean Franco and Angi. Same things as before, but without tears. Then I swung by to say bye to Jherson last second.
Tuesday
We got up bright and early this morning because Elder Cabral had to be in La Molina at 7 AM. Fun days. I just kinda chilled there in the stake center for a while waiting. I don't even know who Elder Cabral is training because Elder Lainez got there early and we went straight to Manchay. I think I'm in the nicer part of it. The district of Lima name is cool: Pachacamac. My area is super similar to Huaycán. The only difference is that it's not quite as hilly here, and people realize how barren it is so there's a handful of homes on every street with a couple of plants. After being in a smaller area that I knew super well, I get kinda overwhelmed a bit by not knowing where I was a good chunk of the time and how big this area is. I'll get over it though. At the end of the day I had a decent idea of where I was. The only reason it's hard is because we don't have a map. But I'll survive, adapt, and then overcome. We share the room here with the zone leaders in Manchay 1. Elder Kimball and Elder Clark. It's crazy because just a year ago I was in calc class helping Elder Kimball with is homework, and now he's my leader. I miss math, and my calculator. Elder Lainez was in the room with me in Huaycán for 2 transfers, so I already know him pretty well. This transfer will be real good. They've got a handful of people with a fecha, including a wedding this Saturday. Our pensionista's name is Ana. We eat there with the zone leaders and the Elders from Musa, so that's a party. The food there is super good too. I couldn't really give you a solid play-by-play of what we did today. We contacted a lot and visited some members/CRs here and there. We spent a good part of the day scaling a mountain and going back down to visit/contact. We visited a good handful of their investigators today. First we visited the couple that's going to get married this Saturday. She'll (Nora) get baptized the same day and her husband (Jose) a week later maybe. They've got some solid testimonies despite her brother bringing his pastor with him to try and talk them out of it. We also went to go visit two siblings, Andres and Angela that'll get baptized. Their mom is super cool too, but she's convivente (cohabiting). It got to be cold at night, enough to make even me uncomfortable. The wind was the real killer because we were outside. The miracle of the night was that after the charla (visit), they invited us to have a bowl of calde de gallina (hot chicken). It was nice because I was cold and we don't have a pension for dinner.
Wednesday
I woke up this morning and I was just like, "The fetch? Where....Oh yeah." In the room in Alameda, we always made jokes about my 4th and possibly 5th cambio there. Good times. It's nice to be in a new area. I'm thinking we have the nicest area of all those here in Manchay. We have more paved roads than the others, even though there's only a few. A lot of houses have plants too. It's (on average) more developed than Huaycán too. There aren't tons of dogs like I was hoping, and they're generally super friendly too. Instead of batting them away to keep them from biting, you do it to keep them from jumping up and getting mud on your pants. I'm kinda disappointed really. I was really hoping to get in some good fights and other exciting stuff with them. I brought a box of pop-its to throw at the dogs that were barking. That was funny. I met a dude today named Carl Malone. Carl Malone didn't even know who Karl Malone is. I need to be friends with this man's parents. I met a convert that got baptized 2 weeks ago named Juana. She's super cool. She used to be a testigo (Witness), but then she met the missionaries, read the Book of Mormon in 3 weeks and got dunked. She and the 2nd counselor in the bishopric are both about 30 years old single and awesome, so the missionaries are trying to low key set them up jaja. We had a cita today with Victor. He's in a pretty active family, but he turned 9 and they forgot to get him baptized I guess, so now it's our job. He reminds me of my cousin Caleb. They have similar personalities. His brother said he was taking care of someone, but then Victor called him out on it. We tried teaching the word of wisdom and Victor kept saying it was, "Drogas (drugs), cocaina (cocaine), alcohol, cerveza (beer)....¿Que es el viltia?" He was pretty concerned about that concaina ahahaha. When he went to say the prayer at the end, he was saying "Thank you for sending the Elders. Please protect Elder Lainez and Elder What's his name..." Funny kid. Today was the 7th birthday of one of the kids of a recent convert we went to go say hi. They were having a little family party and invited us in for a minute. I was thinking, "Hello family I've never met before. Don't mind me as I come in and eat all the food you give me." We played a game called "¿ Amas a tu projime?" Where you basically wind up trading seats with other people a lot really fast. The mom thought it was pretty funny so she started to film it. They kept saying "all the fat people" when it came time to change seats. Another time I got up and ran to a seat and sat down, but the plastic chair leg broke and I went flying over. They all thought it was pretty funny and it's funny now for me too but in the moment I was super embarrassed, especially since they're a humble family.
Thursday
The more time I pass in the mission the more in tune with the spirit I become. Let me tell you about it. We were walking down a rocky path in the evening and we saw a teenager with her kid. I was just thinking, "Hey, there's Angii." Elder Lainez asked her what her name was and she said Angii. I don't know why or how I knew that, but I did. President told us that there's not coincidences in the mission field and stuff similar to this has been going on a bit recently, so I can't just shrug it off. It's kinda like Moroni said, "And by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things." Example #2 from today: At night we were walking along up on a hill and needed to use the bathroom. We found this empty soccer court shaped with walls with stairs leading up to this platform thing which is where I decided to go to the bathroom. As I was walking over there, I got a strong feeling I shouldn't go over there. I shrugged it off saying that I just needed to go to the bathroom and Elder Lainez had already taken the other corner. I got over there and even though I didn't see anything (just graffiti of a dude smoking and a pile of sand), I sensed an evil presence. For some reason though, I decided to go to the bathroom anyways. I have never been more freaked out while going to the bathroom before. I was looking high and low over my shoulder the entire time. After I finished, I looked around a bit to try and see why I felt so unsafe. I found a staircase that led down into a dark room. There was some wood laying around on the staircase. I couldn't see anything past the bend, but at that point I felt the evilness super strong and the spirit told me very forcefully to get out of there, so I did. I don't know what was over there, but it wasn't good and I should've listened to the spirit the first time. Luckily though, I came away without any harm. I think that this will serve as a good warning for my future self. I got to meet a lot more of the CR's and potentials that we have in the area today while we were out and about. Elder Lainez and I talk about the good 'ole days from back in Huaycán a lot, especially Elder Caro (he's the one that used too much toilet paper). Nora had one of the classic pregunta cuatros (four questions), so President Amato called her tonight to do it. She got everything passed ok, but it did take him a while to call her. We kinda just had to stall a bit. She's been facing a lot of opposition with this whole wedding/baptism thing but she's also been really good about building her testimony. We also went to go visit Andres and Angela tonight. It went pretty well. They even committed to go to seminary tomorrow.
Saturday
We had a consejo de distrito yesterday morning. It was good stuff. Elder Rushforth is our district leader. I jokingly volunteered for the testimonio en ingles (testimony in English) and he accepted it. I was kinda like, "Yeah, ok. I got this." I didn't 'got diz'. I got up there and I was as bad as the Latinos. I had to stop and think about half my words. I even almost forgot how to say "Joseph Smith" in English. It was bad. I mean, I can talk in a conversation normally, but when it come to talking about the church my ability exponentially drops. We went to go visit Victor yesterday. All is good with him. Funny little guy. I had a constant little headache all day long. At night though, it got worse. A lot worse. I kept trying to work through it, but at last I sat down and called to get permission to take some meds. I really didn't want to go back to the room though, but my head hurt real bad. I got back to the room and went to grab some pills, but instead said, "Well fetch," and threw off my tie and ran into the bathroom I threw it all up. They told me to drink some Sporade (like Gatorade), but I threw that up after too. I went to bed at like 9:45 and woke up at 6:30 feeling fine. That was the biggest miracle of the day, because I should have woken up feeling like crap. But thankfully I didn't because we had to go to Nora's wedding. She was part of a mass wedding where 100 other couples get married too. It was cheaper that way.
We had some momentary panics about people not having their DNI, but it wasn't nearly as stressful as my last wedding. They brought out champagne for everyone and the alcohol was there, so that was a bit panicky too. Their 5 year old got lost while everyone was taking the group photo, so the announcer dude was like, "My little man Jhon is lost with me and crying. Can someone please take this dude off my hands?" We came back and ate lunch real quick and then went to Nora's baptism. We started kinda late because as it later turned out, 2 of the zone leaders baptisms fell today. Unfortunately for Elder Costa, he came and his investigator wasn't there. But Elder Jensen came back to see Nora. It was a nice service.
We went to go visit a 15 year old tonight named Yasmin. She was going to get baptized before, but her dad who lives in Vitarte was like, "Nope. You're Catholic," so she got discouraged. But tonight she was super down for it and said she'd talk to her dad again though. We also went to go visiting the 9 year old sister of a recently reactivated 12 year old named Estrella. Her parents are still convivientes (cohabitants), but she accepted fecha. We'll see if her dad gives permission.
Sunday
I tried shaving with a razor this morning for the first time ever. I wanted to try it because one time another Elder left his out, so I was like, "Does this even work?" So I shaved a strip of leg hair and was left amazed, so I decided to try it on my face. I cut myself a bit and that kinda hurt, but I like the close shave. The other Elders baptized one of their ladies this morning that wasn't able to go yesterday. Pro tip: if someone ever invites you to an 8 AM baptism, it's probably because someone wants you to give a talk, so just be ready. Church starts at 10:30, which is really nice compared to 8 AM with 7 AM council. We went straight from the baptism to go and pick up Andres and Angela, except they live super far. But we walked really fast and climbed up to the top of the hill even faster. I don't know if I've ever been so sweaty before. It was just a drip....drip....drip of sweat off my face. They weren't quite ready when we got there, but they almost were, so we told them to be on time and hiked up and down that part looking for another person to recoger (pick up), but we didn't find them. Our investigators weren't getting there and then arrived right after they started the sacrament. I was like, "Well, hot diggity dang. There goes Andres' fecha," but they gave the sacrament to the people outside. That was a pleasant surprise. The 3 year old of one of the Huerto's investigators somehow snuck out of nursery when no one was looking and walked a couple of blocks and crossed a busy road to go to a park, so that caused a panic. Today we went to go eat lunch with the relief society president, Hermana Ala. From there we went and called our families. I didn't know who any of the members were whose home we used, but that was nice of them. My mic was kinda super broken, so the two teen daughters from the family kept laughing as I said, "Hello. Hi. Now? Here?" I'm not one of the Elders that calls home all the time and my family is already bored of talking to me. My brothers were all off doing other things. I sang my mom a song I still remember from my first Mother's Day program in kindergarten. I succeeded in making her cry. Score 1 for the republic. After that, we came and did a zone attack in our area. Elder Kimball played his violin and we all sang a bit and then went to go contact the park before moving on to the next one. We got a couple of references from the attack, so we'll see what happens with that. We went to go visit Victor. He's excited and ready to be baptized. We also went to go visit the family Tate, which has some CR's. While we were sharing the message the 12 year old daughter gasped and said, "¡Tus ojos son bonitos! (Your eyes are pretty!)" *Facepalm*
The hashtag board in Alameda
Last photo of the Alameda crew
The front door to Elder White's new apartment. That's a lot of locks!
Elder White's new living quarters:
(At least put the toilet seat down for the picture!)
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