This week was pretty exciting. It started with me kicking down our front door on Monday night because somehow the sliding bolt lock thingies had slid into place so that we couldn't open the door. That was cool. Most of the exciting stuff happened during the weekend. On Saturday, we had 3 baptisms scheduled, and it was also the CCM attack. So we had those Elders with us. We left from that cita (appointment) and came to the church to finish getting stuff ready for the baptisms. When we arrived, the second counselor in the bishopric took us aside and explained how Elena, the mom of the two teens getting baptized (she wants to get baptized too, but is convivient (cohabiting)), came to the church crying just 10 minutes before we had gotten there. She said that her husband had changed his mind about the baptisms and had even hit her and was afraid of getting hit again if they got baptized. We were kinda surprised because he was pretty chill about it when he signed the permission. Elder Jensen, who had taught them before being transferred, had just gotten there for their baptism and we explained to him what had happened and he was just like, "I did not just come here 2 plus hours in a combi to have this dude cancel on me like this." So he went to go talk to the family to see what he could do, which was great for us because we had to do stuff to prep the baptism and stay with the new CCM elders. We were kinda waiting around to see what would happen with the 2 other guys when we got a text saying "Andree se bautizara (will be baptized)!" We waited a bit more before we decided it'd be best just to start taking photos and having the hymns. Andree got there with Elder Jensen, his mom AND with his dad too. That was surprising. His sister was sick and had lost her confidence because of her dad, so we'll have to work with her a little bit more. But the service was really nice. Victor and Andree both got baptized. I delivered a really powerful message on the gospel of Jesus Christ while people were changing. There were about 4 or 5 guys that weren't members. Then after Elder Lainez and I went and had dinner with Andree and his family. I don't know what kind of things Elder Jensen said, but in just 4 hours the dad went from being super stubborn about this whole thing, to going there himself and then sharing dinner with us. What a day. Elder Lainez and I are enjoying a lot of success here in Manchay. I love this area, I love my comp, and I love the Lord. Have a good week!
Elder White
Today I had to kick down a door. Our front door. Let me tell ya about it. Today we celebrated the missionary recognized weekly holiday of P-day, and we did it as a zone. We started it in the morning by doing a bunch of small games. Elder Lainez and I owned the egg toss, but when it came to the talent show at the end, we were at a loss. The best we could come up with was just doing trust falls. Really good trust falls. Afterwards we watched Moana and ate chaufa. Our zone is pretty cool, but our district is especially super hype. Elder Rushforth is a chill dude that's good to talk to. He tells me about how he and Elder Davis blow up matches at night. Fun stuff. Elder Quispe is a funny dude who's easy to get along with. After watching it in Spanish, we watched Moana again but in English from the part where Maui sings the You're Welcome song. Not really sure why we did that really. Just don't let Latinos have the remote. From there we went and did internet. I had 25 emails today, usually I have 12 or so. Those were some busy 2 hours. From there I went and got a haircut. The lady was asking me questions about it, like if I wanted her to use the shaver or her scissors. People make this whole haircut thing too complicated. See the cut I have right now? I want the same one, just make it shorter. I'm not about to walk into one of these salons and say, "Hey hit me up with that 6 3/4 on the top with a retro blend slyly down into a pie (as in the math symbol) on the sides with a hard hexagonic sideburns parallelogrammed in the back. Be sure to use a weed wacker on the sides, with a chainsaw on the top. And don't forget to massage my scalp with a peach extract when you're done." I'm not one of those guys yet. Then we came back to the room. Or tried to at least. Earlier in the day Elder Lainez realized he forgot his key, but we figured the zone leaders could just let us in. But they were down at the office, and the home owner wasn't home upstairs. So we tried breaking into our apartment. It's pretty ladron (thief) safe. I just about tore my arm off trying to use my book to open the bedroom door. I even had to push the bed out of the way with the fingers on my left hand. The sliding bolt was in though, we we couldn't get in even though I got the weird Peruvian doorknob done. I borrowed the neighbor's broom and got the front door unlocked, but we couldn't open the door, so we figured the zone leaders used the key to put the extra lock in. We had gotten there at 5:45 and the zone leaders arrived around 7:30. Turns out that two of the sliding locks were somehow locked, which didn't make any sense, but we couldn't get in. So long story short, I had to kick in down so that we could get in. We just contacted the rest of the night.
Waiting outside our locked door.
Kicking in the door.
Tuesday
We were just kinda peacefully getting ready to go this morning when the zone leaders were like, "Oh hey, by the way, the assistants are coming here on intercombios today, so it'd be cool if you guys could clean up a bit before they get here." We had a consejo de distrito this morning. We have 4 assistants currently , and elder Topham and Elder Leite are assigned to us, and they were there this morning for that. They didn't burn or give a training or anything like that, but were rather there for animos (encouragement) and a check-up I think. They've always got something good to say. I was kinda nervous about having an assistant in the room, but it isn't that bad actually. Elder Leite stayed here with Elder Kimball. He's a quiet dude. He's pretty friendly though. It's kind of an interesting personality for an assistant to have. Today was a great day. I left with a great attitude and was focused in 100% almost the entire day. Due to that, we were able to see a lot of miracles. I felt like every contact I made was a good contact. We marked down a few good citas for tomorrow. We tried meeting with Jose Manuel and Trinidad (CR's), but they weren't home, so we talked to Kathy, the nanny (and also a member) a bit. We went and did the pre-interview with Victor today. What a guy. We got to pregunta (question) 4 and asked, "¿Una vez ha cometido undelito grave? (Have you committed a felony?) He looked confused, so I explained, "¿Ha matado a alguien? (Have you killed someone?) ¿O usted ha robado el banco antes o algo como asi? (Or robbed a bank or something like that?)" Victor replied, "Pues, no hay banco por aqui. (Well there is no bank around here.)" We were laughing real good after that. From there we went and visited a contact that Elder Kimball and Elder Lainez made during the attack on Sunday. It was with Maria (the grandma), Valeria (the mom) and Lonzo (the son). They're a pretty humble family with some health complications. They all accepted a fecha for the 15 of June. I don't know if Maria will be able to get baptized though because she works Sundays usually. Fingers crossed though. Then we went to go visit la familia Quisitupa (Nora). Her husband, Jose Gabriel, wants to get baptized, but he can't always go to church because sometimes he refs soccer games on Sundays and he's hesitant to stop working Sundays because he has a lot of debt. So we talked to him and tried to encourage him to stop working and take a leap of faith. There's a story that the Andersons in my old ward shared during sacrament meeting probably 10 years ago that has always stayed with me. They talked about how when they were in college and paid tithing, they somehow had more money to pay bills than when they didn't pay tithing. I related that to him. We're tentatively planning his baptism for next Saturday. We also went and did pre-interviews with Andres and Angela. They're good to go.
Wednesday
A lot has changed in 10 months. When I was charged by a pack of dogs in Huaycán, I initially subtly hid behind Elder Yañez. Last night when it happened to me, I charged back at them with my Naruto run. The zone leaders finished the intercambio super early this morning. Elder Lainez and I did studies this morning and then we went down to the office. Allow me to introduce you to the next best extreme sport: Combi surfing. You board the combi like normal, but then you don't grab on to any handrails. You stay alive using your strength, fast reactions and pure determination. Exciting stuff. Elder Lainez just had to sign a paper to renew his immigration thingy. While we were there, I saw a package that my mom had sent me, so I snatched that. Goldfish, cookie dough Poptarts, and Chewy Chips Ahoy. Good stuff. There was also some headphones and a camera for a call home (hint hint I guess), among other things. They also sent me a cool shirt from the from the Houston Space Center. It was announced today that Elder Bednar is coming to talk to the 5 Lima missions on May 31. That's pretty dang exciting. It was interesting because on Sunday during sacrament meeting, they casually announced that Elder Bednar would have a fireside in La Molina for JAS and AS around that time. I thought it was odd that he'd come down here without addressing the missionaries, but now it makes more sense. When we got back to our area, we had to go and watch some safety zone videos. I was kinda surprised because they've got the host from BYU sports show doing the stuff. The videos are entertaining though at least. Not a whole lot happened today. There's a dog named Coco that everyone knows because he's notorious for barking at everyone and biting sometimes. I shone my laser my mom sent at the ground by him and he immediately stopped barking and starting playing with the laser. Hehe, poderoso (powerful). Elder Kimball has to strict doctors orders about what he needs to do with his infection because he's on the verge of going home. I spent the last hour of proselyting with him. 18 months ago if you would have told me I'd be walking up and down hills in a place like Manchay with a random kid from my calc class, I would have called you crazy.
Thursday
Yesterday night, we went to go visit a reference we had gotten. She wasn't home though so we talked to her parents instead, who're a bit older. She told us about how she had a dream (while she was on her death bed) and how she talked to Jesus, who told her she was still needed by her family. After that, she improved miraculously. I was impressed. Her husband has Parkinson's and is pretty disabled and her son-in-law's parents just died, so he's pretty depressed. That meas she's working a lot to pay for the family, including Sundays. For someone who had such an experience, that made me sad. The spirit moved upon me to burn her and motivate her to come to church, but I wasn't totally aware of it in the moment. I said to her, "If Jesus were here, would he tell you that you're the exception to the commandment? No, He'd tell you to act in faith and not work Sunday." I can't believe I was so brutal, but that's what I guess she needed. We'll see if she comes. I've been thinking about that a lot recently. When we knock on doors sometimes, Elder Lainez always shouts, "Yo," when they ask, "¿Quien es? (Who is it?)" One time after saying that, the teen girl on the other side of the unopened door said to no one in particular, "¿Cual yo?" Hoy muchos yo's. (Which I? Today there are many I's." That was pretty funny. We watched The Safety Zone a bit more today. That's some heavy stuff sometimes. For lunch, the penson gave us some mazamora which is basically just a super sweet jelly. I felt like I had to get my teeth to the ER to have them professionally brushed after eating that. We were kinda nervous when we went to go visit Juana today because the bishop wasn't there when we told her to go to the church on Tuesday for a temple recommend, and she seemed mad when she called to let us know. But she was pretty tranquila (calm). She's an awesome convert with a powerful testimony. We retaught the restoration of the gospel. At the end, she asked us how we came to know the Book of Mormon was true. I loved that questions more than 1 year ago. I simply believed it was true. Then I was able to reflect on all the experiences I've had in the past year that gave me this knowledge. Good stuff. Tonight we had baptismal interviews for Andres and Victor. They both passed just fine. Angela wasn't able to come down to the church though because she was feeling sick. I'm impressed Andres was alone and early though. We went to go visit Nataniel. Her dad was there and wasn't willing to give her permission. As we wrapped up the cita though, he realized more that we made scarifies to be here and warmed up a bit. We're still hoping for permission. We went to visit a humble contact named Celia. We'll see more about what happens with her tomorrow.
Friday
Was today a good day? Why yes, yes it was. Why though? Because I decided it was. It's hard to say you've had a bad day if you're eating a second dinner of a hamburger that actually had cheese while listening to How Great Though Art by Mariah Carey. At the end of the night, Elder Lainez and I went into a small restaurant and got bistek. When we got home, I realized that earlier I had told the zone leaders to bring us hamburgers from a restaurant in their area if they had time. My boys came in clutch. We got up early this morning to play soccer at 6 AM. There were 8 of us there. It had been misting all night, so it was cold and the court was super slippery. It was fun still. Last night when we got home, Elder Kimball was like, "Surprise! Someone came and installed a hot shower." That was nice. This morning he called dibs on using it first. Gotta respect the dibs. He took like a 20 minute long shower and shouted the entire time about how great it was. When Elder Clark went to get in though, it wouldn't work. I started having mad flashbacks to the 15th of November. I'm sad, but not surprised. I seem to have bad luck with this whole hot shower thing. The weirdest thing that's happened to me so far on my mission might be something that happened when I first got here to Manchay 2 on the first day. Elder Lainez and I ran into the mom of Yasmin (we're trying to get permission from her dad for her to get baptized) picking up two of there little kids from school. They were both like 3-5 years old. They both high fived Elder Lainez, so I tried going for the same. The 5 year old boy, who has hair down to his shoulders, let out a war cry and ran at me and head butted me in the groin. The mom didn't really seem to notice nor care. That was pretty weird. Today we went to go visit a man named George. He's had a sketchy past. He's been to prison thrice, for a total of 13 years, all of it for robbing. That's all in the past though, years ago. He can't get baptized yet though because there's a court case against him that came up out of the blue for the end of June for attempted murder. George told us that he's been in a few fights, but he's never tried killing anyone before. We're hoping it gets cleared up fast. We went to go visit Andree and Angela to get them excited one more time for their baptism tomorrow. The rest of the day was a story of fallen citas. There was a lot of hiking up and down mountains. We spent the last hour of our work day on a caza de grillos (cricket hunt), if you know what I mean.
Saturday
Well, today just happened. I should have know it would be a crazy day, because I had a crazy dream last night. There was an attack from the CCM today. But before that, we had a lit lunch. Teqyeños and lomo saltado. Doesn't get much better than that. There's an hermana from Australia that was there from the CCM and she's coming to our mission. Crikey mate. It was cool hearing Spanish in an Australian accent. When one of the gringos from the CCM stood up to present himself, a hermana pointed and said, "¡Es él! (It's him!)" We all just kinda looked at her like, "?" and laughed a bit. I ran off with Elder Gonzalez from Mexico.
With Elder Gonzalez we contacted a bit and then went to go visit the family of a missionary. Then we went to the church at 6:00 for Angela's baptismal interview. We got there and ran into the 2nd counselor who was like, "Elders, do you have a minute?" and we went into a room with him. He explained to us how just 10 minutes before we arrived, Elena, the mom, who's pretty awesome, came to the church in tears and said that her kids weren't going to be able to be baptized. While she was totally all for it still, her husband had changed his mind last second even though Elder Jensen and Elder Lainez had talked to him and had him sign the permission. He actually hit her and she said that if she let her kids go through with it, she was afraid of her or her kids getting hit again. When we heard that, we were just like, "well, crap." Elder Jensen had arrived to around the same time from 2+ hours away in Jicamarca. When I told him that, he just said, "Uh uh! I did not just come from 2 hours away on a bus to have this dude cancel on me like this," and went to the family's house. Meanwhile, Victor came and we got him already to go. We sat around and waited a while and were about to start when I got a text saying, "Andree is getting baptized!" We waited a bit more and then just started. Andre came just in time, with his mom AND dad there too. They came in his taxi. We had the CCM dudes give the talks. Elder Jensen came back just in time with Andree to see the 2 baptisms. It was nice. I gave a powerful talk on the gospel while they were changing. There were like 5 dudes that weren't members there and I know they felt something.
Victor
Andree and his family.
Sunday
Last night, Elder Lainez and I went and ate dinner with Andree and his family. I don't know what Elder Jensen did, but in 4 hours the dad went from hitting his wife and not letting his kids get baptized, to Andree getting baptized and us eating dinner with the whole family. Hats off to him. The dude came to fix our shower yesterday, so I took a cautiously relaxing shower, a hot shower. I got electrocuted pretty good. My head touched the shower head. I saw lights and got a weird taste in my mouth. Pro tip: don't do that. We went to ward counsel this morning. Nothing too exciting really. I had to give a talk this morning about missionary work. They told me early in the week, but then I forgot 'til last night, then forgot again, then remembered, then forgot and remembered one time more. In Alameda I made a big intricate outline, but I just wing it now. Started from the bottom now we're here. Started from the bottom now the whole team's....here. They turned out better when I just make an outline in my head real quick. Lunch was pretty good. Elder Clark and Elder Kimball tried teaching the ladies English, just basic words really. It was like the hamburger scene from Pink Panther. Elder Kimball was telling me that one time that one hermana went with them to teach an investigator. They put a fecha on her and the hermana got excited and said, "We'll sing this song at your baptism!" and proceeded to start singing Oracion del Profeta. Elder Kimball couldn't get her to stop 'til half way through the 2nd verse. So she's a little crazy, but she's funny. I almost got eaten by a dog today. We were up on a hill walking on a dirt road when a big 'ole black dog saw me and then charged at me barking. I didn't think much of it, so I just casually held my book out. He totally just jumped at me and used his front paws to spring up off my groin so that we were face to face. If I hadn't leaned back, I might have lost my nose. The little girl grabbed him, other wise I might be a doggy chew toy. We had another violin zone attack today, but in Musa this time. On the way back, I was just chilling down, seated by the window on the bus when I saw a flash of white as we were driving along. Then I saw the cobrador (collector) get nearly tackled as a dude jumped through the door. I don't know how but a crackhead had somehow chased the combi down and jumped in. Crazy dude. We went to go visit Nataniel and her family tonight. We read 2 Nephi 31 with them because I've heard of the miracles that does. Then I said to the dad, "You know we're not here for money, because we're bored, nor because our parents sent us. We've seen the blessings Jesus has for us and we want your daughter to have those blessings." He signed the permission after that.
Elder White on a foggy night.
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