Monday
Internet was a blast this morning. Dante got baptized the other day, not sure why I wasn't invited to that, but whatever. Elder Cabral got emergency transferred to Santa Anita and now Elder Vazquez from Argentina will be with Elder Romey. I don't know what's going on with Huaycan all that well. All I know there is that somehow they got strengthened a whole lot because Lomas and Huaycan were two weaker wards. Now there's 4 groups: 2 going to the chapel and 2 groups that both have their own casa capilla. Apparently there were a lot of emergency transfers arranged last night. Elder Madruga, for example, is finally being relieved as an assistant after almost a year. The dude he replaced, Elder Flores, is married and I think they're expecting a baby. He'll be just a normal missionary for his last 2 weeks in Las Flores since he's been in a leadership position his whole mission. After 4 hours in internet, I looked at my comp and said, "Bruh, your extra half hour is up, let's go." His 5 minutes he asked for was actually half an hour. It's such a waste of time to be there for so long. I get so bored. We went to KFC for lunch. It was good, but overpriced. Then I went into Tottus for the express purpose of buying only pizza sauce, but the problem is that that's in the opposite side of the store. Let's just say that that's already a treacherous journey to make and it didn't help that I realized that it doesn't have to be a special day to treat myself. I only spent 15 sole, but between that and KFC, my wallet is hurting. I got Elder Clark and Elder Cordova to go in on a red velvet cake with me to despedirnos de (say goodbye to) Elder Kimball. Yesterday Peru lost against Brazil 3-1 in the campeonato de la Copa America. During the game, there was only 2 1/2 people in the streets of our area at any given time. About half the city had a Peru jersey on. The only people not watching were foreigners. We walked past a watch party and their TV started glitching and everyone freaked the flip out. I was in the bathroom when Peru scored. There were fireworks, cars honking and the entire city screamed. You would've thought Peru had just won the game. Elder Cordova and I had planned to contact a street, but there wasn't anybody so we sat down and waited for a random passerby-er to contact. That's how we met Alex, a super cool 17 year old we put fecha on today. We went to dine with the Quispitupas and then went to Hermana Ana's to have a despedida for Elder Kimball.
Tuesday
Elder Cordova and I went to go get haircuts yesterday. Mine was quick, easy and simple and it looked good too. The lady didn't even ask if I preferred if she used scissors, a weed wacker or a chainsaw. About halfway through my cut, I looked back and didn't see my comp. I shrugged it off though and figured he was in the bathroom. I finished my cut though and still didn't see him. I thought I'd just burn him for going to the store or maybe he was still in the bathroom. Five minutes more and I started to panic. I started to wonder if I should call the zone leaders or President. I had never felt so alone before inside a crowded 3rd world barbershop despite always being a lone wolf before the mission. But then I saw that he was getting his haircut by another lady. She kinda did a super bad job on his hair, so I joke with him about that. I got feeling sick last night late, so I passed 20 minutes in the bathroom hoping I would vomit. I didn't though. It was kinda rough to see Elder Kimball go. He's a good friend to me. I have to keep reminding myself that he lives 5 minutes away from me. Elder Pedrozo got here this morning and I was like, "Wait, I know you." Turns out that we were involved in a 3 way trade with Mayre azgo. Time to brush up on my Portuñol I guess. We had 2 solid milagros today. Here's the first. We needed Wilbur to accompany us late, but didn't have a way of communicating with him. As we were contacting, he happened to walk by, so I was able to arrange it with him. (He bailed on us later, but that part is not important.) We visited Anabel today. She's super hyped for Saturday. From there, we went and met with Andree and Angela and spent 2 hours visiting all their friends. Some of their friends were really receptive, so we'll see what happens there. We went to go visit Lourdes. Her daughter happened to be there; she's less active and 19, so we did what any missionary would do: we told her that she should serve a mission and did our best to show her why and get reactivated. Let's hope it happens. Then the 2nd milagro of the night happened. I don't know why, but Elder Cordova always seems to take down citas with contacts that are missing an address, phone numbers or both. So tonight we went looking for Sebastian, but he wasn't answering because the number was broken and we didn't have an address. He was like, "He told me he lived in this general direction." So we knocked a door to see if they knew the family and it turns out that that was his house. He was kinda satisfied with his evangelical baptism though so we'll see what happens.
Wednesday
This week is hype. You know why? Because we done be puttin' dose fechas fo' August 10 dis week! Cool beans. Today was the multi zone. It was sad because all the missionaries that gave their farewell testimonies are people I know moderately wee and are my friends; read head Hermana Peterson, Elder Silva, Elder Myers and Elder Modruga. That kind of depressed me. It kinda made me feel old though because those hermanas from Hermana Peterson's group (Hermanas Evans, Young, and Daniel) were only 1 transfer out of their training when I got here. We had some good trainings this morning. There has been some drama going on recently in the missionary world. Basically there was a mission president seminar and only mission presidents have access to their seminars. So basically they're top secret. But somehow a Christian reporter, a good person but not a member got a hold of President Ballard's talk and published it with his personal feelings, basically saying that missionaries shouldn't invite to baptism in the first lesson. President Amato destroyed that reporter and taught us from the talk. There were some missionaries and members that had only read the article that were causing problems. Then we had some trainings from assistants and a couple of zone leaders. I really thoroughly enjoyed Elder Madruga's and Elder Leite's thing. They talked about how we can get the members to always carry a Book of Mormon and that'll help us out. President Amato jumped in and told us now in one area he served in, there was a super well-known doctor who had a case of 500 Book of Mormons in his waiting room and nothing else. Long story short, they got 2 or 3 references from him a day and it was the highest baptizing area in his mission. Somehow we had Little Caesars for lunch so that was awesome.
We came back to our area with a lot of animos (encouragement) and had a lot of good contacts. We went to go visit Luz and Fabio and wound out helping him out with a school project the whole time.
Thursday
We had consejo de distrito. It was fun I guess. I had to tell Hermana Lester to kick it up a notch so that we can have a bunch of baptisms on our birthday. It'd be pretty dope if the zone baptized 20 that day for our 20th birthday. It's kinda cool to have a birthday buddy. We need a noche blanca for Elder White's birthday. We had some interactive activities planned to help us learn. We tried stack cards, but I lack Elder Pulida's talent to say the least. Then we tried to score a goal blind folded with the help of our comps, but Elder Cordova isn't as good when he's blindfolded it turn out. Then we had to do wall sits, but against our companions' backs. It's easier against the wall to say the least. But it was all in the esperanza (hope). Today I really tried to make an effort to focus my thoughts 100% on baptism and due to that, I was able to see some extra blessings today. For example I was pondering on how we were going to get more with fecha when, on the way home from lunch, a lady walked up to us and explained to us that she worked in a school in our area and that a bunch of her alumni (14-16 year olds) were interested in coming to church. So we talked to her on how she could get their info and pass it on to us. Cool beans. We had a lot of good contacting time today and met some cool people. This one lady I contacted said that she was forced by her daughter's school to take her family to the Catholic church every week, otherwise her daughter could be kicked out of the school. Almost every school teaches Catholic doctrine and requires their students to attend a church, preferably Catholic. It gets frustrating sometimes. It really makes you miss that good 'ole religious freedom in the states. Today we had a cita with two sisters named Kelly and Carla, who're 16 and 13 respectively. It started kinda awkwardly because we were outside and it was cold, so they handed us each a mug of coffee. They seemed to understand though when I said no. They're both from the jungle of Peru. They were telling us that they both recognized that they were probably headed down the wrong path in life and wanted to get back on the right path. They live in the same building as Luz Torres, so that's cool. We went to go visit Lourdes. She's doing awesome. She knows everything before we teach it. haha Then we got a call from the office to pass us a reference. We ended the night by visiting Ismael. He was super desirous to follow Jesus. The man was asking us about how he could be a missionary. When we asked where he saw himself in 5 years he said a missionary. So we found 3 new with fecha for August 10.
Friday
On Sunday I asked my laundry lady if she had by chance set aside my bed sheet that I sent to be washed because I didn't find it in my laundry. So last night when we went to go put up the laundry, she was like, "I didn't find it, so I went to Tres Morus and bought you both a new one." Then Elder Cordova was like, "Hey, I have yours." I was just like, "Bruh, what? I've been searching for that the whole past week!" Anabel had her interview scheduled for 8:30 this morning. It was kind of an adventure to get it scheduled, but we did it. To get ready in time, I set my alarm for 6:00. I got up though and my first thought was, "Bruh. It's still dark outside. There's no way it's 6 yet. I just fell asleep." So I leaned over, turned off the alarm and rolled over. I woke up at 6:50 and was like, "Well fetch. Hey Elder, we should probably get up. We gotta leave in 15 minutes." We got to the stake center and waited around 20 minutes with Anabel before we were told to walk to the Santa Patrica stake center, which is part of Tambo now 10 minutes away. It's the head of institute for Lima East and also the biggest and nicest chapel I've ever seen. Anabel got her interview passed all right. We came back and did some weekly planning. After lunch we went to visit Anabel 1 more time to hype her up for tomorrow. All the citas we took from contacts, as well as the cita with Kelly and Carla, fell today. That wasn't too fun. We visited Juana today. I'm blown away every time by how powerful she is. She's so active. When she's bored, she catches up on the chapters she missed from before her baptism in addition to her normal study. We went to go see Monica and were very direct with her about what she needs to do to be baptized. Tonight we went to go eat in Gloria's restaurant. While we were waiting, we played Tuth Fruth with Consuela. It was good for her to see us open up a bit because she didn't want to be baptized because she thought she wouldn't be able to go to parties or listen to music and stuff. She's kinda wild and crazy, but somewhere burned deep on the inside she's a good girl. The churrasso was super good and she didn't charge us either, so that was dope.
Saturday
My legs hurt and I am in confusion. I don't feel like I did an excessive amount of walking or anything. We got up this morning to go play soccer on the turf field again. It was kinda boring really. My team won by a lot. I didn't even do all that much. We played for a good while. While it might not have been the funnest game, it was fun to be with the guys. From there, most of the zone went to go do a service for the Quilca family. Sumilda always gives us so much food, so I wasn't all that surprised when she gave us a 2nd breakfast and gave us a bunch of food after too. We went to go sweep her 3rd floor. I was thinking, "Yeah, piece of cake." There was no cake. Just a super extremely dusty jagged concrete floor with a bunch of clutter and two chickens that left gifts all over the place. So we spent a good hour and a half cleaning that up the best we could. That bag of dust and feathers and stuff weighed easily 5 lbs when we were done. We had another cita with Ismael today. We got his mom and sisters to listen to us this time. Their family is going trough a hard time. The 5 year old has a lot of medical problems and the dad came to be a drunkard recently in the last few years. The rest of them weren't quite as ready to follow the gospel as Ismael was. We had to run though as soon as that cita was over so that we could arrive for Celso Dipaz's (Manchay 1) and Anabel's baptisms. Caroline was trying to write something on the board, but she erased each letter at least once as she wrote to try and make it look better, so we gave her a hard time for that and we all laughed. Elder Kimball came back for it, so that was cool. Anabel's baptism was really nice.
It was really special to see Lucis Dipaz baptize his 79 year old dad though. There was really a special spirit there for that. He was the bishop for 12 years here. He kinda lost Celso under the water there for a minute, but he got him back up. To end the night, we spent a while searching all over buena vista alta y baja looking for a dude named Jimmer. We finally found his house, but he wasn't home. On the way home, I had to go to the bathroom so I went behind an old hut. I was about to unzip when I lady appeared around the corner and was like, "What are you doing?" "Uh, looking at that cat." "Don't go back here." Then I noticed light in the hut. So we went to the empty lot next door and chilled there a minute to take a phone call. Then that lady left and a minute later a dude with a big 'ole lantern came to talk to me. He asked me stuff like where we were from and what we were doing and stuff. So I explained that we were missionaries and I was "looking at the cat." Apparently there's trouble makers sometimes so that's why he came.
Sunday
Sundays are always interesting because you never know what is gonna happen. We were on our way home last night and I randomly decided to contact this 22 year old named Raquel. She was telling us that she had already talked to some other Elders earlier that day and was planning on taking her 6 year old with her to church. She was pretty cool, so we arranged to come pick her up this morning. So we left consejo early to go get her. On our way there, I took a short cut that was going to lead us by Luis's house, so I was like, "Yeah, I'll call him. Why not?" I had the number ready to dial when I looked up and saw him. He hurry and ducked down. I went over there and called him out of hiding and after a minute he came. I talked to him and after a minute he agreed he'd go to church with Wily. So we went to go look for Raquel. Long story short, we found her wasted near her house with a friend. Why they were drinking so early, I have no idea. So we started walking back to the church. I was thinking maybe we could take Luis on the way, but when I called, he said he was bathing himself, which made it seem like he wouldn't be coming. But to my greatest surprise of the whole transfer, they came walking in alone together at 10:20 and stayed the whole 2 hours. I'm at a complete loss on what I'm going to do with them. But looking at how this whole sequence of events last night and this morning went, it seems to me that God led me back to them. So I don't think I'm done with them quite yet. We got Anabel confirmed today. She brought Consuelo and Satiago with her, so that was cool. Lourdes came with Neydelhin and her 3 grandkids, so that was dope too. After it was over, Monica came up to me and was like, "Surprise. I'm here." As missionaries, we went around to all the classes to give trainings on the Book of Mormon. We had fasted today, but even after I broke the fast for lunch I still felt like crap. We left to work like normal though. In the tarde we visited Lourdes. She's ready for Saturday, and we also found out that 2 of her grandkids are at the baptism age, but haven't done it yet. That'll be nice. She has cancer, it turns out, but it's small still so they're just giving her pills. We also visited Nataniel tonight. After that though, I felt even crappier so we came home 30 minutes late and I crashed on my desk for a minute before going to bed at 10:00.
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