Week 12 in Manchay

Lourdes

Hello, good morning. Things are pretty good here in Manchay. Cambios came in last night and I'll be staying here another transfer more with Elder Cordova. We baptized our investigator Lourdes yesterday in the morning before church. That was a super cool baptism. As she entered the font, it really finally set in on me how special this day was for her. Five or more years ago, almost her entire family was baptized. She wasn't able to though because she was living with someone she wasn't married to at the time. But she kept going to church despite that because she had an amazing testimony that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints was God's church upon the earth. Some hard stuff happened in her life and she was less active for a bit, but then we came in and helped her out. Now she has all the same blessings that she wasn't able to have years ago. That was special. It was kind of rough during the week though in the way that we had to leave some people, so now we don't have anyone fijo with a fecha. That's ok though because we're just gonna work our butts off! Have a good week!

-Elder White

Wednesday
One more thing about lunch on Sunday. One dude claims to be cuad lingual (quadrilingual) – Spanish, English, French and German. So I was like, "Nein, nein fräulein." He took a minute to think and then said something in slightly broken German. I responded with a confident, "Guten tag! Mein Kampf!" He looked surprised and took a minute before saying something else. Then I went full send and made a bunch of sounds in the back of my throat that sounded like German. He looked even more confused before responding. Then after, yesterday that is, Elder Cordova was like, "Hey. You didn't tell me that you speak German!" Then I was just like, "Bruh. I don't." I want to though. Almost all the other gringos are learning/have a desire to learn Portuguese. Nah man, that's a waste of time. I understand Brazilians and they understand me. I'm a learn some German on duo lingo instead. Today was temple Pday. Somehow Lima North and us went there at the same time. I ran into Elder Vazquez from Argentina again. The temple session was really nice. I rounded the district up (except for the zone leaders) and went to Papa John's because Wednesdays they have an  all you can eat special for S/25. We got there though and ran into the zone leaders who were already there. They had been there for 50 minutes and were just barely getting their first slices. So I took the district to Pizza Hut instead. The biggest miracle of the day might have been that I was able to find some tables for the 8 of us to eat at.  It was fun to talk and enjoy some pizza together. Today was just one of those days where you go in expecting to spend 50 soles, but then at the end of the day have a form of PTSD (Post traumatic spending disappointment) because you drop a solid 150 soles on pizza, other food and more stuff. Elder Cordova and I had a scare this morning because we almost didn't get into the temple. He grabbed an expired recommend when we went to leave this morning. They had to look him up in the system and burned him pretty good about it. Satan wasn't very nice to me today it was hard for me not to dwell on negative thoughts partly because I found out the reason why I didn't go to Dante's baptism. Also, all of our citas fell. But it was almost as if God didn't want us to have citas because in the places around where the people we had planned to visit with, there were a bunch of escogitos (chosen) waiting for us. What can we learn from that? Trust in God's wisdom.

Thursday
We ate breakfast as a district this morning. I made the sacrifice of getting up at 6 AM to get all showered and ready to go so that the other elders would have time to get ready too so that we would gets there at 7:30 as planned. So I may have been a bit bothered when we arrived at eight. Breakfast was good and fun though. I made strawberry banana smoothies. From there the entire zone came and we watched a talk from Elder Holland from a recent MTC devotional. It was pretty cool–it did a great job of explaining some of the doctrines of the fall. 'Tis always a good day when tequeños are served for lunch. We were about to go out to work after lunch and jokingly said to Elder Clark, "Hey, let's get some intercambio action."  He was like, "Eh...wait a sec." He went over and had a quick whisper session and then came back and was like, "Elder Pedroza goes with Elder Cordova and Elder White comes with me." So we got be surprised intercombios poppin' for a while today. This was my first time working in Manchay 1. I got some good hours of contacting in with Elder Clark before we left to go to a district attack in Las Viñas.  It was my first time going over there. There was some drama that went down with Lourdes today. She called us saying she can't come to the interview. She's babysitting her bosses house while they're visiting in the states. The houses in Las Viñas. She was saying that there's cameras there and the family would get suspicious if she left today, Saturday for the baptism and Sunday to go to church. So we were thinking to go to her house while we were there, but it turns out that the house is in another ward in Lima Tambo. Long story short, we got permission to do the interview with phone call and we will do the baptism Sunday before church. After all the confusion I ran off with Elder Silva to work. He's been pretty shy in the past, that he didn't seem to have too much of a problem with it when he was with me.  The hermanas gave us two families at opposite ends of their area to visit. Both were super nice apartment buildings. The first weren't home, but then the mom from the second family she asked us in.

Friday
We did weekly planning this morning. To celebrate, I tried making some Oreo cookie batter. It didn't turn out like it did back home, but it will blame it on the Peruvian brands. They just can't compete with American brands. It has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I had to make up a substitute for shortening. Not gonna lie, today was pretty rough. The citas didn't happen, so we wound up contacting all day. Contacting kinda stunk because no one seems to talk to us. We only took down one cita today, and it was the last contact of the day. But I am very grateful for that miracle to end the day because up until the contact, I was feeling depressed. We wanted to go visit Fabio, but we couldn't find anyone to accompany us to the cita. And we couldn't put the cita for later in the day because I had scheduled 2 citas in the night. The first one was a girl I found. Come to find out, she was in a family who we've contacted on four or five different occasions and every time we contacted the mom or one of the daughters we've taken out cita. But every time we been there, including today, the citas haven't worked out. I have no idea why the Lord has led us to them so many times when they've just started to make excuses every time. For our last attempted cita, I didn't have an address, just general directions. The miracle is that we found the house!

Saturday
Today marks 13 months. It was also my mom's 528 month mark. So happy birthday shout out to her. Yesterday while we were out contacting, I saw a mom helping her three or so year old learn to ride a bike. I tried talking to her, but as she walked past me she looked back to say no and her son fell. She noticed and was like, "Oh..." But her son jumped right back up and did a toddler run straight at me and gave me a bear hug and looked directly up to smile. That was pretty funny. Today was a pretty tranquil day turns out that the lady I contacted at the end of the night last night gave us a fake phone number. During lunch, we played a bunch of mind puzzle games. That was pretty fun. Elder Cordova wasn't very good at it, so that was pretty funny. In Peru, there's a tradition called a techada. What it is is basically a giant party that they have after building the the roof on what is usually the second floor. They'll put flowers in wine/beer/alcohol bottles and hang them from the ceiling. Then everyone gets super drunk. They do it as soon as possible when they finish building – the same day. Just kind of an interesting FYI. Since today was my moms birthday, I got to call home. All is good back home, so that's good. Parker injured his shoulder playing basketball with members. It's kind of bad, so he's coming home to have an operation for the which there is a three month recovery time. That's super sad because I know how much his mission means to him. Now he can hopefully maintain good habits and go back out when his recovery time is up. My hopes are high for him though. After talking to them for a bit, we went back to work. We went to go visit the Quespitupa's tonight. We're a little concerned about them because they haven't been to church in nearly a month. They're doing okay enough. But Nora is really bothered by how her sister Claudia and the rest of her family treat her. They do more than just not talk to her. They avoid and exclude her too, Claudia specifically. I get really triggered when I learn more about it because it's just so sad and frustrating to me. But that's that. There's only so much we can do. Well last night the 4 of us were awakened to a 3 AM cat fight. They were meowing super loud by our window and we couldn't fall back asleep. Then Elder Cordova and Elder Pedrozo were like, "Enough of that!" Elder Cordova opened the window and hissed at them and they all ran away.

Sunday
I love baptizing people. It's a favorite pastime of mine. We had Lourdes' baptism today bright and early. President wants us to focus on having members baptize people, so that's what we've been doing. When we told Lourdes that though, she utterly refused to let a member do it despite us trying to talk her into it. Then she asked that I perform the ordinance for her. That was pretty cool.

We actually had a pretty solid turnout too. We had a bit of a scare because when 8 AM rolled around, only Hermana Ada was there and no one else would answer their phones– Lourdes and the bishopric. But they all got there it eventually hehe. It was a very nice service. As I began to say the prayer, set in on me how at last, after seeing almost all of her family baptized, she was about to have the blessing for herself too. What a way to start the day! After the baptism we tried to go and recoger (pick up) some people, but no one came with us. We went to Ismael's House to pick him up and his dad answered the door. We explained we were going to take him to church with us and he was like, "Ismael is too young (he's 16) to go anywhere by himself." (That's a big lie because in Peru parents are kinda negligent in that way and I'll even send 12-year-olds to the store for them.) "Besides he has to come watch me desfilar." Us: "Wait. Didn't he do his march last week?" "Yeah, but I'm doing it now and he has to come." That's probably the most frustrating part of being a missionary– finding someone super cool and then not being able to do much because their parents or spouse are at the opposite side of the spectrum: lame sauce. We had a fairly normal Sunday otherwise I think. Jacke didn't come because she's working as an intern at a supermarket. The state president came and roasted everybody, especially the RM's, about not taking care of the CR's  The barrio (neighborhood) Musa and our zone had a fireside with an HEFY group. President Amato and ours zone went as well. Not sure why we had to be there because we didn't do anything until we sang at the end of the two hours, granted we had a powerful song. It was weird having so many gringos there and hearing so much English. It was cool though. Today was judgment day. My gut told me I was leaving but I'm staying another cambio. The entire district is staying actually, just not Hermana Copa.