Week 1 in the Office

Cambios de Emergencia (Emergency Transfers)

Well, I thought that this week was gonna go one way, but then emergency transfers happened and it went a totally different, but still great, way. So Yeah, I'm the financial secretary now and I'm going to be working in a super cool area called Covima. It's kind of a wealthier part but the people are still super receptive and the area is only a few blocks from the temple too. That means lots of milagros! The week's gone by in the blink of an eye. I'm getting used to the office life and all that good stuff. I enjoy it. The work is going really good here in Covima. We've got 2 baptisms in our companionship tonight and the other Elders have 2 more too that are all getting baptized tonight. Now we're just sowing seeds for the weeks that come. I love being able to proselyte so close to the temple. That in of itself is an amazing blessing. On Wednesday during the multi zone, Elder Napier had us envision us finding, teaching and baptizing an escogido. Because like he said, things are created spiritually before they are created physically. I imagined a tall Latino with mildly paler skin, also with a long, but kinda thin, beard. He was smiling a lot. Despite never having worked in this new area before, when we left the office that night to go proselyte I was determined to find and teach this random dude that had come into mind. Elder Wilcox told me that during the day he felt like he should look through our list of online referrals. He found a dude named Alvaro from a referral that we received back in July. So he called him and he seemed kinda cool. He set up for us to meet with him on a given street corner at 8, which is kind of a risky move. But we had the faith that he was an escogido and that he was going to be there. So we showed up, not really knowing who we were looking for. We had called him a few more times to confirm it. He told us he was near a Tambo, so we walked over there. As we were walking there, there was a dude that walked past us that seemed kinda like the dude I had imagined. I watched him from across the street and we quickly discovered that it was him. We went over and started talking to him. He was basically almost the exact same as the man I had envisioned during the mental exercise. He was a really cool guy. We took him to a park, found his spiritual need and he chose to prepare himself to be baptized. That was a really awesome miracle that we were able to see in our area. I know that if we can create things spiritually before we do them physically, God will bless us with more success. I know that he lives and loves and blesses each and everyone of us. Have a good week!

-Elder White
 

Monday

D&C 6:36--"Look unto me in every thought.  Doubt not fear not." Even when the times get rough or you don't quite know what's going on, you've just gotta put your shoulder to the wheel and keep moving forward with hope in Christ.  Today started out fairly normally.  We got already to go and went to internet.  I fell like internet has gotten less exciting exponentially as time goes on during m mission.  We went to go eat chaufa, as per usual.  Today is P-day.  Uncultured people may think that that P stands for preparation.  What it really stands for is patriotic.  For that reason, I showed up decked out in my USA flag shirt and pants; I even had the wrist band rolling.  I definitely got some weird looks from people passing by in the streets.  It was funny though.  As a zone we watched Rio.  It was kind of interesting to watch that again now that I've learned to understand Portuguese a bit more.  After that, we all played a game that resembled soccer, but was still pretty different.  That was pretty fun.  So we went back to the room and started getting ready to go out to proselyte.  I was at my desk listening to music and putting my shoes on when the phone started to ring.  I pushed pause on my music and leaned back in my chair to grab the phone off of Elder Cordova's desk.  I looked to see who it was and saw President Amato's name.  My first thought was, "Oh crap."  Here's how the conversation went: "Hello?"  "Elder Cordova?"  "No, it's Elder White."  "Elder White how are you?"  "I'm doing well, thanks."  "Good to hear.  Elder White are you worthy of a temple recommend?"  "Yes."  "Good.  Elder White, the Lord has called you to be the new financial secretary.  I'm pleased that you'll be joining us in the office.  I need you here at 10:00 AM tomorrow.  Have a good night."  I got blindsided by these emergency transfers.  I had time to go say bye to all of my converts (except Nataniel) and Juana.  Lourdes said that she had a dream that I was leaving and were all crying during breakfast.  Juana got kinda teary eyed when I passed by.  Andree and Angela were crying, but Elena completely lost it.  She was worried about being forgotten.  Santos, the local tamale dude that we were friends with and always saw walking around, got mad and ran off when I asked if I could take his photo.  Completely savage.

Good bye photos:

Tuesday

I know that the Lord doesn't give men impossible tasks.  Everything he has us do is for a wise purpose in which we, and God's children around us will be blessed.  So just put your faith in God and do your best and he'll do the rest.  Well, after a packing marathon last night and this morning, we left to go to the office to drop me off.  The first thing Elder Pardo told me was, "Look, what happens on office p-day stays on office p-day."  He likes to make a lot of jokes.  He also told me, "Just a heads up: we make a lot of your mom jokes here."  I smiled and thought, "Now this is where I belong."  He's the secretary of operations.  My companion will be Elder Tenney, who also happens to be my first gringo companion.  He's a cool guy, so I'm looking forward to it.  We got there to the office and he had me read part of an instruction manual.  Then he explained some stuff to me and threw me into the midst of things.  He was there for all my questions and  stuff.  I had to make some payments and sign some receipts.  I'm gonna have to find a faster signature because my standard McKay White takes a little too long to read if you know what I mean.  I also started doing some stuff for the end of month expense report, which is mainly matching receipts and credit card payments.  Today was Elder Meyer's last day in the field, so he was there at the office all day with us.  He's a real funny dude.  I'm gonna miss him.  That was still my favorite district that I've had.  We had to go to the bank to get a fat chunk of change for caja chica.  Elder King and Elder Frame, who are both in Lima Tambo now, stopped by the office real quick, so it was great to see them.  We left and waited in front of the temple for Hermana Amato to drop her card off for us.  While we were waiting, some dudes came along and took our photo for us.  Then we got the card and went to Tottus to buy a bunch of stuff for break tomorrow.  We ran into Luis Angel from Manchay.  Then we went to the chapel to set stuff up for the multi zone tomorrow.  While we were there I ran into Yure from Alameda, so that was cool.  Our dinner pensionista's name is Juana.  She gave us churros.  I like her.  The main thing that stood out to me today is the sheer number of taxis we took today.

Wednesday

There's a couple of scriptures that talk about making things spiritually before making them physically.  That was a big theme of the multi zone today too.  Today my testimony of that was strengthened greatly.  Let me tell ya about it.  So this morning we went to the multi zone of course.  President Amato started right off the bat by calling the entire mission to repentance.  It was a good, mildly fiery, but loving, talk.  I think it was what the mission needed.  The coolest part of today was getting to sit at the office's table with all the other secretaries and the Amatos.  All us secretaries snuck out to go buy 240 burgers and chicken sandwiches for everybody at Burger King.  We got there and they were like, "We're closed.  Come back at noon."  (It was nearly 11 AM.)  So we talked about it for a minute and then said to them, "Just FYI, we're gonna buy 120 burgers as soon as you're open."  He got wide eyed and went to talk to his manager.  Then we heard a lady gasp/yell "¿¿¿QUE???"  Then we had to double it because the other Burger King was closed.  While we were waiting, we went to Plaza Vea to buy some garbage bags.  There was a Dukin' Doughnuts inside, so we had to aprovechar (take advantage of) that stuff.  240 is a lot of burgers FYI.  The assistants had us do a mental exercise of finding and baptizing an escogido.  For whatever reason, the dude who came to mind was taller, mildly lighter toned Latino with a small beard not overly thick and he was always smiling.  The conference ended and we went to the office to get some work done.  Elder Tenny told me that the Lord wouldn't ever let me mess up with His money without warning me.  For example, I was getting ready to pay all the dueños (landlords) in the mission electronically and was about to send it when I got the feeling that something was messed up.  I asked Elder Tenny 3 times if there was something wrong with it and he said no.  So I sent it.  Half an hour later, we discovered names on that list that we shouldn't be paying, so we had to retract the payment and fix it.  Tonight I went out proselyting with Elder Wilcox, the personal secretary.  Our area is Corvima.  It's pituco, but the people are super open still to talking to us.  We decided that there's gotta be 25 escogidos in our area.  Elder Wilcox said that he called an online referral from July and that we were gonna meet up with him on a certain corner at 8, which is always a risky move.  But he was there.  And it was a 95% match of the dude I imagined.  I had left to work determined to find him and I did.  His name is Alvaro, he likes basketball, he's 19 and he's getting baptized September 28.  #Milagros!
 

 Celebrating August birthdays at the multi zone.

Multi Zone

Thursday

As we were wrapping things up last night, we saw an old drunk dude in a dirty suit tap dancing.  Elder Wilcox went and contacted someone near him.    In the middle of the contact, the drunk said to him, "¿Quieres chuper la piña conmigo?  (Do you want to suck pineapple with me?)"  The contact got mad at him and told him to show some respect, so the drunk said, "Pero con respeto, con resto.  (But with respect, with respect.)"  That was something funny I never thought I'd see in La Molina.  This morning we stopped by the office to get some work done before going to the other multi zone.  Elder Tenney had to go to the clinic in Miraflores, so I was working alone basically.  I made a sticky note with like 20 questions in the matter of less than an hour for when he comes back.  I guess you could say that I'm not quite ready to go off on my own yet hehe.  Elder Wilcox and I got there just a minute late and Elder Pardo had already left to go buy the burgers without us.  So we left to go buy some chicken for a sister with allergies.  The burgers kinda took a really long time though.  Long story short, 2 1/2 hours in Elder Pardo came back with 3/4 of the and we went to get the rest of everyone and President payed for Ubers for everyone (well, the 4 of us).  An Elder decided that he didn't want to be here anymore and was starting to cause problems, so that kinda threw a wrench in things.  Especially since the decision was made today and the flight bought was for 9:50 tonight.  It was pretty sad, especially since he had 16 months here in Peru.  Elder Tenney was his companion once, so he went with him to pack his stuff.  That's the thing about office Elders; President has a lot of trust in us and has us run all different sorts of errands.  Elder Fuertes had to stay the night with us because he had a dentist appointment, which I took him to.  Turns out that the dentist lives in Covima, so we chatted a lot.  I told him all about how my dad is a dentist and stuff, all while Elder Fuertes was getting his root canal taken care of.  He and his wife are pretty cool.  So right now we have 2 investigators.  On Tuesday we had their baptism interviews and tonight Juan Pablo and Carmen got married.

 
I do love myself a good wedding.  They're a good couple.  I mean, of course I don't know them super well, but it was still super cool.  Now they're one step closer to having an eternal family.  I know that eternal families are a critical point in God's plan, and I love it.

Friday

Jesus wants to bless us.  That's a fact and there's no debating it.  He loves us, but he doesn't necessarily hand out free blessings.  If I'm not mistaken, the scriptures say that in order to receive a certain blessing, we have to obey a certain law preceding said blessing.  I was reading in D&C this morning and 42:3 helped me learn how to obtain these blessings in a basic process.  You need to 1) be obedient, 2) do it with a good attitude with your will aligned with God's, 3) pray earnestly and diligently asking God in the name of Christ for the blessing.  Then you will receive the blessing(s) you desire of God.  All us office Elders live in the apartment right next to the assistants, so we've basically got the whole 3rd floor rented out.  Once getting home from working, all of us sit and chat the rest of the night away.  You see, after my interview with President, I knew that he was gonna call me to be financial secretary.  I even called Elder Rushforth and told him I suspected it.  Then Elder Napier told me, "Yeah, President wanted to call you on the spot in the interview.  But we were just going to wait until cambios to extend the call to you.  But then Elder Leite and I were looking at cambios with him and realized it'd be kinda hard to wait.  So President called you right then and there."  Today was my first real day of office work.  Nothing too exciting really.  I just got the end of month expense report up to date and fixed some stuff with the water distribution worksheet using some good 'ole Excel.  If I had to go back in time and have President ask me again if I knew how to use it, I would say, "Nope," with a capital "p" (noPe).  We'll get it figured out though.  Working in the office is like a featured episode of "Peru Lima East Mission: Backstage".  There's a tradition in the office where all the new guys that come in have to buy pizza for everybody.  So today I dropped s/107.80 on Dominos for everyone in the office.
 

 

It pays off to be a penny pincher (pun intended ) because I didn't even have to use my personal McKay fund, just the Elder White fund.  I'm still kinda broke though considering that tomorrow they want to all go get all you can eat sushi for s/45.  Tonight we went and visited Juan Pablo and Carmen to get them all ready to go for tomorrow.

Week 16 in Manchay

Fasting

"Sacrifice brings forth the blessings of Heaven." -Hymn Praise to the Man. The more time that goes on and the more I do them, the more I learn that sacrifices bring us blessings. I really enjoyed the fast that we had mission wide this weekend. Saturday was an amazing day of finding people to teach. We found a lot of really cool people that night, including an old investigator and a 15 year old named Andres that actually came and contacted us. He came to church with us the next day and everything. Church was super awesome in of itself. We had both of our investigators there (one was the granddaughter of our CR that we found this week), as well as another family we found the day before where the husband hadn't been to church in 10 years and the wife wasn't a member. We also had the highest attendance there since May. Pretty solid day if you ask me. We were also blessed in the way that we were able to find the mom of the CR's granddaughter and get permission from her without anything complicated happening. The work is moving along here in Manchay and I'm happy to be a part of it. I know that as we are obedient to the commandments of the Lord and make sacrifices to him, he will bless us immensely. Have a good week!

-Elder White
 

Monday

Ali pactashka wata--happy birthday.  Today was Elder Cordova's birthday. He wanted to play soccer to celebrate.  I'm tired of getting everyone up in the morning every time we play, so I just sat there, awake, to see if someone would take the initiative necessary to get out of bed by themselves.  After 10 minutes I helped them out by waking them up again.  They still didn't do anything though.  Then another 10 minutes later Elder Peterson called to see where we were at, because he was already there.  Long story short a I had the alarm set for 6:15, but we didn't get out of the house until 6:50.  Soccer was 3 v 3, so it got real boring real fast.  Internet was normal.  It's not special or fun like it used to be.  My family's always got something trunky for me these days.  In Elder Dodd's weekly email he was talking about how while they were out proselyting, they returned to their room at night only to find that somebody had broken in and trashed their room.  They stole a DVD player, Elder Dodd's quad set of scriptures, his wallet, the money out of his companion's wallet, and an emergency backpack. They didn't take anything more valuable like the cameras.  Also, they had eaten all of Elder Dodd's peanut butter out of the jar.  And despite there being a spoon right next to it, the thief had used his hands to eat it.  Kind of unfortunate, but not as bad as it could've been.  The zone leaders sent out an invite to the whole zone inviting them to go eat at Domino's with us to celebrate.  Everyone except for Cieneguilla went.  I treated my companion and I to some good pizza.  I don't know if I'd ever had stuffed crust before--I don't remember.  They only real problem with Elder Cordova is that he doesn't like to make decisions.  He's ok at following people, but not at making decisions.  For example, I asked if he wanted ice cream and he didn't know.  It's kinda weird because he's a big talker and thrives off of attention.  In the end we went to Tottus and I bought us some Ben and Jerry's and then accidentally sprayed some cologne in his eye.  But hey, at least his eye smelt good the rest of the day.  We went as the 4 of us to Tres Marias and shopped around a bit.  We went to go drop off the laundry and Hermana Paula gave me another pair of black shoes, and gave us both bananas and some nice ties.  That woman is a saint.  We went to Hermana Ana's to celebrate Elder Cordova's birthday.  We got permission to stay out until 11 PM.  When we got back I called everyone in the district to see how they were doing with the charity goals.

Tuesday

Blaze it.  About 3 weeks ago, we were going to church and on the corner by the church, we saw Nicoli and his family putting a sign in that said dumping garbage there was against the law and that they'd get the authorities involved if they saw it happen.  That corner was a popular garbage dumping spot before.  But then they went on 24/7 watch to make sure it wouldn't happen. I hadn't seen them for a few days though, but the trash is gone.  The best part it that those dudes aren't even members, they're Catholics.  But all the Elders know Nicoli.  He's a cool dude.  His favoite song is Nearer My God to Thee by BYU Vocal Point.  We had a consejo de distrito this morning.  Even though Elder Cordova and I were assigned to give a training for the zone, Elder Cordova called Elder Rushforth and asked if he could give the training for the district.  He just loves being in the spotlight like that.  Our training topic was super heroes and missionary work. My assigned topics were Iron Man, Wonder Woman and Captain America's Shield.  It was just an average training.  Intellectual beans.  I have no idea where this whole "cool beans" thing came from. I never said it bacak home, not is there anyone here that says it.  It just sorta happened.  We had a full schedule going into the day today, so I was excited.  Unfortunately however, all but 2 of the citas fell today.  We had a cita with Consuelo today.  Yes, that same Consuelo.  We always passed by the restaurant were Gloria, her mom, works.  I kinda thought that she had a crush on my companion.  She's gone to church almost every week with Anabel, which kinda surprised me because she's kind of a more crazy and mischievous girl.  The other night she told Elder Cordova she wanted to get baptized.  So he gave her a folleto, which she read.  The restaurant was a little chaotic with Gloria working, and Santiago and Estefano throwing cake at each other and yelling.  But Consuelo accepted fecha for September 21.  That might've been the surprise of the transfer.  Gabriel kinda disappeared on us, so that was kinda super disappointing.  We found Claudia in the street last night and she told us how her sister had separated from her pareja (mate) and wanted us to help so we passed by, but they were in a family meeting with the pareja and her.  After a bit the sister and pareja stepped out.  We shared a spiritual thought with who was there because it was late and asked if there was questions. Right as the sister walked back in, they asked if Heavenly Mother existed.  Facepalm.  Why then?  Ask me that later.

Wednesday

Turns out that Gabriel had to leave because he had a family member or something that got super sick all the sudden.  He won't be back until Monday.  He was super apologetic about it though.  Hopefully we can get it all worked out.  I'm pleased to report that I'm still working out in the early mornings.  We had set up a cita with Wendy, but she canceled it on us.  It was kinda frustrating since she didn't have a real excuse for us.  Well, Elder Pedrozo and Elder Vasquez went on another field trip to the dentist this morning.  Elder Vasquez was supposed to get his wisdom teeth taken out.  Long story short, 3 wisdom teeth and 7+ anesthesia shots later, the dentist determined that the 4th wasn't coming out.  So now tomorrow he's going to another doctor to have an operation so that they can get the rest of the tooth out.  We had a cita with Consuelo.  I was thinking that it was gonna go really well because we weren't with the same environment as last time.  Well, the environment was better, but Consuelo stayed kinda quiet during the lesson.  She wouldn't really look at us either.  It was extremely difficult to read her.  I almost ended the cita probably 3 times because I didn't know if she was actually interested or paying attention to anything we were saying.  Due to that, it was a long cita.  We couldn't get her to laugh or anything either.  In the end, we finished teaching the Restoration and gave her a LDM to read.  The rest of the day was basically dedicated to contacting.  There were 2 citas with contacts that crashed and burned. That was really demoralizing for us, especially since we knew where one of them lived and there was a light on in the house.  To end the night, we went to a meeting with Alfredo because Elder Cordova has this script thing for a ward activity about family history work.  It's an interesting idea.  There's a bakery in my area that has some really good cheese rolls that I always buy.  They're almost as good as my mom's.

Thursday

I was reading in 1 Nephi 6 this morning and was inspired to share my testimony or write a spiritual thought every day.  I like reading 1 Nephi 7:16-18.  Nephi was receptive and obedient to the spirit and due to that, his brothers got mad like usual and tied him up.  Nephi prayed with faith for strength to break the bands, but the Lord responded by simply loosening them.  It's a small, but important detail that can easily be overlooked.  Even though the Lord didn't answer Nephi's prayer in the exact way he wanted or was expecting, he still answered it in a way that blessed Nephi equally as much.  Even though we might pray with faith expecting one thing, sometimes God, according to his infinite goodness and knowledge, will answer our prayers.  We had a service marathon this morning.  The 4 of us went to a members house where we were told that we were going to be moving a lot of sand.  Then hermana gave us breakfast and then we got to work.  On the 2nd floor where was a huge pile of sand.  All she had us do was fill up some big 'ole bags with sand and put them next to the pile.  With 10 bags we did probably 1/4-1/3 of it.  After that, we met up with the zone and went to go do some more service for the same family that we went to serve last week.  There was a lot of sanding and painting again.  We got almost all of it painted, but it kinda took longer than we planned.  The member sister for whom we performed the service requested a testimony meeting.  It was powerful, but I'm not sure how much it helped, especially since when Elder Clark said September 21st the member sister said, "August 30th is their anniversary.  I think it'd be cooler that day!"  We had a lot of citas fall today.  We ended the night with a NDH with Elena and her family with Jeroge Garcia.  We told them to invite all their friends, but none of them came unfortunately.  But we resolved some dudas (doubts) and had a good lesson.  Angela's teacher always attacks her beliefs during class.  I just miss some good 'ole American religious freedom right now.  But it all ended ok because there were tequeños there.  There's this one dude in our area that asks a million questions about everything.  95% of what he says is a question really fast without organization.  He mentioned once that his sister received the Elders once, so we passed by.  10 minutes in he asked if I know a famous dude.  I told him if I answered he had to go call his sister for us.  It worked, but she didn't come.

Friday

I know that obedience is a gift from God and a critical one to develop if we desire blessings from God.  I know that as we're obedient to God, or other divinely appointed leaders, God is obliged to bless us.  So be obedient, even if it's hard.  I'm gonna go out of order real quick in today's events.  Near the end of the day, we were contacting and there was a 22 year old or so girl that was walking by.  So I said, "¡Buenas Noches! ¿Podemos darle una invitacion de Jesucristo?  (Good evening!  Can we give you an invitation from Jesus Christ?)" As she walked past, she tilted her head and only had 2 words for me, "Eres feo. (You're ugly)."  And she kept walking.  I was just surprised and confused.  I just asked, "Elder, did she really just say what I think she said?"  "Yep."  Impossible.  There must have been someone behind me.  Or maybe she just forgot her contacts.  Or maybe he was talking to herself.  If she had said that to me before my mission, I would've been hurt. But I have more confidence now.  This is a muchacho bien guapo if you know what I mean.  Elder Pedrozo worked in a barbershop before the mission, so I got him to wake up early to give me a haircut.  It took him an hour, but it's probably the best cut I've ever had.  He told me that I had to tell President that he cut my hair.  We had interviews with him today.  It kinda took a while like normal.  He saw me between interviews and said, "Elder Pedrozo told me that he cut your hair.  Looks good."  All I could say was, "Haha thanks."  Turns out that Elder Rushforth likes Star Wars too.  But when I texted him, "Hello there," he responded with "Hello."  Much to learn he still has. In my interview I told him I was mildly disheartened and unhappy because I feel like I'm an excellent missionary but wasn't seeing a lot of success in my area.  So he shared 2 Nephi 31:20 with me and I got excited because I realized the Lord wanted to try my faith.  Then out of the blue he asked if I was good with Excel on the computer.  Then President surprised me by asking about my study plans for after the mission. It was a good interview.  We had another cita with Consuelo.  It was more of the same, but she opened up to us a tiny bit more.  Then we had a cita with Lourdes and Naydelin and all her little grandkids.  We taught them the gospel. Hadde, 8 years old, was previously scared of water and didn't want to get baptized.  Then we were talking about Lourdes' baptism and she was like, "Wait.  When did you get baptized?"  That was funny.  Anywho, she accepted a date for September 21.

 Us visiting our CR Lourdes and putting a baptismal date on her granddaughter. I'm the white dude.

Saturday

"Sacrifice brings forth the blessings of Heaven." -Hymn no. 27 Praise to the Man.  Today President Amato instituted a mission wide fast so that we can all use our collective faith to find people to teach. The Lord blessed us with an amazing day of finding.  I know that as we fast and make other sacrifices to the Lord, the Lord will bless us immensely because there is power in making sacrifices to God.  I am always reminded of the day I fasted for Jaxon's chickenpox.  When we went to church, they were all still there, itching like normal.  Then when we got home from church, we discovered that they had all miraculously scabbed over.  From a young age it's served as a strong testimony for me.  We did weekly planning this morning.  We took a half time break to go and teach the girl across the street that I contacted, but she wasn't there.  That and the 2 other citas that we had set up with contacts fell through the cracks of our broken concrete floor. We had a productive day of contacting though. Elder Cordova is a very sarcastic person.  Normally, I would have no problem with that; I'm a sarcastic dude sometimes too and appreciate the humor.  But you see, he's not super good at it.  He doesn't hardly ever make or give any vocal or visual cues.  Then he'll get mad at me if I take him seriously.  But he's not exactly 100% responsible sometimes and is also a little crazy.  So I never know what to think. I made one contact that stood out to me today with a 17 year old named Daisy.  It started out as a fairly normal conversation.  She said that she had to go to the Catholic church in the morning, but that she would come directly for our church.  We had a quick cita with Juana today to see how she was doing.  We got RKOed by several amazing contacts to end the night, including a 15 year old named Andres that contacted us.  We also ran into Rebeca while buying burgers. It turns out that her parents just don't want her to come.

Sunday

Here's some doctrine that's rather interesting that I learned while studying the scriptures this morning.  In 2 Nephi 32:3-4, we learn that angels speak by the power of the Holy Ghost.  Then if we go look up Angels in the bible dictionary, we can learn that unembodied or disembodied spirits can be angels.  Then if we take it a step further, we can remember that those spirits/angels could possibly include family that has passed away, or possibly even future offspring.  Now I'm not gonna say that every time we feel an impression from the Holy Ghost that it's them or that every angel that is in that category that communicates with us like that is them, but what I will suggest is that we might receive a prompting from them every once in a while.  That may answer the question, "Can my deceased family member communicate with me?"  My response would be that I think it's possible, but unless it's a dream where you can see them, you'll have little to no way of knowing it was them.  Anyways, it turns out that this Andres dude was a miracle and a half.  We called him in the morning to see about picking him up and he was like, "Yeah, just give me a 20 minutes heads up so I can bajar the mountain to meet up with you guys."  We came out of consejo (Bishop is super awesome FYI--dedicated to his calling and to missionary work.  "I don't want any activities planned for Saturday nights because there's always baptisms and that's priority no.1--no interference.") and called Andres.  He was already there waiting for us.  So we had him at church with us.  We also had Hade, Consuelo and a less active dude that brought his nonmember wife to church.  And the attendance there today was the highest it's been since May.  That all made me one happy little gringo.  We ate lunch with the bishop's parents today.  Then we had a practice thing for the family history theater thing-a-mabobber that Elder Cordova put together.  It was mildly chaotic, but I could feel the special spirit that he said came with it.  After that we went and found Hade's and talked to her for a while and got her to sign the baptism permission.  I was very thankful for that.  Hade is the awesome kind of girl that makes me excited to have kids.  We ended the night eating with Elena and her family, which took a little longer than anticipated.  A poem from Elder Clark to Elder Rushforth over the phone: "If I could choose to be any part of you, I'd be your tears. They came from your heart and are born in your eyes.  They live on your cheeks and die on your lips."  That's some solid freestyle bromance poetry.
 

My companion and I with my MTC teacher Hermana Parraga. I actually didn't even recognize her when we took this picture.  Hahaha

Week 15 in Manchay

Encontrar (Find)

We did more proselyting this week than what I've done in a long time. There just weren't that many citas that we had scheduled during the week. It was cool though because it gave us plenty of time to walk around the streets here searching out these escogidos. Due to that, we've been blessed with a few people that we've been able to find through the Lord's tender mercies. Most of them are in the category of potentials still, but we have a few new dudes with a fecha bautismal. There was one dude that kinda stood out to me this week named Gabriel. When we found him we were on a street where we had planned to contact, but there was a super loud party going on a few blocks up. I was about to suggest we try another street instead, but that was when Elder Cordova contacted him. It seemed like a solid contact from my point of view. We were looking for his house yesterday and were a little lost, but he came out and found us, which is always a bit of a miracle when that happens. We went in and started talking to him and discovered that he was super cool and was looking to help his family out more since he was a single parent. We were teaching and he was being super receptive, so we were both pretty excited. I got to explaining about baptism and he said he had already been baptized with the Jehovah's Witnesses and considered it mockery before God to be baptized a second time. We tried explaining it to him. I also tried looking around in Acts because I remembered a time Paul baptized some dudes a second time because the first was incorrect, but I couldn't find it. I think we got him to understand the authority thing, but he still thought you shouldn't get baptized a second time because it says so in the bible. I knew that if I could show him Paul's example, he'd accept it. So I said a silent prayer and pulled out my pocket bible to search for it one last time. Miraculously, I was able to find it and he accepted a fecha for September 21. I know that if we work our hardest and pray and do everything we need to, Jesus will do the rest. I'm very grateful for the opportunity I have to be here and to be able to see the blessings of the Lord so abundantly in my life. Have a great week!

-Elder White

 

Monday

Today we met as a district at 7 AM in 3 Maria's for our long awaited and hugely anticipated trip to Lomas Del Lucome or more commonly referred to by us as "Huertos Pichu". It costed 10 more soles to get there and eight soles more to enter per companionship than we were expecting, but YOLO. The place is hidden deep inside the Chacra, beyond Manchay but still in Elder Rushforth's area.  There is a line where trees magically appear and weird green things called plants grow all over the place. It's greener than Utah; it's basically how I imagined Peru when I got here. We thought we'd knock the hike out in 2 hours easy, but did it in 4 hours 15 minutes. Our guide was kinda talking a lot at first. The 5K hike was super pretty. The weather was super misty, so everything was soaked. Getting to the summit was kind of hard because the mud was super slippery. Getting down though was like walking on oily banana peals on the already super slippery mud. At first it was funny, but then I biffed it hard thrice as well as many others and I just started to try to make it down alive. The guide was older, but somehow she never fell. Hermana Lester neither even though she had hiking sandals and was holding her comp's hand the whole way down. I got cut up and also got muddy all over even on my glutes. It was a really fun hike. Elder Rushforth put me in charge of the districts goals for charity. Responsible beans.  (See previous post for pictures and videos of the hike.)

Tuesday

Tuesday the 13th it is the Latino equivalent of Friday the 13th. This morning we went and did service for Jorge Garcia. He took us down to Tres Marias where he and his mom had a party shop. I guess that they were closing it down because we helped them take everything out of the store. Elder Pedrozo and Elder Vasques both went on a field trip together to the dental office, so Elder Peterson came with us to the service. While we were waiting for the moving truck to arrive, Jorge's mom paid for us to play football and air hockey. That was a highlight of the day. We were carrying the stuff up the stairs to his house on the hill. I was carrying a heavy box backwards. I thought there was only one step down, but there were really two there. So I slipped and fell and scraped my knee decently well. I've wiped out four times too many in the last two days. I need a break for a bit. Pro tip: add some milk to your (precooked) bowl of aji-no-men (Peruvian Ramen noodles) to enhance your daily "I'm-broke-so-I-resorted-to-eating-Ramen-every-day" experience. We spent the entire day contacting. I mean, I love talking to people in the streets about Jesus and all, but I feel like ever since this transfer started I've been doing that nonstop. Remember Jacke? We really have no idea what happened to her. Her fecha was for this Saturday. Man, she was one of the most chosen people I've met. Next thing you know a water truck blows up on her, she gets an internship as a cashier, and a few days later stops answering our calls and is never home. Elder Cordova even called using the other Elders' phone a while back. She answered, but then hung up when she realized it was him. We don't like talking about her a lot because it pains us to do so. We had correlation tonight. There's a phrase in Ecuador for crossing the road: "Si tienes plata, que me atropelles. (If you have money, run me over.)" Needless to say Elder Cordova is even more reckless than I am when it comes to crossing the street. He'll walk into heavy traffic and people will slam on their brakes and stuff. Then he'll turned to me and say, "Look at the power I have of crossing the road! The cars stop for me. They respect me." He's basically the grandma from Mulan.

Wednesday

Well, I woke up at 6:40 this morning like normal now and there wasn't any water in the house. I didn't let that deter me though; I've got a streak of exercising running and I ain't about to let something as childish as not being able to take a shower hold me back. This Elder has a newly re-found desire for six pack abs... that no one's going to know he has since he can't show them off to anyone. Don't worry--I don't smell too overly awful (I hope). Besides, Elder Cordova puts on enough axe in the morning for the two of us. We walked outside and saw that the previously dirt road was now a mud road; a pipe had burst in the night and a crew was there fixing it. We had consejo de distrito this morning. There was torta (cake). And it was pretty good torta if you know what I mean. It's kind of fun having a birthday buddy. It's kind a crazy stretch because I feel like there's been a bazillion birthdays recently. For example, just in the zone it was Elder Woolf on the 28th, Elder Clark on the 30th, Hermana Lester and I on the 10th, and Elder Cordova on the 19th. I'm grateful that we had cake today. 

 

 

I feel like Hermana Ana knows when we eat cake before lunch because when we do, she always makes us papa a la huancaina with aroz con pollo afterwards. Today was another great day for contacting. The Quispitupa's had invited us to dinner, so we hiked up to their house. It was 5 'til 7 and we were three minutes from their house. In situations like this, I generally don't stop to contact. But as we were walking along, I saw a lady washing clothes outside a house that we tried to pass by to visit a contact for on July 13. I almost didn't go over to talk to them, but then I was like, "Why not?" Well, I'm not sure if that one dude we were initially looking for actually lives there, but the lady I talked to was pretty cool. Now we have a cita set up for tomorrow with Nely and her family. We would have been 10 minutes late to the cita with Quistpitupa, but it turns out that Nora and José Gabriel had left to algun lugar (somewhere) that was super lejos (far) to do some paperwork for Nora's new moto and they didn't tell us. But it's also kind of my fault since I forgot to call and confirm it, even though I've talk to Wilber and Fioloa about it every time I've seen them in the street. But that really might be part of the Nely miracle because I never would have gone all the way up there if I had known they weren't home.

Thursday

This morning... I did exercises! Look at me! I'm highly key really proud about that, but only on the inside. But this morning the zone got together and we watched President's weekly video. After that, we all headed out to do a service thing. It was for some Catholic antiguo investigators that also have a sibling that's a member in Surco. Basically they're adding on to their house and needed help. So basically we went up to their recently built third floor and spend two hours-ish there. We sanded for a while and then started putting primer on the walls. As for me, I was in charge of sanding the ceiling nearly the entire time. I had a fancy sandpaper on a broomstick rig to help me out. But I'm still glad that I skipped the arm exercises this morning. The family was super nice. They fed all of us Pacha manca afterwards.  That was probably the best pach manca I've ever had too.  I had to shower after of course.  It was unbelievable the amount of sand I had in my hair. We went to go visit Nely and her son Travi this afternoon. It was a more quiet cita because the two of them aren't super big talkers. Nely wants Travi (who is 13) to be on a better path. Nely's a widow, but more a single mom I'd say. She separated from her husband (probably because he was drunk and always threatened the family with knives and wanted to burn the house down) before he passed away in an automobile accident. They both accepted fecha for the 14th of September. I'm not very good at getting quiet people to talk a lot, but I guess I'll get some more practice now. We wanted to do noche de hagar with Claudia and her family to be able to meet their friends, but it didn't work out. We passed by to chat a bit. She's not a bad person, but for whatever reason has lingering resentment for Nora. I got a package from my family today. American beans. I was like, "Yes! J-Dawg sauce!" and Elder Clark was like, "What's J-Dawgs?"  Oh boy.  Pobrecita (poor dear).

Friday

Well, we were going to do interviews with President Amato today, but then we got a last-second text from him this morning saying it would have to be postponed until the next week. That kinda through a loop and things, but whatever. I finished reading the Book of Mormon again the other week, so I started reading it again, but this time in Spanish. Frijoles cheveres. We went to take out money today. Good thing too because I didn't have two 10 centimo coins to rub together. Elder Clark and Elder Pedrozo we're running behind a bit because they were coming from an emergency meeting with the other leaders in the mission. So we were all there talking for a while. Some of the other missionaries had some interesting lives before the mission. For example, Hermana Lester always makes jokes about coming home from parties or something after curfew. The conversation carried into lunch a bit and one of the other Elders mentioned that again. All I could say was, "Well, I don't think I really had a curfew. I never really went out, so yeah..." I lived a very tranquilo and sheltered life before the mission. Today was another great day for contacting. The contacts were popping today too. I feel like I was more productive today than I've been in a long time. It was kind of crazy really. We found a 17-year-old pregnant girl outside her house. So I contacted her and we were talking and she explained that she lives alone basically because her mom only came home on Mondays. We kept talking and after a minute we asked, "You doing anything right now?" "Nope." "The gospel can bless you a lot. Do you want us to show you how?" "That would be cool." She suggested that we go to her aunt's house around the corner. We were like"Ok," but explained we'd still have to teach outside since there wasn't a man home. So we went over there and she went into the house for a second. I could only imagine how that conversation went: "Hey tia Maria, how are you?  I just met a gringo and an Ecuadorian 10 minutes ago while doing some chores out front of my house and now they're gonna teach me about Jesus.  Can I borrow a chair?" Well, we taught her. But in the end, she didn't seem 100% sure about coming to church and stuff so we didn't extend the baptismal invitation. We did set up a return visit though so we'll see what happens there. I would credit success today to being willing and going the extra mile to open my mouth to anyone that would listen.

Saturday

Last night I had my biweekly Jiffy Lube dream. This morning, we did weekly planning. It was pretty boring actually. We ran into Andrea and Geraldine (the Callupe's next door neighbors) again yesterday and Elder Cordova took a cita down for today. Only Andrea was there though. That's no problem though, so we started to talk to and filter her looking for a spiritual need. It was cool because she seemed a lot more genuine than the last time I talk her when Elder Lainez was here. Everything was going well and tell I mentioned going to church tomorrow. Then she was like, "Well, my parents said that we can't go." Freaking Satan up to his mischief again. So we spent a hot minute explaining the Sabbath Day and how it will help her. We asked her to ask her parents again and explain to them why she wanted to go. Andrea's aunt, Andrea, came in while we were teaching. It was even odder because she greeted Elder Cordova with a kiss. I've learned to stiff arm every handshake with a woman so that doesn't happen. From there, we went up the hill away to have a cita with Nelly and Travi. We got there and I saw Nelly washing the clothes in her hut so I was like, "Hey Nelly what's up? We're here!" De frente nos dijo (she told us in front), "Otro dia joven.  Estay ocupadita. (Another day.  I'm busy.)"  I replied, "But we just finished hiking all the way up here to talk to you.  We have a cita with you guys."  "Yeah, but I'm busy right now.  Come back later."  I was too frustrated so I talked to her little nietas.  Elder Cordova worked some magic (basically just telling her she can't disrespect our time like that) and seven minutes later we were talking with both her and Travi. We didn't wind up teaching though because neither of them read the folleto. Travi said he'd come tomorrow though. Klesy and Mariela invited us, the 4 of us, to eat dinner with them. That's always tasty beans.

Sunday

So, stake conference was this morning.  That's in La Molina, which is like 30-40 minutes away.  Travi told us he was going to go, so we left to go get him.  He's 13, by the way.  We were running about 5 minutes behind, so I led us on an extreme speed walk up the mountain.  We got there and he was still asleep.  He got up and was like, "I can't go; I don't have shoes."  We were just like, "¿'  He explained that his shoes were wet.  He didn't really show a whole lot more of an urgency or desire to find other shoes.  So in the end, we left empty handed, which 10/10 times stinks.  We got there and the stake center was llenaso (full). All us missionaries were early and formed a giant line of handshakes going into the capilla.  I almost felt bad for those poor souls that were continually overwhelmed by the amount of hands to shake.  The stake choir was actually super good.  I was very impressed by how well they sang.  About 30 minutes in, we got a call from Carmen.  She told me, "We're here, but the church is all locked up."  After a bit of investigation, we discovered that they had gone to Musa.  All I could think was, "This was why we wanted to come pick you guys up."  Sadith came with Wendy about 25 minutes later, but Carmen went home.  Cool beans.  The La Molina ward is kinda crazy really.  President Falabela (the area president) lives there, as well as a bunch of gringos.  Some of them have some pretty crazy jobs.  For example, there's one that goes into the jungle and hunts down the Narcs for the Peruvian government.  After that we went and almuerzoed (had lunch) with La familia Quilca.  We were talking to Luis Angel and asked if he had a novia (girlfriend).  He replied, "No.  I'm gay.  I like dudes, and reached for Elder Cordova's leg.  Elder Cordova just about jumped out of his seat.  That was one of the funniest things I've seen in a long time!  In the evening we went and had a cita with a 40 or so year old dude named Gabriel.  He was a very cool dude.  Things took a surprising turn of events because he's a single dad, not a single mom.  He was super escogido.  Then I got to explaining baptism and he revealed that he had been baptized in the Jehovah Witnesses and that getting baptized twice was wrong.  I knew that somewhere in Acts it talked about that, but couldn't find it.  He still wasn't sure after more explaining, so I said a silent prayer and was able to find it and he accepted a date for September 21st!  We spiritually pile drived him!  His sons are potentials.  He started reading the folleto at the end and I thought, "We'd better hurry and leave before he finishes it." hahaha

Week 14 in Manchay

Perserverar (Persevere)

Well, we worked hard this week, we found some people to teach, and they... didn't come to church. Weeks like this are kinda frustrating. We were there in the church waiting for people to come when someone came that I wasn't really ever expecting to come, came in. His name is Alonzo, is 20 years old and turns out is kinda cool. I'm pretty sure that he has a minor case of down's syndrome. He's always in the streets wandering around our area. So I always invite him to come, but he had never come before. But I always would invite him and ask why he hadn't come. My jaw just about dropped to the floor when he walked up to us. He said thanks for inviting him and I sat him with a member. I guess this kinda just goes to show that we need to do some follow up and not give up as President Ballard teaches us. If people can consistently feel the love that we, the missionaries, or other people have for them, eventually they'll come to open up to us more and we'll be able to serve them better. We just need to keep trying time and time again with a good attitude! Have a good week!

-Elder White

Monday
It would seem as though Satan has been putting in some overtime hours with me as of late. For example, I was doing great all day until a wave of nausea hit me out of the blue at 9:45. I never threw up, but I did feel crappy. I was praying hard yesterday that I wouldn't feel sick after my fast; and it worked. I told Elder Cordova that I wasn't feeling well and he just told me, "Well, I guess you should have prayed to not be sick today either." But really, it's really starting to weigh me down that we've only got one investigator and that we are not finding more. And it's not exactly like the people are super humble here. I mean, the ward has had 130 baptisms in the last two years. Elder Cordova and I have found a few people here that I thought for sure were going to get baptized, but most of them fell. I feel more spiritually in tune than I've ever been in my entire life. We are working hard and talking to everyone that we come across. But very few seem to even stop to talk. I'm not saying that we are perfect because there's a couple of touch up things we can do to be better. But like I said, I'm feeling kind discouraged and confused right now. God will get us through it though. We got up early and went to Cieneguilla for the zone pday. It's green kind a like how Chosica is green. The chapilla had a big grass field, so we play kickball there. Teaching Latinos to play that was kind of interesting, but we got through it. I'm not the athlete that I used to be. That was a depressing thought. We still had fun playing though. We went to the only bagel shop in Peru, which is owned by a Canadian from Montreal. We asked him, "Why are you here?" He just shrugged and in his Canadian accent said, "There weren't any bagels here." I'm not a bagel fanatic, otherwise that would have been super cool. Somehow we got permission from President to borrow a copy of Toy Story 4 from some members. It was high key pirated, but we only borrowed it so that makes it alright I suppose. It's hard to find a disk that is not pirated really. The movie was fun though. We were going to go and visit la familia Machicao, but they got into an argument and canceled on us again. We past by later and Hermana Trinidad was like, "Yeah, well, Jose Carlos just came home drunk and I'm supposed to go to Rome at 10:30 AM tomorrow but I don't have pasaje, so my husband and I are going to go see if our family can lend me s/900." Rough day, but hopefully she was able to get it worked out.

Tuesday
Well, I felt motivated enough by my performance yesterday and the constant jokes from the others in the room that I got up early to exercise. I got more than 20 minutes in arms, legs and abs-enough to make me sore all over. #GetYoked We had District Council this morning. It was pretty normal. Elder Leite came there. I was thinking that he was going to burn us since the numbers in the zone are a little low right now. He just motivated us though. Well, as you know, my birthday is this weekend. To celebrate, the zone leaders always buy cake. I didn't know that last year when my birthday rolled around. The whole zone breakfast thing was just a coincidence last year; no one in the zone wished me a happy birthday. I brushed it off at the time though because I figured that that was just something you do in the mission. But now I know how it is. I usually brush things off like this and I did. This morning there was no cake, and it felt like a sucker punch to the face. I didn't say anything or act in any way, but on the inside I was pretty hurt to be honest. I think I've convinced myself that they're just going to wait until next week to do a birthday cake so that they can split it between Elder Cordova (the 19th), Hermana Lester and I. So I'm hoping for that. Today was another day of almost pure contacting. But unlike the past few days, we were able to find three people in the streets that were pretty cool that we set citas up with. That really boosted my spirits. At night we went to a correlations meeting. Those were some pretty standard beans. I like Erick (the second counselor in elders quorum) because he shows more initiative than other ward mission leaders that I've worked with in the past, so we'll see how this goes. After that we went to go and try and visit a cool contact that Elder Cordova made last night. He said he was in Santa Anita when we called him before correlations and also that he'd be home in 40 minutes. His neighbor showed us his house. We went and knocked on the door and the teen told us that the contact wouldn't be home until late. We explained the situation and he said that he'd go ask someone else. A big 70-year-old came to the door and was like, "He doesn't live here, he lives on the other side of Lima." I said, "But we just talk to him." Then he said, "You calling me a liar?" It wasn't worth it so we walked away. The contact wouldn't answer his phone. We ran into Juana and asked if she was coming to the activity on Saturday. She said, "Of course. That day's your birthday too." I told her my birthday date months ago. I'm impressed. That really made my day.

Wednesday
Last night was one of those nights where I was determined to not fall asleep during my prayer at night. It was going well and I was wrapping up when I suddenly tuned back in 20 minutes later to Elder Pedrozo and Elder Leite (intercambios) talking. They've made fun of me for snoring, but oh well I guess. Last night we also found to burger places that are both respectably good-- 1 for s/5 and one for s/25. And I didn't get sick, so that means that they're safe. Tasty beans. We had a cita with a 16-year-old named Rebeca today. It wasn't that's overly exciting of a cita, but we extended her the baptismal invitation for the 7th and she accepted it. She's kind of a acting unsure about it though. We are hoping that it's just her personality, but were also exercising a lot of faith. We asked her, "What's your biggest fear?" "Like, other than insects?" That was a first. We got a reference from the Hermanas. They were like, "So and so is a single mom and wants to meet with the Elders. She doesn't know her address and doesn't have a phone. But she'll be at the Botica (drugstore) in front of the park at six." I got permission to call them and the only other piece of information I got was that she's about 51 years old. So basically we wander back and forth between the four boticas and front of the park in the busiest part of our area looking for a 51-year-old lady for half an hour. Naranjas (oranges). During lunch we were cracking jokes and stuff like normal. Elder Leite asked why the chicken crossed the road and everyone was pretty confused because Latinos don't make those jokes. They asked me and I explained that there is a lot of ways the joke can go. They were like, "Really?" "Yup. For example: Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the idiots house." *Everyone looks mildly confused* "Knock, knock." Elder Cordova: "Who's there?" "The chicken."  It took a second but then everyone died laughing.  We did a NDH with Elena and her family tonight. We told them to invite all their friends, but when we got there they said that they have been too busy to invite people. We brought Wilber to accompany us, but I don't think that they were to excited about that, possibly because I hear Angela and him like each other. I taught about temples and we had a lot of fun. Angela already has her recommend and Andree will get his on Saturday.  We tried passing by Diego and Donatilda's, but they had been sleeping and weren't feeling it.  Also, Dona said that Diego can't get baptized August 31 because "he won't be ready".  It's frustrating because he's a hard core escogido.  My charity will be tried.  We've just gotta maintain that faith and hope though I guess.

Thursday
It's kinda funny because Elder Cordova says he knows how to cook. Then there's days where he fills a bowl with water, adds two spoonfuls of oatmeal. He went to microwave it an Elder Clark was like "Whatcha doing there?"  "Oatmeal." "With only 2 spoonfuls and that much water?" "It's going to expand in the microwave." *Facepalm*  But, he now knows how to make a bowl of oatmeal. Right now I love saying, "Prohibido el ingreso de maquinaria pesada (Prohibited the entry of heavy machinery)" with a thick gringo accent. It's pretty funny. You can adapt it into an exclamatory phrase too if you want. "¡Pucha Maquinaria Pesada, Batman!" The comleteness of the phrase depends on your emotional level of exclamatories. This morning marks three mornings in a row of doing exercises. I'm proud of myself. My body hurts. I didn't do legs felt this morning because we went and climbed Quinapata after studies. We hiked all the way there and only 30 minutes. It's not the greatest place to contact since there aren't too many people, but you got to know your area.

Elder Vasques came here with Elder Pedrozo on an intercambio today.  It's interesting to see how people have changed in the year since I met them. There was a lot of contacting done today. We passed by an inactive's house to see if we couldn't get her excited to come back to church with her family. Then we went and visited Anabel. That girl's got a good strong testimony-- she read one or two chapters from the LDM every day! It's too bad that she can't leave on a mission. Diego lives right around the corner from her, so we paid him a surprise visit. I wish we could do more with him than just wait for Saturday and Sunday to see if he comes. We left him another chapter in the Book of Mormon to read and told him to watch Prophet of the Restoration. We continued contacting the rest of the night away. There's a hill we were walking down to get to the next part that we were going to contact. Right at the bottom, there was a 70-year-old lady and a 50-year-old lady with a baby talking in the street. Usually that situation is a no-go for me because it rarely works out. But I contacted them immediately. The younger of the two is named Carmen. I asked my usual starter question: "¿Usted tiene deseo para acercarse mas a Cristo? (Do you have a desire to get closer to Christ?)" She explained how they've been wanting to go to church for 15 days but they haven't been able to come due to a ton of stuff going down. For example, their son's car was stolen, her grandson (>1 year old)  is going blind and the grandson's mom has problems with passing out and is a single mom.  But they're coming to church on Sunday and we're gonna go visit them on Saturday.  Pretty solid milagro.

Friday
Today is my last day of being a teenager. That's a depressing thought. Tomorrow I'm going to be an old fart. Oh well I guess. I think that doing sit-ups gives me back problems. There's a pop in my back every time that I go back down. And now my back hurts but as they say: a deformed back < six pack abs. While the other Elders went to Almuerzo de Ingles with President Amato and his family since they finished their English study books, we stayed back and did some good 'ole weekly planning.  Nothing too exciting or new there.  The citas that we originally had scheduled for today didn't wind up happening.  Rebeca was a no show, so that was kinda unfortunate.  We went and visited Nora and Jose Gabriel.  We were making small talk and stuff, but you could tell that things weren't 100% back to normal yet.  After a bit I just said, "How's the family?" Things got kinda quiet and uncomfortable.  We talked indirectly about what happened for a bit.  We also set things up with them so that we could take them to the temple.  The rest of the day was spent contacting.  I felt better about my contacts today, so that was nice.  We were wrapping the night when that same drunk from July 29th named Julio went up to Elder Cordova and started contacting him.  Other than not giving him a lot of personal space and using a lot of hand motions, nothing really happened.  It was taking a while though, so I went in to try and rescue Elder Cordova.  I was ignored though no matter how many times I tried to cut him off.  His other drunk friend noticed that we were trying to escape and came to try and hep. The other drunk was a chill dude.  He was like, "They gotta get back to work, let 'em go."  Then Julio was like, "They're in my territory, they're on my streets." But the other drunk responded, "The streets are everybody's; only your house is yours." So then they were arguing about that and Julio was trying to draw lines and stuff.  They were using a bunch of slang and swearing.  I didn't understand every swear word though, so it was pretty funny to me.  Amidst the confusion, I tried to sneak away with Elder Cordova.  Julio noticed though and ran after us and put his arm around Elder Cordova's shoulder.  To me he said, "He come down here," and put his arm around me too.  I tried to escape and he wouldn't let me.  I finally convinced him that we had to go, so he turned to my comp and said, "Hey, take care of him.  Please."  Then he cupped my hand in both of his and said, "You are good.  So very very good.  Have a good night."

Saturday
Welp. I am an old fart now. I just feel like there's a huge difference between 19 and 20. This morning we went to go play soccer against the office bright and early. That 5:20 AM alarm went off and the other elders immediately started singing happy birthday to me we went to take combi down the curva, but it was really full. The others got on, but there wasn't room for me. The bus started driving away, so I hurried and hopped on. So the combi flew down the mountain with me hanging halfway out. That was exciting. There were rumors flying around that Pres. Amato was going to play with us, but he wasn't there. I scored a goal so that was some highlight where the beans. We, (well, the gringos at least) had fun. The Latinos always get a little too into it.

On the way back, Elder Clark sang "Happy birthday to you. You live in a zoo. You smell like a monkey and your comp's one too." We're pretty Savage about the monkey jokes with him, but she handles teasing extremely well. We came back, showered and studied and then I left to call my family. I went to the Internet café and had been talking with them for all of 20 seconds when the zone leaders called us and said, "So we just talked to the assistance and we are actually only allowed to call on our parents birthdays, so you got to come back to the house right now." I was mad. Not because I couldn't talk to them, but rather the zone leaders waited until the last second to ask if I actually could. I had made it very clear sense Monday that I was going to call. But oh well I guess what can you do? We had a CCM attack today. Elder Free came with me. He was a good dude. We went and had a cita with Carmen today. Turns out that an an active member that I've contacted in the street a handful of times is Hermes. It also turns out that Carmen is a real chatterbox. So much so that we only had time to invite her daughter to get baptized (Wendy), because when we did she told us Wendy's whole life story and every concern she's ever had about her. It took 20 minutes and I couldn't cut on her off no matter how much I tried. Then we have the award activity: Hakuna Matata. We were each in charge of a NDH game. I may or may not have wing it on the spot. The whole activity had a great turn out. The ward to sang me happy birthday, so that was hype. The members were all super cool. Francisco sent me a treat. Wanda called and later gave me real nice box of chocolates with some refrigerator magnets. Hermana Ana made some tasty chicken sandwiches and out homemade 3 leches cake.  all in all, a great day! Birthdays are like a box of chocolates-- you never know what you're gonna get.

Pictures from the ward activity:

Birthday celebrations:

Sunday
Yesterday after lunch, we stopped by the house real quick like normal to use the baño. We were taking care of business and all the CCM dudes walked over to my desk and started looking at my "velocity of Satan's fall from heaven overtime with respect to air resistance" equations. They had all just graduated and we're still a little traumatized from their calc classes. There was one Elder, Elder Sanches, who went to Lone Peak. It was kind of cool to talk to him about people I knew back home. Well, no one that we thought or were planning on seeing came to church. Not a single investigator or any converts that have been baptized in my area since I arrived (except Victor) were there today. But there was one dude that came today that I had never planned on seeing their: Alonzo. He's kind of a little bit more special, but not overly so. He's always over wandering around Portada 3. Every time I see him, I tell him to come to church with us. I'll also ask why he didn't come the last week. I never thought he'd actually come though. Turns out that he's also 20 years old and is a cool dude. When he walked in, he said, "Thanks for inviting me hermano Elder." The missionaries all talked about ministration second hour. Alonzo said that he liked church, so we took out a cita with him. When we got to his house, I remembered I had tried visiting him before but it didn't work out. He wasn't there, so I called and he said he was in the park on his way up. We waited around 5, 10, 15, 20 minutes. He wouldn't answer his phone either so we left. We went around to go visit a bunch of CR's and inactives to see why they didn't come.

Pictures from a hike we took this morning for pday:

The war wounds from the hike.

Week 13 in Manchay

Hello There

This week was pretty good. We've been working really hard looking for people to teach, but weren't really finding anyone. So the zone came to our area to help us out. I called all the references that they gave us during weekly planning and no one seemed to show enough interest for a visit. I finished that kinda like, "Welp," when Elder Clark was like, "Oh, hey, I got one for ya too." I called that one and was able to set up an appointment for us to go and visit them that night. That day though I was on an intercambio and went with Elder Pedrozo to the other area, so I left my comp with Elder Clark. When I got back at night, they were happy to tell me that a miracle had happened. They told me that Elder Clark must have written the address down wrong because that wasn't the families house. After the attack I had made a contact with a young adult that wasn't super escogido, but she said that her 16 year old brother Diego had actually been looking to come to our church. He didn't have a phone number, but I wrote down the address and later passed that on to Elder Cordova so that he could pass by there later. Well, turns out that Elder Clark's reference is Diego's mom and that he just accidentally wrote the address wrong jajaja. Crazy how this all works out. Diego accepted a fecha for August 31. Between this experience and others that I've had throughout the week, it's really become evident to me that there truly is very little we ourselves can do; we're all just pieces in God's plan and the best we can do is live worthily to be used as an instrument in his hands over and over again so that we can receive the blessings that he has waiting for us. Su anhelo sera hecho. It truly is marvelous the work that he has here on earth. Have a good week!

-Elder White

Monday
Well we were going to play soccer this morning between the zone and offices. I got up and all ready to go jersey and all. I was trying to get everyone out of bed and Elder Pedrozo called everyone to make sure they were all awake and on their way. Well, no one was awake. There wasn't a whole lot that happen today. It was Pday de limpiza (cleaning), so I got that bathroom deep cleaned right up. We had a bit of spare time, so we watched Cars and then Kung Fu Panda. Everyone is at the point in the month where their body and mind are saying "Treat yo self," but the wallet is saying, "Save yo self." We wanted to visit Juana to give her the CR envelope. We called her to see if she was home and she told me that she was at Klery's. I was like, "Cool beans. We'll stop by tomorrow then." Then Juana was like, "I'm leaving right now. I'll be at my house in 20 minutes." I tried to talk her out of it, but had no such success. We ran into her with her friend Brenda near Juana's house. We gave her the envelope and she gave us each a nice slice of chocolate cake. Pretty good trade if you ask me. I had a pretty crazy contact tonight.  A slightly bigger dude walked up to me and we went to shake my hand. He smells of cigarettes. There might have been some marijuana and alcohol mixed in too. He tested to see if I spoke English and then compared our two countries. He was like, "Peru es super tranquilo.  Puedo salir de mi casa sin minguna preoccupacion.  Pero dondo tu vives?  (Peru is super quiet.  I can leave my house without any concern.  But where do you live?)"  *Makes a finger gun, then a slicing motion and puts another finger gun to his head.*  "Super peligroso (dangerous)." Then he asked us if we were the Mormon church and I was like, "That's a nickname, but really it's the Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day Saints."  "What's a nickname?" There was some confusion, but then he decided the two are different. He talked about how the Mormons send out missionaries and how he was in the church back in the day. Then he randomly asked me, "What happens if you kiss a girl in the states?"  "Uh..." *Makes same hand motion as before.*  "They come after you till you're dead. Here though? I can sleep in peace." He was saying that and a whole bunch more stuff, so I was trying not to laugh.  "I was broke I left to buy bread and got shot thrice in the head. *Makes motion* I was in a coma! *Makes Motion of being in a coma* God didn't save me, I saved myself."  "Ok.  Do you want to come back to church?"  "I reject your invitation."  "I'm going to go then."  Then we went to Hermana Ana's for a despedida (farewell) dinner for Elder Vilca.

Tuesday
I met a weird dude this morning while contacting. It started fairly normally, but gradually grew to be weird. I invited him to church and he hesitated explaining how the Catholics and other religious groups grew  to be super extreme in the 18th and 19th centuries, but then started slacking off more by the time the 20th century roll around. He said that due to this people stopped caring so much blah blah blah. Then I was like, "But do you want to draw closer to Christ?" I got a response of a political analysis of Adam, Abraham, Moses and Jesus. He was also talking about Cain and evolution and world religion in general, including Mohammed. He talked so fast; it was nearly impossible to cut him off. We had a cita with a girl named Sara. It wasn't the most powerful lesson in the world, but she excepted fecha. She's the only one in her family that's not super Evangelical. I mean, her parents happen to be the pastors at the Evangelical down the road from their home, so hopefully that's not a problem. Sara did just turned eighteen on the 28th of July though (which was Peruvian Independence Day with pretty lame celebrations). Her 13 year old identical twin sisters were there wih their dresses on to listen to what we had to say. Interestingly, it turned out that none of the three of them were baptized. We went to go eat dinner with la familia Quispitupa today. It was kind of awkward and mildly frustrating because they hadn't even started cooking until after we had been there a bit and everyone went off to do their own thing leaving just Jose Gabriel to talk with us.  Elder Cordova took a nasty fall while we were pushing a moto and got cut up a bit.  I think we might've had a cita with a polygamist  tonight.  In the contact he was crying to me about the problems his pareja (wife) was having and was there with a different lady than tonight and he avoided talking about the other one though.  If he wanted to get baptized, he'd have to choose his favorite and leave the other I guess.  Today was Elder Clark's birthday, so we went to Hermana Ana's to celebrate.

Wednesday
 We had consejo this morning. There are only three new people to the zone, so nothings really changed. They took it out Cieneguilla 2, and Elder Peterson is the district leader over there now just over Hermanas. So I gave him a hard time asking if he had an accompaniment for the consejo or saying, "How's my relief society president doing?" I'll transfer long, Elder Cordova has been saying that he was going to arm wrestle me. He's been doing his exercises and stuff while I've done nothing, so his confidence was high. Trash talk goes a long way though; it's all in the mind game. I beat him in three seconds flat. Elder Cordova isn't the best at solving rentals or puzzles, which is funny, especially since he likes to retell them to people after an poke fun at them for not knowing. There wasn't a whole lot that went down while we were working today. There was a lot of contacting involved. We paid Juana a visit to see how she was doing. At night we had a correlations meeting. Nothing overly exciting to report of there. We were finishing the night up contacting outside of a restaurant near the chapel. These three teenage girls came walking along, so I talk to them. I initially thought that they were all 12 to 15, but it turns out that they were all 11, 13 and 19. They figured out that I was a gringo pretty fast, mainly because they asked, perhaps. I was talking about church and stuff and the 19-year-old said to me, "You look like a model." I was just like "Uh..." because of all the things that people would say to me in my life, that was one of the last things on the list. "You look like a mannequin kind of," she adds, "Then when you moved your leg and I was like * makes motion of someone surprised to find out that the mannequin is actually a dude." Well, I don't know if they'll come to church on Sunday but that sure was an interesting contact. I don't know if I should be impressed or what.

Thursday
Here's something I notice myself doing recently: whenever I meet someone if they are 19 to 27 or so, I consider them to be my age. Anything less is young and anything more is old. We went to go take out money this morning. Good thing too, because none of us have 20 centimos to rub together. I got a little overly excited this last temple Pday. We had another long day mainly dedicated to contacting. Sara canceled on us, but she said that she'd take a friend with her to church on Sunday, so we'll see what happens. We went to go visit Anabel. She's better than all the rest of the members about carrying her LDM around. She's still being pretty good about reading it too. I was impressed. The zone is going to come and do an attack in our area tomorrow, so we went to internet real quick to make some maps. It was kind of an adventure trying to figure out how to use an outdated version of Word documents in Spanish, but we got her all figured out. We went to drop it off in the house and then we got a knock on the door. Elder Cordova went out to greet the Jehovah Witness that was with her 13-year-old son. He was friendly and introduced himself after having her do so. When he said "Elder" you could see something in her countenance say, "Oh no."  She tried to teach us some stuff about the afterlife and I just said from the door, "We're pretty aware of what happens because we teach about it all the time too. Actually, we are missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. If you'd like, you're welcome to come to church Sunday at 10 AM with us." "Good night," she said as she walked away #Getwrekt  We found Nathaniel's missing LDM in the church the other day, so we used that as an excuse to go visit them.

Friday
We've built a house this morning. That was pretty cool. We rounded up Huertos and went to go help Luis, Ebony, Analiese and Major (some members) to build their house. Luis works on the other side of Peru and it is only here for one week twice a year if I can remember right. I've known for a while that they were going to build a house when he got here. It was one of the prefabricated houses, so that makes things a lot more simple. We chiseled holes in the cement, sawed big big sticks with the Peruvian nail file saw thingies, and we threw on a tin roof. It was pretty dope. By the time we left, the house was halfway built. We were on our way home and were about to go up the mini staircase by our house when this dude called after us, "Hey Hermonos!" We kinda looked at each other to see if the other new who is this dude was. We started talking and basically here's what happened: His name is Ricky (probably about 28 years old), he moved here less than a year ago and he works in a tech shop near the chapel. He asked us, "You guys are the Mormons right?" * politely correct him on the name* "Ah yeah cool. I want to participate there. How can I go about that?" He didn't really have time for a cita and he had left to do a job when we passed by in the night, but he said he'd be there. It was a pretty big blessing to be able to run into him. Turns out that Elder Cordova and I both felt the impression to talk to him, but we were both dirty and tired so didn't stop him. It's a good thing he stopped us. It just made me reflect on the tender mercies of the Lord. Everything from Luis asking us to stay an extra 10 minutes, to taking a different combi then normal that dropped us off in a different spot, too traffic taking longer than normal to let us cross the street, to him finally talking to us. The list goes on and on. That was pretty dope. On the other hand though, all of our citas fell today. But that's okay because I got to do a ton of walking. And the zone came to our area for the attacks too. It was nice to have an extra 12 missionaries here with us to help us out. They took down a few citas for us and gave us some solid references to work off of too. So all in all, it was a pretty cool bean kind of day. I ran into Rolando again. For some reason I never recognize him at first each time I run into him in the street. But this is the fourth time I've run into him, so there's got to be something there. He said he'd come on Sunday.

Saturday
There was an emergency zone meeting this morning. It was really just an occasion to do interviews though. I like having more time in the mission. Everyone treats you with more respect than when you're newer. I did my interview with Elder Pedrozo.  He told me, "Elder Cordova  me cuenta que ustedos estan trabajando como negros pero ne estan encontrado muy bien. ¿ Es verdad? (Elder Cordova tells me you are working hard but you are very well.  Is this true?"  Yup, that was the case.  He told me to keep doing what I'm doing, but also to pray more earnestly and exercise even more faith. Elder Cordova and I did some good 'ole weekly planning afterwards. We took advantage of that time to call the references that we got from the attack. As my companion always says a lot of them were "naranjas (oranges)". In other words nothing happened with a lot of them. There was one that was good though that Elder Clark gave us named Dona Tilda. I called her and put a cita up for the night. We did an intercombio with the zone leaders today. Elder Clark stayed with Elder Cardova in Manchay while I ran off to do some baptismal interviews in Cieneguilla with Elder Pedrozo. There was a brief panic because we accidentally arrived forty minutes early  and the Hermanas told us that the couple was just leaving from Los Olivos, the other side of Lima. But somehow they arrived 20 minutes later, so that was cool. They got baptized right after their interviews. While Elder Pedrozo was doing all of that, I sat outside the door and took the time to sew up my book because it was falling apart a bit. Long story short, I was trying to get the metal Julius Caesar needle-threader thingy on my thumb so that I could apply more pressure. Well, now Caesar has a 23rd hole in him and I punched a hole halfway through my thumb. That was mildly painful. While I was busy stitching my thumb, Elder Clark and Elder Cordova were working miracles in our area. They went looking for Dona and couldn't find her. But last night I contacted a young adult named Gabby. She's not a chosen, but she told me her 16-year-old brother Diego wanted to come to our church. So I was like, "Cool beans," Took down the address, and gave it to Elder Cordova so that he could pass by sometime today (he doesn't have a phone). So they were there and were a like, "Huh. This Diego dude lives three houses over." Turns out that "this Diego dude's" mom is Dona and Elder Clark wrote down the address wrong. They both accepted fecha for August 31st. Another part of that miracle is that a half hour before, Alfredo call them and offered to accompany them for anything they had for the night.

Sunday
Elder Cordova is a crazy dude sometimes. The other day I was telling him about how Parker had to go home because of his shoulder. Then he got into an elaborate story about how he visited a bunch of chiropractors in Ecuador asking them if they'd dislocated shoulder for him. Oddly enough, they all laughed and said no. Then he said that he finally found a dude that laughed, but then agreed to try. He was like, "That dude ripped me off! He charged me more than $30 and all he did was some weird massages. What a rip off!" "Why?" you ask? Because he said that if he had his shoulder dislocated, he could do some cool dance moves, like his friends. Today was a day. We left Ward Council early to go pick up Juan Diego and Dona. Juan Diego was there, but his mom left to go visit some family real quick though saying that she'd be there in time for when church started. He was ready to go to church though, so we went straight there. We kind of got there about 40 minutes early, and him being a quiet dude didn't really help the situation. You see, we typically go out an hour before church starts to start picking up people just because people usually delay for some reason before coming with us. But he was ready to go, so we were there just kinda awkwardly waiting. His mom came like she said she would. They had to leave after the first hour, but it was still pretty nice. Nora came up to me crying and explain to me that she and José Gabriel had another argument yesterday morning and he left the house and didn't ever return. We took Hermana Ada with us and had her talk to her a bit outside. I get really frustrated because the main root of all their arguments is because of the way Claudia treats Nora. Nora tries talking to her every once in a while, but Claudia just gets mad and treats her even worse. I tried calling José Gabriel but he didn't answer. We got Nora calmed down after giving her a blessing. Later in the day we passed by Claudius because we wanted to talk to her, but she had some friends or family from faraway staying with her so I figured I'd do it another time because I wasn't looking to roast her in front of everyone like that. We went to go teach Diego and Dona again. It went decently well, but I could tell while we were there that something was off. Long story short, Dona is one of those people that wants to prepare themselves 20x over and doesn't want to get baptized August 31, but Diego says he's down.