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.
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