Elder Chad Bergquist: 2 Baptisms Set!

Yes, the postal service is technically still on strike in Huaraz but not in Lima and we receive our mail from the mission office in Lima anyway, so don't worry it.

(I told him that my lesson that I am teaching the young women next Sunday is on true conversion)
True conversion, yeah that's a really good topic, just like the talk by Elder Bednar I told you about (HERE) where he spoke of the Relief Society president and true conversion meaning having the character of Christ, to look outward when you have all reason to look inward.

Our zone had about 5 or 6 baptisms on Saturday and Elder Pilacuan and I have 2 set for early November (if they go to church on Sunday because that's all they're lacking is a 3rd time attending). Yes, I participate in lessons, of course. My Spanish is coming along. The work is going pretty well but we went to Lima for training which meant leaving on Tuesday at noon and getting back at about 6 am on Thursday, but it was good. We had a 6 hour meeting with the president discussing different things, including him opening it up to questions (we usually only have one or two questions because he goes into so much explanation). We rode a bus with big reclining seats.

Yes, lunch is prepared for us, it usually consists of some combination of rice, chicken and potatoes as well as soup which usually has chicken feet in it for some reason. I guess they eat that here. Usually, we go to pick it up in containers except on Sundays we eat there. The wife of the bishop is who cooks for us, but it's going to be someone next door when we move (which is at the end of the month) so we might eat there every day, I'm not sure. We have a different person who does our laundry. The meals we make for ourselves often consists of ramen or cereal, stuff like that.

So my Ipod has disappeared somehow... It was lost before I could use it even once.

No, they don't take siestas from what I've seen.

On P-day we play lots of soccer, and yeah I'm enjoying it.

And, to his dad...

Um, we get an hour and 1/2 to 2 hours to write on p-day. We sometimes have service projects like the other day we were helping paint a ward member's house. We have someone whom we pay to do laundry every week and someone else, a pentionist as they call them, whom we pay for lunch but we have to take care of the other meals ourselves as we are not allowed to eat with the members (other than the pentionist). We have a refrigerator and a microwave so the other meals are pretty simple like a lot of top ramen. The members help pretty well to find investigators and we have ward council every week. In fact, on Wednesday we went to Lima for a large training meeting for all the greenies and President Archibald was saying that only here, Bolivia, Columbia, Venezuela, and Ecuador have ward council every week because we have the goal of baptizing every week. Yeah, I'm enjoying myself pretty well.

Here are a few pictures from the bus ride to Lima...