Tuesday, June 30, 2015

6/29/15 Cuy

I have eaten cuy 2 times. It is small and the skin is really tough, so you have to break the skin and scavenge a little for what meat you can get out haha It may sound cliche, but it doesn't taste much different from chicken. Cuy is also kind of expensive so you don't eat it often. I didn't eat that one in the picture no. It's the elders quorum president's. He has cuy and rabbits and ducks, he had gone with us to an appointment with our convert and afterward asked us if we wanted a lift to our next appointment (in his motocuy, a nicer version of a mototaxi) and he stopped by his house on the way to feed them so we took a couple pictures. haha

L-----'s daughter K---- liked the dedication but I found out afterward that L----- had been pulled out of the dedication because she wore pants.... I had helped her through getting an interview and knowing that she'd need someone to watch her baby. I had told her how to get to the meetinghouse and told her to be in Sunday dress but it never occurred to me to clarify the need for a dress or skirt instead of pants to attend that sort of a ceremony.... so yeah that was an unexpected problem. I felt bad but thankfully she's okay, I'm just glad it didn't affect her testimony in any way!

That's awesome that Devin and Diana got a house! There's a check off the list of what I'm praying for haha which means shifting it to things to thank for! haha

One thing I miss are the reunions.

That's so far outside of the supreme court's authority its ridiculous, I can imagine the uproar. My last companion found out that Chile had passed a similar law and now the US (not Peru yet haha)

te amo chao


In explanation, the picture where my t-shirt is tucked in was taken right after a game of soccer where our team had our shirts tucked to differentiate teams and I didn't notice it was still tucked until after the pictures.

To his dad:
It was pretty nice being able to serve in Huaraz, since the new mission will be getting that area.  And I got to meet a different people than here, where the elementary school teachers have to learn Quechua to teach the children.
There are houses around here without addresses too, it can be a little annoying getting a list of less actives "without number" as the house address haha
You guys cheated I wasn't born yet or I'd be tied too (with the number of years of attending the family reunion) haha I wonder how many miles away from Lima it is?? haha (Brad told him how far it was from HIS mission when he served in Austria)

Monday, June 22, 2015

6/22/15 The Dedication of the Trujillo Temple

Happy Father's Day everyone! 
Thinking of grandpa Measles... I always think of his response, every time you'd say, "what's up?" he'd say, "rent and taxes" haha He was a great example!

My new companion is Elder Riveros, he was born in Bolivia but his family moved when he was 7 years old to Sao Paulo Brasil. He's got 6 months in the mission and is a hard worker and knows how to work effectively and is also very confident. We get along well!  Half our district was transferred, including one area that was whitewashed (I think that's how they'd refer to it in English, it is when an area is left empty for 2 missionaries to come to, not knowing the area at all). 


The dedication of the Trujillo Temple was great!   When they were sealing in the corner stone Pres. Uchtdorf invited up a few children to do it too!  First he had a boy come help seal in the corner stone and Pres. Uchtdorf was telling him to "look over there to the camera" but the translator was like 10 feet away, at a standing microphone, so when he was translating what Pres. Uchtdorf said the little boy was a little confused about who he was talking to and what was going on and it took him a minute to figure out what he was telling him to do...  but you could tell that the little girl in that picture was ready and turned as soon as Pres. Uchtdorf started to gesture and it made me chuckle. 

Later during the dedicatory ceremony, the Temple President and Matron spoke, the Area President, Elder Uceda (from Lima) spoke, and President Uchtdorf spoke and said the dedicatory prayer. When President Uchtdorf started his talk he began in Spanish and I was surprised thinking is he going to do the whole talk in Spanish but he just said a couple of sentences and then started in English with the interpreter there, but it was pretty cool.  A lady sitting next to me was whispering aloud in Spanish every word that she recognized in English, which was pretty funny. Anyway, I was mainly happy because shortly after we got there my converts L----- and her daughter K---- showed up but I didn't get to speak with them afterwards. We will have to go visit them and see how they enjoyed it!

Manjar is good stuff but sometime they make the alfajores with too much and it's too sweet is all. 

We make our own breakfast and dinner I usually eat cereal in the morning and at night either spaghetti or sandwiches.  I recently found "jamon americano" (American ham - I am assuming a deli ham) and was pretty happy so that's one thing. We usually have rice and chicken everyday at lunch around here, sometimes they have beans but that's rare more often potatoes. 

We went to visit a family yesterday and the mom said her husband was out celebrating father's day with his beer and I kind of stared at her for a second like ¿en serio? and said he should be celebrating FATHER's day with his children so we'll see how that goes. 

I'm very thankful for the commandments of God and the restored gospel in my family.
Holland started walking? Awesome
It sounds like Sam had a good mission!


The church is true.  
Thank you, te amo. chao 

Me and my companion at the house of our elders quorum president I'm getting ready to eat a cuy (guinea pig)


To his dad: (Brad was telling him about his friend, who got home, mission and his experiences.  Sam went to the Marshall Islands... one of the islands he served on was on the equator and the sun came up at 6:30 am, and went down at 6:30 pm every day of the year.  They have to be in at dark... plus the electricity was hit and miss depending on which island he was on)

What did they do at night after 6:30?  No work could get done and there wasn't even light for studying or anything... that sounds like it could have been pretty frustrating. 

My companion came from Lima and was like, woah this is such a small town with a tiny branch and few leadership so I just related what you were saying right there to him and he was like woah en serio? haha that is a very different mission than here! wow!

6/15/15 Calling a New Apostle

Yes, It's transfers and I'm staying here! My companion is being transferred. We never know about transfers until the day of (unless you're staying in your area). You meet your new companion when he shows up to the zone meeting with the zone leaders so I don't know who my companion will be or anything.

There were some problems in the interviews so they were not baptized yet. 

I---'s dad can only be home on the weekends so we didn't make any attempt to teach them during the week but we went there on Saturday as we had scheduled with them at the last lesson but I--- and his dad were not there so we invited the mom to church and asked her to let them know. But in spite of our calling them Sunday morning they didn't attend church so we'll be sure to visit them soon. 

I'm not sure what dulce de leche is... does Devin know if it's the same thing as manjar? I think it might be a different name for the same thing.

Apparently Peru played against Brazil in a game in the "copa America" yesterday and everyone was really happy that they scored one goal against Brazil even though they still lost haha I guess that's how the team is here!

What dinosaur movie?

It was pretty weird (and sad) doing weekly planning this week and putting zero as the goal for baptisms and for investigators in sacrament meeting.  We won't be able to baptize this week since we will be having the temple dedication (there will not be a reg. Sacrament meeting on Sunday).  Preach My Gospel says that convert baptisms have to be confirmed in sacrament meeting and we don't want to leave a week in between baptism and confirmation.

A house nearby has a large Barney doll for some reason and it's kind of creepy

The zone of Huaraz is going to be part of the new Trujillo South mission and all of the missionaries there will be part of that mission in this transfer. I don't know whether my companion is going to the new mission or not, he won't know until tomorrow. He's hoping he won't change missions because this is the best mission in the world!  In the weekly letter from President Archibald today he was saying that he has felt some pressure with this transfers after finding out that the transfers had to be approved by the quorum of the 12! 

I am sorry, I will take more pictures of myself even though that's completely out of my nature.

To his dad:
I wonder who conducted Elder Perry's funeral and how that felt. That reminds me, in a recent training with the president he was talking about some meeting he had gone to and someone had prayed for the family of Elder Perry, that they could feel comforted and he commented that that's an honorable thing to ask for but there's another family that's going to need your prayers even more (in reference to the family of his replacement in the quorum of the 12) haha He then proceeded to give some detailed explanation of how an apostle is chosen and some examples of how some apostles have described what it was like being called into a meeting with the quorum of the 12 (or the 11) and the First Presidency and being told that he has been called by the Lord to be an apostle!  He told a story where just after one apostle (I don't recall who) was called he was shown to a phone and told to call his wife where he paused and stared at the phone for a couple of seconds when the prophet said to him, "Did you forget the number?" and he said, "Umm, yes I did" haha

6/8/15 It Expounded the Word of God!

It was a good week! We're trying to get in a couple baptisms this week so they can see the extension of the temple dedication on the 21st.


This last week we had a training with president and he brought up some interesting points on the temple sealing which can be found in a talk given by Boyd K Packer called "Our Moral Environment" given in April 1992 that I know will interest you. Take special care to notice the use of the word 'will' without any 'if' in the quote by Joseph Smith the prophet.
President Archibald said that some time ago he came across that quote by Joseph Smith but noticed that the Brethren had not mentioned it, therefore he kept in reserve not teaching based on that (he was an Institute teacher in Alabama for quite some time). Then Pres. Packer mentioned it in this talk and ever since, Pres. Archibald started putting it into his lesson plans.

So the other day we went to visit the guy with the injured leg, and this time his parents were there so we taught lesson 1 and when we explained The Book of Mormon he said, "I have one of those books but it looks a little different" and he went and got it and it was a triple combination! My companion and I kind of looked at each other like, where did he get that? We can't even get the branch to get one for our converts haha and his dad said that he had read in it for an hour once and explained to his wife how clearly it expounded the word of God!  That was an awesome experience!  

Here are some pictures from a little museum, which was the house of Simon Bolivar known as the Liberator, who was the general responsible for getting the Spanish crown out of Peru and as I understand some other south American countries. the museum also included a printing press used to print the first post-Spanish rule newspaper in Peru (near the same time The Book of Mormon was first printed)



Anyway, chao les amo 

Also my investigator's daughter stole my camera in church the other day and took a couple selfies haha

To his dad:
That kind of detail is how my mission president teaches, like when he was describing the martyrdom of Joseph Smith and stands and puts his hand a certain distance above his own head and says Joseph was this tall and moves his hand to a different level and says Hyrum was this tall and continues to describe the events of the martyrdom and all. He is a big fan of the idea of having your own movie in your head of what you study in the scriptures. I'm working on that and I am starting to understand the scriptures differently.  Yesterday I was reading The Book of Mormon where Aaron was teaching King Lamoni's father and I realized that 2 or 3 of Aaron's brothers were there during the lesson but he didn't let them talk once during the lesson haha

The KFC closed? That's actually one of the more common American restaurants here (though I've still not had one in any of my zones) They have lots of chicken and potatoes around here, although from what I hear they serve a little more rice around here than in the KFC's in the US haha 
My companion received nutella in a package and the jar is written in German so maybe you can tell me what it says if it's not too blurry haha (a little practice with your mission language)
chao. que te vaya bien.

Thursday, June 18, 2015

6/1/15 Truly Love the People

On Saturday night we were looking at the general authorities in the general conference edition of the Liahonah we had just
gotten and talking about how some of them were getting pretty old when and our zone leader called and said, "Who is the second most senior apostle?" or something like that and we all said, "Elder Perry" and he said, "He passed away".  We were pretty startled and sad about that but of course lds.org has been talking about how he's been sick for a while.

I'd really like to see that scripture chase haha 
Were they all doing lesson 1 or different lessons or what? Does that mean they were studying preach my gospel too?

I'm glad Brady is going back out to the field. Our recent convert E---- decided to go to Chile because there is a lot of work there.  The good thing is, her stake president is my companion's uncle! (So that should help her stay active) Her sister is going to be living in her house while she's gone so we helped her move some of her stuff in and had a short lesson with her. She is a pastor so she did a lot of the talking haha Apparently in her church they have "prophets and apostles" and the laying on of hands for the Holy Ghost. We'll see what she has to say when we teach The Book of Mormon and prophets chosen by God.

We had a multizone conference and president talked about his mission.  He was explaining that we need to have real love for the people we teach if we want to make any real difference in their lives.  He talked about when he was a missionary he gave a talk on the atonement, with real love for the Savior and had success in that but afterward an excommunicated member who was there told him he was a hypocrite and could talk of the love of Christ but did not love the people there.  He then quoted his own journal which said that he was right, he had written, "I hate these ignorant Argentines" and later after putting in a real effort to learn to love them, including reading a famous book of proverbs from Argentina (and regardless of the difficulty) learned it and quoted it in another talk later in his mission and some old ladies came up to him and hugged him saying "eres Argentino"!  He told us that we have to be Peruvian and truly love the people here!
love you nos vemos

To his dad:
My current companion is pretty cool. ViƱa del mar Chile sounds like the South America version of Southern California with nice beaches and good weather and all. If that companion was from Peru I bet he was from Iquitos haha they always make fun of the people from the jungle around here haha

Ask Alex why he hasn't written me

Around here they put some kind of white make up on, they say it's sunscreen but it looks the same as what my first companion put on which was like a powder that supposedly is for pimples but I can't figure out how clogging your face with powder could help get rid of pimples. It leaves a white powdery film on their face that looks super weird haha