A New, New Companion - Thanksgiving Peru style and Christmas comes early

Well a lot happened this week. First of all we did the changes on
Wednesday and I said good bye to Elder Lima. I got my new companion Elder Luna. We went to our room to unpack his things and he was looking at the member list and
he said, wait hold on, this is my sister. Yes, his sister lives in our area.
He is from the south part of Lima and she moved here during his mission. We called the zone leaders and he had to have a emergency transfer. The transfer didn’t happen until Friday so Wednesday and Thursday we couldn’t do too much cause they live and work way close to our house.

Friday we went to the offices at 11 in the morning to switch companions, so now my new companion is Elder Roldan. He is amazing!! Elder Roldan is from Guatemala so he talks
a little bit different and that is good cause I like to hear different accents. His story is a sad one. He is the only member in his family and was baptized one year before his mission and has a year in the mission so he is a really new convert. His family doesn’t write him and the only person that does is his brother in law and he hasn’t received a letter from him in 4 months. All of his family are evangelic and his parents are the pastors of their church. He is way funny and we get a long way good. He knows the Bible like the back of his hand. He also knows the Book of Mormon really well. He is a way hard worker but we have a lot of fun, while we are working. I’m way happy for this change. It is way fun contacting people with Elder Roldan because they start bashing us and all he does is quote scripture and asks one question and they go uuuuhhhh. They don’t know what to say. It’s way funny!! We were talking with this guy in the park and he said I don’t believe in God and started laughing and we asked him, where did you come from? He said my parents. We then asked him, where do your parents come from? He said from their parents. Elder Roldan asked where did it all start and the guy was like uuuuhhhhhh. I still don’t believe in God!! It was funny, some people sometimes.

We will have 3 sure baptisms in the next three weeks. First is a Lady, she is 22 and she is progressing and everything and she lives with members that give her support so its way good. The other is Ivan, he is like 35 and is awesome. One day he just showed up at sacrament and he said, “I love your church!!! I have been to so many and yours is the best one, I feel so calm and peaceful here”. Yesterday we had a lesson with him and he was asking questions about the
Book of Mormon. He is reading it and everything. He was like so Moroni is the
son of Mormon and Lehi is the father of Nephi right? We were like yes exactly, he
knows a lot. Then we have Daniel who is 12 and he has been to church 8 times but at another ward but lives in our boundaries so we didn’t know who he was so we are going to start to teach him and he was like when can I get baptized? Then we have Rosa, she doesn’t have a date yet because she has to work things out with her divorce but she has a son on a mission and she attends every week and goes to classes and has been doing that since I got here but she will get baptized this change if she works everything out, she has no doubt or anything. We have found a lot more people the weekend so we are going to get some more
baptisms.

Ya down here there is no such thing as Thanksgiving, most people don’t even know what it is but I thought it was last Thursday so we had a party in our room with me and Elder Cheesman, we drank Inca cola and ate crackers, it was a bumpin party haha. We took some pictures.

The other day we had a dog fight out in front of our house while we were getting ready to leave for breakfast so we got to watch the whole thing, the dogs down here fight like lions its crazy, I have never seen anything like it before, but ya there were two dogs and one ripped the other one up, and was way sad and I watched the whole thing, people ran over and pushed the bigger one off the little one and the little one couldnt even walk away it
was sad.

I decided to buy myself a Christmas present this year and that is a guitar, I bought it this past weekend, and it is way sweet, it is all black with a cool design around the hole and it sounds amazing, and it was 50 dollars American, yes you can by stuff down here that cheap, it is probably a 300 to 400 hundred dollar acoustical there and it came with a case so i can put it on my back when I get transferred. Elder Taylor had one so we always played it at night or on p-day and I got pretty good so he left and took it so I bought one to have my whole mission,
Elder Roldan can play the flute too and he has one so he plays some sweet songs and he can also play some hymns, its way cool.

Transfer Week

Hola,

I get a new companion this week, his name is Elder Luna and he is transferring in from Iquitos so he is coming out of the jungle. I’m staying in this area at least one more transfer. I hope Elder Luna is way cool and wants to work.

Things are good, but our area is slow right now! We have two people with dates for baptism and a couple new investigators but there could be a lot more. Our investigators didn’t come to church so their date was pushed back. When we are not teaching we are suppose to go out and find people and talk with everyone on the street which I love because it makes my Spanish so much better.

My fleas are better, I still get bit every now and then but I don’t have problems with them anymore. Our room is pretty big my bed is the same size as my bed at home (Double) and we have wood floors, our room is way big.

I did go to immigration this week with Elder Layton and Elder Ellison and that was way fun because there were gringos there from America and we talked to them in English, which was a little weird but it was cool. We went to downtown Lima it was cool. The Temple was way sweet and I took pictures.

My Spanish is a lot better and I can say a lot, I can talk with anybody on the street but drunk people and little kids. They are way hard to understand especially little kids, who use so much slang.

Breakfast of Champions

For breakfast we eat mostly bread and bologna!! We eat it with hot milk which is disgusting. Sometimes we get one fried egg and chocolate milk But it’s nothing like an American breakfast. It’s just food to put in the belly that’s how breakfasts are here but our dinners are pretty good.

I haven’t gained weight but I haven’t lost weight either. I walk so much so I could lose weight but I eat so much that my stomach is a pop belly(Elder Ridge loves water but has to drinks a lot of soda pop because he can't drink the water), so I look like one of those starving kids in Africa, not that bad but I do have a pop belly but my face and arms are skinny.

Elder Taylor and Elder Cheesman are awesome, they help me and we hangout and talk at night when we get back and stuff like that, its pretty sweet, they are way funny guys.

We didn’t watch Batman last week, we watched the Best Two Years and played ping pong and had a barbeque it was fun. Tomorrow we are going to the temple. I am excited!!

The other day we found someone that spoke Qechua so I spoke a little bit to her, only what’s your name and where are you from cause that’s all I know, its way different than Spanish.

I heard all about Obama being President, that’s all I heard all day in the street, everybody in the street was like hey gringo! Obama is your President awesome right? I just said whatever and after a while it just got annoying so this guy said the same thing to me and I said I was from France and he was like, oh...really? and I said yah, he said oh ok and walked off and my comp was laughing.

Quake shakes Peru capital Lima, no damage reported

The big thing that happened this week was we had a descent earthquake. We came back after lunch to start our fast and I was on my bed praying and Elder Lima was on his and all of a sudden I hear this deep, deep noise kind of like a rumble and I looked up and asked Elder Lima what’s happening. He was already off his bed starting to run and said we need to go now lets get out of the house it’s an earthquake. So I got up the windows started rattling and everything was moving and I could feel the ground move but not too much cause I was running. One thing about earthquakes that I didn’t know is how much noise they generate. It’s the deepest rumble I have ever heard and it’s loud but it was pretty sweet. It was my first big one but Elder Lima said that it was actually a small one compared to what can hit Peru. I don’t want to find out what a big one is like. Everything was shaking, it was crazy.

Uncle Dave this one is for you!! We had a police chase outside our house. The cops were trying to catch this teenager. Instead of getting out of their car and chasing him on foot, they stayed in their car and tried to run the teenager over. The car was drilling the curbs and bushes trying to run this kid over. It was fun to watch because the cop wouldn’t get out of the car so the kid got away. Uncle Dave, is this how you do it in the US. Maybe you can add this to your driving course you teach. (Elder Ridge’s Uncle Dave is a police office in California and teaches the rookies how to drive)

The work is good we have a couple of investigators on date for baptism. Yesterday we had two people show up at church and said “I like your church and I want to take the lessons, so that was pretty cool. They are getting baptized on the 23rd.

On P-day we write home from 10-11 usually, sometimes it changes. After that we do an activity as a zone like play soccer or go to the zoo something like that, then go to our lunch appointments at 1 or 2 and after that we can do what we want until 6, usually we just go back to the room and hangout with other missionaries or go buy stuff at the store. Today this is what we are doing. I can’t believe it when I heard it. We are going to watch batman, yes the new batman, in our mission the Mission President lets us watch movies with his approval, I think its weird that he lets us watch movies and I don’t agree with it but I have to be obedient haha.