Here I go again

So transfers were a surprise for me. I am now in Tumbes again, the super far kind of forgotten place of the mission. I was in the zone just a little further out for seven months before my last area and now I am here again. I could easily see myself having a collective year in Tumbes. That would be kind of interesting. But hey it is the lords work, what else can I say?

It was super difficult to leave Castilla though. I got super close to the a few of the families there and I was super sad to leave them. I was there for such a short time it seemed. Presidente seems to change people fairly quickly in and out of areas. Not really a huge fan of that as I like to stay in an area for a long time and really get to work and see all of the fruits. You get to know all the members really well and it is just nice, you get to have a good relationship with everyone. It was really hard to say goodbye honestly. But what else can I do?

So now I am with Elder Bailey. I knew him from my days in Sullana way back at the beginning of my mission. He is pretty cool I am excited to get to work with him. We will just need to help Tumbes out a bit, but I am not too worried about it. I am excited to go the gym some more up here, because it is free, owned by a member, and Elder Bailey was mas o menos into bodybuilding back home. So I am going to ask for some help as I literally know nothing about working out in a gym.

So the few pictures I attached are pretty cool. One is a video of the cock fights that they always have out in the streets. It gets entertaining when the guys are drunk and scream at the roosters. Then the picture of the wall is an ad for a phone service but it says,”the city of eternal heat chooses it all” Choosing it all is part of the ad, but I just think it is funny that Peruvians know Piura as the city of eternal heat. I also uploaded a picture of my new agenda. The quote on the front is something to the effect of, “A prophet does not stand between you and the savior, rather he stands at your side and points the way to the savior.” A pretty cool quote I thought. And then shout-out to Brother Foutz for the dope Christ pic that I put on the back. Everything is pretty peachy right now. I am super happy because I got my package this week and that is always one of best times. I got new shirts, as most of my other ones have all ripped and I got a good amount of good american food, that is always great.

So outside of this nothing really happened. It is all chill. I will just have to let you know how the first week goes next Monday. Catch you all on the flipside.

Bautismos

This week we had two baptisms. A joven and then a twenty eight year old guy that we have been working with for a while as well. But the problem with him was that he was always traveling to and from Paita so it was difficult to find him. But we finally found him on Thursday and we asked him if he wanted his baptism on Saturday. He said yes, so we took it from there.

We have also started to go to the gym this past week. It has been a little difficult because I know nothing about the machines. Nothing. It is the first time I have been to a gym with machines like this. So I am having to ask for help quite a bit from the gym owner. Martinez keeps saying that he wants to get fit and I find very little likelihood of that here in the mission. But I will keep going. I can beat him in anything body weight related though. I have found a new love for pull-ups now that I finally have a bar in the apartment.

I will keep you updated on how things are going as we have transfers this week. but I think I will be staying. We will wait and see though.

Love you guys.

Busy Busy

So this week we were pretty busy. We were working around with our meetings with the Stake Presidente, Presidente Vega, and getting a baptism ready for this week. But it all turned out OK. Our baptism was another guy that we have been teaching for about three months. We have been trying super hard trying to get him baptized, but we finally got there.

Apart from this it has been crazy running around trying to help everyone with the new rules that we have to work more with the members. But it has been fun.
I will have to write the blog first next week. I kind of ran out of time today.

Busy

So this week we had our multizone conference with presidente. Everything went well with that the musical number was a bit of a hassle to get together but it went fine. The funny thing was that the one talk in conference about the book of Mormon and missionary work was basically our multizone conference. That was kinda cool. I really like conference this time there was some really cool stuff about the new schedule for Sunday meetings. I am super excited for the whole in home teaching program too. I like it.

So with having the conference and the interviews it killed a lot of time proselyting this week. But it was fine honestly we found some good people and the area is looking pretty good. But as you can see with my desk it is a little crazy just because it becomes my dump whenever we walk into the room so by the end of the week it is just a mess.

P day was a little crazy today. We woke up and had our studies and then I started to clean up a bit. While I was in the back filling up the bucket to mop I accidentally broke the water spout. So water started to gush out of the pipe in the wall. So I had to start a bucket brigade in order to make sure the sink did not overflow. And then we went downstairs and told the landlady. And she told us that we had to turn off a key on the roof. So I climbed between the little space between the wall and the metal roof, climbed on the outside of the wall, pulled myself up and turned off the key until we could get everything taken care of. But as you can see in the picture I did get pretty dirty.

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Afterwards we went to Sullana so Elder Martinez could get his haircut. And so we went got our haircut and then came back to chill before writing. We ate lunch at the little restaurante across the street from our apartment. It was just a little bit of chicken and rice. But it had a pretty good chicken foot soup that comes with it. Afterwards we went and chilled in the apartment before going to the internet to write. And that is going all fine. But that is about it for the week. I will get to see you guys next week.

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Crazy but good.

So this week was a little crazy running around the zone picking up stuff. As the zone leaders we need to take all of the baptismal records from the areas to the mission office so that they can get put into the system. And with a zone as spread out as we are it takes a good amount of time.

But the good thing is that with all of that we still had a baptism this week. Luis was baptized finally. He is a young man that we have been working with for quite a while and he was finally ready. This is super exciting honestly. Two baptisms, two weeks in a row. We would have one this week if it was not for general conference but I like general conference so I am not mad in the slightest. I am a little upset because I will get half of general conference a week late. In Peru they have the elections this Sunday and that means everyone is locked in their houses and cannot leave. Also known as they will have no church. Also known as we cannot confirm anybody on Sunday.

So Sunday is a dead day for us. I will be printing out coloring pages today as I bought colored pencils to color my day away. That will be super fun. And then to add on to it we have our interviews with presidente on Tuesday, killing our morning, and then a multizone conference will take until about four in the afternoon. So we really only have about four days during the week to actually work. So that is just a little bit frustrating.

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So I did find my new favorite place in Piura this week. It is called the baguetteria. And it is the Peruvian attempt at a french bakery. I have budgeted out my money so that I can get a little something every week when we go to the office, as it is right next door. It is soooooo gooood. The lomo saltado empenada is to die for.

Apart from this nothing much is going on. Just keep working I guess. I will see you all later.

All done.

Baptism!!

We finally had Andres baptism this week. That was awesome. The picture is of his mom, one of the most spiritually strong members I have met.

It was awesome to help her out and get to know her and her kids. It is just amazing to watch a conversion. Our area is booming right now actually. We have baptisms lined up for every week this transfer. We are just trying to work our tails off finding new people because they will be the baptisms for next month. That is a huge thing here is that we look for people and we find them and baptize them, but because we back off on finding new people for a bit, the baptisms slow down the following month.

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My companion is Elder Martinez. And this guy is a nut. He is a huge jergero. Jerga is the Spanish word for slang. I mean it is insane. When he is on the phone with other missionaries from Lima I only understand about fifty percent, because the rest is all slang that I do not understand. I am dedicating a page in the back of my agenda for all the phrases that I have to learn.

We had another consejo de lideres with presidente. That was super cool. Elder Martinez and I gave a pretty bomb class if I do say so. The council is a super cool place to learn and how we rendir cuentas. Which is like be accountable. I am not sure how to phrase it in English. We report all our numbers and everything basically.

Other than that it was a chill week.

Catch you all later.

My last pictures with my old companion….

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