Sunday, May 16, 2010

Woo Hoo, score three for Callao! But back next Saturday for appointment

It is soo great to hear from you too! I don´t know what it is but something about Peru is killing handwritten letters, or at least making them that much more special when missionaries do receive them, did you know they have Dear elder here? i don´t know how it works but apparently they do!  anyways i feel like the last couple of letters have been lame so i will try and make this one worth publishing.

first off i broke the rules so that you could have a picture of my first native companion and a few shots of the inside of the CCM (Central de Capacitation de Missional) (i think) and if i get struck down then at least i´ll be doing missionary work on the other side! 

ok so they were right we do get to proselyte on Saturdays here it is a way awesome experience and i loved it. Me and my compañero elder Tapuy were sent on a bus to follow up with some less actives in Callao (ki-yow) ask Sister Oaks about it i don´t have time to get into it other than the fact that it is definitely not the safest place in Perú.

so we show up at this chapel, which is just like the CCM surrounded by a ten foot fence topped with broken glass and spikes and lots of other stuff. and we meet this member man MIGUEL who is was awesome and we along with him and a teacher go out proselyting and as were are knocking some doors these two guys maybe about 25, 26 years old come up to me and start talking really loud really fast at me and i have no idea whats going on and i look at the teacher and he talks to them and says he doesn´t understand and they start jabbering at him and he says they want to know where i am from and how long i have been here so i say mesa Arizona and one week, i don´t know if they have any idea where mesa Arizona is, but it got them to walk away, so i was thoroughly worried as we walk up to another house about an hour later (during this hour we did a lot of walking and talking to people through doors, classic missionary style reactivating members) when these other two guys walking down the street call out to me something like ´´oye russo´´ which apparently means something like ´´hey russian´´ again i look at the teacher with a funny look and he tells me in straight up English that, that is not good because there are gangs in this area. OK so I'm thoroughly freaked out as we are now walking around the streets of Callao, when these 3 niños about five or six years old see us and more importantly see me the only white person i think they´ve ever seen and they come up to me and ask why I'm white and why i have red hair and are way cute right well as we start walking away all of the little children pick up rocks and start throwing them at us so we just keep walking, woo hoo score 3 Callao! then about five minutes later this woman runs up to us and starts yammering on in Spanish, and what i gleaned from what she said was something like ´´are you guys crazy don´t you know this place is dangerous you need to get off of the street like right now!´´ so needless to say we hurried out of that area and started tracting on the next street over.

GOOD PART we found this old lady who had joined the church but had become inactive, and her granddaughter who is a very strong catholic and they let us in and we were able to talk to them about our church it was way awesome, my companion started us off by having us sing i know that my Redeemer lives in Spanish and the older lady was teary and we were able to talk about the restoration and have a great spiritual experience and make an appointment to follow up with them this Saturday!

ok and i also now understand why people eat dog here, dogs are everywhere, i mean everywhere, and its not like they are even any ones pets they are just everywhere and they don´t ever move as you get close to them they just lye there. its weird but i guess when your as poor as some of the people we saw in Callao you eat what you can get.

anyways we went to Interpol today which was way easy they didn´t even ask any questions they just checked our teeth and then they took our picture and finger prints and let us go. i can´t wait to go to the temple tomorrow morning (we went to Interpol instead)

oh the food here has officially become bland you have arroz con pollo for lunch and pollo con arroz for dinner, occasionally a fish thrown in. oh and there is some havoc on our dietary systems here. lots of rice backs you up way bad! and lots of the fresh juice here give you diareah, so you have to find a great balance of all things here! ok well I'm out of time if you have any more questions try and dear elder me and i will prepare a response so i can think rather than just write fast fast fast love you and bye!