May 26, 2010 New Companion in CCM from Bolivia

how are things in Peru? things are great.... Have i received any letters yet? no..... any recommendations right now? no... Have i been drinking the water? yes and no the ccm has clean water everywhere else does not. How did my follow ups go? didn´t have any. and my new companion well..... ok those are the short straight forward answers and i just wanted to tell you straight off because they have a new computer system that absolutely sucks can´t push enter right click or send home pictures and i was really looking forward to sending some cool pictures! oh well things have been great here in Peru i sent off Elder Tapuy and was a little sad but i know that he is ready to serve the people of Bolivia La Paz! We had one of the most amazing P-Days ever we were able to go on a tour of Lima and see a lot of historical sights as well as go to the beach and to the Inca mart which is basically three city blocks of straight up small street vender type stores, and McDonalds! No i haven´t received any of your letters yet it is taking a really long time and i feel bad because i think i lied to you, but i found out how to work the system really easy while i am here in Peru and it is through that DEARELDER.com apparently you write and they drop it off in the church pouch because they are right across the street from the CCM and they forward it to any church office building and then they deliver it to us, it is free from what i understand and if you right me i will get it not the next day but the following Friday whenever that is like if you right Monday it might come that Friday or the next it basically just skimms a couple days off of the top. but they apparently will all ways be able to find me through that and i will be changing addresses again shortly!!! I really can get my hands on anything if i really want to but it is all the Peru version so anything American would be nice. It was a really sad and a really long Saturday since we were the only 18 people in the entire ccm that had been there for more than three - four days we were unable to go proselyting, but this Saturday we are headed back to Callao! woot woot! i am so excited! Ok my new companion is Elder Tellez (tey yez) he is from Santa Cruz Bolivia and he is was cool. He really slurs all of his words to gether so he is next to impossible for anyone(North American) to understand and the other thing is he can´t understand me, all the other Latinos can just not him which frustrates me. oh well. oh he also has a lack of understanding of companions, this one time i was in the bathroom and when i came out he was gone, i checked all the classrooms went back to the bathroom to make sure he wasn´t there and then found him walking around outside. he had just decide to go off on his own, and again today when i got back from migrations i found him alone in the distributions center down here. i asked him where his companions were (he was in a trio) and he said that they had left. HELLO YOU HAVE TO GO WITH THEM! oh well this will be an interesting three weeks. other than that all is going well, i officially have been working out enough to get shin splits and have dropped a good couple of inches i wanted to send a picture of how baggy everything is but the program changed and the timer is back! ugh! oh well i know god is with me i just need to have patience and endure to the end of my 9week stay in the MTCs ugh! love you all hope to get some letters soon! oh this was a great letter btw but I'm serious about dear elder give it a shot!

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!

Peru pretty good, fresh fruit, creamy warm milk, crazy drivers, small temple!

Umm trying to figure out how too send pictures, but most importantly i do get a mothers day call, well technically you have to call me at 51-1-3494282 between 8 and 9 local time on Saturday, i get exactly five minutes no more, so basically this call is just for me to talk to mom and wish her happy mothers day. Other than that Peru is way awesome i am learning Spanish way fast my companion elder tapuy is way awesome he is from Ecuador he is 24 and has only been a member of the church for 2 years! his testimony is way awesome and I can actually understand him, i also got a compliment from elder bravo (native) which i think is like the highest compliment that any greengo can receive he said ''elder king your Spanish is very good you speak just like a native, if i closed my eyes i wouldn't know you were American!'' so I'm stoked, i know the lord is with me and that he continually blesses me in my life! um oh the food here is amazing umm there is only fresh squeezed everything, like watermelon and cantaloupe and pear and coconut and papaya and mango and every other kind of fruit the milk here is way creamy like warm whole milk with a little bit of cream i think they have a cow somewhere and they are milking it every morning! oh but it isn´t all good they had this one kind of pudding the other night, you look at it and it just looks like normal chocolate pudding right! wrong it tasted like someone had been smoking while they were making it and had used the bowl as an ash tray! i took like one bite and almost spewed! it was awful! good thing my companion seemed to like it, umm there are six people in my room this time me my companion two americanos and two natives umm the teachers here are way awesome they are teaching us way way fast and we get to go out on Saturday and do our real life teaching experience! ahhh! I'm way stoked! ummm yeah it is way humid especially today, you know those restaurants that have the misters out side, well that is what it was like today it didn´t rain it was just like being in a cloud of mist which was weird, yes we did get to go to the temple, and the temple here is wayyy small there are only twenty five people per session and i think there is maybe two ordinance rooms and not even sure of that, there are 115 missionaries here and 32 are American so there is not very much diversity and every single one of us ha a latino companion! this is way awesome i love the people here! OHH the drivers here are INSANE!! they say they have driving lanes but i have yet to see anyone paying any attention to any of them they just stop and go whenever they want, they will run you over if you don´t get out of the way fast enough and no one stops at stops signs ever they really only slow down for the random speed bump and when a bus slams its brakes in front of them! ummm president whetten and his wife are the presidents here and they are way cool they take care of every single missionary like their own children and i think they all love them more because of it! everything is great here just keep praying for me i still need all the blessings i can get! hope to talk to you on Saturday love you so very very much! adios! cho!