Ok, so this week will be an email just summarizing all of the stuff that has happened, because a bunch did. From water balloon fights, to crazy drunks with machetes, to our room getting a makeover, it was an eventful week, but I will start off with P-day.
So, for P-day we just stayed close to home today, and had some water balloon activities as missionaries, and made brownies with M & Ms, and even went down to the ice cream lady and introduced her to the brownies and Ice Cream, and she said she will learn how to make brownies so she can add that option to her store. Yup, there will go another 3 sols.... See what happens when you send 5 North Americans to the same ward? Ice Cream and Brownies! Oh yea, and the sister missionaries have an appointment with her to teach her and her family as well. [I taught my son well. We ALWAYS have brownies in hand at home. You just never know when you have to bring a dessert to some activity or food assignment. Love this.]
Well, a while ago I told one of my super investigators that if he gets married, I would buy him the cake. Every time I see him, he brings it up, and even talks about it to others! This guy is awesome! He even took us in his MotoTaxi to a few of our appointments and accompanied us for our lessons! That's more than a bunch of the members even do!
As my collection of LDS Church materials in Spanish grows, so to does the desire of all the ward members for what I have. People I don't even really know will come up to me and whisper like its a drug deal or something... Ï hear you have a bunch of church videos and hymns and stuff.... ¨could you pass me all of them please?! hahaha.....I respond with sure, but only if we can get a lesson in with them... so there we go! I feel so bad, the church has so many resources in so any languages, but the internet is so painfully slow here it would be frustrating to even try. Which is why I am slowly collecting the stuff from the church on my flash drives so I can give all of them copies of what they need to help out.... [I have been helping out Elder Holmes and downloading Spanish Bible Videos and Mormon Messages and sending them to him to share. They have access to a DVD player. He is now requesting some of the manual's that are available in pdf, which the church has a ton. I guess we have a new project and start burning CD's.]
Ok, there for the crazy drunks with the machetes story. So first off, living here in this part of Peru, it is quite normal to see people walking around with machetes. So with that in mind, I was sleeping. Then at 12 in the morning, we hear super fool yelling right outside our door with the sound of people throwing beer bottles and what not... So, Elder Inkley and I rise up to the 2nd floor to see what is going on below. We get up there and my companion sees the guys with machetes swinging and trying to get at each others bodies. Eventually the serenazgo [police] gets in and I think they took them away. The only people that I saw them take away were some other drugged up hooligans hiding in the bushes next door.
On Tuesday we had a district meeting I wont easily forget. I twas in English, so part of this is because we were waiting for Elder Sebando to come in, our other Zone Leader, but nobody could get in or out of our area because they closed our bridge. Yup, they closed our only bridge in and out of the area for like a week, and there were rebels. Yup, so the reason they closed the bridge is because they think they have found petroleum, here which would drastically change things here. Anything from the economy, jobs, pollution, river run off, and fish production., you know... the works... There came some people fighting for both sides, but during all this mess there were some individuals who were injured and subsequently perished. I wouldn't worry though, it was only those who made a stink about everything and tried changing it all up , its just an inconvenience for us is all... Sup you, we had our district meeting in English which is basically the best, and felt super weird and a bit difficult to actually teach and pray and do normal things in English. It is almost like another language to me. I'm in that halfway stage of Spanish right now... I understand basically everything, and now am improving my responses, which accordingly my English is changing to how I would directly translate things back into English. Its a mess..
Speaking of English, my English classes are going quite well, we always have good attendance for these, and I really enjoy teaching them as well, its just fun!
I said we got an extreme home makeover - Peru Edition, so for a few weeks ago our room leaded from the floor, so they added a layer of cement and tiled that side. We thought that was all, but nope! We got new paint, a new light, and will be getting more window panes here soon! Things are looking up! But, we still don't have water... Here I go to put out the buckets for the rain.
Mazamari is always fun as usual, exploring through farms to find members and what not is always a blast, it is just hard over there sometimes because of the lack of member support over there...
So my favorite part of the week was Sunday. Went on our normal route to scoop up people for church right, and i went over with a ward member on splits to see a sister in the ward that is totally bed and wheelchair bound and physically cannot get herself to church. So, I went over and convinced her that we could go to church, yes even with the rain... and with a bit of help from her husband, I got her in to the wheelchair. And off we went! I will tell you though, dirt and mud streets are not my favorite, but about 20 minutes later we got to church (she cannot get into the Moto Taxis here, we walked it) were about 15 minutes late, but it showed to the ward that even with the rain, and a broken umbrella, we made it to church: She was beyond grateful, and I complete an experience that I will truly never forget. It is my hope that the ward can learn from this and begin to help out these individuals a bit more. It is super interesting, whenever it rains, people just shut down. No more work, taxis, church, everything just practically shuts down.
So we are also working on a few smaller projects here like training them how to sing hymns, but also how to do their home teaching and visiting teaching visits with them as that is now part of our assignment as missionaries. Things are really moving forward here in Satipo, Peru, and I am loving every single bit of it.
I hope and pray that you are enjoying your time that you still get a kick out of my emails every once and a while! Sorry, there is no photos this week, partially because of the internet!!!
Elder Holmes
Satipo, Peru
No comments:
Post a Comment