Week in Review - October 5, 2015 - October 11, 2015

[Note: Click on pictures to make them larger]

General Conference Weekend

This weekend we had the opportunity to watch General Conference Live, but also in English! There were enough of North American Missionaries that we constituted a small room in the stake center. English is channel 3, and Spanish is channel 8. While many members were a bit tardy, we were there on time to take advantage of the time we have to listen to the prophet and his apostles in these days. I won't go through each one, because it was a conference of two days, but there were many discourses that called my attention, like discourses from Sis. NeillF. Marriott that “It will all work out” or Sis. Carole M.Stephens, “Teach them” or many others, all of which are available to still watch or listen to at conference.lds.org. On Sunday morning session however, the stake center was fill to the brim, but the other sessions were a very story. [?] Talking to the members, its almost as if the majority were unaware of the fact conference was a total of 6 different sessions in one week, and not just 1 or 2, ugh. Well, I will tell you I kept on the tradition of ice cream after priesthood session and got some with my companion, but it had to be super quick and in our room because the priesthood session ended at 9pm, and the absolute latest we can be out of our room is 9:30pm and we had to pick up our dinner to bring home, because on a normal day here in the mission dinner is served at 8pm.

Appointments that fail

An interesting topic I had the opportunity to teach this week was time management to a youth who is a recent convert to the church. An odd topic for missionary to be teaching, perhaps --- an odd topic for a missionary to be teaching in Peru – not so much. At home it is drilled into our heads in all aspects that ones time is your most valuable asset, and best do everything possible to preserve it and utilize it well, unless it is something taught by your parents, is not taught anywhere else, this making it way difficult to stress to individuals that being on time, or honoring an appointment is not a joke, or completely excusable for [?] half an hour late to activities… So, every once and a while we take advantage of this opportunity and try to make a teaching opportunity of it. The older generation is beginning to understand it, along with a few select families, but if the attention to this is not called, it makes it very difficult to teach sometimes, or to have members who will accompany us on appointments. So, with all of that there are many times we cannot visit members because there is no male present, or they simply aren't there because they decided to do a quick shop in the market – the same time we had planned with them – because they forgot and don't keep any type of schedule or reminders in the phones that they all have. Ok, rant [?] is now over.

P-Day! 

P-Day this week was pretty darn fun. We took a comvee from Hauncayo to an outskirt town called “El Ingenio”. Were basically it is just trout farms with a bunch of local restaurants. We

found a super cool restaurant not only where we could fit all 16 of us (our zone) but we could also fish our own lunch! I wasn't very patient, so I took a plastic crate and scooped out my fish. This was by far the best fish I have ever eaten in the mission, and if it wasn't so far away I would keep going back. 

The plate cost like 13 soles, and the jar of lemonade for 2 was 8 soles. So, considering in total a lunch here is 7 soles with everything it was a bit 'pricey' but it was completely delicious. After El Ingenio we took another comve over to Santa Rosa Ptn Ocopa which is a Catholic Church/Museum clear back from the 1,600's. It was prohibited to take photos inside the structure but outside there was no problem. 

We did get them to lower the entrance fee because we said we were part of a religious organization, and the majority of us, Latinos or North Americans are foreigners, so we got the price lowered from 5 to 3 each one, not to bad. A lot of cool history stuff, photos, 22 [?] that nobody can read, and many old paintings from that era. We finished the day by taking a mototaxi around, I kinda sat on the back 'seat' but nobody noticed because it is something that many people do from time to time.

Breakfasts

So you know that in the room that I am in we cook our own breakfasts, so we have a stove (no oven), a fridge and a couple other plates, and dumb stuff. Well, Elder Glasset and I have gotten to experimenting and so we have with many different items. Our latest two inventions has been stove top egg casserole and cactus syrup. Both of which might I add are delicious, and our Pension [cook] wants to buy the cactus syrup from us. It is fairly easy to find the cactus fruit here and then you just have to do the necessary steps to syrupify [?] it. It came out great! I have attached some photos of our attempts to imitate an oven on the stove top (for casserole) and some cactus syrup pictures.

Cactus Fruit

Peeled Cactus Fruit

The start of their egg casserole - stove top

Mormon Helping Hands

So, on Thursday we had the Worldwide Mormon Helping Hands project which consists of all members taking part in service projects around the world to help the community. That's it! Simple. I never go anywhere without my Leatherman, and let me tell you that was a blessing. A big part of our park clean up service project was taking down barbed wire walls, untangling it, cutting it, and installing it. Nobody had or brought pliers or thick gloves, or wire cutters, so my Leatherman and I became lifesavers. My hand hurt like heck after wards, but it all worked out. P.S. I'm glad I had my Tetanus Booster shot. :)

To explain photos that I didn't explain.... lets see.... there is a solar water heater on our roof now. We use that for all of our hot water in our companionship. And let me tell you, does that steam BURN your skin! We use it daily, and it works great! I think in dollars it is like 500. Totally worth it to not have to heat hot water and pay for the gas to do so, especially down here!

Solar Panel on roof of Elder's room

All in all we are doing good down here... My health is great, I'm definitely slowing down on my metabolism, but I guess that is a good thing. It is kinda weird to be helping a missionary finish his mission. ugh... weird. But I'm doing great.

Elder Holmes

Huancayo, Peru