My Memorable Missionary Moments

I had the amazing opportunity to go on splits with the missionaries here in Banos. I got a small 2.5 hour glimpse into the life of a missionary and I loved every second of it.  In that short two and a half hours I was able to experience a lot, including the ups and the downs.

 We started by walking to a home in Banos because they had an appointment set up with the family. We knocked and knocked and knocked. I couldn’t figure out why we didn’t just leave! Clearly there was no one home and the sisters were wasting their time by knocking. After about 12 minutes of knocking, calling out to the family and waiting, a little boy who lived there came home. We asked if his mom was home and sure enough….she had been their the whole time. She told the boy that she didn’t want to talk to us and we could come back another time.

So we left. Swing and a miss.

Next the sisters needed to buy toilet paper, so we stopped at a little tienda. It just so happens that I know and love the owner of the tienda, Rosanna. We bought bread from her and keep coming back because she is so nice. So when we walked in, the sisters introduced themselves and went to introduce me, but before they could, I was over hugging and kissing Rosanna hello. They were pretty shocked that I knew this woman, but we had a nice chat with her and are coming back next week to discuss the church more in depth.

Next we were off to the home of another investigator, but while we were walking, we stopped and chatted with a woman who was sitting outside with her two kids. I’m not sure how it happened, but before I knew it, we were walking into her house and sharing a message about Jesus Christ. It was so cool! We had them read certain verses in the Bible and then some in the Book Of Mormon. It was a mom, her two kids (Natalie and Jhonny- ages…10 and 12?) and the grandma…. Who didn’t have any teeth. The house was really nice and I was so impressed with how well the kids were paying attention.

Sidenote: The toothless grandma directly all of her comments at me. Pretty much, she spent the whole time talking to me under her breath and didn’t seem to realize that I hadn’t a clue what she was saying. I have a really time hard understanding adults who speak really fast…let alone ones who don’t have any teeth! It was crazy!

I didn’t say much the whole time we were there, but I observed like crazy. One amazing thing that I saw happened when the kids were reading out  of the Book of Mormon. Their deep brown eyes were literally shining. It was so amazing! I looked into the eyes of the crazy grandma and the mom…still dark. There was such a difference alone in the eyes of the children.

A bit later we were getting ready to leave and we asked the mom when we could come again.  The mom was hesitant and gave us a date two weeks from now. In my head I was like, “Alright! She’s letting us come back in two weeks..” But the sister missionary was like, “No way, that’s too far away, how about tomorrow?”

Haha it blew my mind, clearly I haven’t learned the mentality of a missionary yet, but I’m picking up on it fast.

The little boy suggested sooner days but the mom had an excuse for all of them. Finally we found a time next Wednesday to come back and the little boy said he wanted to come to church with us this Sunday! Cool huH! We said we’d pick him up at 8:30 am and his mom said that was too early, but the boy said, no it’s ok I can do it!

Awesome little boy! Awesome experience! I had so much fun and could totally picture myself doing that kind of thing all day everyday… well at least for 18 months J

"Today I Don't Feel Like Doing Anything"

Don’t judge us for the following events that transpired.

Wednesday morning we woke up and decided that it was time for us to explore the natural hot springs in Banos and take our first hot shower. But we were feeling kind of lazy, so we power walked instead of doing our usual run. We showered a most amazing shower (it reminded me so much of the showers that you go to when you’re camping. Dirty stall, but the warm water is so amazing!). We then took the bus back up and it was downhill from there.

We didn’t feel like doing anything! We had some stuff planned for the kids that day, but didn’t do a single thing we planned. Instead we just let them color and do puzzles and pretty much whatever they wanted. But it was so nice and relaxing! 

After the kids left, I had serious plans to do some studying, cleaning, laundering etc. Here’s what we did instead.

We watched a whole movie. Letters to Juliet.

Then, we started another movie. 10 Things I Hate About You.

It was dirty, so we turned it off and started… yes ANOTHER MOVIE. Enchanted.    

                 

As we were watching it, there was a knock on our door and it was Pedro. He had brought us Torta and Chocolates! So we went down stairs and ATE and hung out with him for a couple hours.

Then we went back upstairs and watched Enchanted for the rest of the night.

We literally did nothing productive that day. Don’t worry, it gets worse. Check out what we ate.

Breakfast: Sweet Bread.

Lunch: Fried Speghetti and Rice

Snack: Tea and Popcorn with Cinnamon Sugar

Snack: Chocolate Cake with lots of frosting         

Snack: Sweet Bread and Milk. Normal Bread and cheese

Snack: Graham Crackers

Dinner: Chocolate Vanilla Swirl Cake with lots of frosting (and lots of it)

Snack: Half an avocado

Shoot We Should have Eaten Something of Substance Today: Leftover Chicken Quinoa Soup

Lets Just Try One Piece of Chocolate: 15 pieces of fancy chocolate

I Need to Get This Chocolate Taste Out Of My Mouth: More Sweet Bread

Are you judging us right now? You probably should be. But we don’t regret it one bit. It was a GLORIOUS DAY! Every girls dream come true. Filled with warm showers, chick flicks, chocolate, cake and a slumber party. 

Although, last night for scripture study, we read Mosiah 4:30 and decided that starting the next morning, we were going to exercise some serious self control.  Our new phrase (that we stole from that verse) is: Oh Man, Remember!

Meaning, when we’re craving some of that cake that’s tempting us (one in the fridge, one in the freezer) we say to each other, “Oh Man, Remember!” Remember how sick we felt going to bed that night? Remember how chubby and sluggish we felt waking up the next morning? Remember how nothing tastes as good as being healthy feels???

Oh yeah. We remember. And we’re determined to be better.

So determined, that we woke up the next morning (at 7:30) and went on a super steep uphill run, followed by a nice run down the mountain and did P90 Ab Ripper X. We were then sweaty and nasty and ready to submit ourselves to an ice cold shower when just as I was about to hop in the shower, I discovered that our water had been turned off. Just our luck. So we stink, but we are well on our way to being sugar free and fit for life!

Who Says You Can't Have It All

I do.

Here's Why:

Yesterday (Monday) we had the most perfect day in the whole world….almost. At around 3 o clock, I was ready to pack my bags and leave Peru for good. I was done.

Here’s what happened. It was the perfect morning where we went on our run without being viciously terrorized by one single dog (see previous post). We got all our shopping done for the week and we sat outside and basked in the beautiful sun while we prepared the day’s lesson.  

Today’s lunch menu consisted of lentils AND a fried egg. My favorite lunch by far. Melchora even let me get two helpings of lentils! My favorite little boy Antony (who only comes on occasion) was there that morning, happy as ever.

 Life was so good!

Until one punk kid came and ruined everything. 

He was maybe 15 or 16 (it’s hard to tell ages cause lots of people are short). He had a leather jacket and a mohawk with stairsteps shaved on either side of his head. All he needed was gages and a tongue piercing. Anyways, some of my little boys were playing outside and before I knew it, that punk was chucking rocks and throwing punches at my ninos. Now, my little ninos were at fault as well I’m sure, they were spitting and trying to fight back. But I was so stinking mad at this punk kid (I think his name is Jose) and one of my older boys (Luis) who were just being big, fat bullies. I was super disappointed in Luis, because I really like him and he has potential.  Long story short after much loud talking at them and trying to hold back my kids and lock them in the center, I finally got the boys to leave. I was exhausted though. I had crying boys, I had yelling  boys, I had angry boys trying to get past me and find a way back outside. Keep in mind that all of this was going on in a different language.

Finally 3 o clock came and the kids left. I went upstairs and laid on my bed, so exhausted. We had plans to go see a waterfall with our friends at 3:30 and I just did not want to go. 

Well after about 15 minutes of wallowing and napping, I hopped out of bed and we headed down into Banos to meet up with our friends. We ended up going to Cajamarca and had an amazing time! We had our first red meat in a long, long time and ate some amazing hamburgers. Later that night (like at 8ish, our friends (Liz, Miguel, Pedro and Alecksi) came over for FHE or Hogar Noche.. (I think). It was so much fun, we did it half in English and half in Spanish. We played Nertz, ate popcorn, had an awesome discussion on the scriptures and Liz and Miguel brought us some awesome sweet bread that was SO good!
 

Cajamarca

Three of our AMAZING new friends

Cajamarca is an interesting city

We died and went to heaven whilst eating this burgers!

FHE!

After our friends left we just basked in how great that day had been. The three of us stayed up and told embarrassing stories and laughed all night long. Finally we popped in a chick flick and hit the hay.

It was a nearly perfect day. It had a fantastic beginning, an amazing ending and just a minor bump in the road somewhere down the middle.

High Fives All Around

Yesterday we did something that we thought would be impossible. 

We went into and out of Cajamarca ALL BY OURSELVES! 

We caught the bus in, found our stop, found our way through the city and found the spot to get back on the bus and head home. After that, I felt like I could do anything. Here’s a few snippits of what we did yesterday:

First we went to the Aldea (orphanage) and played with the children for about 2 hours. I’ve never been to an orphanage before and it was a lot like playing with our kids here at El Bichito, but just knowing that these were orphans with no family and no home of their own… wow, it completely breaks my heart. But I fell in love with them just as quickly as I fell in love with my Bichito ninos.  I sat and played (and lost) four games of chess with a 16 year old boy named Jose Luis and all the while, the younger kids (whom I haven’t even met) would come and crawl up in my lap and just want to be held and loved. They all called me “Senorita” but that made me feel old, so I tried to get them to call me Elia.  Also, while we were there, we got burnt to a crisp. I remember being warned that Cajamarca is super close to the sun or something so you get a lot of sun really fast, but we didn’t have time to put on sunscreen before we left and I have never been this red in my life! Luckily mine is already starting to turn into a nice tan.

After that we took ourselves around the city and tried to get a feel for it. We spent a good 30+ minutes searching for a certain pizza parlor that we’d been told about and when we finally found it, we discovered that it didn’t open until six, which is too late for us to be in Cajamarca alone. Here are some other things we learned/saw/heard:

A boy our age, who was Mormon, from the States AND spoke English. Meet Elder Parker Seitz from Vernal, Utah. MADE OUR DAY!

Don't mind how tired, dirty and au natural we look, but do notice the cute coats we fell in love with whilst shopping at the mall!

 We walked by a man on a cell phone, after he passed us we heard him tell the person on the other line that he saw a bunch of gringas.

I am much more apt to ask directions or help from a Peruvain man with glasses. They just seem nicer and more approachable.

Pelt the gringas with water balloons as hard as you can is a popular game all throughout the city. Next time, we’ll fight back. 

There was an adorable man our age on the bus who gave us his seat. He was clean and therefore, so cute!

We saw a cage of dead guinea pigs on our way home.

When you order fried chicken…it’s not like KFC. It’s more like normal chicken that has just sat in a pool of oil for an allotted amount of time. 

Old ladies with no teeth follow us around and beg us to by their weird candies.

We made it in and out and around all by ourselves. We are alive! Over all it was tons of fun!

Home Sweet Home

Saturday January 14, 2012

Today was such good day!

By The Way, this is our humble home :)

We went and explored town a bit. There isn’t much in the actual town that we’re in, but there is a bigger town just a five minute drive from here. We decided to walk instead of drive. We were passed by at least a hundred (not exaggerating) taxis, combis and buses that tried to give us a ride. They couldn’t seem to understand why three rich Americans were walking to town. Especially when it started pouring rain on us. But we kept walking and eventually the sun came out and shone brightly on us. 

In town we looked everywhere for a bakery for fresh bread, but couldn’t find any! We did get more groceries and familiarized ourselves around town. We also saw the Sister Missionaries, but they weren’t really that excited to find out that we were Mormon and excited to come to church tomorrow. Oh well, the church is still true :)

We came back and tried organizing all the supplies we have for the kids. THERE ARE SO MANY! We also cooked a real dinner tonight of stirfry and quinoa and avocado. It was so good! While cooking, I explored the kitchen a bit and had a bit of a shock as I discovered that WE HAVE AN OVEN!

 

It was hiding under a cardboard box with junk on the top of the box. We had no idea and were SO estatic when we saw it. Ohhhh I’ve never been so excited to see an appliance in my life. Seriously… close to tears excited. 

After dinner we decided that since tomorrow is Sunday, we really ought to try and shower and wash our hair. I’m not going to tell you how long it’s been since we’d done that…. But assume the worse :) The weird thing is that we couldn’t really even smell each other or ourselves. So we were doing pretty good. 

One option for cleansing ourselves

Keep in mind that we have absolutely no hot water. Ice cold showers! So to help with this, we decided to get our blood pumping with some P90x. We set up a laptop in the kitchen and went to town on Kempo kickboxing. As we’d “Jab, jab, upper cut, across” we’d chant phrases like “Cuantos. Anos. Tienes!” and “Que. Te. Gusta. Hacer!” to help Brittany learn more phrases and words to use with the kids. I then started teaching Abigail and Brittany the pledge in Spanish as we kickboxed. I’m sure we looked ridiculous, but it did the trick!

We ended up washing our hair in the sink and then running really fast into the shower to shower off

Also, we saw our first mouse today. It scurried past the bathroom as we were getting ready for bed…. :( But over all, such a great day, we're beginning to feel more at home.