¡Vamos a la Playa!

So this week started off so weird.  Tuesday I felt the need to bring consecrated oil teaching, and it came in handy.  We spent most of the day in "los parques" which is like the ghetto of Pueblo Nuevo.  We were walking out of a teaching appointment and a random lady, we later found out that her name is Edela came up to us and asked us "you are missionaries of Christ right?" after we said yes she proceeded to tell us about a young guy without family here who needs help.  We went to David's (that his name) house, which is nothing more than a small room and talked with him.  David is skinny, like he looks like a skeleton, and he was in bad shape.  We gave him a blessing and taught a brief lesson.  He said he was from Callao, which is the bad part of Lima (like the south American equivalent of Over the Rhine).  Edela told us that the reason he was sick was because he experimented with black magic and ate "huesos de muerto".  We have returned to check on him, and he is doing better, but seriously needs a doctor, but doesn't have money for one.  He has a solid knowledge of the Bible and a stronger desire to change his life.  We don't know much, but I can just tell he has been through a lot.  After that lesson we went contacting and taught a lesson to a mom and her 9year old kid, Brian.  I thought the kid was a mute because we asked him so many questions and he didn't say anything.  At the end of the lesson he asked his mom something like "they aren't here for me?" I was astounded he could speak.  His mom explained that he is afraid of Gringos because he thinks they are here to take the organs of kids.  We then when to the church to speak with the branch president and he had a piano for the ward.  It felt like Christmas, I have been teaching E Palacios how to play, and I am so thankful for all the lessons I have had with June.  I might be teaching others in the ward how to play too.  Though teaching piano in Spanish is hard, because it is a whole new set of vocab.  Also in the upcoming week we are starting our English lessons, it is crazy how much the people here want to learn, but lack the opportunity.

On Saturday we went to Pacanga for service for Pierre's family.  All the service we do is either with a shovel or with a machete, my gringo hands have so many blisters now, but it makes me appreciate the hard work people do here.  Pierre worked with us, and it is great to work side by side with an investigator, I Cannot wait for Pierre's baptism.  We then had Cuy (otro vez) and it was really good.  Most of the food here is good, but the one thing that is bad is when you think dinner is chicken and it ends up being rooster (there is a big difference).  Also Marco, one of our recent converts, has been talking to us about serving a mission! This is so exciting and makes the work even more fulfilling.

To day we went to Pacasmayo, which is the nicest area in our zone to go to the beach.  It was a lot of fun to relax and just play games with the district.  I love the work we do here and I love enjoying the culture on Pdays.  I know this is the work of God, I can feel it in my soul.  I want everyone to know exactly how important our message is.  I love this opportunity to serve, grow and learn, through Christ and his gospel.

Te Amo

Elder Perryman

¡Este semana fue locismo!

Hola Familia!!!

I don't really know where to start because of how much has happened this week.  I had my first dream in Spanish!  It was so werid, we were teaching a lesson, which is basically my life.  Right now I am in Chiclayo to get my package.  Going through Serpost and customs and sketchy areas of Peru was fun.  Overall I just always feel like I am on an adventure here.

So we had transfers and our zone has been completely switched.  Elder Palacios (Mi compañero) is now the leader of our district.  It is fun because that means I get to go on more intercambios and go with him for baptismal interveiws.  Also one of the new(he has 6 months in his mission) gringo elders in our zone is Elder Pugliano (I know his sister and he knows the Price's).  It is crazy how small of a world this is.  He is super funny and we talked for a while at our zone meeting.

I am going to take break and talk about food.  I love how most of the food here is rice and chicken.  Maybe one day I will get sick of it, but for right now it is great.  My favorite dishes here Bistec a lo pobre and Lomito saltado.  Bascially our pinsionista is great.  The other day she made us Cuy.  That is right we ate guinea pig.  It was super weird because we saw it alive one day trying to jump out of its box and then on our plates the next.  It tastes like chicken, but a bit more chewy we had it fried.  It is considered a delicacy here, and some people even eat the bones.  I do miss North American food, but we made burgers last night with our zone leaders, because they have a stove type thing.

The baptism for Ysabel was great.  During her interveiw I played hide and seek with her kid, Noé.  Noé has so asbergers and so much energy, I am always amazed at how much patience Hna. Ysabel has as a single mother.  I enjoy playing with Noé (He makes lessons interesting) and whenever we have oppurtunities to play with the other kids in our branch, I feel like I just enjoy being a big kid sometimes.  This was my first baptism and I baptised her 3 times because her food came out of the water.  So I gues I already have 3 baptisms in my mission (haha).  Afterward she bore a super powerful testimony.  It is crazy how much faith the people have here. One phrase here is "The house is small but the heart is large," it is so true.  Her life has so many challenges and she is also humble, but everytime we teach her she talks about how important the gospel is in her life and in the life of her son.  I know with out the gospel in my family I would not have real joy.  Many things in this world make us happy but eternal Joy only comes through Christ.

We have a family in Pacanga who is amazing.  One girl, Carla is a member and her siblings are investigators.  We taught her sister, Erica, the other day and we asked her to speak to us frankly about how she feels about the church.  She loves it but something keeps her from obtaining a desire to be baptised.  I had her read Mosíah 18:9&10 and I broke down the scripture for her.  With each question I could feel the spirit stronger and stronger and I know that she will be baptised before I leave the area.  Her brother, Pierre is our age and is terrific.  We had a conference this week and he came with us to both the Saturday and the Sunday session.  The sessions were fantastic and the Sunday session was a broadcast from Salt Lake for Peru. Elder Bednar gave an amazing talk about repentence and the need for a sincere heart.  Then Elder Scott spoke and he didnt use a translator, he spoke spanish perfectly.  Elder Pugliano leaned over and said to me "Elder Scott just got 10 times cooler" after his talk.

I love the mission, I love the people, I love the gospel.  I regret not opening my mouth more to share this grand message before my mission.  I know that the mission will prepare me for life, and life will prepare me for eternalñ life.

Te Amo

Elder Perryman

Segundo Cambio!!

This week flew by!  I cant believe Collin is already leaving on his mission.  I am sad to here about Brother Bang.  He is a huge spiritual giant in my mind and will always be an example of a righteous life.  We found out who was leaving today.  Elder Palacios is staying to finish my training.  I feel like I have been teaching forever.  I just finished a lesson today where I told the story of Zeezrom and asked Paco (a recent convert) how he could apply it to his life.  It was weird that I feel comfortable speaking and actually getting down to deeper thoughts in Spanish.  Oh,, also the time clock in the mission is super weird.  We eat around 8 every day and today we have a strange email time because we went to Chiclayo for cambios, so sorry this is coming in late.  Also because of the weird day I don't have much time to write.  I got my package! but I did not have enough time to pick it up because today was hectic.  I did however meet my grandfather (The trainer of Elder Palacios).  I said goodbye to my first district leader and saw a bunch of old friends.

I don't have my memory card with me, but I have a lot of great pictures to send next week.  We had a baptism for Marco this past Saturday and will have another this upcoming Saturday.  Marco is a 20 year old farmer from El Alto.  He is super humble and has great faith.  He is funny because he talks SUPER fast and always asks me about how to say stuff in English.  He has a great spirit and I just want to take him along for visits with us.  Isabel is a single mom with super humble circumstances, but has a mountain of faith.  Her child Noé has Asperger's and is a handful.  I love the little kid, he always makes the lessons eventful and the other day I actually walked him to church with Elder Palacios because his mom needed more time to get ready.

The other day for our Noche misional we watched the other side of heave (in Spanish of course) with some members and investigators.  It was super funny, and make me so glad that I am on my mission.  All the members started calling me Kalipoki afterwards.  I love the members.  It is crazy how much I have grown to love it here.  I never would have guessed that I would be in a small little farm town in Perú and be having the time of my life.  I know it is because I am preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ.  It is the source of happiness in my life.  I don't have much time, but I just want to say, and emphasize, that I know this church is true.  I know that true change is wrought through the teachings of Jesus Christ, and miracle come through faith.

Te Amo

Elder Perryman

¡Churro!

This week has gone by so fast, but we have done so much.  The mission is nothing like what I expected; it is so much more.  The work, the struggles, the blessing, all make me thank God at the end of the day.  This week was filled with service, and it is always done with a machete.  We started this with some service for a member named Pedro.  Pedro and his family are awesome, both him and his wife are return missionaries, and they still give so much to the building up of the kingdom.  We tore down one of his adobe walls in his "backyard" area.  Almost all the homes here are made of adobe, and it is basically mud with a bit of goop to hold it together.  It isn't pretty but it is a very cost effective way of building.  The service was super dirty, and thus super fun.  Later that same day we went to a little farm village out side of Pueblo Nuevo called Charcape.  We went there just to contact for a few hours and we ended up teaching 4 lessons.  Every house except for one let us in for a lesson, it was a miracle.  The first man we taught, his name is Victor, is super funny.  When we approached him, he was chewing down on some coca leaves he had in his hat and asked us so many questions about the gospel.  We asked him if he lived alone and he explained about how his family lives else where and his parents died a while ago. We taught him about the Plan of Salvation, and I love when investigators get super into the lessons. On our way back to our room that night a lady started yelling "churro" at us, I kept turning around and would start to walk towards her, but Elder Palacios would stop me.  He told me that she wasn't selling churros, but that churro was like guapo [ means - handsome] and that she was hitting on me.  I was upset, because I really wanted a churro.

The next day we had mini inter cambios [changes] and went to Ciudad de Dios for a day.  I was paired with Elder Quiroz, who is an excellent missionary, but super quirky.  There area has a casa capilla [chapel] and they share the house with another companionship of elders.  A casa capilla is when the house of the missionaries is also the chapel for sacrament, because the area (member wise) is small.  We worked hard that day and extended 4 baptismal invitations just in the afternoon.

On Friday all the missionaries from Ciudad de Dios and Elder Palacios and I did a large service project for our branch.  A man in our Rama [Branch] needed a new floor, a new roof, and needed his walls redone.  It was so much fun working with members.  My favorite part was painting the walls with Hno. Huaman (pronounced kinda like Roman).  He is such a hard worker and worked the whole day with us, without shoes.  At the end of the day we were all crazy dirty and only had a couple of hours for missionary work.  Elder Palacios and I decided to go to Quember (another small farming village) about 15 minutes out of Pueblo Nuevo.  We taught them a solid lesson about the Sabbath day and then after ward they wanted us to play cards with them.  We usually don't do stay long after lessons, but they were our only appointment for the day.  It is a lot of fun to really get to love a family and feel comfortable in their home.  Afterwards I gave Rosa and Heber (the kids) glow sticks and we tried to find a moto taxi to get us home.  Mom might not like me saying this, but there wasn't one, and since it is against the mission rules to walk home in the dark, without street lights, we hitch hiked.  Rosa and Heber helped us flag down a car and Elder Palacios and I went home in the back of an old pickup truck.  They didn't even charge us anything for the ride, people here are so nice and always willing to help when they can.

On a note about food.  I helped carry some bags of rice this week(in my shirt and tie) and they are so heavy.  I always get dirty/dusty some how even when I am in my shirt and tie down here.  We walked by a butcher shop while contacting the other day and it almost made me vegetarian (that's all I will say about that).  I continue to have new food every week, this week was cau cau pronounced cow cow), which ironically is cow intestine.  It looks kind of like calamari, but it is not as good.  Also Peruvians cook EVERYTHING with oil.  If you want to know what a Peruvian dish looks like fill a plate all the way with rice, then cook whatever else you want to eat in oil and put it on top.

I am not sure if I mentioned this earlier but we have hot water now!  It is a miracle.  I never knew how much of a blessing hot water is until now.  Also I never knew how much of a blessing Liahonas/Ensigns are until I came out here.  I love reading articles and giving out Liahonas, I don't know what it is but people are instantly drawn to them here.  It is a sign that this church is true when we can freely give away proof of a prophet everyday.

I do not have much time left, but I need to explain these photos a little.  We went sandboarding as a zone today, and that is why this email is a tad late.  It was a lot of fun, especially because we have a great zone.  I went barefoot, which was great until I realized how hot the sand was.  Luckily there was a lagoon near by where we could relax after the heat.

I love you all, keep sending me the great emails.

Te Amo

Elder Perryman