June 1, 2015

So I was in Huanta on an interchange because it´s my job to verbally abuse the missionaries in my district (just kidding :D). I think I´ve explained this before but Huanta is about an hour away from my area. The way to get there is literally one hour of nonstop U turns. It is the most windy drive ever. It´s also probably incredibly dangerous because peru driving and the way and speed people go around corners is just insane, but whatever.

So I was there on Wednesday morning, the day after being with the president and I got a call from the zone leaders. They said ¨Elder Mitchell, I have an announcement. Tomorrow you and your companion are going to change rooms with the sister missionaries because they are going to have a third companion and their current room is too small. Also there´s a guy who lives right next to them who´s single and kinda weird. Also the sisters are currently sleeping on mattresses on the floor because they don´t have beds so you need to bring 2 beds back here to Ayacucho so you and your companion can construct them and have beds in your new room.¨

So I was kinda just like wtflip how am I supposed to do that? Like, HOW DO I TAKE 2 BEDS THAT FAR?! I DONT EVEN KNOW HOW TO MAKE BEDS WAAAAATTTTT

Anyways, it took all morning and like $11 but we ended up transporting the beds all the way to the new room. We had to fight with multiple people about how much we were going to pay them because they wanted a lot of money to take us and the beds. They were disassembled so we had to like carry a bunch of parts a few times. There was actually a part of the process where I was standing on the back of a truckbed attached to a motorcycle thing holding on to a bunch of pieces of wood and we went down a HUGE hill. The guy driving just totally went all out yolo and we just flew down the hill and that was basically the greatest thing I´ve ever done in my life.

Anyways, turns out the sisters HAD a bunk bed, but they tried playing bob the builder sister missionary style and they just destroyed the whole thing. When we got there there were 2 mattresses on the floor next to a huge pile of firewood like what the heck.

The next morning we spent a lot of time cleaning and packing up everything just so it wouldn´t be all gross for the sisters. We moved all of the sisters stuff and our stuff and it all went fine. Then we built the beds which wasn´t really a big deal, but we still have a ton of wood bed parts from the old bed and I don´t know what to do with that. We were still doing that and cleaning everything when the sisters called me. It wasn´t even one of the sisters that we had moved with but she was calling from their phone. I didn´t understand what she said but it was something like ¨aasdñlhasgiow we need you to come get your mattresses and bring your mattresses back to your new room¨ So I was like what are you smoking I´m not doing that so I told her to wait a second and I hung up. Then I called the zone leaders and said ¨the sisters are complaining that they dont like our mattresses and they want us to switch them with their old ones. Do I have to?¨ He told me the same thing I had to the sister missionary and he hung up. Then we kept building the beds when the health secretary calls me and starts quizing me on the condition we left the old room. And I was just totally oblivioius like what are you even trying to say, do they not like the room? We´ll switch back because that room was amazing. Then he tells me that the sisters had gone into the bedroom and taken off the mattress covers (why would you do that?) and it just so happens that we had a huge insect problem with the mattresses. I just never knew because I never saw any bugs and we had the mattress covers on always so why would I look at the mattress itself? So I think the sisters had to spray everything with raid and leave it out to dry but I didn´t have to do anything else so I´m happy :D

The biggest downside about the new room is that the sister missionaries left a whole ton of hair all over the place. I started sweeping the floor and I decided that it was not actually sister missionaries living there, but a herd of yeti people. Like what the heck its everywhere. It gets all stuck all over the walls in the bathroom and just everywhere everywhere everywhere. Plus the sisters didn´t even have a toilet seat, like WHATTTTTT

Anyways, yeah. Yesterday we had 4 more baptismal interviews for another family. They might be getting baptized on saturday but either way we´ll be at their wedding on Friday. I know how to get married in peru so well now :D But that´s pretty exciting. Like extremely. The baptismal interviews took almost 2 hours for each of the parents so we had to sit outside and entertain their kids for forever, I have a bunch of pictures on my camera that the kid was taking. Whatevs.

Also yesterday I decided to make hamburgers out of the meat that I had that was sitting in the fridge for like 6 days. It only smelled really bad but I figured if I put enough worcestershire sauce on it and made sure it was cooked well then it would be fine. To make a long story short I only threw up 2 times this morning.

Yesterday I learned some of the statistics for the ward I´m in. There are 780 members baptized in the ward and 116 came to church yesterday. Like seriously we just knock on doors and people are like "yeah come on in, im inactive"

I think that´s the majority of the stuff that´s happening. Thanks for everything you do to help me! :D

Have the greatest day of your lives!

C U in 15 months,

Chao

Elder Mitchell

May 25, 2015

So this week was pretty alright. We taught almost double the lessons this week than we did last week even though it still wasn´t that much. We´ve been visiting members a lot to get more references because the people in the street don´t want to talk to us and we´re running out of people who are interested. Last night I was feeling pretty junky. All of the appointements fell through before we had even gotten there and I was looking through some lists to see who we should go look for. I called a few people who were interested but they either didn't answer or hung up when I told them that they were talking with the missionaries.

I gave another talk in sacrament meeting yesterday, so that was exciting. I just talked about the book of mormon. I think I talked way too fast but a member told me it was incredible and that my spanish was amazing so that made me feel good :D

I´ve been meditating if there´s anything else I want in the package. Winter is starting and I need some warmer clothes. If you could send me some long garments and some sweats that would be great. I bought a sweatshirt that I sleep in last week that´s actually pretty nice.

I´m waiting for a time when I can buy everything I need for the soup to try that out. Probably this week but we´ll see. I make a lot of hamburgers still, so that´s nice. My companion is silly and doesn´t buy food so yesterday I was eating hamburgers and he was eating ramen with an egg hahahahahahahaha.

We have another family that´s getting married on Friday next week. They should be getting baptized on the Saturday after but we´ll see what happens. We´re really excited for that too. I was with them this last week and the investigators made a comment about the collections coins that they have here in peru and that they have them all because they have a restaurant. So I was like "um ok" So I brought my book of collection coins that I have with all the ones that I already had and they gave me all the ones I was missing :DDD I was so excited for that. Not all of them are released yet but I have all the ones I didn´t have. Some of them like Machu Pichu are really hard to find and can cost up to 50x their worth. I ended up having a double of the only coin they didn´t have so I gave them so they could have a complete collection also. lololol.

Anyways, yeah. Things are going better than last week. I feel good. We´re going to go play volleyball for p day with the zone so that´s going to be fun. Probably.

I´m hitting my 9 months this week so that´s pretty weird. Not that weird, but a little bit. :)

Also please send me a recipe to make orange julius smoothies. I need that in my life right now. Thanks!

I love you guys!

Elder Mitchell

May 18, 2015

So the baptisms actually did end up happening, so that's pretty much the greatest thing that's happened in my whole life. It is so exciting when a whole family gets baptized. The baptismal service went really well and everything was amazing. The members helped a ton and everyone was happy. My companion baptized the son, I baptized the mom and one of the members baptized the dad.

Nothing super exciting happened this week. We had an interchange with the zone leaders and I need to get started on the interchanges with my district. 

Things aren't going too bad. We did have the baptisms so that was great. Actually I can't think of anything else good right now but I'll work on it later.

This city was built for rain, which is good because there's been a lot of it. Right now is the not rainy time of the year so that doens't really make any sense what's happening, but whatever. Winter is starting here. I don't know if equador is on the same side of the equator but it sounds like summer is starting.

Well yeah. Keep me updated on what's going on,

I love you guys!

Elder Mitchell