Week 17: Gray Skies All The Time

 ¡Hola! I hope you are doing well. I'm doing my best to adjust, although not understanding Spanish is making it a little hard. Hopefully I'll be able to get everything down soon. Thanks for all the prayers!

I guess I spoke too soon about the third trio thing. Elder Richards is now an AP in training, so I'm just with Elder Beizaga now. He's nice and were getting along just fine. He cares a lot about the was he looks and will spend a lot of time looking in the mirror and has a meticilous face routine. He's great though and knows a bit of English.

It's actually quite cold down here. I feel like wearing a jacket most of the day and the skies are always gray. It actually rained a couple times last week. It so weird being in the southern hemisphere where the seasons are flipped. I guess I'm glad now that I brought a bit too many long sleeve white shirts. Just a few weeks ago I though I wouldn't be needing them all that much. Pretty much every house has a mini store in it that sells snacks and basic supplies. We walked around for a while in the rain trying to find a shop that sold milk in a carton for our cereal, which we eat on days we aren't served breakfast. We found one after about 20 minutes.

I had my first mission conference this week. It's President Hinostroza's final conference since his mission is ending very soon. I was asked to bar my testimony during the testimony section. I also played "Jesus is my Shepard" for a special musical number on the piano. I tried my best to understand President's talk, but it's really draining trying to translate words I don't know that are being spoken really fast for over an hour. For lunch we were given fast food, just cold burgers and fries and a warm Inca Kola. Then we had a 6 hour long talent show. Some of them were great, like my zone's which was a sketch called "The Death of Elder Ewell." It was of different takes of a movie scene with diferentes styles. I operated the music by clicking pause and play for each segment. We played Careless Whisper for more love, and Sweet Dreams when we played it really slow. At the end we all dance to Runaway from love. Others sketches weren't so great because they were 30 minutes llng and not funny. Also because I was cold, needed to go to the bathroom, and somehow had cut my finger.

Lots of chicken and rice this week. We have leftovers from lunch every night for dinner. Last night all the chicken was gone so we dug through the soupto find chunks of beef for our meat. For breakfast on Saturday and Sunday we were just given a bunch of rolls and a tub of caramel. Apparently that's a normal breakfast down here. Earlier in the week we stopped a traveling salesman and got cachanga con dulce, which is two large crisps with a bunch of caramel in the middle. It surprisingly doesn't crumble and was really good. Chocolate milk is made in a pan and served warm and I had a drink with quinoa in it. Today for lunch I had a plate of a bunch of different meats at another companionship apartment. Chicken, pork, and beef.

Elder Beizaga and I did most of our lessons over the phone this week. Lots of people cancel so we end up just trying to set up more lessons on the phone. We gave a blessing to a baby and then walked for 30 minutes up the steep hill to Nuevo Jerusalén just to have our lesson canceled on us. We did get 8 or so investigators to atiende church with us on Sunday though.

On Saturday we hosted a mothers day talent show for the warm that started 1 hour and 20 minutes late. I did my best in announcing things although I'm still trying to get louder and more energetic when speaking in Spanish. We had people from the ward sing songs and we greeted all the elderly sisters as they entered. Some performances were great, especially the ones where the people played the guitar and sang at the same time.

Sacrament meetings is much diferentes here. It's totally normal to come up and sing a hymn as your talk. One young man came in motorcycle clothes and gloves with some sort of black eyeliner on and sang "Love at Home." He was actually a fantastic singer.

That was my week! I feel like I'm not including everything I want to, but there's just too much going on to remember. Missions are great and I encourage everyone to go on one! Transfers are coming up next week, and I've heard that I might be getting transfered. I hope I don't because I'm just starting to understand this area. I hope you say safe and have a fantastic week!

Hasta luego,
Elder Jensen

1. Final meal with Elder Richards
2. Mission meeting meal
3. Cachanga con dulce
4. I told him it was going to break 
5. Gandalf in Tahuantinsuyo 
6. A view of Trujillo








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