Week 46: Am I an Exterminator, a Real Estate Agent, or a Chicken?

 To start this one off I'll mention some things I should've put in the last email but didn't have time to write them. First off we had a little bit of a bug problem on Thursday with tons of flys absolutely everywhere in out apartment. I bought some bug spray from our pensionista and "...did carry on the work of death among the [flys]," (Alma 43:38). Probably the best 10 soles I've ever spent.


For pday last week we went to a place called Conache as a zona, which is just a place with large fields for sports, a pond, and some other activities, including kid trampolines you have to pay extra to use. For some treason the deeper you got into the park you had to pay more money, so certain fields ended up costing more? It seemed like a scam to me. We played volleyball, ate a little bit of chicken for lunch, talked with family, and then did a little bit of sand boarding! We rented some boards and climbed up the sand dune. It didn't work at all until we used wax and found the steepest part of the hill. But then it was pretty fun. On the bus back I talked with Elder Barrantes about everything. Then out of nowhere the song "Ordinary World" by Duran Duran started playing on the speakers in the bus. I got excited because I hadn't heard music from home in a while. Siblings, just to let you know a year ago I came around with that song. Dad knows what I'm talking about. 

On Wednesday we had a lesson with hermana Maria. She had been on vacation for the last week. We started to read 3 Nephi 11 but she was having trouble understanding so we showed her the video instead. This led to the question of what we need to do in this life. She mentioned baptism, even though we had invited her already to be baptized but she told us she didn't feel ready and needed to learn more. We asked her again and she said the same thing. I've been trying to do better about not thinking about what I'm going to say beforehand while they're talking and relying on the spirit. I was definitely told what to say by the spirit in this moment, drawing on my experience from when I was baptized. I was 8 years old, and I can guarantee I didn't understand much, yet I was baptized. We extended another invitation and she started to say the same old thing, but she stopped mid sentence and said, "claro." The spirit was so strong in the room there was no denying it. We're now working on getting to church and prepare her for baptism before her date in December. 

On Thursday we had our multizone conference with Elder Zeballos. Presidente y Hermana Hiatt both spoke follones by Hermana and Elder Zeballos. He talked about languages and the importance of making decisions now. He said that not only baptism is the gate, but repentance too. We ahould start to view them both as the gate to further blessings instead of just baptism. For the dessert we had a little apple pie and that's when I remembered it was Thanksgiving. I asked Hermana Hiatt if it was her idea for the pie and she told me it was. We didn't celebrate November birthdays because they wanted the conference to be "more formal." Hopefully they'll still celebrate them in December because I don't want to be skipped. After the conference I went on exchanges with Elder Sánchez. This is his first transfer in the field. We stood in the hot sun and let it cook our necks while we listened tothis old guy explain his life story. Afterwards my legs were so stiff it was hard to move them. We had our noche misional (after 3 months of "planning") We were planning on doing little plays of stories from the BoM from each of the organizations. A decent number of people ended up showing up, but no investigators. Only the young men and the young women prepared anything, and by that I mean only the young women prepared something beforehand. The YM did the conversion of Alma the Younger which was prepared 5 minutes before it started. The YW did the 10 virgins, and they actually had some costumes and props. Elder Sánchez and I ran to grab dome snacks for everyone during the YW's performance so we watched a recording later. Afterwards we played some games, do you love your neighbor and musical chairs. I got pretty into it with my funny dances and I'll say that I fell out of a chair or completely missed it 3 times.

I was kind of stressed this week because hermana Milagros told us that the radical evangelists in her house finally kicked her out and she needed a room in our ward boundaries. I seemed to be the only one who really cared so I found myself looking through all the apartments I looked at with Elder Cabrera in August. None of them worked because they didn't accept dogs. And Milagros can't separate from her dog Mya. That dog literally is the dog of problems. WHAT AM I A REAL ESTATE AGENT HERE?!?!?! Eventuales I found out that some of the rooms that hermano Alan lived in before with his family were available and they permitted dogs. Luckily that one worked for her. So hermano Alan's move had some unexpected blessings. I just hope this whole situation is behind me because I don't want to do that again...

Friday night Elder Lumbre and Elder Sánchez came over and we ended up pushing the 2 beds together to have all 4 of us sleep. I was in the middle and had to sleep like Dracula because there was no space. This is technically against the rules but we had no other choice -_- The next day I officially joined with Elder Lumbre and Elder Sánchez as my comps. Elder Macedo had to go home for a few weeks, so now we're covering both Pueblo Libre and Esperanza. We might be spread a little thin for the next little while. I had to move the majority of my stuff to their apartment, even though the apartment in Esperanza is one of the smallest I've been in, with the bathroom being extremely tiny. We couldn't fit the third mattress in the bedroom so we ended up moving the beds into the living room area and the desks into the bedroom. Of course the hallway was tiny so we had to take apart one of the beds to fit it. So right now I'm sleeping with my mattress on the floor in a tiny apartment covering 2 areas. The pensionista here also gives us a tamale everyday for breakfast. The tamales down here aren't very good so what we end up doing is having tamale sandwiches by shoving it in the bread. Hopefully I can get back to PL soon to have Hermana Gladys' food again. Not really what I was expecting for my birthday tomorrow but whatcha gonna do?

Saturday morning Esperanza had the baptism of hermana Rocio, a sister whom we in Pueblo Libre initially received the information for. She lives right next to the border so we got her reference but later sent it to Esperanza after we visited her. Sunday we attended both wards and had the baptism of Jeampir, another man Esperanza had been teaching. That night their was a stake priesthood meeting. It was cool seeing all 10 bishops and stake president Avila up there and speak to us about keeping our covenants. There was also an awesome special musical number with three elders singing Angels we Have Heard on High in accapella. We had a noche hogar with the Goycochea family and unfortunately weren't in our apartment to see all of the misión zoom call. I joined when we were walking and was able to hear happy birthday sung to all of us November birthdays. It was pretty fun.

For pday today I tried Shambar for the first time which is a soup unique to Trujillo. It has a bunch of big fat in it and it's good. We had some corn puffs that looked like Golden Puffs that we put in the soup.

That's it for me this week! I'll let you know what we're going to do on my bday next week and whatever else will occur. Have an absolutely fantastic week!

Elder Jensen

1. What I found on my wall one morning
2. There was a flock of sheep that just ran by
3. Zona Esperanza 
4. Distrito Indoamerica
5. Zona Esperanza on the dunes
6. My thanksgiving treat
7. Shambar
8. El baila del pollo










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