Week 55: Fisher of Men

 Hola! Como están? I hope you all had a great week!


Well right after I finished last week's email we went to dinner and then to Adrian's house. We put him on date for the 18th of February too and got to say goodbye to them. Hopefully Elder Ochoa can push the date for Maria back to the 18th so we can have them all in one day. That'll make it more likely that I can go to visit on that day and attend at the baptism. We immediately went to la casa de hermano Anthony Díaz after to say goodbye to him. It was a pretty emotional send of, actually, because to be honest he's kind of my Peruvian dad. He referred to me as his son, which he only does for his favorite missionaries which have only been me and Elder Richards. He accidentally called me Elder Richards 3 times because that night reminded him so much of when he said goodbye to him. We talked for a while about the mission and my potential before saying goodbye.

Packed up the next day and at breakfast got pictures with hermana Gladis and her family, uncluding Taylor. We had to go to Esperanza to pick up the tie that they had ordered for everyone in the district after that. Elder Sanchez decided to just give me one of his ties for free, too. I started sweating a lot as I was trying to packed my bags because I had to shove it all in there. We then rode to the offices, said hi and bye to some people, gave some free ear plugs to Elder Kennedy, (who's Elder Ochoa's new comp), because he's gonna need them, and rode off to Huanchaco with Elder Larkin. Hermano Diaz and his wife actually passed by the offices during transfer so I got to say bye to them one last time.

The apartment in Huanchaco is nice, but we get a lot of flies for some reason. And I've killed a few cockroaches already. It's the only finished apartment in the four story building and it's the fourth floor. We got two bathroom again! So I have my own now but there's no divider between the shower and the rest of the room so I just take my shower on the bathroom floor. Also the mirror is just hanging down and acts as one of the walls. Maybe that's why there are so many flies. There's about 3 or 4 holes in the roof! But we got a fan. por fin. And the apartment has a full on fridge with a huge freezer so you'd best know I'm stocking up on my liquids and frozen treats.

This is Elder Larkin's 2nd transfer in Perú. He served 1 transfer in Colorado before coming here. He's cool and I've definitely used more English in the past few days than normal. I think we're going to get along well and we'll see if 2 gringos can baptize. The pensionista is hermana Anghela, and she's awesome. She loves missionaries and her food is sooooo good! She owns a lot of animals too, including dogs, cats, chickens, turtles, and a parrot! The parrots name is José and he likes to bite people more than he likes to eat. He hasn't bitten me yet but he's gotten my shoe. It's also very close to the apartment which is a lot better than the 15 minute walk I used to do in Pueblo Libre.

Huanchaco is the beach área of the mission, so as hermano Enrique told me before I left Pueblo Libre, I was going to be un pescador de hombres, literally. Since it's the beach we have to be a little careful, especially right now during the summer. Also a lot of people visit so it isn't as effective yo street contact, atleast in that part. But I'll make sure to get lots of souvenirs while I'm here. We also have the airport here so we see a lot of planes coming and going. It's my biggest área so far and I've actually had to use a bus to get to some parts. Now I have to memorize which bus is which. The chapel is also just a house that's been turned into a chapel, but the members seem really nice. We don't have a real piano, though.

The previous elder who was here told me that they had 5 Fechas for baptism. But upon looking, none of them were ready. Elder Larking told me that his old companion really pushed baptism on people even if they hadn't been to church in a while. So obviously the first thing to do is take a step back and work our way up again. We visited one man named Ikeimi who "was on date" but had only been to church once in November. Personally I would've dropped him a while ago. We also met with his brother and the family of his brother. I explained to them the importance of keeping commitments and why we do them when he said truthfully that he hadn't even been reading the Book of Mormon. They seemed to have felt something and committed to read, pray, and come to church. Elder Larkin later told me that's really the first time he felt the spirit during a lesson, especially with them because his old comp was always trying to push baptism. Ikeimi and his niece ended up coming to church on Sunday for the first time in almost 3 months, so we'll see where this goes!

We're also meeting with a lady named Yessenia and her family. She was baptized when she was 10 but can't find the records anywhere so she might have to be baptized again. She's currently waiting for divorce papers so she can get married to hermano Erick, the person she's living with, who also wants to be baptized. 2 of Yessenias sons have already been baptized in Chan Chan before they moved here. Their niece, Khaory, is also living with them and she wants yo be baptized too, they just want to wait until hee family can come up to watch when the protests let up, because they're in Lima. So we'll have that baptism when things calm down. We also met with Fabrizio,  the grandson of a member. He's been coming to church and is very interested. I invited him to be baptized but he responded with not yet. We'll see what we can do.

We had a short consejo de zona on Thursday about our goals for February. For pday today we played some soccer as a district and walked along the side of the beach.

I'm excited to see what this week holds! I hope that all you have a fantastic week!

Elder Jensen

1/4/5. Adiós a hermano Dìaz
2. Hermano Jaime y Adrian
3. Hermana Gladis, Obispo Blas, Yasmine, y Taylor
6. Elder Larkin y yo en Huanchaco!
7. Lego Gandalf in Huanchaco









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