Hello to everyone from down here in Peru!

Since I’ve heard I’m getting a lot of new fans (Not really, but I’m not sure what to call them… Bored people?) who didn’t get some of my first several emails, I figured it might be good that everyone knows what my email is (Because I’m pretty sure I told a few people the wrong one…) It’s alexander.schroeder@myLDSmail.net, and if you have any questions for me or a cool story to share, feel free to email me — Right now, I almost have no clue about what’s going on back in the States and all! (Do we have a new President yet? I don’t remember when that’ll be decided!)

Anyway, this week was pretty chevere. For P-Day my zone and I went and climbed this HUUUUUGE hill in my area to go see the ocean and the other side of the mission. My area extends from basically the chapel up into a range of massive, mountainous hills; on the other side of these hills is the other part of the mission. It’s kind of like the mission divide because there’s no road to go over the hills, so you’d have to go around if you went by car! We got some pretty sweet fotos of all the pretty foliage.

Or rocks.  Yeah, that was about it.

This place is pretty much all rock, dust, and dirt! Seriously, now when I play Settlers of Catan, every Rock tile is going to make me think of this area!

The top was pretty cool, despite what you’d think with all the rocks and dirt. I got some fotos of Comas (the area on the other side).

If it wasn’t for all the smog, you’d actually be able to tell that there’s the ocean way in the distance (that part that seems like a mountain in the top left is actually an island).

And then, because of the strong wind at the top and the rocky terrain, we had a lot of fun taking dramatic fotos. I’ll include a few of me. I didn’t really feel my inner peace here with the 200 foot drop behind me, but… Photo op!

The other picture would have been a lot more dramatic if my shirt had been tucked in! With the wind blowing it, it makes me look like I’m pregnant or something!

And we also took a picture of us as a zone around the Peruvian flag (Well, not all the zone. There are actually 6 more of us, but these are the tough ones who actually lasted until the top of the hill).

That was probably the most interesting part of the week. There’s not a whole lot else that happened, but I’ll put some of the more interesting stuff:

Wednesday I killed about 30 flies with a Tithing pamphlet because we had the window open and were eating our food and the flies just KEPT ON COMING! We closed the window and I killed everything that was left. That was really satisfying — flies are annoying!

Saturday Elder Rodriguez (one of our zone leaders) was visiting our area for a day to see how it is and we kind of got locked outside because our key stopped working (we think we bent it or something), so we bought some crackers and trained a few of the dogs outside my apartment to sit when commanded to. That was a little new.

On Saturday we also had a cool spiritual experience. Elder Pastenes went with our ward mission leader to a part of our area called Amazonas and contacted a bunch of new people in the hills there, and one of the families we’d seen before! It was during our first or second week as companions: we were waiting for one of our investigators outside her house, looking around at all the people down below (her house is kind of up in the hills), and we saw this family. We were really far away, but Elder Pastenes said, “We need to talk to this family”. Well, he finally did, and it turns out they’re really open and willing to listen because they’d been looking for the true church this whole time!

Man, Saturday’s just FULL of stuff; we also had a wedding AND a baptism!

We’ve been working for a long time with this young couple, Melvin and Yhamiley, trying to get them married so we could baptize Yhamiley (Melvin’s already a member, but he’s less-active). We kept having slight problems with it all, but finally managed to get everything in order and they got married and, a few hours later, we baptized Yhamiley! (I’ll send the fotos in a separate email because I don’t have space in this one!)

Well, that pretty much sums it up. Here’s to more success and more interesting stories for next week! ¡Cuídense!

— Elder Schroeder