Hey all! I’m still here in Peru! (17 more months to go! Man, time flies!)
I’ve had a pretty good week so far, but something that makes me a little sad is that I’m going to be transferred! I’ve been here in Machu Picchu (Not the Machu Picchu!) for about 6 months now, and apparently my mission president decided I’m due for a change! I’m a little sad to leave because I really have grown to love the people here (The hills and dogs and dog poop… not so much!), but I’d have to leave at some point, so I’m excited for a new start — almost literally!
I’m going to be with Elder Rodriguez , my old zone leader (That’s pretty cool!), and he just opened this area, which means he started teaching people in this part of Lima about one change cycle earlier! That’ll be interesting!
I forgot to mention this last week (It takes a lot of thinking to write in third-person about my life!), but I baptized someone! Her name’s Elda, and she’s a pretty cool person (I think) (I’ll explain about this later). Elder Pastenes (my previous companion) met her before he finished his mission and took us to visit her so we’d know where her house was. She’s kind of interesting because she’s about 50 years old and lives alone at the top of the hill — she’s never been married, never had kids, and doesn’t even have a job! All day long she works on her house, either inside or out, fixing it up and digging a massive hole out front! (I’m still not quite sure what its purpose is, but she must have something planned!)
We found out that the reason for her loneliness is because she has a hard time trusting people; apparently she used to be fine until someone robbed her of EVERYTHING she had about ten years ago, and ever since then she’s had a hard time opening up to people (It was a bit of a struggle for us to teach her when we didn’t know much about her and when she clammed up every time we asked her about herself!) and trusting them. She eventually came to trust us and the Church. She wanted to know all of the legal stuff for a baptism (we had to explain that there weren’t any!) and I got to baptize her!
The only problems were that I had to do it twice because she didn’t go all the way under the first time, the water was FREEZING, and we had a grand total of SIX PEOPLE (!!!) at the baptism: Me, Elder Mayta, Elda, James, Helena, and Alexandra. Where the heck was everyone that said they’d come?!
And then Elda forgot her towel, so I gave her mine to use and had to use my backup… it’s literally a dishrag! (And remember, the water was COLD!)
But, all in all, it was pretty good, so I can’t complain too much!
Then I also got to explore a little bit more of Machu Picchu and decided to talk to people in this giant hill that’s right where the boundary line between our area and the next area is. We crossed the line by ONE house and ran into members that told us we were in the wrong area! So we just decided to follow the boundary up until we came to the top of the hill, knocking on doors as we went. And, of course, right before I leave I discover all the good people! We met a lot of humble people that want to listen and follow Christ. Normally you encounter two kinds of people in the hills: Poor humble people or poor lazy people (“Do we really have to go ALL THE WAY down the hill to go to church? Can’t I just pray in my house and we’ll call it good?”)
Then, when we had talked to the people in the last house at the top of the hill, we realized we couldn’t really go down the way we got up, so we just went over the top to another hill nearby! It was kind of interesting to see all the rugged, untouched dirt and rocks where people hadn’t managed to build houses yet, and we had a lot of trouble with loose dirt and rocks trying to kill us (If we slipped we’d pretty much slide all the way to the bottom!), so that kept stuff exciting. I’m just really disappointed that I didn’t bring my camera!
On Saturday we went to visit a family that we’re trying to marry only to discover that the “husband” didn’t want to get married any more and had fled the house! So we did our best to comfort the wife, who’d been dealing with this side of her husband for the last 13 years and broke down and cried while we were there. It’s really sad to see just how much a bad father can ruin a family: This woman, Jacky, has been waiting for him to change for 13 years and really wants to have a stable family (but can’t without him) and his three sons are all really hurt by the fact that their dad isn’t a good father, although they show it in different ways: One wants to leave and go live with his grandmother, one is just angry all the time, and the youngest tries to make a joke out of it — in school the other day he stood on his stool and yelled that he was willing to buy a new dad from someone because his dad ran away from the rest of family. Hopefully it will get better, but if not I’m out 100 soles ’cause I already paid for their wedding (We needed to pay by a certain day and they didn’t have the money, so I just paid the rest)!
So, yeah, that’s what I’ve got going on this week. Sorry I don’t have stuff a little more interesting, but to make up for it I’ve added a picture of the stowaway I discovered when I went to pack up my stuff. (I don’t even know what a spider would eat in there! There’s not a whole lot of bugs!)
— Elder Schroeder