Well, I’m writing this email a little late because we went to sign the marriage papers so some of our investigators, William and Maria, can get married and then baptized! It should be really great, but I feel like I wasted the only free day I have in buses, and now I have to get back to work for another week, but without much of a rest. Oh, well, at least I know I’m not actually “wasting” it! Here they are after we went and signed everything:
Anyway, the rest of this week has been pretty interesting because there are a LOT of changes! I wasn’t able to write about any of them last week because we didn’t know any of them until 11:00 at night last Monday! I knew I was getting a new companion, and we guessed that Elder Ortega, Elder Torres, and Hermana Meza would leave, but that was about it. Turns out we were right: the two Elders left, Hermana Meza left (And her companion, Sister Manrique, cried when I called to tell her!), and then our presidente decided to:
Combine two of the areas in my district, Casuarinas 1 and 2, into one area, leaving the other two Elders, Elder Seminario and Elder Gil, as companions!
Divide the area of the Sisters, Collique, into two areas, now Collique 1 and Collique 2, and put two more Sisters in the new area! The Sisters that are going to open the area are Hermana Lopez, a Sister that’s just about to finish her mission, with a newbie, Hermana Gonzales that she’s training (And despite her last name, Hermana Gonzales is actually gringa and as such doesn’t speak very well yet)!
Hermana Meza was replaced by Hermana Gilson
I got a new companion: Elder Rioja! (The first time they told us over the phone, we heard it wrong and we thought they said, “Elder Frijoles”! Well, poor guy if he has that name! If you don’t get the joke, put it in Google Translate). But no, it’s Rioja, and he’s only been in the mission six months, meaning this is my first time being the most experienced companion!
He’s pretty cool, but I obviously don’t know him very well, so I’ll get to know him better and can tell you more about him later on.
Tuesday was when we actually did all these changes, and it caused a bit of a problem because I, as district leader, needed to help the Sisters in the new area to get to their house and get all their stuff set up. The problem is that they moved into the house where the other Elders lived before Casuarinas got combined, so it was a DISASTER! The six of us — my companion and I and the four Hermanas — ended up cleaning the place for two hours to get it all nice and clean! Luckily we didn’t have any appointments, but the rest of the week I’ve been doing a lot of running around trying to get everything firgured out for all the area changes. At least I’m not a Zone Leader — They were the ones that had to find houses for the new people in the entire zone and move all the furniture around!
Then, of course, a dog almost fell on me. That was also new.
We went to try and find a family that we talked to a while back while we didn’t have any appointments. So we knocked on the door and started talking with the son when all of a sudden I hear a loud THUD off to my side, and when I look there’s a dog on its stomach in the sand next to me, with it’s legs splayed out kind of like a smashed spider. I thought that was a little strange… and then I realized that the dog hadn’t been there before! It’s not uncommon for Peruvians to put their dogs on the roof because then they can’t really go anywhere and they don’t cause problems or make messes in the house. This dog must have gotten a little too close to the edge of the cement roof — Of the second story! — and slipped and fell right next to me! I’m just glad it didn’t fall on me because it was a pretty big dog (Although it probably would have made for a better story!) and the next time when we visited the family I made sure to be protected by the roof before I knocked!
Well, I hope everyone else is good and that life is at least interesting. I await someone’s joke about how it’s raining cats and dogs here!
— Elder Schroeder