ONE YEAR DOWN, ONE YEAR LEFT!
I’m not exactly sure if I should celebrate or cry that I’ve already finished half my mission. When I had 11 months I was honestly a little scared to think about it, but now that it’s come around I’m not sure what to feel. The end of my mission is going to come at one time or another — and right now I don’t want it to — but I imagine that by the end of two years I’ll be quite ready to get back. There is, of course, the constant longing for good food for breakfast and dinner (The members always cook really good lunch!), and I won’t miss having to ride buses to get everywhere. Then it’ll be nice to relax a little bit and have actual free days, not just P-Days.
… But even if I don’t want to have finished a year, I admit that the fiesta was awesome!
One of my zone leaders, Elder Stoker, did a work visit that day, which is why he was there and not my companion, Elder Rioja. Towards the end of the night we went to visit a family (Hermano Alexis, Hermana Janet, and their kids, Diana and Roguel) who told us to pass by, saying that we could eat some banana pancakes for dinner, which would have been pretty great because I didn’t even know you could even make pancakes out of bananas! So we went and I had no clue that they were going to throw a party (As can be seen by the lower-quality photos; my camera died in the middle, so I had to copy the pictures from Alexis’s cell phone!). So we:
Burned my tie (I didn’t really want to follow the tradition of burning a tie at six months, a shirt at one year, pants at 18 months, and your suit at 24 months, but I have a lot of ugly ties (Thanks to you, Dad, and the bad taste of whoever gave you those ties!) and they handed me a bottle of lighter fluid, so what else was I supposed to do?!)
Made me a grave
Had some fun with swords and masks
And then ate cake (After they’d shoved my face in it and we’d finished throwing frosting at each other!)
It was pretty great!
… But aside from that not much else to mention. We haven’t done any dangerous service projects recently, everyone here’s pretty good, and I’m just getting ready to leave my area because I’ve already got six months here, so I’m pretty sure I’m gone. If I don’t leave I’d be really happy because I really love the members here (Who else would shove cake frosting in my ear?!), but, like I said at the beginning, I can’t stay here forever! Gotta change something!
Here’s wishing you all a good week and a happy whatever-Peruvian-holiday-it-was-this-week!
— Elder Schroeder