Finally! Baptisms!

We had a pretty good week because some of our investigators FINALLY GOT BAPTIZED! Unfortunately, Diana, the woman who gave us ginea pig to eat that I mentioned last week, wasn’t one of them, but she’s still a possibility and the other two, Yeferson and Camila, are awesome!

We found them when I was with Elder Marino, about two months ago, and at first they didn’t want to listen to us. Whenever we were close by we always went by their house to see if they were there (And for a while we had no idea why — something just told us we should pass by! Turns out it was the Spirit!), but they didn’t have any interest — Yeferson later admitted to us that he’d hidden and had sent his wife, Camila, to go tell us that he wasn’t home or that he was really busy!

But we were persistent, and it paid off! Finally, Yeferson decided to listen to us and see why we were so determined to share our message (He told us later that he’d only done it out of obligation!), but we did something right and set another appointment, and in the next appointment he felt something, and that Sunday came to church! I wrote about this a few weeks back, but it was all in Spanish, so I’ll put it here again, but in English:

This week we only had an INCA (Investigador con asistencia (Investigator with attendances)) in the chapel, but how he came to go is the miracle: We taught him (Yeferson) Monday and asked him if he would be willing to go to church, read the Book of Mormon, and pray every day. He told us he found it a bit difficult and didn’t want to, but the Spirit led us to say, “And what would you do to be with your family forever?” He was silent for a second and then said, “When you put it like that, yes, I’ll go to church and read! (Miracle part 1)

Well, Sunday came without us having found him again and he didn’t answer his phone. After the sacrament, we went outside to call him and found him outside the chapel with his mototaxi. He told us that he’d come earlier, but he saw all the people with ties and pants and he only had jeans and a t-shirt, and he thought, “I can’t enter like this!” and went to work as a mototaxi driver. While working, a family of members (dressed in jeans and t-shirts!) flagged him down and asked to be taken to the chapel! He thought, “If they can come in like this, I can too!” and he came and found us. He told us that God was calling him here, because God led him to the chapel twice so he could attend! (Miracle part 2)

From there he kept progressing! It got to the point where he asked us when we could come back to teach him, and he invited Camila, his wife (Who actually wasn’t his wife at the time) to listen with him! From there they decided to get married (Here’s a picture of them outside their house — we passed by in the night to congratulate them: )

… And get baptized! (Here we are the next night, but with Yeferson’s uncle and their oldest daughter, too: )

Their baptism was really great because they really had to fight to make it there! The entire week, from the 20th to the 26th, they had a lot of things happen! First, they had a bunch of things to do for their wedding — finding papers, sending them to the municipalidad, signing the stuff, finding witnessess (They weren’t able to come at the last moment!) — and then, the night before their wedding, a spider bit Camila’s ankle and she became SpiderWoman!… (Nah, but that’d be pretty cool!) No, actually it ruined her wedding! She couldn’t stand up for very long because it hurt, so she didn’t stand up much or pose for photos, and that night, during their party, she developed a headache and a fever! They ended up going to the hospital after we’d passed by to visit them and found that the poison from the bite had eaten a hole in her ankle, almost to the bone! The next day — the day of their baptism — she was OK because she’d taken some pills, but then the next day, Sunday — when she should’ve been confirmed — she was sick and couldn’t come! She’ll end up getting confirmed next week, but I felt so sorry for her! She was crying when we came to her house on Friday because she was too sick to enjoy her wedding, and all the stuff that they’ve had to do has made it so they really earned a break!

Aside from this, not a whole lot new. I’ll include some photos of stuff that’s happened lately:

My companion decided to try the french toast I made for breakfast, but he accidentally ate the one I’d just taken out of the frying pan!

Here’s Elder Gutierrez Friday night. We accidentally left the keys in our cuarto and the landlady wasn’t home, so we had to wait until her daughter could find the copy (We ended up waiting until 11:00pm)!

And, to finish, here’s my zone, Comas:

At least, it was my zone! We have cambios today, and I could leave, and at least some of these others are leaving as well!

Until next week!

— Elder Schroeder

Well, it’s been a good week this week, but not really a week that’s been different or interesting. No dangerous service projects, no strange food, no birthday parties… nothing.

… But last week, yes!

There still aren’t any dangerous service projects (But we had something a little more scary happen: our mission president called us out of nowhere and asked us to come to his office one morning!) (It was just so he could teach us some cool new stuff), but because the 10th was my companion’s birthday we did some interesting stuff.

First, we ate cuy:

For those of you who don’t know, “cuy” means “guinea pig” (Explains the little foot, doesn’t it?)!

It was pretty good, but it’s flavor reminds me of what a pet store smells like, as in the smell of all the wood shavings and strange plant material. Like I said, it wasn’t bad, just weird! We ate cuy with Diana (The woman next to me in this photo):

She’s great and we’re planning to baptize her this Saturday, if everything keeps going well! When we first taught her in December, I honestly didn’t think much: she didn’t seem that interested, but we set another appointment, and when we came back she told us she’d prayed and asked if what we taught was true, and she’d received her answer in a dream! It took us a while to get her to accept baptism because when she started listening to us and changing her life, she started having more problems. She has a lot of faith and knows that these problems are trials, but it’s made it hard for her to go to church and things like that. But now she’s finally going to get baptized (And just before I leave the area, too! (Maybe))! I’m excited for that and also for the other family we’re planning to baptize, Yeferson and Camila! (I’ll write about them when I hove some pictures!)

After eating cuy, we also went to visit the Gallegos family, who are the people that threw a birthday party for me on the 31st. So we did a family home evening where we played games, and the losers got painted. Just about everyone lost, so…:

But anyway, that’s all I’ve got! Next week is my last P-day before cambios, and hopefully a few people will get baptized!

— Elder Schroeder

Well, sorry, but I’m not going to be able to write much today. If you notice, I’m writing this on Tuesday (not on Monday like I should!) because yesterday we had a few emergencies with the wedding we’re setting up so we can baptize a family, and then we were busy all day with other stuff.

I have pictures and things, but unfortunately I’m not going to be able to send them now. I got permision to write an email today (So you all know I’m not dead or something!) (And yes, I did get permission!), but I don’t have much time right now. But I’ll let you all know what’s going on next Monday when everything should be a little more tranquilo…

But yeah, well… duty calls!

— Elder Schroeder

Well, since I didn’t mention a whole lot last week about how life’s going and stuff like that, I’ll give you all a two-week recap, ’cause it was pretty interesting:

For starters, another “first” in the mission: Praying for our dead neighbor’s funeral (!) That was certainly a little new. One of our neighbors died this last week, on Friday, and because they’re richer here they had a massive funderal/party that involved lots of loud music and lots of alcohol, punctuated by moments of silence to mourn. I’m not entirely sure how Peruvians normally do funerals, but whatever. Anyway, on Sunday we were returning to the house and a woman ran up to us and asked us if we could offer a prayer for this man. I was a little confused because they’re Catholics, but one of the things about Peru is that basically any religion will do, as long as they don’t have to change their religion, and anyone who devotes their time to God like we do is more “holy” or something. So we entered their house and I said a little prayer for this guy, doing my best to not mess up, becuase that would.. kind of.. ruin everything… and be super awkward… Yeah.

Then, for those of you that haven’t heard, we recently had some changes to our daily schedule! Before, we woke up at 6:30am, studied or got ready until 10:00am, went out to work until lunch at 1:00pm, left to work again at 3:00pm and worked until 9:30pm. Now we wake up at 7:30am, study and get ready until 10:30am, work until lunch at 1:30pm, and work from 2:00pm until 10:30pm, with freedom to choose when we take an hour to study as companions and to study the language! I’m still not used to it because I keep on waking up at 6:25am every.. single.. morning!

Of course, the 31st was my birthday, and it was pretty awesome. We celebrated a little on Monday, too, because it was P-day and all. I’ve added some pictures below.

Me, eating ceviche (Which we’re not supposed to eat in the mission because it has raw fish, but this is a special kind of ceviche that doesn’t have raw fish (Ceviche de pulpo)! So I can eat it!). (Ceviche is a mixture of fried fish, octopus, onion, lime juice, cancha, and aji, for those of you who haven’t heard of it before. Sounds weird, but it’s really good!)

This awesome family that we have here love the missionaries, so they threw a party for me and bought me a cake!

… And then shoved the cake in my face! (Well, actually, Elder Escobar also helped a little with that!):

Then, a few days later, I bought dinner for a drunk guy we’d contacted a while back. Why not, right?

So it’s all good here, and I had a good birthday! I’ll keep you all posted about how everything goes this week! ¡Nos vemos!

— Elder Schroeder