August 31, 2015

No group email from Jeremy today (he says his email was giving him some troubles) so here are some highlights from what he sent to Kathy and me.

I told him about eating grilled beef heart and he said "You think grilled beef heart is good, you should try grilled Alpaca heart. Yeah, I ate Alpaca heart the other day."

I asked him about his hump day (one year mark) and he said "The tradition is when you hit 6 months you burn a tie, a year you burn a shirt, 18 months you burn a pair of pants and the day before you go home you burn a whole suit. Well, I didn't really want to burn a tie, I don't have enough pants to lose a pair, and burning a suit is just plain stupid, but I am planning on burning a shirt. I actually started with one of the zone leaders, Elder Ramirez, and we're thinking about burning our shirts together. Maybe we'll do a big bonfire or something."

When asked about exciting events this past week he wrote "Oh, yesterday I conducted Sacrament meeting! That was something. Nothing real exciting is going on yet."

And from Kathy's email he said this "This week was super weird. We were traveling basically the whole week and there was not any time to teach. On mondays we always go to a city called Juliaca because it's where the rest of the missionaries in our zone are. So last monday we went to Juliaca and then we had to stay there til wednesday morning because I had to go to Puno and sign a couple of documents for my visa. On thursday we went to Asangaro in the morning to get a birth certificate for a member in Arequipa (which is another mission) so that he and his girlfriend can get married. We got back to Choquehuanca at like 2 in the afternoon, then had to leave again at 4:30 to pick up our district leader Elder Kline to do divisions. Friday we went back to Juliaca again to drop off Elder Kline. I think in all I spent at least 9 hours on a bus this week just going back and forth. Our branch president had his leg operated on during the week and because of that couldn't come to church yesterday. Since Elder Blancarte and I are the counselors we were in charge of everything. I even conducted. It was super weird, but I kinda had fun.

My pensionista from Quillabamba wrote me this week. She started her letter with "hola mi hijo". I love her. Just thought you should know I have another mom here haha."

You can't really tell, but the watch reads "9:35" We're always supposed to be back at home by 9:30, but one day Elder Montero and I got stuck in a baptism  until 9:45ish and our district leader was going to send this to President and tell him how disobedient we are. The best part is that the district leader was also there, otherwise he wouldn't have been able to take the picture, and it was his baptism.

All of those kids were part of our seminary class. They came with us to a baptism one day. The kid right on my left is Alex, one of my converts :)