?Iquitos o Lima Norte?

Hey everybody!

So yeah...there is in fact going to be a division in the mission and it will be split into Lima North and Iquitos.  There will be 2 presidents and in all honesty, I cannot tell you anything else.  Not because it's a secret but because I have no idea.  I just found out this morning from another missionary who was already on the computer, but I think I can make some educated guesses.  I'd say Iquitos would include all of the Selva region so Iquitos, Pucallpa, Tarapoto and such places while Lima North would just be in Lima.  I cannot tell you where I'd be but I'd guess it depends on where I am when it splits.  So I might be in the jungle for all 2 years or I could go back to Lima in a change or 2 and stay there for the rest of my mission.  No idea but those are my guesses.  Sorry I have no concrete details, but you knew before I did.

This week was a good week, we had another baptism and we finally have all of the paperwork done for that family that has been waiting like a month to get married and baptized.  The baptism was of another kid who is 9, but he's a little different than the first one we baptized.  So we were teaching this guy named M* R*( (may have mentioned him last week) and his son M*r*.  very receptive and also very smart.  Both of them.  we invited them to be baptized and they accepted but when we went to set a date for a few weeks out, the dad stopped us and asked if his son could be baptized sooner so we said yeah and we set it for Saturday because the kid attends church every week and knows basically everything most adult members do.  So at his baptism, we were leaving the room to go to the font and about to go to the font when he stops me and asks to go to the bathroom...haha kinda funny.  But that kid is awesome and when we asked him why he wanted to be baptized, his response was because he wanted to be a missionary when he was older.

So a few weeks ago, mom, you asked about fruit.  I'll tell you about one that doesn't make any sense to me.  It's called aguaje and it's litterally all over the place here.  It's a little smaller than an apple with a black shell and orange on the inside with a big pit.  If I were to describe the taste of it,  I would say cheddar cheese....yeah....Not a huge fan.  However, anything made out of it : crema de aguaje, chupetes, shambos... Is delicious and tastes nothing like cheddar cheese.  I cannot explain it but the fruit itself is not good, at least the one I had wasn't. Which makes me wonder how much sugar is in that stuff? 

Another fruit that I actually like is pepino.  It's not cucumber for those who speak Spanish,  It's kind of like a squishier pear.  I've only had one so I can't really describe the taste.  Also the bishop’s wife who lives below us said she was going to try to get some cool fruits for us because we haven't seen anything to unique yet.

Not sure what more I have to tell you all and I'm out of time today so I guess I'll just finish this up.  I love you guys and I miss you but there's nowhere else that I want to be right now.  Thank you for all that you do and have done to support me.

Love,

Elder Peacock

P.S.  So Eva doesn't have a heart attack, I did get her package with letterhead, ties, a shirt and a few letters from kids.

[From my limited research on the aguaje fruit:

Aguaje: the Amazon’s New Superfruit Secret Is Out

“The aguaje fruit is just another nutrient-rich, pulpy gem with the potential to gain as much popularity as the now familiar acai berry or guarana extract…Tasters have compared the aguaje fruit to a carrot, although it boasts three times the amount of Vitamin A than this familiar orange root vegetable. Aguaje oil is also high in beta-carotene, oleic acid (also found in olive oil), and essential fatty acids that the human body cannot synthesize on its own. Amazingly, the oil also contains a naturally-occurring SPF that can filter ultraviolet rays and treat burns when applied topically.”  Hmmm.  Maybe he’s not eating them when they are ripe enough??  No mention of cheese here.]

New Mission?

This is the Mom writing.  Just saw that the Church added 58 new missions [see HERE].  On the list is Peru Iquitos.  Elder Peacock is currently serving in the city of Iquitos within the Peru Lima North mission.  So is he in the new mission or the original one? Well, isn’t this interesting?  Maybe we’ll know on Monday when he emails…

Captivity

Hey!

I'll apologize now, I don't have much time today so this'll be a shorter email.  

Elder Duran has this rash on the back of his neck so we went to the doctor to get it checked out and set an appointment to come back on Friday.  So we went on divisions with members that morning which was really lucky we usually can't get 2 members at a time to divide, especially not on a weekday morning.  So I come back to the house at like 1 to see if he has come back yet and he pulls up in a motokar with a huge bandage on the back of his neck.  He proceeds to tell me that he isn't allowed to leave the apartment for 3 days because they burned off his rash....Who does that?? They burned it off? So then we were trying to find more people to be able to divide with so at least I could go and do something. We got a few hours of divisions in this weekend but really I was stuck inside for quite some time and it was not the best, I got a little bit anxious.  Oh and they only burned off half of it and he has to go back this week to get the other half done which will likely be another 3 days of captivity....not looking forward to that!

Oh, by the way, I am still in Iquitos with Elder Duran in the same area.  So 6...i guess now it's 5 weeks at least that we'll be staying here.  We're still waiting on some papers for the family that is waiting to get married and baptized.  We found this other family with probably the weirdest situation ever.  The dad is named M* R*, the son is named M*r*.  yeah...and the son is 9, goes to church every week on his own and his dad has yet to come.  They tape record all of our lessons so they can study them later? and the 9 year old kid is smarter than me.  Like he really is just a genius and his dad is like a professor in the local college.  The dad really wants to get baptized...but in Nauta, which is a branch outside of the city...I guess I can't really explain why it's so weird but it's just way different teaching them, maybe you'd just have to be there.

Love you guys!

Oh and I'm not sure exactly who put it together but I think it was the primary, thank them for the package with letters that they sent. [They sent the package before Christmas!!  Oh my…]

Note:  Bryce finally wrote Tyler!!

1st Change?

Hey!

So I finish my first change today.  For those of you counting, it's only been 5 weeks since I got here.  Apparently they shortened this change by a week because they're trying to put all of the missions on the same cycle.  At least that's what I’ve heard.  I do not however expect to be going anywhere, nor do I think Elder Duran will either.  We'll probably be here for another change or 2.  But if I were to be leaving, I wouldn't find out until tonight and I'd be leaving in the morning.  Not much time to prepare.

So mom, you asked about my mission president which was pretty good timing because he came to Iquitos this week and we had a training with him.  His name is President Blunck, he's from Oregon, served in Peru when he was younger and speaks almost perfect Spanish.  His wife does not speak much Spanish though.  It's gotta be tough for her but they're both awesome.  They're about 2 1/2 years in so I only have them for another 6ish months and I'll have another.  He's really awesome, and the mission has had a lot of success and growth under him.  I haven't had too much time to talk to him aside from the weekly letter, 2 interviews, and training this week.  We get interviews every 3 months and another one when we first got to the mission.  He comes to Iquitos like once a month I think but yeah, it's just hard to get too much time to get to know him when the mission is so spread out.

So we had another baptism this week! for W*.  He's like 50 and his wife and kids are all members already.  He has one son on a mission and another with his papers in.  He's just an awesome guy and works a lot so it was just hare for other missionaries to get a hold of him.  But something seemed to change about December when the sisters in our area before found him again and it didn't seem to be as hard as his teaching record said.  So on the day of his baptism, we went to clean out the font and fill it up that morning.  It was absolutely disgusting.  Apparently when it rains, the font floods back up and fills with dirt and just crap.  We couldn't get it to drain out so we couldn't clean it out.  This is where it's a good thing that we have 2 wards.  We just changed it to the other building.  That did make a problem for people knowing that the baptism was in the other building because mass communication is a little bit harder here.  The service was a little bit smaller but still a baptismal service.  We do have to figure something out for the font though...

So Feb 9/10 is a national holiday here in Peru called Carnavales.  Basically what it is is an excuse for kids to throw chalk, water balloons and buckets of water at everyone that passes by and for the adults to drink and have a big party.  They also have these tree things with a special name I can't remember.  Basically they take a palm tree, braid the palm fronds into 4 pieces, tie it together and hang random things in the tree.  I don't understand what it is but that's what they do.  So the party is really on the 10th and it involves everyone.  So we couldn't go out yesterday which was really annoying.  Not a huge fan of having to stay inside all day.  Don't worry mom, I'm not in danger, it was just a precaution. [Ahem, I’m really not that fragile!]

Love,

Elder Peacock

(Still nothing from Bryce)

P.S. [in response to a question I asked…]

Fruits and vegetables are good here, couple of mangos and a papaya, all good.  Nothing too crazy that I've seen yet but the water, we buy 20L filtered water jugs about twice a week and just use that.  So no real problems and I do drink the water in members homes, not dead yet :)

3 Months This Week!

Hey,

Time seems to be already speeding up.  It seems like I just left the Lima MTC and came to Iquitos, Although it doesn't really because so much has happened in the past month(almost a month).  I am surprised that it's already going so fast.  I'm almost already done with my first change, but I'm almost positive that I'll be here with Elder Duran for another 1-3 changes.  Haha, not exactly precise I know but almost nobody gets changed after 6 weeks with their trainer and I haven't heard of anyone who stays with them for more than 6 months(4 changes).  So I'll probably be staying here for a while at least.

I feel like I've already talked about the weather but I'll do it again because you asked.  It's always either raining and nice out, or I am absolutely drenched in sweat.  The only exception to that is when we're in a house on the water, it's usually pretty nice on the water.  And it doesn't cool down at night either.  I pretty much just sweat through the night.  And dad, those handkerchief things you gave me are really coming in handy, nice to just get sweat off of my face. [Jeff will be so happy! He’s always trying to sell his sons on the virtue of a good handkerchief!]

For our "kitchen" we have a hot plate and a fridge. Haha, not too high tech.  We're supposed to have a rice cooker too but I don't know that I want to eat more rice than I already do anyways so it doesn't really matter that we don't have one of those.  As for what I make for meals, it's only for breakfast and dinner and I usually have oatmeal for breakfast.  I make it with yogurt to give it a little flavor and seeing as we don’t have a microwave it's nice and cool which actually isn't that bad. I'll make eggs, toast, grilled cheese even though cheese doesn't melt here and I pretty much always have bread/crackers with jam.  Nothing too complex.  It's not that I can't make more but it's just more work than I want to do really.  One time I did make french toast though.  Pretty good.  What do you usually make that with? I just had egg and milk.  I feel like cinnamon is supposed to be there but I didn't want to buy it. also, syrup is very expensive, so I had it with jam.  Pretty good.  But yeah I don't make too much else, any other cheap, easy ideas? A little variety wouldn't hurt.

We did, however, get a cooking class with a sister in the ward for our meal with her.  We made arroz chaufa (basically fried rice) with chicken and platanos.  So I can make pretty much all of that, it's fairly easy.  There are some pictures of me cooking the chicken here.  Also, if you were wondering how to cut through bones, it's pretty simple, you smack a knife with a rock.  Haha! That was a little surprising although I guess I should have seen it coming.  But really, we have yet to be fed anything bad, scary or really interesting.  I'm somewhat surprised.

I think we finally have all of the paperwork for E* and M*.  We've been working on that for a month...papers seriously take forever.  I really wouldn't be surprised if they still aren't married/baptized in a week when I write again...They're close though.  He doesn't have a birth certificate and in order to get one we need his diploma from school, his school burned down so they don't have a record of it...his cousin works in a school though so apparently he can get one made for him? It's all confusing...  Which worries me because we just set a date for this other family for March 8 and they're not married....hopefully they actually have some papers so that date actually works...

Also, last thing.  We have this guy that loves to talk to us named A*.  He's always drunk.  The first time we talked to him he told us he lived right there on the futbol court.  We talked to him yesterday and he insisted that we come to his house with him.  So he does have a house.  We literally tried for 20 minutes to leave but he just wouldn't let us leave.  We were finally about to leave and he decided he was going to come with us to our appointment and teach with us....hahaha there was no stopping this guy.  He is very persistent.  We eventually convinced him that he couldn't come with us.  I have a feeling we're going to see him a few more times though.  He shook my hand at least 20 times and while we were in his house he told us that it was his house at least 10 times.  Haha. interesting guy.  Thought someone might enjoy this story.

Love you guys!

Elder Peacock

P.S.  If you can get word to Brock tell him good luck and congrats!

P.P.S.  Tell Bryce to write me a flippin letter :)

P.P.P.S.  Tell Evan happy late birthday!!