Nueva Cajamarca

[Email dated July 29, 2013]

Hey everybody!

So I've gotten a lot of questions about my area.  It's gigantic.  I have only seen a little tiny part of it and I will only ever see a little tiny part of it.  It's probably 10 times the size of Delaware just for reference, and it's just all really spread out.  We´re in a branch that is still working on getting a chapel and right now has about 110 [people] that are attending. If that keeps up, they'll start the construction of the chapel in about a month or 2.  There isn't room for all of the people that are attending in the place where we have the meetings and the attendance is still growing.  We're at the base of the Sierra and it's all very green here.  Much more like the jungle you all thought was Iquitos.  Elder Carrillo and I are basically isolated out here and the closest other missionaries are in Rioja which is pretty far away.  I'm really not sure what else you all want to know about my area really because there is a little bit of everything here, "city", jungle, farms, etc.  But it is very different from Iquitos.

This week we had a baptism, but we didn't do it in the river, we went 40 minutes to the chapel in Rioja for the baptism.  Her name is H* and she is the mother in law of the Branch President.  she's attended church for some time now so I'm really not sure why she wasn't baptized until now but now she is.  Other than that, this week we were just working hard and basically had to start over in terms of finding people, but we're really doing really well right now.  I'm really not sure what to tell all of you.  I'm still a little bit lost, not just being in a new area, but having miles and miles of area to worry about.  I'm still just trying to learn all of the town names that people are telling me, instead of street names.  I love being here and just know that I might not get any mail in my time here (which could be another 6 months, supposedly).

Love,

Elder Peacock

PS-if you want to know things more specific, ask me more specific questions, I really just don't know what to tell you.

[Mother’s note:  I sent him a list of questions to work on over the next few weeks because, really, I need more than this!]

Extract from an email to his dad:

haha yeah we're kinda all alone in Nueva.  We have a district of 4 and the other 2 are in Rioja, like halfway between Nueva and Moyo.  I am still DL [District Leader].  This area has been open for a long time, but I think there have been a lot of missionaries that just got "distracted"  being in the middle of nowhere…The package is in Lima and has been there for a few weeks but i don't know that it'll ever get out of Lima (offices of the other mission).