Tacos

(pictures:  Elder Limon send off)

After about 7.5 months with a white companion, I am finally with a Latin companion, as I told you all last week.  His name is Elder Romero and he is from Mexico from the city of Puebla, which is the same city as President Gomez.  Sadly, we have yet to make tacos but it is on our to-do list.  Authentic tacos with homemade everything.  Its gonna be nice, not gonna lie.  He has 16 months on the mission and he is 27 years old.  He’s a pretty old guy [it’s all relative in the mission world]but he's really smart and a really hard worker.  We're going to work really well together.

 

We are working really hard and things are going fairly well.  We had gone to the municipalidad to get maps made of the areas because the maps that we have don’t really work all that well right now and we’re doing some cool stuff with them.  Just thought that I would explain the picture.  

This week was really just full of lots of little adventures:  opening cocos while tracting, new missionaries in the zone and just lots of little things.  With the whole coco thing, someone gave us a couple of cocos.  So, then we were just walking around with cocos.  We decided that we were going to use that to get into houses to teach (not that it is all that difficult to do, but it just makes it a little more interesting).  I figured it would take a couple of houses at least to find someone with a machete that was willing to lend it to us for a minute.  But, the very first person that we asked was just like. “yeah! take it”!  So we did, cut open our coco, and then obviously talked to them about the gospel.  It was more interesting for sure.

Everything is going well and I’m happy to be here right now.  Not sure how much longer I will be here. but I’ll enjoy it while it lasts. 

Love you guys! Have a great week

Elder Peacock

Bye Bye Limon!

Elder Limon is done and should be sitting in the offices right now, having finished his interview.  I imagine he’s now just waiting to go to Lima, arriving at the airport in Arizona at 12:21 local time tomorrow....

At this moment I am without a companion, but he will get here tomorrow.  I just got the email from the assistants for the zone and, as I thought, I am staying for at least another change here as Zone Leader.  My new companion will be Elder Romero and he is from Mexico.  From what I know, he is a really cool guy and I think we’re going to get along really well.

This week went really well.  We just spent the week working as normal with more exciting lunches because it was his last week.   We were getting ready to go out to work on Saturday in the afternoon for his last day of proselyting (we have language study after lunch because it’s hot in the jungle) and we get a call:  sick missionary.  We have to take them to the clinic.  Well, that was an interesting last afternoon of missionary work!  We would have done divisions [where companionships split up and go out with other missionaries or members] with them but they were sisters so that wasn’t possible.  We did get to go out for a few hours that night so it wasn’t like he lost all of that time, so that was good.  But yeah, tomorrow he will probably be reading this because he has heard so much about this blog from all of the new missionaries....SHOUT OUT TO LIMECITO!!!! 

Sorry for the short letter but I have no time today.  I had to do all of the informes and I have the changes to worry about so I’ll be sure to have more for next week.  But, you can all just know that I'm good and mom don’t worry, I’ve never been to the clinic here for myself and I will never get any toenail amputated or anything because I’ll just do it myself… that’s why I have a pocketknife right? haha joke? Love you mom!!!

[The last paragraph is in response to another missionary in Peru who sent word to his family that his toe had been amputated in the clinic.  Fortunately for all, it turned out to be a toeNAIL.  Note to all missionaries:  jokes do not travel well through email.  Do not worry your mothers unnecessarily.  Just sayin’.  I still get heart palpitations thinking of the time my older son sent me THIS EMAIL.]

Elder Peacock

El Fin se Acerca y Hay Poco Tiempo

Hey everyone!

So, the title of my email has nothing to do with me, but with my companion.  He is ending this week and we are just trying to figure out if he’s leaving from Pucallpa on Saturday or on Sunday.  I don't know how we would be able to do that on Sunday because the flight is during Sacrament meeting...that could be awkward.  But yeah, this is his last week as a missionary and he's starting to get kinda trunky.  He's actually been really good about it though.

This week we went to Iquitos for the council and it turns out that even though I don’t know any of the missionaries that have started in the last year, a large majority of them already know who I am thanks to the blog.  Here's an example of a conversation that I had with a newer missionary:  "Hi, I'm Elder Peacock".  "I know. I read your blog".  It’s really weird.  So in case any of you reading this are coming to the mission, you’ll be thrown into this group of people as well.  Turns out there are some who were avid readers of my blog before and know all about the mission before even getting here.  I feel like my letters aren’t interesting enough for random people to just read them.  The pictures are pretty cool though.  Maybe that’s why you keep asking for pictures-- to make this stuff interesting enough to actually put on the internet!  Now i understand.  It's ok because I have some pretty cool pictures for this week.

When we were back here in Pucallpa, we had a baptism on Saturday of a 20 year old guy named J*.  He is a really cool guy.  Like, during his service, he was talking to his friends about when they are all going to leave on their missions.  They all want to leave a year from now at the same time.  It was kinda cool to get to hear him talking about that and just so ready even though he's only been going to church for about a month now.  But yeah, in the morning we went to go and fill up the font.  Well, last week the missionaries from another ward left the water in the font and it was absolutely filthy.  I mean just really disgusting and somewhat scary looking with bugs, animals, leaves and lots of dirt.  I don’t even know how all of that stuff even got in there.  Long story short, we couldn’t get the water to drain and we are somewhat convinced that it is because of something that got into the drain and died.  So we had to go and do the baptism in another church building.  It was really bad water.  All’s well that ends well right?

About the pictures, I don't remember the order that I put them in but just pay attention to my [my what?  was there another word supposed to be here?], they’re good ones.  In the baptism pictures, you might have to look really hard.  If you guys can’t figure it out, you can try putting it on the blog and see if other people can figure it out.  [um, a little help here people!  I have absolutely no idea what he is talking about] It's pretty cool but I might just have to show you guys when I get home.  Explaining just doesn’t do it justice and I don’t know if it can be seen really well in the picture.  Also, about the monkey, I had to make up with him because a little over a year ago I ate his father....haha hopefully these pictures make up for the lack of pictures in these past few weeks!

Have a great week!!!

Elder Peacock

Dinner with Chino

[Email dated 6.2.14]

I don't really have any cool stories like I did last week to tell you guys.  But, here’s what I’ve got:

On Monday, Prez came out here to Pucallpa.  That night we had set up a dinner meeting with the Mayor of one of the Districts here in Pucallpa to see if we could make it easier for people to get married.  The Mayor’s last name is Chino Mori.  I thought that was just the best last name ever.  So, our meeting went really well and it looks like we've finally gotten through the worst of it, getting people married.  Nobody here really gets married if we aren’t giving them a little push in the right direction.  It had been getting harder and harder for while in another district that we were working with.  

We then had an interesting assignment to write some officialish documents to submit to the District council so that we could get something done.  It was something that President was sending them but he had us write it.  I don’t know why we are supposed to be qualified for that, but we went to work on it.  When Sister Gomez read it to revise it she said that we should be lawyers.  Now I know that that is not what I'm going to be but I thought that was funny.  

That was something really different and I had no idea how to do any of it when we started to try to get a deal worked out with them--like how would we even ask for help for this stuff? We just went around and started doing things, making friends and eventually figured it out.  We are just waiting on something official for this week.  

Sometimes you don't really need a plan, which is weird to think because we plan everything that we do as missionaries. Well, that was probably the most interesting thing that happened this week.

I love you guys and I hope you all have a great week!!

Elder Peacock

PS Pizza Hut is a great addition to Pucallpa!!