Crutches

I think I mentioned a week or 2 ago that we had an investigator that lives on crutches.…  But, if not, we have an investigator who lives on crutches because he had a steel rod put in his leg after an accident.  He is a really cool guy.  His name is E*.  We had gone with him twice to church in a motokar, but we weren’t all that sure how he was going to be able to to go to church on his own.  He doesn't have a lot of money because he can't really work very much with his limited mobility. 

So, when we talked to him about going to church yesterday, he told us that he was going on his own and that we shouldn’t pass by for him.  We asked if our mission leader should pass by for him (The one in the wheelchair) and he said no, he was going to walk.  The church is about 2 km away (or for those of you more used to miles its a little more than a mile) which is pretty far.  Especially when you’re on crutches.  We were both pretty surprised that he was going to do that.  Then, that night it started to rain really hard and it got really cold--colder than I have felt in my whole time here in Peru.  When it gets cold here, people do not leave their houses because they are sure that they are going to get sick and die.  

So, it was wet and really cold and we were somewhat worried about if he was going to be able to really walk that far.  We were going to church with a different investigator and as we were on our way to church in the motokar, we passed by E* about 3/4 of the way.  He was just going nice and steady on his way to church with a little bit of time still left before church was supposed to start and a lot of time before it would actually start (8:00=8:20 here).  So he got there on time in the cold, water and mud all on his own.  It was really one of the coolest things that I have seen.  

Here, nobody even considers it an option to walk to church when they have two legs that work perfectly fine.  A lot of people will use that as an excuse to say that they cannot go to church because they don’t have a moto or money to pay for one.  E* didn’t have money either, but he still managed to get to church on time walking on his crutches for an hour.  I think that is just an amazing thing.  He has so much telling him that it is not possible—even his his culture saying that walking is not even an option,  but he just did what he had to do to get there.  Someone who really understands what the most important thing is and isn’t about to put up some excuses for not going or not being able to because simply that was his desire and he was willing to give a whole lot to be able to make it a reality.  

After the 3rd hour [a typical church service lasts three hours, split into three meetings:  Sacrament Meeting, Sunday School and Priesthood for men or Relief Society for women.  Children and youth also have their own classes but everyone is together for Sacrament Meeting], he just walked on home.  It's a great example for all of us.  What is the most important thing for us? Are we really willing to sacrifice to get it done? Or, are we just going to give excuses?  Sometimes I think we are more capable than we think and we don't achieve what we really can all because we are too willing to just throw in the towel instead of finding solutions and just making things work.  It was really cool and I just thought that I would share that experience with you.

Other than that I'm all good and I'm happy to be here.  Elder Limon only has 3 weeks from tomorrow--when he will be in his house eating cheesecake and Mexican food (beans and tortillas are constantly available in his house at all hours).  Were working really hard and all is well.  I love you guys and thanks for all that you do!!

Elder Peacock

No Pizza This Week, Negotiations and Impromptu Training

This week was good.

On Monday we were going to go get Pizza Hut because it had been open for a couple of days.   [He told us about this during our Mother’s Day call.  He and Elder Limon were pretty excited for it to open.  Apparently, the only other “American” fast food they have available is Kentucky Fried Chicken].  We got there and they started making excuses.  Long story short they lied to us and we did not get any pizza.  [Huh? Pizza Hut is open but they don’t have any pizza?  I think we needed a little more of the story…]   I was really excited about getting to try some pizza.  Well, there’s always chicken to eat...

Recently the place where we’ve been doing weddings has become really difficult--throwing on more and more stuff for us to do while at the same time raising the prices.  So we started looking for a new place to do the weddings.  That was an interesting process to negotiate requirements and what we need to be responsible for and just finding ways to make it work.  It was a lot of “I scratch your back and you scratch mine”.  We’re setting up meetings and figuring out how to make it more convenient.  It’s actually really interesting and fun to do.  I feel like this will be a useful skill to be able to negotiate things like this so that we both win.  [I really had to work to make this paragraph intelligible.  The Spanish syntax is invading the English and winning.]

This week we had a meeting with the Stake President [church leader of a region] and we decided to have a training with the Ward councils [the leadership council of a local congregation] yesterday to start putting some systems in practice in the stake.  All good.  We (the 4 Zone Leaders) had planned to be there in primarily a support role.   However, when the meeting was about to start, the Stake President handed us a few documents and told us that we are training on it.  Five minutes later we were up there in front talking to the whole stake about some papers we saw for the first time like 5 minutes before.....haha! It went pretty well all things considered, but it was a bit of a surprise and definitely a bigger audience than what I am used to.  

Other than that, everything is fairly normal and not much is all that new.  All is good with me and I'm really happy to be here.  I love you guys!!!

Elder Peacock

Last Time’s a Charm

Email dated 5.12.14

A picture is worth a thousand words right? So, three pictures is the equivalent of a three thousand word letter right?  Haha I’m really not sure what to tell you all.  I'm here in Pucallpa still and basically the same as I was yesterday.  I told you everything that I had to tell you yesterday.  I burned my pants [a tradition when missionaries hit their 18-month mark] and helped with a move this week for service.  I was pretty tough looking right?  

I still can’t believe that I already hit 18 months.  If I were a sister I would already be done and home.  Luckily I’m an Elder and have another 6 months left in my mission.  Everything is going pretty well out here and I’m happy to be here.  It was good to get to talk to you all yesterday and just think, the next time you hear my voice you’ll also be looking right at me so that’s an interesting thought for you guys--my last call as a missionary.  

Love you guys and I hope you have a great week!!

Elder Peacock

P.S.  We have struggled mightily with technology for our Christmas and Mother’s Day calls.  Gratefully, everything worked as it should for our call last Sunday.  Despite being in the middle of nowhere, the internet connection was actually pretty good.  It felt like we were a family, just shooting the breeze.  And then I cried.  There is wisdom in not having more regular phonecalls.  I feel the absence so much more on these days.  Not that I would ever trade those calls.  I love my missionary! 

A Few More Circles Around Pucallpa

Ok, so long story short: I’m staying put again which means that I will be the last companion of Elder Limon [he is completing his mission and returning home in 6 weeks].  It also means that I will have the best possible Mother’s Day call because Pucallpa has the best internet connection in all of the jungle here, which is good. I was afraid that I was going to go back to Iquitos which probably has the worst connection [as I can well attest after last year’s frustrating Mother’s Day call made from Iquitos!].

This week was good and I am happy to be here.  We went to Iquitos this week for our Leaders Council.  It was a really cool council and we’re really starting to change things up.  They had been somewhat the same since President Gomez had gotten here and now there are a lot of things changing up which really is a good thing.  Not really all that much to tell you guys, it all seems somewhat similar when I walk around in circles for a while in the same blocks all the time.  We do have an investigator right now named E* who had an accident a few years ago and now lives on crutches.  He’s a really cool guy and a really good learner.  

I will just apologize now for the shortness of this email, but just remember that we will talk for 30-40 minutes on Skype this Sunday.  Love you guys and hope you have a spectacular week!!!

Elder Peacock

P.S.  We got to have a pre-call phonecall yesterday with Elder Peacock.  I only hung up on him once (oops!!) in my excitement.  It is pretty startling to hear his voice saying “Hey Mom!” like he just talked to me last week when in reality it’s been nearly six months since I’ve heard it.  I do love that boy-man!

Adventure Time

Hey everyone!

So this week we had a pretty big adventure!  We went further than any other missionary has ever gone before...as far as I'm aware, anyway.  We travelled out to a place called San Alejandro which is 110 km away on the highway headed to Lima in order to get a birth certificate which couldn’t just be sent to us.  Usually you can just call the "municipalidad" (English word? I don’t know) and they’ll send it to you, but this place doesn’t even have a phone number.  I think that I just realized that 110 km isn’t really that far, but when you’re in the Amazon jungle, it seems pretty far.  In America we could make that trip in like 40-50 minutes, but here it took an hour and a half.  So we just got in a car and took it out there, waited around for a while, got the partida and came back.  So it wasn’t really all that exciting but it was a new place where missionaries have never been before and I’m fairly certain that a majority of those people had never seen white people before-- especially because they were all staring at me and the half Mexican ginger.  Haha it still strikes me as strange that he [his companion, Elder Limon] is the Latin one.  Everyone tries to say his last name an English way "lie"mon and I always just tell them that his dad is Mexican and they’re always really surprised.  But yeah, so a long morning of car rides and I got to see a new part of the jungle that is pretty rare.  

Other than that, this week was a pretty much another week in the life of a missionary here in the jungle.  That was definitely the most exciting thing that happened this week.  Elder Limon and I are just working hard and things have just started to go a lot better in our area even thought it is possible that I won’t be here to see it all get done or to be with Elder Limon when he finishes.  He's only got one change left and I think that I'm going to be leaving next change.  I really don’t know anything though and I have no idea where I would be going to.  I would be fine either way but if I stay that basically assures me that I would only have one area left in my mission.  That’s weird to think that I already have so little time left, and that I would have so few areas.  I’ve kinda just stayed put for a while in each area I’ve been in for my whole mission.  So I won’t be surprised if it happened here too.  I mean its only been like 4 and a half months here and if I stay it will be at least 7 and a half months here.  I've never really gotten bored in an area before but if I were to get bored in an area it would be this one because it's tiny.  I love it right now but we'd have to see in 3 months if i were to feel the same way.

Not really sure what else to tell you guys about, everything is going well out here, I'm happy and healthy and even though the people in the clinic know me.  I never go there for myself, just for other missionaries in the zone, 3 times this week... I’m not a huge fan of Peruvian clinics...haha love you guys!

Elder Peacock

PS Talk to you in like 2 weeks!!! I'll let you know the details next week.  [Missionaries get to call home on Mother’s Day]

PPS You probably don’t believe me, but this soup was really good. The fish is called carachama.  It’s pretty common here.

Walking in Circles

Hey everyone!

So like I said last week, we had a wedding and a baptism for this week and all went well! Kind of.  As far as our family it was good, but there was going to be another family that has a phantom birth certificate. It really just doesn't seem to exist anywhere even though we know it does exist because they had a copy of it that they had lost and now we think its in a little town up the river that just happens to not have a phone number.  This is going to be interesting.  Sometimes I don't like doing paperwork....

So, we had been teaching this family like 2 months ago, but the dad  just did not want to get married.  The mom had been going to church for like a month straight.  He is a less-active member and part of a ginormous family that are almost all members.  He hadn't been to church in years and really didn’t show much interest in going or doing much of anything so we just had to stop visiting them.  Then, one Sunday about 3 weeks ago, they both showed up to church which really surprised us, and we passed by their house that night.  He said that when he woke up that morning, he heard a voice telling him to go to church.  So he did.  And then, out of nowhere, he said that he wanted to get married on the 17th because he wanted to get married on his birthday which was kinda weird but I mean if that's what he wants... So got it set and had their marriage this week and her baptism at 7 in the morning so that he could be there for his now wife’s baptism before he went to work for the whole day.  He's still not going to church constantly but he's definitely opening up more all the time.

Other than all of that stuff happening, this week was a fairly normal week just walking around in circles (we have a tiny area).  Two weeks until changes and it's possible that I will stay here for the last change of Elder Limon’s mission and then send him home...or I could leave and go basically anywhere.  I really have no idea which it will be but I think if I stay here for for another 3 months I will literally go crazy.  Did I mention that it's a really small area?  Part of me wants to stay here with Elder Limon and another part of me does not want to stay here for that much longer because I feel like I've literally talked to every person in this area.

And, we had a service day where we worked as carpenters which is a lot of fun! GUINEA PIG!!! [at first I did not understand the guinea pig reference, and then I realized he’s wearing the shirt I sent him, although it’s hard to tell with his arms folded!]

Elder Peacock

Alma 26:12

December It Is

Hey everyone!

For the last two weeks, it stopped raining and just started getting hot and dry and it has been ridiculous these last few days.  Then, out of nowhere, this morning it just started raining really really hard and there were rivers in all of the streets and it was almost impossible to get out of our room because there was a river right in front of it.  It required a lot of planning, skill, technique, leaping ability, and a willingness to let our feet get wet, but we got out of there and I'm just soaking wet at the moment.  Not even my dri-fit socks can keep all that water out.  So much for playing soccer in the stadium today....haha.

This week we had interviews with President.  I got to speak with him directly about my end date.  At this point, he hasn't actually done anything and I don't know what actually has to be done anyways, but what I do know is that he said it will be December and that there won't be any problems, so you guys can just plan on that for now.  It'll be the first week of December that I'll be getting home and I'm happy about that.  I know that there are a few of you that would rather that I went home in October, but this really is what I want to do.  I love being out here and I love being a missionary.  Plus, nowadays missionaries have much shorter MTC stays so really I'm just gaining back the time that I lost for having to stay in the MTC for 2 months instead of 6 weeks like they do now.  And don't worry, I will be home for Christmas and we can have a 2nd Thanksgiving  a week or 2 late if you would  like.  [Me thinks he would like a little Thanksgiving food.  I think I’ll be over it by then…]

This week was a pretty good week.  We had President and Sister Gomez here this week for a few days and other than that, a fairly normal week teaching the Gospel, doing marriage papers as always and other normal stuff.  Elder Limon is trying to get in shape to go home and so for these past few weeks we’ve been running in the mornings.  I missed running and it's a little different because we have to get up kinda early to do it but I think when you combine that with the blazing sun of these last few weeks, I'm losing some weight which is kinda nice.   I'm getting skinny again!!  

By the way.  Did you know that it's normal and not an insult to call someone fat here? That is going to be somewhat dangerous if I keep that up when I go home!!  Just know, If I call you fat when I'm with you in a few months, I'm not being mean, it's just a cultural thing.  

I don’t really have any stories for you, and I didn’t take any pictures this week.....ummm....its alright we have a wedding and a baptism this week so that always makes for stories and pictures!!  Thanks for everything, have a great week!!

 

Also, just an invitation for everyone to really focus on our Savior and His Atonement this week to be able to really understand the purpose of Easter.  It's really a great holiday that is really underrated and definitely way different here in Peru.  I'll bet that the majority of those who have served in Latin countries know what I'm talking about.

Elder Peacock

Alma 26:12