7th (or 8th idk anymore) Week / Yunguyo-Puno Pics

I had a blast this week, we got so much done and I'm settling into Yunguyo nicely. The members are super helpful and patient with my spanish especially because I give a talk every Sunday at Church now. I also get to teach English every Saturday now! Everyone who wants to learn comes to the church building and Elder Cubillas and I (mostly me) get to teach English which is sooo much fun and it makes me realize how hard our own language is, but it's difficult to learn a language no matter what. 

We do a lot of service at the end of the day which leads to teaching oppurtunities, since they're absolutely no stores or malls or anything, these old ladies sell everything you need on the streets and after the day is over, they have to carry ALL of it back to their house so we try to help as many of them as possible. After they always ask where'd we come from and who we are and boom teaching, I love it. Okay so I get a ton of weird looks from little kids that are like 6 or 7  because we're in the middle of nowhere and some of them have never seen a white person before its hilarious, on the terrrible 2 hour bus ride to Puno that we always take, there was a little girl next to me and she kept telling her mom that she wanted to brush my hair because she's never touched golden hair it was great. The people here are so nice about everything and they barely have anything. I always compare it to home because we have so much in the States and we're still asking for more even when we have a ton. It's great because the people are so receptive to what you have to hear even if they don't believe in the same things you do, they always try to find a similarity and it's awesome.

 I'm finally being over terrible sick, at the beginning of this week I got super sick and I think it's cause it's freezing and I've never lived in cold my whole life so maybe that's a reason. We teach an owner of the only Pizzeria now so it's like the best reason ever to get pizza and man is it good pizza. 

Saturday Night we had a mini apocalypse in Yunguyo, we were walking home at night from our pensionista and every single light in the entire city turned off, like imagine closing your eyes it was so dark, and of course my companion grabs me to find me so I flip out haha, every little kid was screaming in the city too so yah it wasn't a good time. luckily I had a flashlight in my bag, I had no idea why but I was prepared, it was kind of a lame flashlight so everytime we'd see a car or some kind of light we'd just start running towards it I honestly don't know how we got home. I wish they told us before we started flipping living here so we were prepared but I guess everytime a thunderstorm is about to pass over, they turn off all the lights. Like wow wish I'd known that. So that whole night we just sat in our room with candles with an insane amount of rain and lightning it was super cool. Heavenly Father definitely protected me that day cause if I didn't have that flashlight we'd have to just sit still it was that dark. I have pics of my city finally haha. We also went on splits with the zone leaders so I got to learn the ways of Puno a bit more but honestly I don't like it as much as Yunguyo, Puno is like LA and Yunguyo is like Santa Clarita. But yah I hope all of you had an awesome week and remember to always carry a flashlight it helps.

 Ether 12:27--"And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness.  I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them."

¡Estoy Aqui!

Okay so these past weeks have been just full of traveling and sooo much excitement and Cusco is awesome. But first Ill get the important stuff out of the way. 

My companion is Elder Cubillas, he's from Peru and will be my trainer for 12 weeks until he goes home. He can speak English which made me so happy and he's a really good missionary so I'm excited to work with him. So I fell in love with Cusco when I stayed there for days to meet the mission President and do a bunch of paperwork stuff. The weather is perfect and everything's gorgeous and I got to meet a bunch of members and I loved it so much. Buttttt, my first area is like the furthest area away from Cusco haha. I don't have pictures of it yet but I will next week. It's called Yunguyo. It's basically on the border of Bolivia and Peru and on Lake Titicaca. It's freezing and sketchy but I love it. We took a 13 hour bus ride to get there from Cusco. It's an extremely poor town, our bathroom is on the roof so I mean you get a nice view but everyone can see you right back. 

Leaving the CCM was really hard because made so many lifelong friends there. It was like leaving home again I hated it. But It's exciting. Our area only has like 28 members going to church so our main focus is strenghtening the members, we probably won't have a lot of crazy baptism stories or anything like that, we're only focused on visiting members everyday which I think is a great idea. The district of Yunguyo is just me and my companion. We had to conduct, bless, pass the sacrament, and give a talk on Sunday. It's really sad so wqe're going to work so hard to get members coming. But yah! Im loving it! Oh and of course we get there and no one speaks Spanish, they all speak Quechua and some other old inca language so I have no idea how we're gonna do that cause I dont even know Spanish yet, but its an awesome challenge and everyone here loves Americans, all the old ladies with the colorful backpack things just love talking to me it's hilarious. Just google Yunguyo for now because Ive been very busy and haven't gotten pictures, it's nothing too exciting but I have love for the city.

 Hope everyone had an awsesome past 2 weeks! Happy Thanksgiving!


 (He did take a picture of Yunguyo--this is the view from his bedroom window.)

Dear Parents,

As you can see in the attached photo, your son has arrived safely to the Peru Cusco Mission! We are thrilled to have him here! He looks great, a bit tired from the travel, but ready to go! Thank you for allowing us to watch over him for the next two years. He has promised that he will be a missionary we can trust, and we have now given him that trust. As well, you can trust that we will do everything that we can to care for him and to help him to become a successful missionary.

Con Gran Amor,

Presidente y Hermana Herrera

5th week / CUSCO IN 6 DAYS

This week was so productive and awesome. I love this place so much but I'm so excited to get out in a couple days. Being a zone leader is so busy but such a blast.

We watched a video for a devotional on Sunday night about John Mowry. He worked as a stone cutter for the Salt Lake Temple but lived like 20 miles away from the temple site. He would wake up every morning at 2 and walk all the way to the temple site to do his work for the whole day and walk all the way back. At this point I was like okay well I need to do better when it comes to waking up and being excited for the day, but then Mowry lost one of his legs. But yet he made himself a wooden leg and continued to walk those miles every single morning. That's huge motivation to me because I need to be grateful for everything I have and the fact that I only wake up at 6 haha.

I'm scared to get out into the field because I'm not confident in my Spanish at all but then I have to realize I have only been here for 5 weeks. It's crazy how fast time flies it's actually kind of scary cause I don't want it to end too fast. Lima is so awesome and everyone I've met is so nice and the people here have the best sense of humor. My favorite part of the week is going to the temple and just talking to everyone on the temple grounds, everyone there loves missionaries so it's so much fun.

I made a goal to memorize 18 irregular verbs and almost every single one of their conjugations and I did it! I don't know how much it'll help me but so far when I speak to the Latinos it's been awesome. I can now teach all the lessons in Spanish without a need for a plan or preparation which is super nice, I'm a lazy person so I really didn't like writing every single thing out I was going to say. Memorizing is a huge part of teaching in another language because after awhile it just becomes so natural and you'll learn every single word in that phrase.

My time here has been so much fun and I feel so prepared but I'm also terrified at the same time;) Other than that it was a very normal week it's just a lot of work and study, when I get out into the field I'm sure these emails will be so much better haha. Im so excited to go preach the gospel to the people of Cusco, this Monday night/Tuesday we will all be going our seperate ways to our missions. I hope you all had a fantastic week!  

Fourth Week

I hope you all had a great Halloween!! They don't celebrate it here
but a lot of us Americans just shared candy around that night. This
week went by so fast it was crazy.

We went proselyting! It was terrifying because with three weeks of Spanish under my belt it was
kind of difficult, Peruvians mumble like crazy, so it's hard enough to
understand Spanish but then when they mumble it's just impossible. I
didn't get any cool teaching experiences because we went to the rich
part of Lima East so all of them are very Catholic and didn't even
just want to have a normal conversation. There were dogs everywhere,
outside of the richer neighborhoods, all of the people were so happy
and fun, we talked to two old ladies who were sitting on a park bench
and they kept complimenting our clothes it was so cute. So ya it was
nice to actually go outside and talk to people and see how everythings
done. It was a very good experience, and it was very humbling for all
of us. It also made me realize how bad my Spanish is and how hard I
need to keep working. 

They fed us hamburgers and pizza this week! I
cannot explain how sick I am of rice already. I know its only been 4
weeks but my goodness it was nice to have some burgers. I mixed mayo
and ketchup and put it on my burger so I could have In N Out in Peru.


We've had a couple more eathquakes, one of them in the middle of the
night that was the biggest one I've ever been in, we had a couple
stuff fall from our closets and stuff but it wasn't big enough to make
me get out of bed haha. Other than that the weather has been perfect
every single day. I feel like when I get to Cusco I'm going to be sooo
cold.

 We're doing very well with our practice investigators. I can
recite the first vision in Spanish now and am trying to memorize
Spanish things everyday. I am so close with my district now, it's
going to be so hard when we all have to go to our seperate missions.
Being Zone Leader is a blast. Elder Wells and I basically run the
whole MTC now along with 2 other Elders. It's so much fun meeting all
these missionaries from around the world. It's a lot of work on top of
being a normal busy missionary but it's so worth it. One more email
after this one and I'm off to Cusco! "The glory we seek is in
glorifying others"---David A. Bednar  Hope you all had a fantastic
week.