Week 7

Hello Family!

I don't have much time and this keyboard is extremely sticky so I am sorry if this is like hieroglyphics for you. Pisco is a huge area, I am not by the coast, Pisco is by the ocean, but I am in a desert, it kinda sucks, but hey, its my mission so I will live with it.

Craziness right, my very first lesson was with this lady and she was breastfeeding, just ooop! like that. So needless to say that is how most lessons are, breastfeeding mothers. I think I have had 5 lessons without breastfeeding. The food here is good, I am starting to get the bug, but its fine, its like it was in the CCM, except toilets don't work here past noon. With boxes you send them to the office, but on the BOX part, not the address, put Pisco, because that is my zone. Most of the food goes like this, breakfast we have rolls with egg or ham, with this drink that is like oatmeal without the chunks, disgusting. Lunch is always rice, chicken with bone, and surprise. One time they had noodles that were COATED in pesto, nastiness but alright. I cannot finish a lunch meal to save my life, they give us so much food!!! I am known as the missionary with the tiny stomach, its ok.

I am in a ward with 150 members this past Sunday!!! our goal is 200 so that will take a while. I have figured out some weird things about Peru. The dogs are either strays, abused, pregnant, sleeping, or cute. Always a combination of 2 but most of the time combo of 3. There was a funeral, but the people threw beer bottles at the casket, it was weird cause it happened on the catholic road. Here we have roads that different religions are centered, we have just the catholic road and the testigos de jehovah road. Needless to say the catholic road is alright, but the other is crazy. I saw them trying to preach, they were wearing hats, old OLD clothes, and were just .... extrano. Wedding was fun, I will put pictures if I have time. There is this lady that we contacted, who I think is technically my first investigador and her name is Paula. She is golden. The members here in Peru are mostly women, we had 6 people in Elders Quoram, including 4 Elders.

I don't think we do anything for Thanksgiving, because its an American Holiday (winky face) but its all good. I am getting frustrated a lot and it is bugging me because its only my first week. I am having lots of problems with falling asleep after lunch, not during lessons or anything, but I am just tired. Trying to be better. I am also thinking of buying a blanket because I sleep with a hoodie and my socks because it is cold in the morning. I got a tie that has a llama on it, its awesome. I have lived off of yogurt and peanut butter for my dinner, es lo maximo, not! My companion is always chastising me about not being able to teach, because I can understand Spanish, I cant ever explain how I am feeling because he doesn't know english well enough and I don't know Spanish well enough. The people here talk really fast and really quite. I cannot hear them at all!! but I guess they say that I am better than most of the gringos that come because I actually talk, its weird. I am baptizing an hermana on Saturday, its kinda crazy. I really need something to be able to help me belt, because nobody knows what to do.

Well, sorry for cutting off, but I have to go do stuff.

Love you

Elder Roberts

Extra Sweetness

This is a letter he wrote, I'm assuming while he was meeting with his Mission President.

Week 6

Ok, let me see how much I can write in 40 minutos.

I love all of you guys. Charlie and Emily, congrats and looking amazing in that awesome pic, es lo maximo (its the best) thats the most common phrase here in Peru. My companion is Elder P and he is shorter than me!!! hahahaha, anyways we are in a city south of Lima called Pisco. TBH you havent seen people who are poor until you have seen Peru. Leterally our apartment is the best and we cant flush a toilet in the afternoon, because the water doesnt work. I am able to download pictures when I write you guys, but I havent taken any pictures yet, sorry. The dogs here are so weird. Imagine all types of dogs, but with no hair to incredible sparce hair. It is crazy. Elder L was in my district back in the CCM and I helped him with Spanish, he was kinda weird TBH because he thought that he could "read me" hahaha oh it was hilarious. The flight here was fun, I talked to a guy in Spanish for like 4 hours, cause I slept the first hour and after we just waited for a long time. We started talking because he was curious as to what Elder meant. We talked about temples because his cousin is a member and he wasnt allowed in the wedding and was wondering why. I told him that what goes on in the temple is sacred and instead of being married until death do you part, you are married for time and all eternity, how wonderfulo is that? Anyway he was a catholic who believed that God is the universe so that was weird and I wasn't the best teacher cause it was hard to communicate in spanish. I think that once I get into the routine here in Peru and after I know where things are, I will be able to go crazy on the language. You would be surprised how much I actually understand, the only problem is that I cannot talk to people. I cannot communicate my feelings the way that I want to. The first night we stayed in a hotel that was super nice, then the next day we woke up around 5 to go to a meeting with the Mission President, President Douglas. He is way chill and I am grateful for the two things that he is stressing in the mission: exact obedience and the atonement. Everyday we read with our companions a scripture about the atonement and it is awesome. It is extremely hot here. The first food that I tried was the breakfast that I had this morning, it was interesting. It was 3 rolls with bologna in them and this oatmeal like drink, extremely hot, but not chunky like oatmeal. I actually liked it. Our lunch today was chinese food, a lot of it that only costs like 4$ in America for 3 plates of food, crazy, i didn't finish it was so much. I tried Inca cola for the first time, it is one of 4 drinks that I can drink here: water, inca cola, coca cola, and the oatmeal thingy. I am probably going to get a bug because I can never use a bathroom!! there isn't a place that has a working toilet past noon, terrible. We have to fill a bucket of water and flush our toilets, so fun.... ya. My companion el lo maximo, he knows a lot of english and he will help me with learning spanish. One of my zone leaders made me a little mad today during our meeting because he came over and asked if I was tired, I said yes and he told me kinda snarky "get over it". I have a good attitude about most stuff, but when someone was new like me and says that, just a little frustrating. I am sorry that all of this is just one giant paragraph, but the cubicle that I am writing in is so tiny, everything here is tiny. I have to duck to miss hitting my head when coming downstairs to bruch teeth or eat or study, ME!!!! ya crazy. The people seem that they are nice and this weekend we are attending a wedding I think and I think my companion has already set up a baptism on the 3rd of December. We are in the desert, it is so crazy, I am going to be so dusty its almost hilarious. Mom, you would freak out about how dusty everything is and how many cookarachas there are. When you are sending a package, address it to the zone in Pisco, I will be here until february so its ok for you to send something. I dont know what I need because we can order garments which I will eventually need. Everything is in spanish which is good, but it is driving me crazy. I really wish that I could just understand, but I know that it will come with time in the mission field. It is a little different with the schedule, but thats ok. Ya, que mas... que mas.... I could use some socks... but I'll let you know later. I am really grateful for all that you guys do for me. It is extremely different here than in Utah, like driving wise, if you don't try to cut people off, you get honcked at. It is literally crazy, grampy would say "guy" at everyone, so that always goes into my head. The verbs are normal words though! like to clean, to lift, to break, to breathe, to think, every normal word in a dictionary guys, nothing new from me... come on;)

Let me know if I forgot anything

Love you tons and bunches

Elder Roberts

Week 5

Hola Familia!!! 

So crazy things happened this weekend, oh goodness this is going to be a crazy letter.

So first things first, I AM LEAVING ON MONDAY!!! We leave the CCM around 10 AM and our flight is from 2 in the afternoon to 9 at night, not too shabby. So exciting because the others mission in Peru (West ugh) jk, they leave in the middle of the night and it is hilarious because they have to go to their classes and everything. It is really scary because I have no idea how to speak the language and its just.... ahhh!!! I feel like I've been gaining a little weight, but that might just be because of the food and all the sitting that we do, we don't really walk as much as the Provo MTC would. i'll either find another belt in Peru or just find a way to punch holes in it.. idk. We had a huge party last night with all of our goodies, we had the chips, root beer, chokies in leche with peanut butter... ah t'was glorious. I am getting my umbrella, just making sure I have enough pesos. all of my clothes are holding up, except for some of my socks, like the cool British pair, gray and blue pair, but that's just because they are thinner so when I play sports it wears them out. Grammy and Grampy are the only ones besides Charlie and Emily to send stuff, which was very nice of them to do for me. 

OK so we met the new baby district: so there was the one with all of the hermanas in it, and now we got another with 8 elders.

The one with the 8 elders is so legit. They are all a bunch of cool kids. There is Elder M with Elder A (who went to Bingham a year before me, didn't really know him but he's chill) Elder D with Elder S, Elder H with Elder S, and Elder T  (who is from LP and is crazy at sports, ginger jumps has a whole new meaning now) and Elder A  (he is from St. George and he says he has danced ballroom for most of his life and did Dancesport, but I don't recognize him, but he's funny) They are all just the coolest most ready missionaries. Unfortunately (don't freak out) we were playing cage soccer and I kicked the ball high so that it was bouncing. Elder A was the goalie so he jumped up to grab the ball (nobody was around him or anything) and he came down on his ankle.... and ya. gross. Elder M and myself ran to the infermeria and got someone that could help. He was gone to the hospital for 2 days and then came back. He told us that the doctors told him that he dislocated his ankle so severe that it would have been better if he had just broken it. He is in a wheelchair right now and has to wait for Monday to go home to heal for 2 to 3 months because he can't put pressure on his foot. Needless to say we are all kinda protective of anyone being rough in cage soccer now. I jammed one of my fingers a little playing basketball (cause we didn't want to play cage) and it hurts, put its almost healed, not worried about it. Other than those injuries I have to half index cards that I use as yellow and red cards for cage soccer, so if someone is acting stupid and reckless, BOOM card, or boots the ball out of the cage BOOM card. Its hilarious and everyone goes along with it. Today (pday) we played cage for a bit and I didn't play defense, I was just by the goalie kinda cherry picking, it was fun, scored 3 goals... it was a fun day, nobody really was injured except for two people in my district complaining about blocking shots and tripping and... blah blah blah. 

Everything is kinda weird right now, nobody is really liking their companion. We got a new District leader because Elder D is now our zone leader, and the new district leader... oh man. He loves role plays, it is driving me nuts. When we have a testimony meeting, he doesn't wait for people to gather their thoughts so that they can share what the want to about the day or about what they learned from the devotional. Needless to say I am looking forward to Peru.

Saturday: Finished organizing my Spanish scriptures the way that i wanted to. I put tabs on every 5 chapters so that when I know a certain scripture, I can just flip to it. It was a frustrating day because everyone thinks that Elder Roberts doesn't have struggles with the language, so when I get something wrong, they all jump on my back and attack me. Just because I made 450 flashcards and know 370 doesn't mean that I can speak fluent or mildly fluent yet. 

Sunday: Sunday was good, I finished the BOM in engles from when I started on week one (100 pages a week, or 15 pages a day, no biggy). I also blessed the sacrament in Spanish. It was funny because I practiced with our branch president before and he said that I sounded Mexican (good????) but then things changed. President Pratt (MTC president) came in and joined our sacrament meeting. I was a little nervous and stuttered a bit, but I didn't need to do it again, which is good because I had been here for 5 weeks, come on. An elder from the toddler district got up to share his talk, and he thought that nobody understood a scripture that he shared in Spanish (everything on Sunday is in Spanish FYI) and so he said "let me just read it in English for those who don't understand" President Pratt quickly said "don't bother" kinda bluntly and I had to hold back a laugh because it was hilarious. Needless to say the elder was a little mad. 

Monday: The teachers talked to the Elders and the Hermanas separately about the rules of clothing and appropriate relationships with the Hermanas (not a problem). Monday was the day that Elder A hurt his ankle. Our Progressing Investigador lesson was good, we hit everything we wanted to and the teacher told us that it was a 9.5 out of 10, so that's good. My companion made fun of the word Mentally Retarded... ya, still mad about that, don't know if I should talk to him about that, pretty sure I'm going to cause it was extremely offensive. After that my companion hasn't really talked to me, so I'm gonna tell him what's on my mind then let him tell me what's on his.

Tuesday: Today wasn't the best day. Elder D and I split and sang in the choir for the devotional, it was a good devotional that helped me realize a whole new meaning the the purpose of inviting ALL to come unto Christ. That doesn't mean people that we don't think will except the Gospel. That means ourselves first, our companions, a bishop, ward members, and investigadores. Es muy importante por todas las personas recibiremos el evangelio porque es como regresamos a Dios y Jesucristo. 

So that is my weekly update. Everything is going good.

Jacob 6:1 says Oh Be wise, what can I say more?

That is were I got my sassiness from, that guy.

Love you all, will take more pictures, sorry

Love,

Elder Roberts

Week 4

Dearest family that I love,

No I did not fix my belt, gonna try to fix that in Peru, not too much of a problem anymore.... I will get an umbrella the last week that I am here because it hasn't been raining here, and the umbrellas cost about 100 pesos (about 10$) here. Which is how much we are given each week. I have been saving up because I don't know what I will need when I leave. I leave November 18th, so I think that is a Monday. Yes I did get the goodies (pretty sure I said that last week) but we haven't pulled anything out yet, because we have been waiting for this PDay. I'm not sure if we get to call, probably not because the entire flight will probably be missionaries, seriously though. I have one more PDay here in the CCM before we head out to Peru. So excited!!

This week has been a little crazy, I will start with the crazy then go into the normal.

So remember how Clay was in the same District that I am in now? Well now we are the oldest District in the zone because the other district  left. I really enjoyed spending time with that district because they had the same humor that I have. I didn't get to take a picture of the Hermanas from that district (10A) but its all good because the Elders are the ones that I hung out with. One of the Elders in their district left before anyone else, and his name was Elder D, he was a cool legit person, and he is actually serving in Peru Lima North. I had most of their district write testimonies in the book, so that was good. We received the new district with the usual random pranks (russian) and the Hermanas (6 of them!!) basically looked liked they wanted to kill us, it was nuts. So we had a fun time, but we weren't sure about the new district. Sunday was Fast Sunday and they closed the Comedor on Saturday night for dinner so we could start our fast that night and have lunch the next day, which was nice. My companion and I taught the priesthood lesson on Sunday, which was alright, but we talked about the two priesthoods, so naturally people started to doze off. Everyone in our district is a zone or district leader now except for me and my companion, which has him a little mad. I am fine with it because I don't think that I could handle a little extra (not even though) stress on my shoulders. It was weird to see the difference in the Espanol. The difference was between the district that left and the baby district. I started to memorize verbs, around 60 a day. One day I did pretty good and i memorized 100, so now I am at 220 to 280, there are 450 total that they give us, some are repeats, and some I will never use. It was good thought because one of the Elders in my district, Elder L, has had the hardest time struggling on Espanol and I started to help him with the verbs. So far he has 73 down (that I know of) which is about 25 a day. He used one of the new verbs in class and the teacher was surprised that he knew that word HAHAHHA!!! One of the new Elders from the baby district also kinda slipped, not meaning to (I think) an insult to him, which made him feel bad about his Espanol. I tried to cheer him up, but I feel that he will just be motivated by that more now.

Onto the days. 

Friday was a PAIN!!! Probably one of the worst Halloweens ever!! They made our entire casa move casas. We had to move from casa 1 to casa 2, not that big of a deal except that we were in our nice clothes, had to move everything, my companion cut his thumb on his razor, and my companion and I don't have any drawers (gahones). So we are literally living out of our suitcases. Its not that we just don't have drawers, we don't even have a place to put drawers in. The Hermanas in both districts were just really sassy and I didn't want to be mean or sarcastic, so I just didn't talk for most of the day. 

Saturday: Friday night the CCM had a power outage (in the new casa remember) and it was freezing. The new district Elders were being a little rude. I told them that if they wanted to talk to other Elders, we are just down the hall. One of the Elders jabbed back "this Elder wants to be a psychiatrist when he grows up, cause he likes to talk about feelings"UGH!! needless to say my prediction came true and now we can't get rid of them, lovely. We taught in TRC again (no little 15 year old this time) instead we had a 30 to 40 year old member. We taught her about prayer and she asked why do bad things happen to good people... piece of cake, you got Alma 14:14, 2 Nephi 2:13... The spirit was so strong that she teared up and gave us an amazing review, boom, spiritual high. 

Sunday: I started to feel a little distant from my district because everyone talks to each other and I study vocab, because I want to know how to say things. It was a rough day because my companion started to be a little moody and I didn't know why. I spilled food on my shirt at lunch (the food just wanted to be eaten so bad that it jumped out at me) so I had to go change. I think one of the things that I don't appreciate about people on Fast Sundays is that they gorge themselves with food. Disgusting. 

Wednesday: I kinda messed up in our progressing investigador lesson today. I thought that we had to hurry and didn't have enough time , so I said that we didn't have time, but then we had 5 more minutes, so it just ruined the whole forward motion of the lesson.. ugh.

Today: I really wanted to iron all of my shirts (almost done) and get organized, which we did. I wanted to go play ultimate, but instead we played volleyball for awhile which I didn't particularly enjoy. We played ultimate and it was alright, nothing crazy. We played normal soccer on a regular field and the other team had the 3 actual soccer players, so we got destroyed. We found out that we have another baby district that came yesterday and met some of the Elders. We have 8 Elders in the new district (Me gusta). Onto the last week of the CCM WOOO!!!!

I like DC 24:7 because its simple and I like it

Love, Elder Roberts

 The hoodie Brigade

 The baby district

 A yummy breakfast drink

These two are for Elder Olive :)