Week 20

So this week was good. the transfer is already flying by which is sad because it is super fun. Elder Juarez is super dope and we laugh hard. Tons of contacting again but we are getting in a few more lessons. We have a guy who has a baptismal date for the 14 of January. His wife is a less active and he has a little 9 year old daughter that will be baptized in march so that is good that we have someone that is progressing. We will find others though.

A couple of stories that happened this week. We were knocking doors in this kind of alley way type deal and i ring the doorbell and hear "over here" from behind and i was super confused thinking it wasn't real. Anyway turned out to be this huge white dude from Houston that got married and moved down here. It was super duper weird to do a contact in English after so long of only spanish. We will see if he has any interest.

Another one is that i ate fast food for the first time in 130 some odd days! We went to the stake christmas activity and elder manzanera and i sang a duet lol it was trash but everyone here is tone-deaf so its ok, and we were getting home super late because it was way far away and we hadn't eaten so i stopped at the mcdonalds on the corner near our house and got a big mac and fries and a coke and it tasted exactly the same lol! it was awesome and so good!

Since this area is super rich, there are tons of malls and whatnot here and there is a huge one in our area. My comp showed me this place that looks the same as the nutrishop where i bought some stuff and we are doing our exercises. It is awesome because he actually likes to workout unlike my other comps.

We ate dinner sunday night with some members and her brother was there visiting from Bountiful lol. After his mission, his mission pres invited him to live with him in Provo and go to BYU, he is from Trujillo, and so he did and he got married and is living in bountiful right now. He is super dope and i think he will like call you guys or email you or something. They are the ones who are gonna loan us their computer to skype on sunday. Which btw we will be doing at like 3 here in Peru.

It is super weird to be celebrating christmas in like 90 degree weather. I have to wear sunscreen everyday otherwise i would look like a latino as well because i tan so easily. The peruvians celebrate about the same as we do, with trees and tons of lights and whatnot too. There are like infinity nativity scenes set up all around town and i am still working on getting a pic with this like 30 foot fake 

Brycie The (Gigantic) Elf

tree set up in ovalo. 

so ya ill talk to you guys on sunday! 

Week 19

Ya so this week has been pretty good! My new area is super super rich in comparison to anywhere else in Peru. it is like the U.S. it reminds me a lot of seattle tbh like the streets and little restaurants and whatnot. i will take pics to show you. My new comp is dope. Elder Juárez from Piura, Peru. He loves to workout and is super chill and teaches me a ton of crap it is awesome! There is a Chili´s in our area and a mcdonalds and a burger king and tons of other sic stuff that ive gotta go to. Its just difficult to go because we have the pension and on pdays no one wants to go but i will find a way. There are huge malls and whatnot here it is super weird to see after seeing the super poor side. 

I got your package and it was awesome. it was fetching huge hahaha. i weighed myself and turns out i have lost more than i thought! i am at 213 right now and i left at around 225 so that sucks. 

I got to go to the baptism of the Perez Family this week back in my old area! i baptized one of their twin daughters. it was super cool, they got married first and then baptized right after. they have been so prepared. i got to meet Elder Gozalvez´ brand new comp. i guess he has really been struggling but he is a really cool guy from Idaho falls! i will send pics. 

My new zone is pretty dope. my zone leader is Elder Manzanera who was elder Wilcox´s comp in the ccm. he used to be a super hardcore dude but he is cool. my comp is the District leader for our zone. lol it could be worse and he could be the DL of the other district in our zone which is complete hermanas hahahah. 

We went out with the elders from the ccm again this saturday. hahahaha boy am i glad i dont have to relive that or even relive the last 3 months of my training. They sure struggle with everything. 

We did 80 contacts this week in our area. There is absolutely nothing set up here, we are practically opening the area. To let you know, the mission-wide weekly goal is 50. We havent found much but one couple. We do tons of walking and a little tiny bit of teaching. It will be a real challenge but it will be a real good experience to learn and to grow here. 

we eat breakfast in our room here in San Borja and the rest in our pension. Everyone has tons and tons of money. The 2nd counselor in the bishopbric is an X mission pres and area 70. Tons of people can speak english. I have seen like jeeps and mercedes benz and even a ford raptor to let you know how rich it is. It is super cool. Hopefully we can find people that will progress. please pray for our area and the people that we can find those chosen souls.

 Elder Juarez and me lighting it up!

--Eating Lomo Saltado at members house

Much Love,

Elder Mortenson

Week 18

Whats up guys so tomorrow i finish my second transfer. Haha it seems like just yesterday i got to the CCM in mexico scared to death for what waited for me ahead. I am being transfered to San Borja in La Molina. I am super pumped to see what it is like. La Molina is the richest part of Peru and San Borja probably only comes in second in richness in all of the districts that are in La Molina. My new comps name is Elder Juarez and they say he has like 9 months in the mission and is from peru so we will see what he is like. Elder Wilcox served there for 2 transfers and was telling me that the teaching is hard because the people are a little more prideful but the members and area are awesome. I will let you know how it is next week. 

 

So this week we had our zone meeting and they are changing everything in the mission around. Just some things that will affect you guys is that they are changing the scheduling of P days so i will be writing from now on at 3 here in peru. They are changing everything though. There is no longer a program to rescue less active members, they just want us to baptize. They say that the keys and the responsibilty for rescuing falls with the ward quorum presidents. But they can assign us a couple families to visit and just motivate to come to church but we no longer have to like teach them all the lessons and whatnot. but also the rules to be able to baptize will change in the coming year. There is tons of stuff that will be super good and cool for the mission and i am excited. 

So the family Perez wasnt able to get all of their paperwork in and whatnot so they are going to get married this friday at 3 and then get baptized right after so hopefully i will be able to get the invitation to come back and see them. They are so dope and have truly been prepared by the Lord to receive his gospel. That is also another stress this upcoming year is finding the chosen people and get them the gospel. idk if its just me but with them wanting us to just baptize and baptize it seems that the second coming must be near. 

We were able to watch the christmas devotional last night in english like we did with conference so that was cool. The talks had super interesting takes on why we celebrate Christmas. I really liked the first one where he said we celebrate Christs birth but that is not the start, neither is his death the end. And how we came here to earth fully trusting that He would pay the price and make it so that we could return. And also how Christ entered the garden almost completely alone with the fate of humanity in his hands. So that is what we really celebrate, the fact that we can receive mercy through our Lawyer, so to speak, and not receive the penalty of justice from the Judge. We also had a stake wide activity where we sang as missionaries and it was super cool. For christmas this year, as zones, we are going to go caroling from what i understand so that will be fun in like 400k degree weather. 

I had my 12 week final training with president boswell this week so that was fun. It made me really think about where i want to go in not only the mission, but in life. i am really figuring things out here. like why i am here and where i want to go and what is important. It is super cool. One thing interesting that they mentioned to us in our training was that, what other time in our lives will we have the opportunity to study the scriptures for like 3 hours a day for 2 years. I have learned so much just from that and i hope to just keep rollin. 

--

Much Love,

Elder Mortenson

Week 17

This week was good. this transfer has flown by, if every transfer can fly like this one that would be awesome haha. So my email last week kinda lacked so i will try to make up for it. 

 

we just got back from the temple. it was so nice to go somewhere clean and reverent and spiritual haha because you cant find that here in peru. the temple is a little baby one, like our stake center seems about as big as it but it awesome nonetheless. we did one session with our zone and then took pics and went shopping. i dropped like 100 sols (about $30 U.S. Dollars) and didnt even feel bad because you all just spent 100 dollars for black friday. 

 

thanksgiving isnt a holiday here but our pension made us mashed potatoes and chicken which was somewhat like thanksgiving i guess. you dont eat a ton of mashed potatoes here. 

 

So last sunday we missed the sacrament. we went to pick up a less active family who both served missions but just kinda fell away and they took forever to get ready we ended up waiting at their door for an hour and a half haha but it was awesome because they hadnt been to church in like 12 years. 

 

we went on divisions this week and i went with elder paiva our new zone leader. he is so dope. he served in the military for 3 years before he came and he was like super inactive beforehand but now he is so spiritual. he taught me so much crap just about life and whatnot and i am beginning to see why i am here. but most of the guys in our mission arent unlike him, super inactive before hand and then active just long enough to be sent out to the mission. it is pretty cool stuff. 

 

it is getting super hot. the heat here is like that of lake powell. it is super dry and the sun just bakes you and you cant hide from it anywhere. but it is alright i guess im just glad it isnt like that year round. i am also glad that i should only miss one lake powell trip too haha

 

so this week i had my first baptism. Her name is Esperanza and the missionaries have been visiting her for like 6 months now. her whole family are members and they are going to get sealed here soon which is really cool. The baptismal service took 3 hours because everyone was late and we had to wait on her brother to arrive from la molina which is like an hour with the traffic and whatnot. but in the end it was really cool. ill tell you what the water in the font is like ice water holy fetch its like wading out into bear lake in may when you think it will be warm but it still takes your breath away haha. Also, our golden family should get married and baptized this saturday if all goes well with their paperwork and whatnot. it will be really cool to see. they have made so many changes in their lives to live the commandments and they want to learn so much about the gospel. i will email you next week with pics and let you know how it goes. 

Much Love,

Elder Mortenson



Week 16

This week went by fast which was good. We have been hard at work. We went to Pizza Hut last p-day because there is one not too far away in our zone so that was dope. The most american thing i have eaten in 3 months haha. Our pday's here are trash because there is nothing to do or to see so we literally do nothing but like watch a disney movie and play soccer but its ok. 

 

we rescued 2 less actives this week which was dope. There is so much fetching work to be done with the less actives because fetching everyone is less active. literally Peru holds like a 20 part of the whole church and almost all of them are less active lol. But the promise a member of the Seventy made to the mission is that for every person rescued you get a baptism and randomly on sunday 2 ancient investigators showed up to church and said they used to have a baptismal date and that they want us to come back and visit them so there you go. 

 

So i had a thought this week and this one is for Brett and Brock, baptism is the door to eternal life right? and after we open the door we find the straight and narrow path in which we have to persevere. its kinda like goku on snake way lol. and when we finally get to King Kai we still have to do more training to be the best. 

 

Honestly nothing much has happened this week. I should have divisions this next week so that will be fun because our zone leaders are dope. i cant believe i only have 2 weeks left  in this transfer, it has gone by so fast. soon enough i will talk to you guys on Christmas and then soon enough i will have 6 months already in the mission. The two years really is a short period of time. Once I hit the new year its almost like 1 year more haha. 

 

Just one thing that I think I want. Will you send me some contacts? with the hot sun I sweat and my fetching glasses like fall off my nose constantly and it's super annoying. Elder Wilcox, our zone leader wears his contacts and he is fine so i think if i am just careful i will be alright.

 

And also tell gram and gramps thanks for the package and the card and tell jan too. i am so hyped about my Cholula because the peruvians dont like spicy stuff very much and that is something that I really miss. 

 

Anyway all is just fine. I am adjusting slowly but if i get transfered, which i probably  will, i will probably have to readjust but ill be fine. ill talk to you guys in like a month over skype. 

 

 

--

Much Love,

Elder Mortenson