Week 13

This week was alright. my new comp is elder gozalvez from la paz bolivia and he speaks zero english. luckily i can understand and know enough spanish to where we are fine. he is like your average video gamer stereotype. He likes to work really hard though which is fine with me it makes the time pass faster. We have been contacting a ton this week because our old investigators arent really progressing and we need new ones. and the lord blessed us with 17 new ones this week. we will see if they progress. We had an emergency transfer this week in our district and my comp from the ccm elder hunt came from the other side of our mission so that is awesome. we get to chill and enjoy ourselves again. i like our new zone and they love to play soccer which is fun. 

on saturday we had a zone attack. we went to a different area and the elders from the ccm came on splits with us and it was fun. somehow Josh King, from Preston that i used to play ball with on the Cache valley elite, was there and so we got to talk. he is headed to trujillo. it was kinda sad and funny to see the noobs struggle with spanish. i was just thankful that i could speak better than he could in the ccm holy! i encountered some ancient investigators that were taught by elder griffin when he was here in the area 27 de abril so that was cool. 

we had our 6 week training with the president this week and all it was was just a Q & A which was nice because we had a ton of questions. i fell off of a bus trying to get on because it was so packed and there was no where to hold onto. i am fine though, luckily i am nimble. 

randomly there was a line we saw in the street that literally was like 3 miles long of people all wearing Guns n Roses tshirts so i guess guns n roses is on a world tour ahahah idk why they came to peru. There was also an earthquake the same night but it was weak. 

i am struggling pretty badly rn. i know a lot of spanish and can understand but i still cant get to know people and it is so frustrating. i cant teach like i want to either but i will just keep working. it just sucks being on the bottom of the totempole as well. i mean i guess i have to start somewhere but it sucks. because i am brand new and dont know enough spanish i feel like i just get walked on. 

all i still know is that it could be worse. The dude who is like 24 served a mini mission before this which idk really how it works but it was for 9 months. i think it is kinda like dad said about the tongans, a test run. haha he has been gone for almost 3 years. and he just showed me his wedding anouncement with his gf who waited the whole time for him lol. they are getting married in february, such a long time. 

the thing i look forward to is knowing that one day i will like this. 

--

Much Love,

Elder Mortenson

Week 12

Guys, 

So there goes my first transfer. My new comp will arrive tomorrow morning. his His name is like elder Gonsalvez from Bolivia and he has only 6 months in the mish. we will see how it goes. it was kinda sad saying goodbye to E. Cruz this morning. he was really excited and nervous but there goes really one of the only people i know here in the mish. he was a really was a good guy and he taught me a ton of stuff. every companionship in our zone had a transfer so we will see who the new missionaries are tomorrow. 

This week has been busy. We didnt study at all because we had a multizone and meetings and we had to go to the office for Cruz. The days here go by like weeks and the weeks fly by like days. It is crazy that i am almost 3 months in. 

I got 3 packages this week. two from dad and one from marissa for my birthday! it was awesome. i have snacks enough to last me until christmas haha. I saved the small one for saturday morning and opened up new resistance bands to use! they are awesome. Our pension made me a cake and luckily mom sent me those candles because they couldnt find any here. as they say here for my birthday we had to [tirar la casa por la ventana] it was weird to celebrate alone but it kinda just passed like every other day as i am sure most holidays will. i am just really sad about missing Halloween as the first holiday in the mish. 

it is really hard not to look at the things i am missing or will miss while out here on the mission but i am trying to keep a good attitude. 

no real stories this week. i have met some of the most humble people ever but i have also met some of the most prideful ever. people think they know everything about the bible even when Cruz would wreck them haha. It is sad to see them like that. it is also frustrating to have everyone accept our message but not really want to hear. just say they don't have time. i think we are going to drop some investigators who arent progressing. 

haha so the childrens songs CDs were a great idea too. i am going to try to find a childrens hymn book at the temple when we go next month. Also, if you are going to send another package for christmas or something i could use another twirl a tie thing or two and popcorn and some mints like altoids because we cant chew gum. Thats it though. Maybe some starburst jelly beans. 

anyway, all is well here. i am just grinding away at the time here. 

--

Much Love,

Elder Mortenson

 Week 11

So this week was actually the best yet i think! i went on a division with elder grover our zone leader and it was the most fun that i have had. i learned a ton and i had to direct the area which was a little scary but when Cruz leaves i will have to anyway haha. The story to go along with this is no one was home or had time to be taught so i was like yo there are these girls that we contacted forever ago right here and we could visit them. so we got a member to come with us and went in to teach. Anyway it was going well and i was teaching well but when i looked over at grover he had a super nervous look on his face and kept touching his nose and his ear. i found out later that that is the signal meaning ir nos -like we need to go. haha the chick had been drawing hearts in her notebook and looking over at him telling him how she needed to learn english and if he was going to come back to visit peru. turns out she had been like stroking his leg with her foot. anyway when we left she did the hand tickle handshake thing to him and he told me that i am never allowed to go back there ahhahaha. 

anyway he also showed me how to get our shower super hot so that is awesome because i had been showering in lukewarm stuff. it runs electricity through the water so you just have to use a super small amount of water. 

i was talking to the zone leaders about how grateful i am that they aren't pharisees like brett said so many were. They told me that i would definitely have some but they just tried to be as chill as possible. 

yesterday we did service for our landlord. he had us sweep the dust off the steps and the garage area and the roof of the apartment. lol i thought cleaning mom and dad's garage was bad. i have never seen so much dust in my life and they told me that compared to some areas it was nothing. i thought about how kelly harmon told me when we were hometeaching the last time that i would miss things like cleaning the garage and boy did he know what he was talking about lol. 

so i thought about how in the ccm elder nordfelt told us about his barn analogy with the mission. The first 6 months are straight up the wall, the next are just sloped upward on the roof, and then the next 6 are sloped down and the last 6 are just a drop off. haha i am still going straight up but i think that i am adjusting well. 

i popped my package open this morning and it sure was a spirit lifter. it was almost like christmas. haha you guys made my life so much easier here with all of that so thanks. and thanks for all of the birthday wishes too! i was thinking about how this isn't so bad. i will only be 20 when i get home. one of the elders here just turned 25 so i got off lucky. 

last pday we went to Grau which is in central zone. holy fetch i have never seen anything like it. they have blocks of stores just for like shoes and whatnot. and everything is fake nike and stuff but it is like alright quality and looks real so i think i will be buying some good stuff. I have never seen so many people in one place either. they say that central zone is one of the sickest zones because there are huge buildings and malls like that and also that it can be sketch too which would be cool. All i know is that from hearing the stories from the elders in my zone, i will have some aboslutely insane stories to tell haha and some that i might never want to tell.

--

Much Love,

Elder Mortenson

Week 10

so this week was much better than the last! i think that i am starting to get the hang of things here. like it sucks being away from home and working all day everyday but this is pretty cool. there is never a dull day here because it is so crazy and there are so many people to teach. 

so i saw a dog get drilled by a bus this week on the main road by our house. it is like a 3 lane each way street with a grass median and the 

dog got hit and a lady ran out with a giant rice bag and picked it up while it was still twitching and ran away with it. haha i asked cruz if they were going to eat it and he just nodded and didn't say anything lol. 

i found out that my good pal from the ccm went home on tuesday, elder magee. i am actually pretty pissed that he gave out on us and left us here alone. i hope that i dont give out.

something that i noticed in conference as i have been going back over my notes was that James 1:5 was mentioned like 5 times during conference. i think that is an important thing to realize, that the brethren want us to find out for ourselves. that is all we can do out here in the mish is invite people to find out for themselves because they cant go off of our testimonies. 

i had a thought while reading the book of mormon this week as well. president boswell challenged us to read it again during our training and i am in alma right now. but i was reading mosiah chp 3 about the atonement and also chp 4:9-10 about believing in christ and also what i

t says in jacob chp 8. i dont remember exactly my thoughts haha but i thought that we cannot reject the scriptures or jesus. because he will be our judge and like it says in 2 nep 29:11 out of the scriptures he will judge us. shouldnt we know their teaching a little better then? its like a test that we have been given but we know exactly everything we will be tested on before. we have been given the outline. something we do here to reactivate inactives becaus there are sooooo many haha is encourage them to read for only 10 minutes a day and if they cant, at least 5 verses. who doesnt have time for that? 

so some stories about my comp real quick haha. he wears spf 50 sunscreen everyday even though the sun rarely comes out and he is one of the darkest peruvians that i have seen. idk haha. and so there is this burn mark on the floor of our room and i asked him about it and he told me that his last comps gf broke up with him and so he burned all of her pics on the floor lol. 

we committed Marco, a kid who speaks english and who i taught my first day here, to baptism on my birthday. i hope he keeps his commitment. he has a real problem with the law of chastity that i wont go into but i think he will do well. i will let you know. 

we were contacting last night and here in peru it is almost like church row in Page at lake powell. there are different little churches in garages everywhere. anyway we walked past this one and this lady had a microphone and was just screaming this spanish into it and all of the people were down on their knees just bawling. it was so frightening. i thank god everyday that i was born into the only true church. 

i am doing much better. i am starting to speak and cruz thinks that by next transfer i will be fine. i just have to take it day by day here. 

venga lo que sea,

elder mortenson

--

Much Love,

Elder Mortenson

Bryce asked me to post some addresses:

Email Address: bryce.mortenson@myldsmail.net

Mission Address, for letters and packages:

Elder Bryce Cameron Mortenson
Peru Lima East Mission
Calle Los Agrologos 268
Urbanizacion Las Acacias De Monterrico
La Molina
Lima 12
Peru

Peru Courier Services:

El Inka Envios
1604 S Prospect St.
Salt Lake City, UT 84101
(801) 548-0561

or

LDSXPRESS

http://www.ldsxpress.com/

Week 9

It feels good to be at least more than a month in now haha. This week has been much better than the last two! Stuff actually happened.

so Monday we were playing soccer and my comp kicked the ball at the same time as our zone leader and dislocated his big toe hahaha. he sat in the room for 3 days while i went out in a trio with the companionship in the area nearby. He has been going out with me since Friday but it is so hard for him haha and i think his toe will be screwed up forever because of it. he goes home in 3 weeks and couldn't bear the thought of going home early so he is trying. He wakes up and works out really hard for an hour but doesn't really do anything because he doesn't know how to work out. I asked him why and he told me its because he has gained 40 lbs in the mission and wants to lose it before he goes home hahaha. I can see why, because he buys bread and cake on every corner lol! . 

So we get to visit the temple here in Lima ever 3 months and we can get permission to go to it with our investigators so that is cool. I think we are going next month. 

I started studying the dictionary in order to expand my vocabulary to see what I can do. I have just been focusing on learning like 5 new words a day and it has been helping a lot. but i am still very far behind. Cruz had to watch a session of conference in English with me because I didn't have any other companion and he was complaining that he didn't understand a thing and so I told him, welcome to my life. I think it kinda shed some light for him on what I am experiencing. 

I got a haircut on Monday and it was so fresh. They whip a straight razor and shave your whole head all around the corners it was the best haircut I have ever gotten, and it was only 6 soles and ones in America are like 14 dollars lol. 

Not a ton happened this week but it was much better than the last. we had to go to migrations this week so I got to spend a full day with all my homies from the ccm. they took a print of every one of our fingers twice haha and gave us a dental check and whatnot. It was kinda sketch but it was nice. 

Also, I had to go to the hospital with my comp for a checkup and it was pretty ghetto. it was probably one of the cleaner ones and the nicer ones but the zone leaders warned me that i might see someone die haha. 

General Conference was the highlight of the week. it was so nice to hear some English again, i had forgotten that English and white people existed. We didn't have to do any work and just got to be spiritually enlightened. I think my favorite talk was Elder Uchtdorf's first one. He said "I have confidence that we will be satisfied with the judgment of Christ, but I think we will also be astonished and overwhelmed at the mercy and grace of our Savior." It is such an interesting thought to think that we will know that his judgment will be just and we will know what we have done. I know that we absolutely cannot earn our salvation on our own, for we are saved by grace, after all we can do. he then talked about how we teach the answers to questions that philosophers have searched for their whole lives for to 3-year-olds in sunbeams and how perfect the plan of salvation is. Do we take for granted the knowledge we have? I know that I took a lot of things for granted before I got here. We need to try harder not to be too accustomed to the gospel and be more grateful. I also loved his thing about the flag that he saw that said "what shall we give in return for so much?" that quote sure hit me hard right now. What am i willing to give? 2 years? my life? it makes me also think of a talk by Elder Holland in which he talks about how salvation never was easy. it wasn't easy for Christ so how could it be for us?  

We need to give just a little bit more and try just a little bit harder to be grateful and how great will be our reward. this gospel is awesome. it is the same here in Peru in Spanish as it is in the states at home. 

--

Much Love,

Elder Mortenson

Week 8

So this week has been difficult. It sure is hard to adjust to this brand new lifestyle. It really is baptism by fire and by immersion because i am drowning. I will get used to it sooner or later though. The fast yesterday sure helped me out. As soon as i can speak and understand i will be fine. 

Anyway i am doing well other than that. It is nice to forget about things when i go to work. I saw my first breast feed here. just on a bus with a ton of people like its no big deal. Dragonball Z is huge down here and everyone watches it so that is comforting hahaha. 

I forgot to tell you that the pentionists arent allowed to serve us pork etc. and they only cook with bottled water and we can only eat things that are in bottles or packages so i dont think i have to worry super bad. the food down here is really good. 

Some lady while we were walking down the street started yelling at me, "the Gringo" saying "American Gringo Gringo silla" but turned out to be C.I.A. va a morir (C.I.A. is going to die). i just told her i was australian and kept walking lol. haha she thought i was from the cia and was like spying or something. why would the USA want to know about this fetching country? There is nothing here! lol. 

next week should be good. the gringos are getting together and we are gonna watch conference in English and get snacks and stuff so i am excited to hear some english again. i had my first interview with the pres and he is such a good guy. he made me cry with the prayer he gave because it was so powerful. i have felt all of you guyses prayers in this last week so thank you. 

idk what the price is for that shipping but i would like/need some things. First, a lot of love haha. but really i need some dri fit socks, my long sleeve usu shirt, there is this nice Gold Bond lotion and baby powder if you can. There is no lotion here. If you could send me some lyrics in spanish to like if i could Hie to Kolob and savior redeemer of my soul so i can print them out that would be awesome. Idk what else. Can you find out the date that i am scheduled to leave haha? Can you send me a multitool as well? and some glasses cleaner with a rag and like another pair of my old shorts, and maybe just like some snack and other necessities you think i may need. 

anyway not much happened this week. We stayed out late last night trying to contact because we were missing a lot to reach our weekly goal of 50. it was actually fun and i am getting much more confident in contacting. 

like all of our investigators fell out on church this week which was unfortunate. we will have to do better in two weeks. 

i think my companion has ADD lol because he can never stop moving or clapping or making those weird noises with his mouth. idk. 

a lot of dust here. i saw the huge mountains for the first time. you wouldve thought we were in the middle of nowhere with how much fog and smog there is but it cleared up one afternoon and it sure made me miss our beautiful rockies and the smell of pine to that of smog. 

--

Much Love,

Elder Mortenson