Changes n' Stuff

Movie quote: Don't be a gooey chocolate chip cookie!

Well this week has been full of adventures. And by adventures I mean super long bus rides. So I found out right after emailing last week that my area, Alborada, is in the department of Puno. I'm in the zone of Juliaca, so basically I'm on the complete other side of the mission. If I'm not mistaken, it looks a little something like this. Eh-hem:

Andahuaylas (this is where I was)

                      Abancay

                                                                      Puerto (the jungle)

                                           Cusco

                                                           A whole bunch of other areas

                                                                                           Juliaca (where I am now)

                                                                                                Puno

So yeah. I'm a little far away from my last area. In total it was about 16 hours or so of travel on about three different buses. It sucked but I'm glad to finally get here. When I got to Cusco I stayed over night in the apartment of one of the elders from my MTC district so that was fun. I didn't travel alone either. There were about 15 missionaries traveling to Puno from Cusco so that was nice. And the best part was the bus from Cusco to Puno was actually big enough that I could fit my legs in. That was the first time I wasn't too big for a bus or a car here. It was sublime.

So I left on Wednesday and got here Thursday at around 6 or so. I met my companion and he took me around to meet some people. I'll explain more about my companion later. Anyways, we have two pensionistas here. One for lunch and one for dinner. We make our own breakfast. The lunch pension's name is Roxanna. She's pretty cool. I'm still getting to know her and her family. I don't remember the other pension's name. It's all weird and spanish-like. She's nice too. The food is good, basically exactly the same as in Andahuaylas only more people eat chuño here. And for those who don't remember, chuño is a potato that has become too rotten to eat, but rather than throw it away they stick it in a freezing cold river until it turns white and what they consider edible. It's fantastic! NOT! It really just kinda tastes like bum.

I've also gotten to meet a lot of the members here the past few days. The members here are the bomb. The city of Juliaca is really kind of a hole so the cool people make up for it. It's a couple thousand feet higher than Cusco but I haven't had any problems with that. The members all respect me a lot because I came speaking Spanish. They also think I'm the shiz because I speak a little bit of Quechua. I told Elder Rodriguez (my companion) on Thursday that it was my birthday on Friday and he got super excited and told me we were going to do something awesome. We were at a ward meeting later and he and a couple other leaders called all of the YSAs in the ward and told them that there was a surprise party for Elder Rodriguez's new companion the next day. It was funny. We showed up at the church the next day and all the YSA's were sitting in a room waiting for us. The young men's president walked out of the room with all of their money and went and bought a cake and some juice. Then they sang Happy Birthday and shoved the cake in my face. I pretended to be surprised. Normally the tradition here is they throw eggs (amount of the number you're turning) and flour in your face. I was glad not to have that. It was a fun day.

My new companion's name is Elder Rodriguez. He's from Honduras. I told him that I'd been there and he was super stoked. He and I get along well. He's goofy and fun, so I enjoy that. This is his second change here. He told me that the last change the work was starting to slump because he had a companion that was finishing and didn't want to work and then went home a couple weeks before the change ended so Elder Rodriguez got sent to another zone. He really wants to get things going again though so we're going to to our best. I'm slowly starting to gain the confidence of the members. The past couple days we met with some less actives and a couple old investigators. That's about all we have right now. We're going to have to build this area back up from the ground. We do have one less active couple who aren't married yet but when we went to talk with them on Friday, they said they want to change. This Sunday the husband came to church and had an interview with the Bishop and now we're going to plan their wedding!

Yesterday we had dinner with the Bishop and his wife. They're awesome. The chapel here is huge! I'm still the designated pianist for sacrament meeting which is cool with me. I'm also going to start teaching piano and English here as a contacting method. We'll see how that goes.

Well that's all for now. I'm excited to be here. I miss San Jeronimo, but it's in good hands. The Lord has been with me as I have made this transition. It actually came surprisingly easy. I wasn't that scared to be on my own in a foreign country traveling for 16 hours. The Lord is helping me grow. Peace and blessings. The church is true!

Elder Tate