Sept 23 2013

Hey Everyone,

This was a week with many ups and many downs. I had a great time on splits in Chulucanas with Elder Farnsworth (probably because we spoke english and we talked about so much stuff, doctrinal and our home lives and BYU, etc.). We had one day where it was actually a little chilly in the morning, everyone was wearing jackets except me, and it even sprinkled rain!!!! It was so nice! Here there are no service opportunities it seems but the day it sprinkled one lady was washing the bars outside her window but couldn't reach the top of them, so I went over and washed the top for her haha. No one around was tall enough, that was a little act of service that was kinda fun hah.  Also the day we went to Piura for the interviews was great, I got all those letters and pictures at once, including two from the stake presidaency. I got letters dated back from JUly and letters dated from early September, that shows how good the mail system here works. I love all the pictures and the letters from 'Dear Elder.'  I plan to send a letter next week or two in Piura so hopefully I can. I heard Aunt Jenni and Uncle Travis are moving to Detroit???

One night at a members home for Family Home Evening, one guy named Manuel, he`s not a member of the church but he`s our best friend in Morropon, started talking about el senor de los anilllos (lord of the rings). And we talked a lot about it and he and his sister said I am like Legolas without the long hair, it was a funny, interesting conversation.

I'm excited for the branch of Morropon because they have just started taking temple preparation classes. None of them have gone through the temple so a family from Piura comes to teach them. They are tying to go as a branch at the beginning of December.

This week was also hard though because a ton of appointments fel through and Clemente was suppposed to get baptized on saturday but he was at work during the time we had set up for his baptimsmal interview. He said he was super busy but still wants to be baptized, our new date for his baptism is October 12th.

Hopefully this week gets better, I have splits with the Zone Leaders on Thursday, we´ll see how that goes! 

Regarding the email from my family:

Did you guys make applesauce with all those apples? Beacause I remember that was super good the one summer we made it with our home picked apples. I remember also, when Jimmy, other friends in the neighborhood, and I would take bats and hit and kill the wasps around our appletrees. Those were fun times, but I wouldn't do that anymore ha. The food is good. but wwe rrarely eat fish, its all rice, chicken, beef, and eggs. But its realy good and i love the food every day, i dont get sick of eating rice every day. Thats awesome matt made the [robotics] team, i never thought he was into that but thats great, I am impressed, PL has always had a really good robotics team.

Yeah that is crazy! there will be so many missionaries! It's great! And Jimmy, Ethan, and Eric come home in February!

Miss and love you all!

Elder Paul Evans

 

a house made of earth. My disrtrict, from left to right are E. Martinez, me, E. Zerillo, E. Farnsworth (DL), E. Mulford, and E. Roman

 

on the roof of the missionaries apartment in Chulucanas on my exchange.

 

Sept 16 2013

Dear Family and Friends

This week went well and fast, although the language is still a bit frustrating but I think it´s slowly getting better. Good job Matt in marching band, I still remember marching band like it was yesterday, and it was two years ago, that´s crazy. I´ll for sure look up DC 76. This week one chapter that really helped me was Ephesians 3. I don´t have zone conference till october 23 so hopefully the pictures will be here on Friday when we have interviews with President Rowley. 

I had a few strange/cool experiences this week. One was that it took me three weeks in the field to get sick. I was throwing up most of the day on Wednesdsay so I was in bed all day and that´s it. On thursday I returned to work but had reallly bad stomach and chest pain, and one investigator is some sort of shaman or something. He did some strange thing to help me with my sickness but it wasn´t as weird as most would think when they hear the word shaman. My companion Elder Roman just laughed the whole time. 

Also, we have been teaching a 14 year old boy named J_____, he said we walked by one day and felt something so he called us over from his house and taught him about the plan of salvation the first meeting. Oh and his Grandma is a member but no one else. Then we taught him a second time and he had a friend or two over so we taught all of them. Then our third time he had  more  friends over and we taught all of them the restoration and now we have three new investigators, J_____ and two of his friends are intrerested in hearing more. I´m really excited to see how this plays out!

Today my district went to the waterfalls nearby, we took a moto taxi for 1 minutes and then walked an hour and a half. Then the two other americans, one latino missionary, and I ran back in 20minutes while two other latinos just walked. It was really cool! I´m going to experiment with dropbox today to drop some pictures. 

Tomorrow I will be on splits in chulucanas with my district leader Elder Farnsworth from Georgia so I´m excited for that, it´s my first splits.

I had stake conference which was a broadcast, we listened to two people but the audio was bad so we couldn´t hear them, and then after we had Elder Bednar and Elder Scott speak. I couldn´t get much out of it though because it was all spanish ha.

That's what I have for this week, Love and miss you!!

Elder Evans, Paul

Pictures:  The log is pretty high haha. like 10 or 15 feet over rocks

the ice cream is at the mission home my first day

elder farnsworth and i are in the waterfall, but not getting very wet, we´re behind the water

I uploaded the turkeys for Uncle Mike :P

elder farnsworth and I are on a rock really high up too, that was cool. 

Sept 9 2013

Thats awesome! I wish I could have been there for the rain, rainsortms are my favorite! Here we`ve had nothing but sun, sun, and more sun, except this week wev had a few days with clouds. Im slowly getting better i think, with the language and with the homesickness, though sometimes all i can think about is the day i get home and coming out of the airport with you guys, and haveiing macncheese, im still trying to find my place here and am trying to like it here but its slow in coming. The culture is completely different and very strange to me. BUt its coming along.

Here its the same, just working with members mostly , especialy the less actives, thats our focus in this mission. My night time teacher from the ccm called our phone today because he has friends in morropon and got our number from them. We talked for 20 minutes and it was awesome, made me feel much better. Ill try using that one website for pictures today cause i have some pictures to send. 

Morropon has very little cars, most people travel by small moto taxis, and whenever we need to travel to chulucanas for a district meeting or to piura for something we need to hop in a van or on a bus to take us there. We`re super isolated here, the nearest elders are in chulucanas 45 min away. But we see them most pdays and meetings so its not too bad. also, we have stake conference this coming sunday.

Yesterday and today we havent had water, except at random times so yesterday i couldnt shower, and today i showered using pure water that i put in my water bottle earlier. Except my companion got luky and when he howered he had water both times haha. Also im not sure if i have bed bugs or im just getting misquito bites. Oh and there are LOTS of spiders in the room, lots of daddy long leg type spiders but im doing fine, when we cleaned the room today i probably killed 20, but they kill the bugs so i left a bunch alone haha.

Tell Morgan and Grandma I got their letters and I loved gettting them, they took a few weeks to get here and i can only send letters in piura so it might be a while before i can send anything back so if they want my email you can give it to them, that is much faster. Im sorry about Great uncle Morris, that has to be hard. 

 Love you all!

Elder Paul

Sept 2 2013

Week 1 in Piura

Please forgive my grammar and punctuation, I type fast and dont have much time. My first area is a city called Morropòn, about 2 hours farther inland from Piura. Its beautiful here, up in the mountains. The people are super nice too. Its hard getting used to it but Im doing alright. I feel way better already just from writing everyone for the first time in 2 weeks. 

In this mission, the missionaries pay one lady in the ward to serve us lunch every day, and the food is fantastic. Its a ton of rice everyday with chicken or eggs on top, sometimes we get soup too. This lady is one heck of a cook, it fills me up pretty well, at least until dinner, which we usually eat at around 830 or 9. Although, I have to say I do miss my mom´s home cooked dinner a lot, because I´m so used to that. I also miss burgers, theres nothing like that here. 

My branch only has about 18 active members so its really small. We have had good luck this week though, especially fast saturday (in south america we fast starting right after staturday lunch, and then we fast until lunch on sunday at 1 or 2 in the afternoon). On that saturday we committed an investigatior Hermano Clemente to baptism and his date is set for the 21st. He is trying to get over his problems with the word of wisdom but we are helping him and we think he will be ready, he said he should be ready by then. Its also strange that here they call each other hermano/a followed by their first name rather than their last. 

My spanish was great in the CCM (MTC) but out here its virtually nonexistent haha. Im trying my best though and I have faith that it will come in time. 

This is all I have time for now, sorry I couldnt say much and if I didnt respond to your emails its because I didnt have time, the internet is slow and for one whole hour neither my companion´s nor my email would open so we went to another cafe.

Love and miss you all, hope everything is going well!

Elder Paul Evans