Peru

Peru
Machu Picchu

Monday, March 27, 2017

First week! Last area?

Hi guys!

Well I can't lie, but Juliaca is pretty ugly!

Tons of mud, like, everywhere, pretty much all the streets aren't paved.

But that doesn't really matter because, at the end of the day, the work is pretty good!


I am struggling to write at the moment because I am SO full. We ate at Pizza Hut today (the first time in over a year for me!)  I actually weighed myself last week, was pretty curious.  It turns out that I am 142 pounds (and think I was like in the 182 range when I left on my mission).  I feel like I have eaten 5 pounds of food today though! :)

Here is a picture of the little slice of civilization out here in Juliaca!  Is crazy really, as most of my areas didn't have that many restaurants all in a row!  I mean this is a place with basically ZERO tourism so my companion (a red head American) and myself walking around always creates a little buzz of people watching us!



Here is a picture of the "Park of the Virgin" which is real close to our house (us walking through it on one of the videos!).


Here is a video of us in the park as we are out working / walking.


So here is our house: LINK

Our house is the one with the red door on the left (not the red door on the right!).  We live in a room on the third floor.  We are seriously ON the roof.  There is a little square room built on the roof, but we walk outside of our room and we are out in the open air on the roof with stairs going down into the house AND our bathroom is up there.  I have a video of that as well.



We live with the Bishop, but we don't really see him all that much.  

Our room is fairly big and we are happy here.  I really like the work in Juliaca.  We are starting up this new area (as I told you last week) so we are looking through a VERY old area book (from like almost 2 years ago when missionaries were here) and unfortunately it doesn't help that much.  We have some AWESOME recent converts here though in our ward and they are helping us out a ton!  I know we will find some more people to teach this week.

The only bummer is that is is VERY cold and windy though.  Like. Super cold. Lol.  Most of my mission has been in cold places, but this seems to be the coldest yet!

The roads are literally always covered in mud and is just hard to get around.  Here is a video of me and my comp just trying to navigate the mud!


I am pulling a little bit of a trick on the ward though.  ALL of them (Bishop, pension, and all the ward members) that have asked me how long I have left on my mission.  I tell them all that I just recently hit the one year mark!  It will be pretty funny when I say "PEACE I AM OUT OF HERE" in a few months! Lol :P

I have been thinking a lot about school when I get home and what I want to study / what I want to do as my profession.  I know that I will be guided in what I should study / do, so I am trying not to freak out about it too much!  I think the advice in my patriarchal blessing will help.  I just force myself to work harder with my companion when the thoughts of home / what to do after the mission start to occupy too much of my time!  I just want to end my mission strong and love working here with Elder Lara.  He is great!

Well, we are off for this week.  Talk to you guys next week!  Have a good week.  Thanks for everything guys -- I love you.
Will try to get more pics/vids.
-Elder Barry

P.S.  Although it is freezing cold all the time here, we have a ton of flies!  I am guessing that is because all of the livestock just walks right by our house and into the park!  So my companion and I are keeping a tally of all the flies we kill in our room!  We are up to high death count.


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