Lots of work!

Hello from Juliaca!  This week was just a good week working.  We were sent to Puno on Saturday to have interviews with the Mission President.  Mine was pretty easy, and VERY short, as I guess he is realizing we will have our final and more "official" final interview in less than 3 weeks!

This week we had 7 investigators at church, taught a ton of lessons, and have confirmed 2 baptisms for the Zone's White Night this Saturday.  We thought we were going to have 3 baptisms by Saturday, but one investigator wants to wait until June 17th when his Dad will be in town.  So I guess that one will be for Elder Lara and his new companion!

Here are a few pics from this week.  Nestle Ecco is a barley drink that everyone drinks down here.  I am actually a fan of this!  But I am not sure it exists back home, so I will need to take home a few cases!

We also found a bunch of new investigators this week, including an older man who appears to be in a lot of debt and has many problems and issues.  We were a little unsure how to approach the lesson given the host of issues he has, but it actually turned out very well!

Messing around in soccer today--- played volleyball and soccer as a zone-- and made these little funny videos!

Love you guys.  Talk to you next week.

Elder Barry

Mother's Day

[We got the chance to talk with Connor via Skype for Mother's Day!  We are excited as this was the 4th and final video call and now we just have the last 27 days to wait until he comes home!]

[We also got our weekly email on Monday and the blog entry below is a combination of a portion of that Monday email along with some text / chat we had with Connor as his companion spoke with his parents.]

Hey guys!   So we can video chat in about an hour once my companion is done.  We can chat on Skype until he is done though.

We are not in a Trio anymore.  Our third Elder went back "home" on Tuesday, so we have been the dynamic duo for a while.  Today was an awesome day in church!  We had 10 investigators at church and now have 3 confirmed baptisms for the 27th!  (We might actually have 4 but are still working on that.)  I think my District will have 6 or 7 by itself on the 27th and our entire zone will have over 10.  Pretty exciting and is helping me not think about going home!  It helps to have work to keep you busy.

Here is another picture of my mission dollar!  It only has one letter left unshaded!  [They evidently color in one letter a month until all 24 months / letters are complete.]

We have a very busy week scheduled to keep teaching our investigators and line up the District baptisms for the upcoming White Night.  The weather is very strange right now, as it is very hot in the day and then come evening it gets very cold.  I sort of wish it would just pick one or other!  Hot or cold!

Well not much more to say given we got to talk live yesterday!  Looking forward to seeing you guys soon.

Love you.

-Elder Barry

A Trio Working in Juliaca

Hi everyone.  So this week pretty rough.  We are still in a trio with Elder Cunya. We really haven't received any news about his companion.  We hope he is ok and doing better, but we really aren't told anything.

So we actually are not having a member of Quorum of the Twelve come to our mission in June.  I guess that was just a rumor.  We are instead having Elder Craig C. Christensen from the 70 though on June 7th.

It will be interesting to see what they do with me in terms of travel plans.  I was going to come into Cusco anyway on the 10th to wrap up my mission.  I am guessing they will just bring me in (along with entire mission) on the 7th for our meeting with Elder Christensen and then let me stay there rather than sending me back and then turning right around a day later basically and coming to Cusco again.

We are working hard though since we also need to cover Elder Cunya's area.  So we spend our time in our area and then running over to Elder Cunya's area.  The good news is that working keeps us busy and I don't think about going home as much!  We also have a great investigator in his area that accepted a baptism date for the 27th (the next Mission White Night).  We have two tentatively scheduled for that day!

Working in a trio is a little hard actually. Everything is more complicated!  The travel arrangements by moto taxi; teaching a lesson (when we are so used to two Elders); and even just walking down the road with three of us!  Is all just sort of strange.  We don't want to waste money so when we take a mototaxi to Elder Cunya's area we try and spend the entire day working there.

I assume we will still be in a Trio for our Mother's Day call on Sunday.  That might be interesting for logistics too.  I guess we will figure it out.  I will try and figure out what time we are talking and will tell you beforehand.  I assume it will be like around 6 pm my time.

Elder Cunya gets to sleep on the cot in the picture above.  He says it is fine, but I am sure he is ready to go "home."  

We also spent a fair amount of time this week looking for a room for the Elders opening up a new area here.  We really spent most of the day Tuesday, all day Wednesday, and a lot of Thursday.  We didn't expect it to take that long, but honestly, everything we looked at was pretty scary!  Most didn't have hot water, didn't have a private bathroom, or were just extremely dirty / run down. 

But after a lot of prayer, we finally found a decent room for them.  I prefer ours still for sure!  But it was the best (by a long shot) of the things we saw.  They live very close to our church building.  

This coming week should be busy, as we plan on spending a lot of time in Wiracocha (Elder Cunya's area), and mostly trying to firm up our two baptisms for the 27th.  It looks like we will have a lot of baptisms this White Night in our zone!  

For our time in Peru after my mission ends, I am literally going to be wearing basically the same few sets of P-day clothes for a week!  It is weird how I have more white shirts than p-day clothes!  Elder Lara and I were laughing the other day when we realized "how did a white shirt and tie become normal clothes!"  That is the joy of missionary work though!

So looking forward to our LAST phone call this Sunday afternoon.  Take care. Wow, can't believe this is our last call!

Love you all.

-Elder Barry