Week 99

LETTER FROM JORDAN - WEEK 99 (4/25/16)

Well there goes another week here in the mission!

The work is going great right now. It seems that we are being giving more less-active member to visit and we are helping a lot of them go to church for the first time in a while. Having investigators and less-actives go to church is one of the coolest things because many people let us in their house's but when they go to church they are really showing their desires to come unto Christ or at least to investigate the church a little.

Here are some pictures that I took of a few things from this week.

As part of our area, we not only proselyte in San Pedro, but we also go to a nearby town called Chocofán. There we have some of the first members in all of our branch and they continue faithful in the church. We caught a lizard in their house while we were there too:

San Pedro is actually really famous for their lizards. They actually have a special dish called "ceviche de lagartija" (it's a lizard ceviche if you want to look it up) typical to San Pedro, which I have still yet to try. Here is the family that live there: Sindulfo with his wife Carmen and also their great granddaughter Yazumi (the lizard's tail fell off)

The people here are so great!

Also I was able to snap some pics of the San Pedro Market which is in the center of our city.

Here Supermarkets aren't very common, so people daily go to the market to get all of their food. It's pretty cool to walk through these, with meat hanging on hooks and everyone trying to get you to buy from their booth. There's also a large variety of fruits here:

I was also able to take some opportune pictures in our area.
Another sunset, with the Pacasmayo Cement factory on the side:

Also a nice close up picture of a butterfly:

I'm pretty used to pulling out my camera now in the right moments.

Well, that's about it for this week and looking forward to another!

Elder Terry

Week 98

LETTER FROM JORDAN - WEEK 98 (4/18/16)

Wow. I always thought this point of the mission would never approach, but here it is!

Well today are the last transfers that I am going to have and it looks like I'm staying here in San Pedro with Elder Connelly. I was a little scared that they might transfer me for my last six weeks, but it looks like I get to serve these people a little bit more! It's weird to think I only have the time I had in the MTC remaining for my mission, which means I have to make this time well worth it.

One of the sisters in our district and in our branch, Hermana South, also went home this week. My companion and I both saw her start her mission in the same zone as us and she has also been in my district in Central Zone for a little bit and now finished up here in San Pedro. Her parents came to pick her up with a branch activity Saturday night, and going to church Sunday morning. She left with her parents to visit all of her areas and to some historic Peruvian sites. It was a pleasure to meet them:

(those are 2 random kids from our branch)

Well that's all I have for this week, so until the next!

Elder Terry

Week 97

LETTER FROM JORDAN - WEEK 97 (4/11/16)

Well that's one less week that I have here at the service of the Lord and this really has been another amazing week here in the mission, and enjoying every minute of it!

Well last Monday, we went climbed a hill to go see the iconic mark of Guadalupe, "La Virgen de Guadalupe." It's a statue of a virgin situated on top of a hill in the middle of the city of Guadalupe. It wasn't too high up but you could get a great view up there. A great way to spend an only Elders P-day:
Part of the trail:

The statue of the virgin with a baby in her arms:

The view at the top:

My companion, one of the zone leaders Elder Mendez, and I:

In the plaza de armas of Guadalupe:

It was also a really interesting week because of a random rainstorm in all of the cities in our zone. Out of nowhere in the middle of the night it just started pouring rain like it never does in Perú, and it wasn't only rain but with lightning and thunder and everything. Apparently this hasn't happened here for over 20 years! Kind of reminds me of last year when I was in Chocope and the same thing happened. Good memories.

Also, this week we were in elections for Peru's next President and they've finaled it down to 2 people now, a woman from Japan, and a half Peruvian half American man. It made it kind of hard to visit because every one was out voting. If you don't vote here, they send you a fine which is pretty interesting.

Also today for P-day we climbed another hill! We climbed the hill of Chepén which is right next to Guadalupe, but this hill was a lot bigger! Chepén is where Elder Smith is right now. Along the trail they had nice statues of Jesus and how he suffered on the trail:

The view from up top:

Selfie:

3 cross statues:

Resurrected Jesus with his metal heart:

Elder Smith doing the karate kid:

And a pretty cool Atonement statue:

Well, that's about it for this week and this will be the last week of the second to last transfer in the mission!

Until the next!
Elder Terry

Week 96

LETTER FROM JORDAN - WEEK 96 (4/4/16)

Well I am left with very little time to write, but this has been a pretty amazing week.

Nothing too momentous to comment on, but this week we were able to watch general conference! We go to our district center to watch the first session on Saturday, but it turned out that the building was closed and no one was going to come over to open the church for some reason. But thank goodness that the Bentleys were there! We have senior missionaries that live in Pacasmayo, who when they heard that the church wasn't opened, invited us all to their house to watch the session. Because of technical difficulties and rushed time, we were only able to watch the first session in Spanish.

But we pretty much got to spend the whole day in the Bentley's house. They made us lunch and we stayed to watch the second session in English, because they got the church building open by then to watch it in Spanish. We then ate dinner with them and got to check out the sunset on Pacasmayo Beach and stayed in their house for the Priesthood session. The Bentley's are so awesome!

On Sunday we were able to watch Conference in our own church building while all of the members watched it in Spanish and we went on the secretary's computer to watch it in English. Overall, the conference was amazing! It was the 10 fastest hours I've gone through in a while! It was amazing to listen to all of the prophets and especially our beloved President Monson, with his short but powerful message. I got a "you can do it" type attitude out of all of the talks and loved the concept that they talked about choosing to be happy and not finding faults in others. I have learned a lot and am planning on re-listening to all of the talks in these next few months. We also were able to get a member that has been less-active for over 25 years to go to church for the first time in a while! It is amazing to be a part of the change in the people here!

Well that's about it for this week, and I'll leave you off with this picture:

(see if you can find the white dog)

Elder Terry

Week 95

LETTER FROM JORDAN - WEEK 95 (3/26/16)
Well this was a pretty crazy week here! We didn't have a whole bunch of time specifically for proselyting, but it was amazing!

Well to start off this week, we had another baptism on Wednesday! Another 9 year old girl whose name is Ariana.

We have been teaching their whole family and strengthening them and helping them get to the temple. Here they are:

David and Teresa, with their kids Estefany and Ariana

Our goal with these last two baptisms was to make sure that their dad was able to baptize them and not just have us do it, so we had spent a lot of time focusing on the dads to make sure they were ready to baptize their kids. One of our big focuses in missionary work, especially here, is our focus too on strengthening the members that don't go to church all of the time, and we have found a lot of success working with them.

Also this week we were able to go down to Trujillo for a few things. Friday, we had a huge multi-zone meeting, where our zone met up with the Caja Marca zone and the Sierra zone to learn from our mission president and his wife, and from the assistants. We do these about once every 3 or 4 months and get to meet up with a few different zones every time. I also got to meet up with one of my last companions, Elder Simper.

So after this multi-zone, we went over to the temple grounds and got to spend the night in the albergue (hostel) of the temple, which was probably one of the best rooms that I had stayed at in all of Peru. Then early this morning (Saturday) we got to do a session in the temple with all of the missionaries in our zone and with our mission president. It is such a blessing to have a temple this close and inside the limits of our mission!

Then we got back to our area and had a photo shoot of some of the cool places in our zone,
Pacasmayo, a famous beach city close to our area:

A few signs in the entrance of our area:

This has also been Easter weekend, and here Easter is celebrated really differently. They actually celebrate the whole week and it is called Semana Santa (Holy Week). They celebrate each day and remember what Jesus did on each of these days. And also they don't eat meat all week, just fish. But the biggest celebration for them is on Friday, which is kind of sad having them forget one of the most important parts which is Christ's resurrection on Sunday. They also do not hide easter eggs or anything of the sort, but it is a time dedicated to remember everything that Jesus has done for us. But with all of this, it is amazing to see how religion is just part of the culture here and almost everyone acknowledges his loving sacrifice.

Well, that's about it for this week, and we are really looking forward to these sessions of conference next weekend! I guess it will be until next Monday (April 4) before I write again, so have a good Easter Sunday!

Elder Terry

Week 94

LETTER FROM JORDAN - WEEK 94 (3/21/16)

Wow that week just flew by! Here we are in San Pedro and adapting to the transfers and getting to know the area and the people even more!

Well this email looks like it will just have a lot of photos, so here we go!

Last Monday after writing we were able to go to a pretty sweet lookout place with our district in the close city of Pacasmayo. Pacasmayo is an industrial beach city and is really beautiful and has a lot of tourists that come for the beach. We walked up a hill to a Christ statue that they have looking over all of Pacasmayo and the beach:

Also right next to the statue is a nice cemetery and a lookout of the beach:

Pretty cool picture spot!

Also this week we were able to do a service for some of the members in our branch. They work making adobe bricks passing the rice fields in the outer parts of San Pedro. I don't know how much we helped them but it was an amazing experience.

We had to walk through the rice field to get there:

The bricks are literally just made out of mud and part of the rice plant to make the mud stick better, so we got to break up some of the dirt and mix up some mud:

We also got to help them out in making some bricks by filling up the molds with the mud and taking out the mold. Pretty simple:

Well that's what they do every day as their job, just getting to play in the mud all day. haha

Also on Saturday, we had a baptism!

Her name was Yazurith and she had turned 9 without being baptized, so we helped them out with her conversion. We were also able to help her dad, Orlando, be prepared to baptize his daughter:

I know she's only 9, but she had learned a lot and also invited all of her best friends from school to go to her baptism:

Well that's all I got for this week and it looks like we have another coming baptism soon and we are also planning to go to the temple this Saturday as missionaries.

Until next week!

Elder Terry

Week 93

LETTER FROM JORDAN - WEEK 93 (3/14/16)

Well surprise!! It looks like we got some emergency transfers!!!

Well Elder Gubler and I were doing amazing here in San Pedro, but Wednesday night we get a random call from our mission President. He talked to my companion and called him to be a zone leader back in Trujillo and that he would leave San Pedro the next day. We did not see that coming!! Apparently a zone leader in Trujillo had a medical emergency and had to go home for a quick operation and my companion was called to take his place. Need I remind you that we had transfers only 2 weeks ago and this is definitely not a normal thing. We were both super shocked and really sad to have to change, but willing to adjust to what the Lord has for us now.

So over here, I am now with Elder Connelly, a missionary that only has 3 months less than me from Arizona. In fact, he started his mission in my same first zone, so we had already met. They had to close his last area to have enough missionaries to go around so we were both pretty unprepared for this emergency transfer. That also makes it my fourth companion in the same area, with Elder Alles, Elder Chacon, Elder Gubler, and now Elder Connelly. That's not too common.

We took some pictures today in San Pedro's plaza:

Well that's pretty much it. But we are also planning on having at least one baptism this week, so we are looking forward to that! More information to come.

Also there is a restaurant here that's called "Mi Terry" which is pretty legit.

Well, with just a little bit of time left, we're working hard to do the Lord's will. Until next week!

Elder Terry