First Letter from Mission Field, Izcuchaca, Peru

HOLA FAMILIA, I understand mi Sobrina and mi Hermano had birthdays since I last wrote.  I hope they both had a great time!  I'm glad your starting to feel better Mom!  HI to Bro. and Sister Johnson (Say thanks to Sister Johnson for writing me.  I'd write everybody seperate letters but on my income it's expensive.   I was happy to hear from her,  and I hope they are doing well down in Delta!) So, I'm in my first area here in Peru.   It's called Izcuchaca, and it's about an hour away from Cusco.  I was going to send pics but I forgot my camera so I'll send them next week!  Were going to some ruins today as a district for p-day so I'll have pictures of that too.  My companion is Elder Chavez.  He is from Nicaragua.  He is 25.  He's a really great teacher and he's helped me out a lot. My first night I stayed at the Mission President's house because the busses to our town stopped for the day so we had breakfast with the mission President and his wife.  That was cool.  He seems like a really nice guy.  My room is alright, it's the shower that's no bueno, haha.  Basically, if you want warm water you have no pressure and if you want more water presure the water is freezing cold.  There is some little electric coil thing on the shower head doesn`t work very well -- welcome to South America.  It's given me a lot of perspective.  The people here are really awesome, I like it a lot.  The area I'm in has been closed for 15 years and was just re-opened 4 months ago.  There is about 25 members or so but we had record attendance yesterday of 41, so thats exciting.  There is no bishop or anything, just a group leader.  We only have sacrament and sunday school. Oh yeah, we live above the church which is basically the size of 2 living rooms. We already have a baptism for the end of this month.  I can't really take any credit--my companion taught him all the lessons with his old comp, but we challenged him 2 days after I got here and that was way cool.  I hope it goes through, we have several other investigators we're teaching as well.  It's hard just because I always hit the language wall but I get a little better everyday so that's how I look at it.  We don't have to worry about cooking.  We have a cook for lunch and dinner and another lady that does our laundry by hand.  I gave my first talk in church yesterday.  It went alright,  I didn't stay up there to long.   Every Friday we have nocha misional which is basically the members get together and we teach a lesson and play game, kind of like mutual.  There is two other elders that live in the room next to us and one is from California, so that has helped me but he only has 3 weeks left.  That's my life as a missionary right now.  I don't have time to write my address-sorry.  I love you guys (and Aunt Mary wrote me, too.   Say Hi to her for me and I hope they're doing well) Talk to you next week.

Week 4, Lima, Peru

Everything is fine here, we went tracting this last Saturday(well actually visiting inactive members and we taught one lady), and it didn´t go well at all, it was a pretty tough experience, I can´t wait to start getting more of the language down that will help so much, because i´m not scared to talk  to people and that stuff, so once i start learning more spanish that will help so much. I'm leaving for the field this coming Monday! That´s pretty crazy, i´m a little nervous honestly, but i´m sure everything will turn out all right just quite of few tough days ahead with the language, but since i´ll be imersed in it and have to speak it all the time, i´m sure it won´t take to long. And the new companion i sent you the picture of last week is only my companion while i´m here, all the north americans have 2 differant latino companions while they stay here, because the latinos are only here for three weeks.  And all the water here at the mtc is filtered, but last saturday we were at a members house and the old guy gave me some sort of drink and it made me really sick for that night and the next day, i´ve gotten sick a few times while being here.
Next time I email i´ll be out in the field!! I Love you Dad, and Mom , and the Family(hope things work out for Jennie and Brett the way they want them to), keep me up to date on things at home. Love you guys!