More Watermelon

The scenery in Cayhuayna looks a lot like the drive down to St. George and a bit like Idaho. There are mountains, but there is a lot of dust and it gets hot during the day, but not as hot as they say the jungle gets. I like that we have blue skies here. The ward is pretty good here. We go to an actual chapel, but it is far for us and so it is hard to get investigators to come to church. I forgot to tell you last week that my ward here meets from 3 to 6. I guess it can get later than my 2:30 to 5:30 time at BYU. We do have a container of water in our room. We just call a water person when we run out. It is usually the older people who wear more traditional dress, mostly older women. They wear big skirts and they usually have hats with a couple flowers stuck in them. They carry things on their backs like their babies and their groceries in rainbow cloths similar to the patterns on Chrisanne's bag. I see a few people dressed like that in Cayhuayna, but I see more people like that when we go to do internet in Huanuco.

So our pension is the best. For breakfast we have rolls with some sort of meat or avocado and sometimes cheese, but I try not to eat dairy here because it made me pretty sick in the CCM. My pension was nice enough to buy milk without lactose. She is the best. She makes really good banana smoothies and for dinner we have Peruvian cereal, so like some sort of grain, with fruit and yogurt, This yogurt does not make me sick. She puts watermelon in this dish though, so I just wear a smile and eat it, but my companion and the other two elders know I do not like watermelon. They laugh about it and one time they were talking with the pension and saying that she should get some watermelon, but they used the Spanish word for watermelon so that I would not know what it was. I think the word sundia or something like that. Anyway, they all turn to me and say that I have to try this fruit because it is so good. They all laughed and told me that they were talking about watermelon. There was one day during lunch where I think I ate a fish eye in my soup, which actually is not as gross as you would think. This usually does not happen, but I also had ants floating around in my juice. Luckily I could pick some out and the others sank to the bottom so I could avoid them. After that I had ahi de gallina, which is really good.Chrisanne can probably tell you about it. They put a really strong olive on it though. The Americans call it the gringo killer. I could tell it was stronger than the usual olive, but I did not think it was horrible. I wouldn't go looking for it either.

 

 

We have had some good lessons this week, and some less actives and recent converts came to church and only one investigator came, but at least he brought a friend. 

I also forgot to say that we had to teach gospel principles on Sunday. I only talked a little bit, but it was still pretty stressful.

Also good luck to Stephen and Matt! I hope they do well!

My old roommates started a group email so every so often we can share things from our missions. I really like that idea. I love you all and I hope you have a good time in Utah. That is great that Grace liked her job shadow!

Love

Elder Brian Hymas

Cayhuayna!!

You can except the requests from Ashlen  and Hermano A.   I do not think that I ever studied with Josh M.  If I did I cannot remember. That is sad though.

So at the CCM pretty much everyone caught a cold and I have gotten over it now. On Tuesday we took an 8 hour bus ride to Huancayo. The first few hours of the ride were bad because it winds a bit and it seems like we just kept going up, kind of like El Tigre and El Diablo on trek last year. I could feel it a bit in my head. Once we started going down I felt better and it is cool to see a little bit more culture here. There are farms and people, mainly women, wear more traditional  dress with hats and skirts. Chrisanne can probably describe what that looks like. We stayed at the Assistants house for two nights because we had a training on Wednesday and my area is further away. After the training we contacted in Huancayo. Huancayo is a nice city. My  trainer is Elder C from Cache Valley, Utah. He is my age and he has 11 months in the mission.  My area is Cayhuayna 2 which is in Huanuco. It is six hours north of Huancayo. We have a pretty nice room and a good pensionista, which is good. I was very happy to find out that all rooms have big things of clean water. I feel that the Lord is taking care of me. Cayhuayna is pretty dusty and it is only a little chilly in the mornings and nights. I feel like Pigpen from the Peanuts because I always have dirt on my clothes, in my hair, and in my eyes. There are chickens everywhere, sometimes I see sheep and an occasional cow outside a house. There are some pretty annoying roosters that crow every morning at about 5:45. Every day. We hear roosters crow during the day too. There are two other American elders in Cayhuayna 1 and they are also in our  ward. 5 out of six Huancayo missionaries from my CCM  district went to Huanuco and  two of them are in my zone, one of whom is Elder Ch. The food is pretty good. I have not had to eat anything too weird yet, but I think I am doing well at eating what is given to me because I have already had to eat watermelon and drink Pepsi. (Brian does not like watermelon!)

 

We are teaching an 18 year old named A and he wants to be baptized, but his parents say he needs their permission. We started teaching a man named Frank, who is going to start praying to know if the Church is true and he has accepted a baptismal date. We met an unmarried couple, and the woman wants her family to be together and protected. I am most interested in  those investigators right now.

I found out that before I left, my former roommate Andrew got his call to the Washington Spokane mission and enters the MTC August 12th. That sounds like Grace will like her job shadow, and that sounds like a very good CAS project! I cannot think of anything I need, just your prayers. I love you all very much!

Love,

Elder Brian Hymas

CCM District