Hola from Peru Letter

Hello and greetings to all!   This week was rather eventful, (and thanks for everyone who sent out e-mails to me, they were great! And continue to send DearElders, they take a while to receive, but that makes them even more precious!   And yes, I got Mom´s, Chantel´s and John´s DearElder)   And before I get into the juice of my letter, I´d like to thanks chantel for her awesome letter and photos of her and Ashlyne holding artillary, Mom for her mega letter and photos, and from Ashlyne!  Oh, and BTW Madison, I forgot to tell you last letter, but there was an old chubby guy sleeping next me on the plane!  Does that mean you won the bet?   And I forgot to ask how (Brown) Devon is doing, is he ok now? Our district prayed for him to get well back in Provo. And Ok, time to answers questions: Peru uses all available space possible. There is no such thing as unused space.  And the traffic here is insane!  Everyone speeds, rushes, swerves and in some of the bigger roads it looks as if everyone is about to get in a car accident every 10 seconds, but no one does.  I bought an awesome tie with a llama embroidered into it, my Compañero is awesome!  I´m not sure when I´ll be back in the US, and they have my visa here.  The food is odd, everything has an aftertaste and all deserts are based on Geletain. And I finally tried some Inca Kola, it´s like a Spanish version of creme soda.  The craziest thing I´ve seen so far is the Traffic, and the dogs.  They are everywhere!  And they all have little personalities and lounge all around the city like the people. Ok, now to talk about day1 of tracking!  Last Saturday they took all us missionaries about 15 minutes into Peru, and each companionship was assigned to a teacher or two and our job was to go and visit some inactive member´s houses.    The first house was with an older scruffy man, and my companion and the teachers did most of the speaking because I did not understand a word he said.  Well, I got pieces throughout, but not enough to understand what he was saying (Spanish spoken between missionaries is much slower and simpler, much easier to understand, but the real world is as tough as an old steak!)   The second house was better, I could understand about 60% of what was said. The inactive member was a 20 year old sister who was studying psychology in school and said she didn´t have time to go to church.  Elder Farinango and I got to teach her about the importance of attending church, shared a couple scriptures, and I testified that if she would attend church that God would be able to open up a way for her to attend as still have time to do what she needed to that day. I couldn´t understand clearly, but I´m pretty sure she agreed to come. We visited a couple more houses, walked around the city  (the whole ordeal took about 4.5 hours without bus time) and I still was having trouble understanding the language depending on the person.  But it was a fantastic experience to learn how the city works, how the people are, and breaking the ice. All in all, it was well worth it. And today we got to go to the Temple and do endowments for people (for those who don´t know what those are, ask Claudia because I don´t think I have enough time to explain it in this letter) and it was wonderful.  It´s really cool how no matter how foreign you go, the promises and ordinances in the temple are  the same throughout the world. So, I´m gonna start wrapping up, I´ll attach some more photos, and it also turns last week the president of this MTC had to fly to the USA to a hospital because of a problem in his kidneys or gall bladder, but we hear he´s doing better.  And last note:   President Oaks from the quorem of the 12 apostles is coming HERE  for OUR DEVOTIONAL  NEXT WEDNESDAY!!!!   YEAAHH!!!!  The church is true, I love you guys, keep the commandments, and I still keep you all in my prayers.     
  ¡nos vemos!          -Elder Sanders      

From the Peru MTC

¡Hola a todas personas!    ¡Estoy fantastico!    ¿Y uds?                    Well, the MTC here is great!   I´m adapting to the food, I am making lots of Gringo y Latino friends, and there is just an overwhelming spirit of welcome and brotherhood here between the missionaries.  (Well, I guess sisterhood for the sister missionaries)                                                            Ok, overall it´s been nice.  We have class for the greater part of the day, which usually is just personal study, companionship study, or teaching our ´teacher investigators´.     And my spanish is coming along well, I´m probably speaking it the majority of the time with what little I can pull out of my spanish brain bank, but I find that I´m alot better at speaking during lessons than I am at normal conversation.      So, today is our P-Day, and at around 2:30 we get to go into the outside world to shop!   The money here is called Soles, and about 1 US dollar is 3 soles, but the prices fluxate and right now it´s about 1.7 soles per 1 dollar.    And the people here are great.  yes, I can only understand a small portion of what they say, but when they talk to me they use less complex language so that I may converse properly with them.  It´s swell!  And all the Latinos are way shorter than all the norteamericanos, one of them (Elder Pingo) was about half my height!   And thier names are sweet, for example, one elder´s last name is Llamacponcca.   Try saying that!    Our classes are split up between the NorteAmericanos and the Latinos, so I have an English speaking class, although we speak spanish as much as we can anyways.  And in that class I have another Trio!  Woot! (Elder Tuckett and Elder B      )                                           Well, also the spirit here is just as strong as the spirit in Provo.  I guess that{s just a trait that all MTC´s carry.   And I´ve also had a couple opportunites to feel the spirit.  One time was when we (my NotreAmericano companions) were teaching our ´mock´ investigator about The Atonement, and I after I said my bit, and my companion began to speak I got a rushing feeling that it was the right time to bear my testimony... but my other companion started to pick out a scripture and I dropped the idea, I don{t know why I didn´t go with that feeling, but it also turns out afterwards that our teacher said the lesson went very well... except that we should´ve bore our testimony in the lesson.  So, I´m glad it was just a practice exercise, but I learned, even in that small instance that I gotta do what I need to do when I feel a prompting.  And the neat thing is, I don{t think I´ve ever really had a promping so specific, i have always been able to feel the spirit when it is present, but this experience was very good for me.                                                                                           Well, I´m also on a timer in here, so I´ll hurry up my final answers: that native language my companion (elder Farinango) speaks is Quechua  (in peru there´s another language named Quichua), Good luck on your Preschool, you gotta send me some pics once you get it going, and good luck to Sidney, what day is she getting married?   And people here just discovered I could draw, and now everyone is requesting for me to draw them stuff!   I{ve already done 3 pics in hymnbooks, a drawing of one missionaires girlfriend, and about 4 more requests!  God blesses us with talents, and I´m learning that they need to be shared, whether you want to or not.               And lastly, hang in there Madison, you have a good heart and endure well.  If you strive to be kind with others, that same kindness will return to you tenfold.                  I love you guys, you are awesome, and I´ll try to attach a pic of Elder Farinango   (we can only take pics outside and on P-day.   Ciao!)                                           Elder Sanders.