Peru Chiclayo Mission 9/2013-9/2015

Peru Chiclayo Mission 9/2013-9/2015

Monday, December 30, 2013

Feliz Año Nuevo!

12-30-13 Week #14
Hey Everyone!!

Hope you had a wonderful Christmas with your families! 

This week was pretty awesome! Although the missionary work really slows down during this time of the year, mainly because all the people are on vacation, we had some fun times! 

On Tuesday night before Christmas we went to some other elders pensions house and we stayed the night there with two other elders! Its a tradition here to eat at midnight so we all stayed up and helped make the food and told stories and that was fun! We didn't end up eating at 12 but it was still pretty late when we ate. Then at 12 we went on the roof and people started to light off fireworks everyone and although fireworks aren't legal here they sell them all over the place and everyone buys them! So there a ton of fireworks! We ended up going to bed at like 2 30 in the morning which was not good because we had to get up early the next morning to travel to the mission office. All the 8 zones within Chiclayo all met together at the office for a Christmas activity of the 25th. First there was a soccer tournament and although we didn't win it was still pretty fun, we also played some volleyball too! Then we went into the chapel and every zone had organized their own little talent shows and we all performed and our zone, Chiclayo Central, was the best out of all of them and it was pretty funny too! After the talent show the people who are from the different parts of the world in our mission got into groups and did a little culture presentation in front of the mission. For example there people in our mission that are from Colombia got up and told us about their country and then Chile, and Honduras, and Bolivia, and Uruguay and so on and so forth and that was really cool to see some of the pictures from the other places. A lot of them had their songs to sing from their country and some of the songs were so cool! After that we ate lunch and for lunch we had Pollo a la brasa which is like fried chicken with french fries! After that we watched a movie called The Rescue of Ephraim which is a movie like 17 miracles and it was super good. Oh and we had ice cream during the movie! Then after that we had a gift exchange and got some cool little things from the mission. Then we went home and were scrambling to try to skype with our families. We went to our pensions house to try to skype but we just encountered problem after problem until we finally got it to work like three hours after we had set up to skype. So i ended up skyping my family at like 11 00 here in Peru! We had stayed up till like 2 30 the night before and now till like 12 00 the next night too but it was so worth talking with my family! The next day we were so tired we didnt really do much but some baptismal interviews. Then on Saturday after Christmas we had a baptism of three kids which went pretty well although we realized that after we had filled up the font that the water was draining and we didn't have any way to shut the drain so we just ended up doing the baptism with the water filling the font at the same time!

This week should be pretty awesome too with the New Year!! Were not sure whose house were going to go to yet but i think were going to go to a members house and have a little party and just hang out for a while!

Not much else to report down here in Peru other than that i might get to email tomorrow too so if you guys want, send me an email before tomorrow and hopefully i get the chance to respond! Hope you guys have a wonderful New Year and try to keep your new years resolutions for at least two weeks before you break them ;) Feliz Año Nuevo!

Con Amor,

Elder Jarman



Monday, December 16, 2013

The work is progressing in La Pradera!

12-16-13 Week #13
Hey Everyone!

Hope you're all doing well and enjoying the weather because it is getting really hot here and were just sweating all the time now! Christmas is in a week and a half!

Well this week was pretty good i guess! The numbers don't reflect out efforts but that's not what matters. We actually have been having some success, we have two for sure dates for baptisms the 28 and we have two that are tentative for the 28th as well! This week were going to challenge two more to the 28th so if best case scenario we could have 6 baptisms on the 28th and on top of the 3 we already had early this month that would be 9 baptisms for the month of December! We are helping one of our investigators get married and i think its kind of funny because 18, 19, and 20 year old kids are giving advice on why people should get married and were not married. I could just see the investigator being like "what do you know about marriage". But yeah we are working on organizing an activity do hermano Julio can get married and get baptized and if he does get baptized then the whole family will be members and they can put the goal to go to the temple! We have hermana Graciela who is just awesome! She just needs to talk to her husband and let him know but she wants to wait until he comes home from Lima to talk to him because she is hard of hearing and cant really talk on the phone! The two set dates that we have are two little girls, Noemi and Shantal, and they live with their grandmas because their parents died. We are going to invite their cousins to be baptized too this week! The work is progressing in La Pradera! 

We are looking for another capilla for our branch because we have so many people that on Sundays there's like 30 people standing because we don't have enough chairs! We have more people attending than almost every single ward in this stake but yet were still a branch! Soon they will build a capilla here though and that will be awesome for this branch!

The food is sometimes hard to eat... For breakfast sometimes we get tuna with onions and bread. Thats what we had this morning and its not really the great thing to eat on the morning, or at all for that matter. We eat sooooo much rice! Two meals a day everyday we have rice! Although today for lunch we had pizza! Every Monday from now till the end of the change in January we are going to my comps old areas to say goodbye to the people nd one of his old pensionistas made us some pizza and it was so good!! We eat rice with everything and we actually have lomo saltado a lot but its not nearly as good as it is in the U.S. 

My companion is really funny! He likes to give massages to but he gives really really hard massages and they hurt!! He also likes to sing too! He knows quite a bit of English too! Sometimes he'll tell me things in English about the people were teaching and its pretty funny. He sounds really funny when he speaks English and i wonder if i sound as weird as he does when i talk in Spanish! Its kind of nice that he knows a lot of English because i can ask him about words in Spanish and he knows what they are in English!

Hope everyone's doing super well! Have a great week and if i don't get to email this next week than i hope you all have a merry Christmas!!

Love,
Elder Jarman

Monday, December 9, 2013

I will be in La Pradera at least until March

12-9-13 Week #12
Hey everyone!!

This keyboard that im using doesn't have any of the letters on it and is very dumb  so i hope that you guys can understand me! Well this week i got a new companion  and his name is  Elder Quilpatay from Argentina! Hes actually really cool and hrs a funny guy! He goes home at the end of this transfer which means that i will be in La Pradera at least until march which is cool because i like my area. 

Since Elder Bunker left i have had to speak so much spanish its ridiculous but it has made me realize how much spanish i have learned in such a short amount   of time which is awesome! This change is going to be really fun because were going t try to plan a Christmas activity in our branch and were also going to have an activity with all the missionaries who are close to us and that should be really  fun! My comp says Christmas in the mission is the best so im stoked  for Christmas!  

Stories for this week aren't to interesting but  there was thus little kid who ran by us crying   when we were walking towards one of our visits and then he turned around and came up behind us and hr grabbed  my hand and just started walking  with us and so we started talking to him and we were trying to find out why he was crying and finally he told us that he was scared of a dog. so he kept walking with us for a while   and then he freaked out and pointed at this dog and said that's the dog and it was this tiny little dog that this little kid was freaking out about so that was pretty funny. 

Nothing much more to report. Sorry for the little amount its  super hard to type on this keyboard.

Love,
Elder Jarman

Monday, December 2, 2013

We had a new record...

12-2-13 Week #11


Hey Everyone!
This week has been pretty awesome!! The three baptisms went well and we had a new record of 112 people in the chapel and it was crazy because there were like 30 people standing up who didnt have seats! We also just got a podium and a speaker and microphone for our capilla and its pretty awesome, although were in the process of looking for a new chapel and were going to have to move rooms too. The one thing thats kind of a bummer is that we have transfers tomorrow and Elder Bunker got transferred but we dont know where yet. Its kind of a bummer because everythings just starting to take off and then he got transferred. We find out tomorrow where hes going and who my new comp will be. Elder Bunker will probably be a zone leader somewhere. The thing that im most scared about is that i have to lead my area for the first couple of weeks because my companions not going to know the area! So im going to be the senior comp in a way for the first couple of months even though ive only been out for 3 months! Its going to be a good experience though and everything should go fine. So today were going to go around to everyone and say goodbye.
Today my first zone leader Elder Esquivel is going home and i sent some letters with him for hm to put in the mail when he gets home so there should be some letters there soon within this week! The weeks are going by so fast i cant believe it although when i think that i still have 21 months left it feels like an eternity! We have been getting a lot of references lately from the members and so hopefully we should be able to see some more baptisms in the ward and maybe soon they be able to build a chapel in La Pradera. We have 200 members now but only about half of them are attending church so if we can reactivate a lot of them then we can get a chapel here soon. We only need more priesthood holders and we need people to pay there tithing and thats about it. We have been working tons with the members and things are going well so we should keep getting more and more references of people we can help. We have 4 people who are ready and want to get baptized but they need to get married, so were going to try to help them get married for christmas time!
Nothing much more happened this week, except now that my comp is getting changed im going to have to do a ton more talking!! That will be good for me though! Hope all of you are doing spectacular and that you all have a fantastic week! Love you all!
Con amor,
Elder Jarman

Thanks for all the pics and the emails!! I love them!
Love you guys so much!!!