I Am Lucky

In a letter to our family dated April 10, 2009, Justin wrote, "It is the Friday before changes (they are always Mondays). I still don't know what is going to happen as far as Bolivia. They normally call us the Saturday before with the changes. They called me the other night and said that I have to go to Lima to do some stuff for my passport, which I assume is for Bolivia. I'm not sure if I am supposed to bring all my stuff with me because I'll be going to Bolivia or if we are still going to wait longer. But I guess I'll see tomorrow."

In Peru, they do not celebrate Easter. They have a week long celebration called Samana Santa or Holy week. Justin said they don't understand why we celebrate resurrection Sunday (Easter). "I don't think the Easter bunny exists here. It's mostly the Catholics that celebrate it through processions and stuff. Today they did a reenactment of the cruxifiction. At the top of the big old hill there were 2 crosses and they had a guy dressed as Jesus with Roman guards and all who carried a big wooden cross from the highway and climbed the hill followed by a huge parade of people. Then they put him up on the cross and hung him there on top of the hill. They focus a lot more on the cruxifiction here."

"Well it is Monday, April 20th now. This month is flying by! Like you know we had changes and everything and I'm in Ica now with Elder Parker from Ogden, Utah. He's great. It's really rare that President puts 2 North Americans together, so I guess that I'm lucky. We are both new to this area, but things are going well. We are being blessed with a lot of new people that want to get baptized and seem to be ready. We should have a lot of success. But we'll see how long I'm here for."

"I got to have a nice 10 minute chat with President Fierro last Thusday in Lima at the zone leader conference. We just talked about about Bolivia, his hometown and stuff. He's a good guy. Changed a lot. But like I said, my Lima trip last week was great! Dunkin Donuts twice, McDonalds (yes, I kind of like it in Peru), Papa Johns and Chili's. (Justin wouldn't touch McDonalds before his mission. He also only ate Domino's pizza back home. He was quite a picky one.) It made me excited to go back to the States and eat."

Justin got his cousin Cayleen's wedding invitation and thought it was a "cool picture." We will miss him at the temple and celebration. But we wouldn't want him anywhere right now but where he is.

One of the elders that Justin was in the CCM with lives with him again. Elder Buhlur, "this huge, gigantic, tall kid. He's like the encyclopedia Brittanica. I just ask him questions about random stuff all night and he always has answers. He was on Jeopardy as well. I should learn a lot this change from all of the knowledge he has."

"There are 14 missionaries in our zone here. Four sisters and ten elders. They all seem great and ready to work. We will probably only finish April with 9 baptisms as a zone, but we are going to put it up in May. There is actually only 1 Peruvian in the zone. There are 8 gringos, 1 Bolivian, 1 Chilean, 1 from Guatemala, and 2 from Ecuador. We are going to do an international food day or something."

He is happy with the weather. They are in between summer and winter. He says it feels like California weather. He hears it gets freezing at night in the winter there. Typical desert weather. Ica is a pretty big city and has more supermarkets. He said the people from Pisco come to Ica to shop.

"One of the members here is actually the aunt of the new bishop's wife in La Villa, so she knew who I was before she met me. She has an internet cafe that we go to Mondays to email and she called the bishop in La Villa and had me talk to them. Got to go. Love you and talk to you later, Justin"