Friday, September 19, 2014

September 17, 2014 ~ Week 11

Not a day goes by where I am not amazed by Peru.
What I have done this past week cannot simply be described into an email. 
However, I am willing to try...

This past week me and some of the Elders in my zone did a service project, it was for the kitchen of my pentionista.  As I have said before her kitchen is outside of her house.  It is maybe a 10 by 20 foot straw hut with a concrete floor and tin roof, (but allow me to say, she makes some of the most bomb food I have ever had in my life).  The concrete floor is unstable and has a lot of holes in it.  So for the project we took everything out of her kitchen, and we made cement. In order to make cement, you need gravel, sand, lots of water, and a grey powder (which I assume is the cement in powder form.)  After a half of an hour of mixing all of that with a shovel, the cement was ready to be poured on the floor and smothered and spread by a knife!  Now the kitchen floor is stable and looks pretty nice.

On Sunday I gave a talk in church about la obra misional, (the job of a mission).
Wow!  Translating Spanish to English is difficult.  Almost as hard as trying to write these sentences, I am having to delete a lot because I am typing in English, but in the way that I would say it in Spanish, in other words, I love Spanish.

I think the talk went great for only having a days notice, and it was my first one in my branch!

After Church on Sunday I travelled with my companion and 2 other missionaries by bus and airplane to Lima where we could get our ID cards.  After arriving in Lima at 2am and going to migrations the following morning and landing in Arequipa at 8pm I was emotionally and physically drained.  And at that moment I was told that my companion, Elder Atencio, and the other Latino that we travelled with are still in Lima because they had to go to migrations again the following morning. 

So here we are alone in the airport, me and Elder Andersen who has been my friend since the CCM.  We are in Arequipa with a 3 hour bus ride ahead of us and we have no idea where to find a bus to take us back to Camana.  After a quick prayer, a man called "Obispito" who works for the mission, shows up and takes us exactly where we need to be in order to board a bus back to Camana.

At this point I was really stressed out, but as I took my window seat inside of this 14 seat bus that currently contained 20 people I looked outside and saw the stars, at that moment tears came to my eyes as I realized seeing the stars was a blessing in disguise or in other words a tender mercy from the Lord.  In Camana I have seen the stars at night maybe twice, every night is cloudy and every morning is clear.  But for some reason the stars reminded me of home and what I am here in Peru for. 

I absolutely love my mission so much and after this short time of 2 months I’ve been out, I already know that I will be able to say this has been best 2 years.

!Chao Entonces¡

Elder McCook


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