29 September 2010, Part 3

So since we have been here for so long now, we have gotten to know the

CCM leadership more. Hermana Whetten has eaten with us a couple times!

She is the wife of the CCM President. Hermana Slingerland, wife of

area doctor, teaches a class on how to lead music every three weeks.

We went to both just cuz they are so cool! She is really the most

excited person about leading music I have ever seen. We were loving it

so much, and have adopted her favorite hymn as our own, number 9 in

the spanish hymn book... i dunno about the english one...

In class we were taking turns leading with a little blue plastic

pointer. It has a little hand on the end with index finger pointing

straight, which makes it just about the coolest things around. Our

excitement caught on to all the rest of the class of 50 or so, as the

new and unsure people gradually started singing during practicing, and

having almost as good a time as us. At the end when we went to thank

her she said we set the mood! Hermana Whetten was there, and took note

of the blue pointer.

Two days later we had a Large Group Meeting. Elder Bardzinski, who is

the best and the only Australian here (who was in my first district)

got to to lead the music at the LGM. He used the blue pointer to the

delight of EVERYONE. Hermana Whetten was struggling at not laughing so

bad, Hermano Whetten even smiled, and I could hardly control myself.

Elder Bardzinski is such a character. We are lucky to be his favorite,

he comes into our room every night and shares the most mind blowing

sections of his daily reading in Jesus the Christ in such a thick

accent that we often don't understand his English in the most excited

parts of the summary.

Soccer has been a blast! The new Latinos are very different from the

group of Latinos that we had in our first three weeks. They pass the

ball! I have no idea why it is so different. I would think that with

this many people, it would be more similar than different. They are

all stunned when Elder Stewart dribbles past them all. Oh by the way

Elder Stewart is from Saint George Utah, and is going to Arequipa like

me.

We didn't get to go proselyting last Saturday, and won´t be able to

next. Next Saturday we can´t because of elections and general

conference. Every year on I think the day before elections no one is

allowed to go out on the streets. I believe it is to prevent riots,

chaos, civil unrest... something. We are all super excited to hear it

in English. I´ve never been this excited for conference before!

Oh guess what. All the water fountains here have sheets of instruction

that tell how to use them. I thought that was pretty cool. Also they

have a button for cold water, and another for un-chilled water. It is

pretty odd. Another shocker, I fully averted my first sneeze at 3:30

pm on 9/27/10. I have done so again once since, but never before in my

life. I am learning so much! haha

ummm... the juices the other day were phenomenal. Passionfruit juice

and Watermelon Juice. The latter tastes just like the juice left in

your bowl after eating diced watermelon. It is my favorite here I

think.

I got some Dear Elders!

One from Aunt Carmen, all the news sounds awesome! I think it is one

of my life time goals to cut something with those giant scissors. We

don't seem to have any scissors down here.. it's odd. Were they heavy?

Jared, best of luck haha. I have never heard of such an event. Ryan is

a freshman? That's so cool. It was fun to be in with Paul for two

years. Also I love soccer too. The shoes I brought are ripped up so

bad from playing soccer every day. Hahahaha Andrew's hair!

Did y'all know I volunteered at that Pow Wow the last fall? It was a

lot of fun and I got a sweet shirt out of it for free. Also I learned

about crime prevention! Always good.

Mom sounds like mornings are super chill now. I have changed my

sleeping failitude! We have lights off as per rules at 10:30 every

night, but I am usually in bed at around 9:45. I try to write in my

journal, for fifteen minutes, read the libro de mormon for fifteen of

30, and if I have time, read Jesus the Christ for 15 minutes. Then I

wake up at 6:00 every morning, to be ready before 6:30, to allow for

about 30 minutes of extra study in the morning. We are asked to rise

between 6 and 630...but I am about the only one who gets up at 6. So

there! Elder Stewart and I work in about another hour of extra study

by doing things quickly than we would have if we relaxed and went by

the schedule. It is great.

Mark

September 8, 2010

Dear Mom, Dad, Eric, William, and Paul,

That is a lot of people on the blog! Holy broccoli! The Taiwan [person] might
be Kirsten´s sister... I know she is somewhere there abouts.


Ok, I'll answer all the questions first. I don´t know who Elder Palaoci
is, but in regards to soccer, he is absolutely right. It was really fun
in the Provo MTC, but it is way better here. First off, there aren´t
nine-finity people playing. We usually have about 12 on each team.
Second, everyone is way better on average. I think it is just cuz
soccer is much more popular among the latinos, and this MTC is about
half latino. Oh and Latino is the term we have been asked to used. As
for us people from up north, we are referred to as norte americanos.
Except for Elder Badzinski, he is still Auzi.

The food is intense. Every meal is alien to us. The tastes are all
different, the ratios are different, and the fact that we have rice
and a meat for every meal is diffferent too. I think we even eat more
rice than I had been eating in my final weeks at home. Sometimes meals
are great, sometimes they are mas o menos [more or less, average], and once I had to
concetrate on lifting my foot off the ground. The juices are so weird
haha. Ok... so different. Every meal we have a choice of two unlabeled
juices, or water. The two juices the first day, were of coloration
bright yellow/orange, and a dull light brown [anyone's guess, but mine is Tamarind]. All of us newbies chose
the bright one, and were sorely suprised. I honestly dont know how
that particular juice could have caught on...it was...er...great.
Luckily the juice changes every day, though I often stick with the
safe choice: water.

One day I went for the juice, and drank it. When I asked my companion
what it was, and after serveral minutes of trying to understand him, I
realized he was saying it was herbal tea. uhhh.. is that even ok?

I have heard no word on where people do dry cleaning, but I haven't
asked either. I suspect we need to arrange it with someone outside the
CCM.

The spanish is exploding. Every day is so much better. And my english
is going out the window. When I'm writing in my journal after a day of
speaking spanish, I tend to accidenatlly use grammatical structures of
Spanish or the english version of a phrase I can say in spanish, so it
makes limited sense. Last night I was trying to ask if we could go to
meals in our P-day clothes (which are just casual wear), and I said,
"Can we go to food in our clothes?" Oh and I memorized the first vision
really well in English in the MTC, but then memorized it in Spanish.
Now, the only way I can say it in English is by translating it
directly. But the result is in a different order than the real English
one. Elder Silva (my compañero) laughed at me for a while after he
asked me to say it in English for him.

My companion is a Chilean who knows his scriptures like nobody's
buisness. He can whip out a scripture on the most diverse topics, and
i have no idea how. He says he learned them all in seminary and
institute. Apparently he wasn't sleeping. So I guess I really need to
work on my at hand bible references. He was in a band before comming
to the CCM and they recorded a CD. I got to see some pictures of him
performing live. He plays keyboard.

Ms. Harber remembered me?? What in the world? thats impressive.

A random story. The second day here, Elder Steward kicked a soccer
ball over the wall in a game. We got to go into the world, which was
super exciting at the time. It took forever to find it [the ball], and while we
were looking, a dog smelled or heard us and started barking from the
other side of one of the homes wall. They all have walls in this
neighborhood and the CCM has a 15 foot wall all the way around. A
man came out to investigate the cause of the barking, and gave us a
quizzical look. Instinctively, Elder Stewart asked, "Have you seen a
ball?" He didnt understand. Why? Oh wait this is PERU! Haha Elder
Stewart rephrased, "¿Pelota?" The man shook his head.

That 50 mile hike story is awesome. [A couple of years ago Mark participated in a

Boy Scout activity to walk 50 miles in 20 hours or less. He was successful and finished it

in about 16.5 hours. Missionaries get to walk a lot, but never 50 miles in a day.

So, he can never complain about walking on his mission, because it will never be as hard

of a walk as the 50 miler was].

Ok, I wrote some things down to get into this email.

Today we went to the temple, and it was awesome. The Lima Temple is
one of those Micro temples, and its it definitely micro. To get
there, we are required to take the bus. We can walk back if we want,
however me and Elder Silva took the bus back. It was quite an
experience. The bus to the temple had about 18 seats, and 38 people
crammed into it! It was incredibly crowded. In addition, the ceiling
was about 5 feet 11 inches off the ground, so I stood with my head
completely sideways and pressing against the ceiling. Everyone here is
quite short, the Peruvians around me were probably 5.5 feet at the tallest.
Only two other people on the bus had my problem, and they were norte
americano missionaries also going to the temple. The driver has an
assistant who collects the money of departing passengers when they
drop them off. He stands right in front of the bus door while in
motion. To give an idea of how crowded the bus was, he just left the
door open on the way to the temple because there wasn't space to close
it, and he held onto the rails, leaning out the side the bus between
stops.

On the way back from the temple, we missed the bus. But another came
about 10 seconds later. There are a lot of buses here. It was not
nearly as crowded though, which is good. But this time, since it was only
me and Elder Silva getting on, the driver started going the instant
both of my feet touched the floor of the bus. Consequently I almost
fell and was able to give people on the bus a good laugh. The driver
did this at every stop, and it caught me off guard every time. So
everything was more or less ok until the bus took a turn off our road
to the CCM! They don't really have routes as far as I can tell, and
there are no bus stops, they just pick you up wherever you are, but they
are more like mass taxies. Someone had to be dropped off a street
over I guess. Elder Silva and I both looked at each other as we turned away
from familiarity and into the wild unknown Lima with nervous looks. We
tried to jump off, but when Elder Silva asked the departing-passenger-money-collector

slash door guard, he said some spanish words that even Elder Silva didn't understand.

I remembered the time when i jumped off the bus sans you all in London. Paul was with me
right? [No, Mark jumped off all alone and the bus took off. He started running; we tried to keep

him in sight, but weren't able to get off until about a block later--it all ended well,

obviously, but, it was very scary.]

So we keep driving who knows what direction, the door guard keeps
telling us no one knows what and we are steadily growing more nervous,
when the bus suddenly stops and he motions for us to leave. It cost 1
nuevo sol to get both of us wherever we were. We looked around, at
each other, and around again. Haha. Ummm... We were by a gas station...
Oh, behind the gas station is a nice fence! Luckily for us we could see
the Regional church headquarters building from where we were, so we
headed there. Remembering that the CCM was right by the headquarters,
we were able to make it back to the CCM alive.

So by the way, I got a hair cut the first day I got here. Which is
odd, cuz I had one two days before leaving Provo. I have not hair
now...they buzzed it way short. But it isn't even a really good chop!
There are uneven hairs all over the place!


We went to tottus (similar to walmart) after the temple today, and
there were odd bottles in the drink aisle. The notable ones were tall
and skinney 1.5 liter bottles, and taller and a little wider 3.3 liter
bottles. They look pretty great for water rockets... I kinda want to
take a few home in 1.9 years.

The area authority came the other day and talked to us (in spanish).
He talked about while we are on our missions, we have similar
responsibility as apostles. It was very cool.. Obviously we lack the
keys and authorities that they have, but we are here to a similar end.
It was cool. I had to listen to the translators. Im not that good yet.
However, I needed no translation in the temple.

and I'll send pictures of stuff next week


Love
Elder Johnson!