Izcuchaca - September 24, 2012

Ok newsletter here we come.

First things first, i know that i have given you close to no information about my beloved comp ELDER SOLIS. I feel terrible because really we have become best friends, I would love to give you a little info about mycomp and our roomates.

Elder solis is my trainer. Super chevere guy from lima, born into the church. One thing that is just wonderful HE SPEAKS ENGLISH! Which you might think i would use this as a crutch, but honestly it is an amazing help. We ALWAYS (casi siempre) Hablamos espanol. Pero a veces, quando ha sido necesario para recordar o encontrar un nuevo palabra en espanol, siempre le puede ayudarme para saber este palabra o frase. He also has the strongest testimony and knowledge of the doctrines of the gospel, he has taught me so much in the way of testifying with power and authority. AT times i think we are aprehensive to proclaim that the gospel is true to our vecinos, or anybody we come in contact with, (and perhaps that is ok in some cases because not all of us are missionaries) but for us it is very important, and elder solis has taught me how to do that. He always bears testimony and i always feel the spirit when he does it.

He is the funniest guy to and we love to joke around in english. I have had so much fun with him, and have been so grateful that he has been patient with my as i am trying to learn spanish.

The two other elders that live in our district, that room with us, are elders tavoian and ferman. Elder tavoin is seriously a hoot. SOOOO funny, he is from cedar city so its nice to have somebody who knows a little bit about home to chat with. I somehow encountered an american flag in the CCM and we both sang the national anthem with a lot of patriotism sept 11. Yes i miss the united states, we have it pretty good over there.

Speaking of the US, elder tavoians companion looks EXACTLY like barak obama. Kinda creepy. And i feel terrible because once again i have forgoten my camera but i promise to bring it nxt week and send some pics. He is from honduraz and loves his country almost as much as elder tavoian loves the US. (Let me tell you one of the only things that has caused a little contention between their companionship is where the promised land actually is)

So there is a little info on those cool cats.

This week was a little different... The president of our family group asked us to paint our chapel..... WOW that was not a good idea. We spent about 200 soles on painting supplies so like 85 bucks. and spent every single morning this week painting and cleaning our chapel. goodness gracious that was a bad idea. We had absolutely no time to study, and once you start a paint job you cant really stop. More especially for us because we were preparring for a special activity that we had this friday about eternal families.

Also we had the baptizm of kevin this week! I dont have my camera, so i dont have pics, but i promise to send some nxt week.

All in all things are super great. I am already experiencing some of the classic peru experiences, like getting shocked everytime i touch the shower head. OH AND THE FLEAS!! Mom i need you to send me some dog flea collars to put on my bed posts because the fleas are EATING ME ALIVE!!!! and they particularly like to snack on the insides of my thighs, which is totally weird i know and i am always itching so please send me some of that.

 

oh ya pictures

me and elder solis,

oh and elder tavoin had a birthday.

WEll i think that is it for this week LES AMO!

Elder Neff

 

September 17, 2012

ALrighty lets get an update goin for the folks back home!

Wow the mission is turning out to be sooooo fun! Honestly it is a real blast. After i wrote my newsletter last week we went up and toured a couple historic sights of the city. you will be depressed to hear that i forgot my camera cord this week, but perhaps it is a good thing because there are a lot of viruses that can infect your camera if you connect it directly to the computer with a usb cable, so i am going to buy one of those nifty little sd card connector things to use, sit tight for pics!


Izcuchaca is a super cool place to serve, i had absolutely no idea where i was going to be "born" in the mission, but Izcuchaca is a fantastic place to start out!


Sin embargo we face a lot of challenges here, one of those being that there are very few members here and even fewer that are loyal church attenders. Really it is quite sad. Yesterday we went to go and pick up a few of our investigators to bring them to church. Either they weren´t there.... OR THEY MADE A PROMISE THAT THEY DIDNT KEEP! Honestly we had investigators who i respect very much say "  Si Si Yo voy a estar aquí a dos EN PUNTO!" Ya it didnt happen. BUT we did have one solitary investigator attend and he is going to be baptized this saturday.... and guess where??? In a place called " Los Cataracas" Ya nxt to some waterfalls in the mountains, this mission could not be any cooler!


WE did have some excellent lessons this week though, and I would like to share a few stories about them with you. We have an investigator named Yobeli. She is the cutest mom of 4 kids, one is a teenager and the rest are under ten. Her youngest daughter is named Debora and she may be the cutest brown child i have ever seen in my entire life! I remember telling aunt suzie that i was going to take elija with me to peru, well it wasnt necessary because there are a million adorable brown children here. anyway Yobeli is da bomb, she loves to listen to us, she has many excellent questions and has read the bible faithfully for most of her life. Honestly she is a person preparred. WE have taught her the first lesson and an introduction to the book of mormon, this week we are planning on teaching the plan of salvation. Anyway the story is that she made us some Chuño, or moria i cant remember which is which. Basically waht happens is the woman here preserve potatoes by putting them in freezing water, it also expands the potato so it makes it seem like you are eating more?? IDK WHY ANYONE WOULD WANT TO EAT THIS STUFF!!!! WE were helping a bunch of old ladies peeñçl this stuff the other day and it was very nasty. ANyways Yobeli made us some and it was actually kind of good... todavia this was before i actually knew waht the stuff was so we will see if i can stomach it in the future.


Next story, we were going to teach one of our investigadores se llama Sarit, super chevere investigator. WE were walking into her house, talking to her when some people began to cross their herd of cows across the road. If you now anything about the traffic here you know that the poeple are stupid and dont stop for anything. WEll this cow herder was trying to stop his dog from crossing the road, but the dog wasnt gonna have it and ran aroung him. BOOM! the dog totally got ran over by a truck. It was honestly pretty horrifying, it all happened so fast and was so bizare. Let me tell you that set an excellent mood for the lesson.


One thing i do want to say is that the lord has blessed me abundantly in terms of the language. I cant believe it. It is my second week and i can converse with just about anyone. I rarely have trouble understanding what is said in the lessons, and my comanion and i are beginning to have pretty equal parts in terms of how much each of us teach. One investigator asked me if i was from lima and another from cuba, WHAT?!?!? I am practically a native. I am so grateful for this oportunity to learn spanish, i have never felt so blessed in my entire life.


LOVE YOU ALL! NO TIME LEFT!


Letters take about 2 month and a half to get to you from here so sit tight
jk on the letters more like 1 month and a half

Not for newsletter


Edna dont bug sarah ç, and you letter are comin sis!


Le vaya bien


Elder neff

Sept 10, 2012 First week in Izcuchaca!

Hola mi familia:

Sorry i know it has been awhile since I have sent a letter, we have had over aweek since our last pday so i didnt have an opportunity to write for over a week. here is the update!

WE left the MTC tuesday morning at about 5:30 in the morning. I felt sad leaving a bunch of the friends I made in Lima but i know they are going to be excellent missionaries and i am so excited for them! We got to the airport and had to wait for about 3 hours to catch our flight. Once we were in the air though it only took about one hour for us to get to cusco. I WAS SO HAPPY WHEN WE GOT THERE!!! the sun was actually shining and you could see blue sky (you have no idea how dark and dreary it is in the winter in lima, it was awesome to finally see the sun) The area is a lot like salt lake, a valley nestled between two mountain ranges, and the mountains are about the same size in the near vecinity... and then you look off into the distance and you can actually see the tall mountains of the andes, and let me tell you, THEY ARE ABSOLUTELY HUGE! Honestly massive, it is so cool to be in this unique place.

Wewent to the mission home and had an excellent lunch with the president and his wife. I absolutely love the food here in peru... I am pretty sure that a day will not pass in these two years where i dont eat a giant plate of rice and potatoes and some soup. My favorite thing to eat here though is definitely platanos, oh those fried bananas just get me i think they are soooo tasty. Anyway so we ate and had interviews, my interview with president was great... except that somehow every leader in the mission seems to find out that i studied music before the mission. So naturally he asked me to sing for him in the interview, and then later without warning put me in a little choir that sang in the changes meeting. Oh and by the way i forgot to tell you how singing in the choir for elder cristopherson went this week. The mtg was sooo great, and the choir did so well. I was a LITTLE nervous tosing a solo in front of 1000 missionaries and an apostle, but all went well and i felt so relieved sitting down. Ha, then halfway through his talk eldr cristopherson said that it would be nice to hear the choir one more time, he said " is that allowed can I make you sing again?... well of course it is im an apostle so i have the right to ask!" Ya so that was funny even though i had to sing again.

Ok ill tell you a little about the area i am serving in right now. My first sector is about one hour by bus outside of cusco, it is a really neat town called Izcuchaca. Ive sent some pictures so you can get an idea of what it is like. The town is pretty small and probably around 1000 max live in the area.

Mom there is one part about cusco you would absolutely die about if you could see... THERE ARE VOLKSWAGON BUGS EVERYWHERE! seriously i swear i see one every five minutes, and i am happy my latin comp doesnt know how to play slug bug because that would get old rapido.

Ok I am running out of time so i want to share a few stories about the work and how it is going. WE are teaching this lady se llama yobeli. She is a mom of 3 super cute little girls and is very interested in learning about the gospel. This week we had a really great lesson with her in her house, despite the fact that her children were running around screaming, and that flies were flying into my face and other things like that. My favorite moments when teaching investigators is when you feel the spirit come extra strong to testify of something you are teaching, you know that this particulary thing is very important for this person to hear and it is wonderful to see the light bulb click in these investigators eyes and for them to say, "I know that this is true" We have had a couple of experiences like that this week... I know that the mission holds even more experiences for me like this and i am so excited!

ok no time left here is some picture explanation
and no time for that either just the pictures... so love ya and talk to you in a week!
p.s. eden letters are coming, tell sar she needs to send me a letter stat though.