Sunday, April 3, 2016

Easter


Hello family,

How is everything going?  Well right now it’s the last night of change and my companion is leaving.  So I’m getting a new companion; his name is Elder Holguin.  He is from Columbia and has been in the mission field for just over a year.  It’ll be a lot of fun; he seems very energetic and ready to work.  We are excited.  Hopefully we can do a bunch of cool stuff in this area and help out the ward.

Elder Beales and I at Yura
On Monday we went to a place called Yura.  It’s a tiny town and has an awesome waterfall.  It reminded me of a slot canyon just like down in southern Utah.  It was fun and around 30 of us went to another Zone.  We had a fun time and it was a great experience.

Then we had some sweet family home evenings.  We tried to visit more families this week to try and change things up and help out the ward more.  We were able to teach this one family and get a reference for their mom who is a nonmember.  So we are going to go back and teach her some more.  Their family is really good.  They came from Lima and you can tell that they have a bunch of struggles.  We are trying to help them out and keep them excited. 

Then we were on divisions and I was back with Elder Rosano, my companion in Moquegua.  We had a fun day.  We were able to teach some people.  We walked to this one part of the area super far away.  We walked there and the only family there was not home so we walked higher and higher by Misti.  We sat there and talked for a while and then came back down and taught the family. We taught another family that night and we had a good division.  It was good to just talk with him and see how he was feeling about the mission and everything. 

So it is holy week to just remember Easter (Spanish version) and the Resurrection (Spanish version).  It is not great I guess you could say.  They just have a bunch of traditions from the Catholics.  They go to twelve different churches for each of the apostles, they eat a whole bunch of different kind of food, they don’t eat meat, and it is the one time of year that they fast here.  They fast for only five hours.  Everybody climbs the hills and mountains and carries a rock with them.  The rock represents their sins.  If they carry the rock with them to the top without dropping it then their sins are forgiven.  It is really interesting.  Also some people believe that Christ died on Friday and went up to heaven so there is no sin on those couple days and they do some really wild stuff. 

Our Pensionista went to Puno, which is really far from Arequipa on Thursday and Friday so we didn’t have anywhere to eat for lunch.  We were on our own to find a place to eat.  On Thursday we found a member and helped him cook this soup for Holy Friday.  It was really good; it was all just seafood and it’s just a really good soup.  We also made fried squid.  It was fun to learn how to cook some more things and be with their family.  It was a great experience.  Friday we ate another soup, which was fish because they don’t eat meat.  It was fun; we were with them a while. 

Fire: Cooked marshmallows and hot dogs for around 60 people.
We also did a service project.  We painted a person’s house and it took one and a half hours.  That night we had an activity so we had to go get everything ready.  It turned out really well.  It was a fire with s’mores and hot dogs at a member’s house.  There were around 50 people there; it was a good turnout and I was really happy. 

On Saturday we went and cleaned up in the morning.  In the afternoon we went to go buy the tickets for the missionaries that are leaving our zone.  My companion is leaving so he went and said goodbye to some families.  We had pizza that night and it was a good night.

On Sunday we went and had adobo with a family.  It’s a type of soup that you eat in them morning.  Then we came back and helped cook and then went to church.  After church we came back and had a goodbye party for my companion.  It was really fun and a good experience and I’m super happy to be here. 

This week it was a good week and now we have a whole bunch of stuff to do coming week.  We have to clean out some rooms for missionaries that won’t be here and we have to reorganize the Zone.  It’s going to be very interesting but I’m excited and I just need to keep working hard and keep doing everything right and it’ll all turn out good.

I love you all so much.

Hopefully everything goes well with you guys tomorrow and you have a great day. 
CHOU
Elder Cooley
Central y Paucarpata


Pauracapata Zone


Pauracapata Zone


Pauracapata Zone


Yara


Yara




The Leon Family


Yet another ugly dog! Haha


Semana santa for chupe de viernes



Jose & Abraham wanted to say goodbye; so we had pizza.


Pastel de tallarin y rocoto relleno
Made by Mama Cali

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