Elder J Wesley Wilcox: 16 March 2015 Letter

Week 7

Well where shall I start? I'm out in the field finally! I'm serving in area Campoy, barrio Portada del Sol. The ward here is massive!. On Sunday they filled up almost the whole chapel and cultural hall. The main problem in Lima is the activity rate. Here somwhere close to only 25% of members are active. So lots of our work involves trying to activate them. We also have tons of investigators though so I am blessed with a full day everyday. There is never nothing to do.

My companion is a Colombian named Elder Espinel. I found out he does speak some English, but only for things like praying and bearing testimony. Otherwise, we have to communicate in Spanish. Well our apartment is pretty cool. It is normal to me now and I am used to it but when I first walked in, I just stood there like wow. This is my life for the next two years. Forget all the needless comforts of the United States like a couch or water you can drink. Forget a clean room with insulation and calking around windows and such. Bugs can come right on in and the DUST!!! It's everywhere. The second day I went crazy and dusted the whole apartment. All the dust is back now. It is really humbling here. The middle class is nearly nonexistent. Some houses are really nice, like a rich person's would be in the states. Others have 4 foot tall tin doors and no windows. so it's really quite the experience.

My area is in the top left corner of my mission. So the north boundary of my area is the boundary of Mission Lima North and the west border of my area is the Mission Lima Central boundary. One side is super packed all really commercial and the other is really hilly and still packed I guess but not commercial.

My pensionista is a member of our ward. She lives just across the street. We eat every meal in her kitchen, often with her family (all members) on the 5th floor of this house occupied by like 6 families. All members too so it's pretty cool. They have four kids and I already love them all. They're family lives in a tiny two room house on the 4th floor. We eat on the fifth. Ill send a picture. The food here is great. Breakfast is usually tons of rolls and maybe a smoothie or a glass of milk. Lunch is huge and is around 2. Dinner isn't till 8:30 or 9 for some reason. That's just how is is here in Peru and the dinners aren't very big either. But the food is all great so I cant complain.

We have about 15 investigators I can think of off the top of my head and countless number of inactive or less active people. I have lots of work to do. We are hoping on having about 4 baptismal dates by the end of this coming week. I am amazed at how receptive everyone is here. I've met tons of people and we knock doors, or rather bang on gates, all day. And I haven't met a single person yet who doesn't believe in God and Jesus Christ. So I am really happy to be here.

The language is tough, people speak so fast and slurred and I get like almost nothing out of some people. I can almost perfectly understand others and my companion. Speaking is a different story. My comp almost always looks at me at random times in the lesson and doesn't say anything - his queue to me that it's my turn and hes not covering for me. It's good though and I'm learning so much. I will be trained for 12 weeks here in this ward, hopefully all with Elder Espinel. My goal is to be able to understand everyone and be able to teach a whole lesson without looking to my companion. We'll see how that goes.

What else, oh yeah! DOGS!! Everywhere!! There are seriously hundreds in my area, all just chillin' like they own the place. We are always calling to them and messing around with them. They cross the crazy busy street with all the traffic with such confidence, it motivates me that I probably wont die. All the vast majority of them are really nice dogs too. I haven't been attacked but I've definitely been chased or rather kept out of its territory. But they're fun.

We've been waking up some days at 5:30 to play soccer over at the stake center. All churches have soccer courts in the back on concrete.

Well I'm out of time. I am working hard and I am so happy to be here. Love all of you and thank you for your prayers.

Elder Wilcox