Mom sends 18 Questions and Missionary Answered

I had a bunch of questions for Jaren. 18 in fact. Today we got the answers. Yeah!


1. How long had your companion been teaching the lady you baptized last week? My companion had been teaching Stephanie for about 2 months before I got here.


2. What is your apartment like? I don´t live in an apartment. We have our own room upstairs in a member family´s home. The mom is our pensionist. That means that she makes all our meals for us. Its a job. The mission pays her and she feeds us whenever we want food. sweet huh!!!! The family is amazing. I love them all so much.


3. Where do you eat your meals? I eat at the house that we live at.


4. What kind of food are you eating? They eat tons and tons of rice here. We have rice every lunch and dinner. Lots of potatoes =) and chicken. Pollo y Arroz is huge. Chicken and rice. I´ve also had duck and cow stomach. Both aren´t too bad! haha.


5. How many members are in your ward? There are almost 500 members in our ward but only 70 or 80 are active. We are trying to get a list of all the less active members because we don´t even know who they are so we can visit them.


6. Do you get support from the members? We have some support from the members but we could use more. My companion is organizing a ward activity this week to get them fired up about missionary work.


7. What has the weather been like? The weather is kinda overcast and 70ish every day. My companion has been here long enough that he is freezing right now, along with the rest of the country. I´m loving it haha.


8. Did you have any trouble in customs on your way to Peru? I had no trouble. It was incredibly easy. We just had to get in line and show our passport and this other ticket we got on the plane saying why we were there to a security officer and then we were home free. they didnt even search our bags like we thought they would after we got them.


9. Do you keep rocks in your pocket so you can throw them at stray dogs? I haven´t had to use a rock. I have had some really close encounters with dogs who think the want a taste of this guy, but you have to just walk or run right at them and yell or pretend to throw something at them and they´ll run off haha


10. How many missionaries are you around, are there others who live close to you? There are 5 other companionships in our zone that we see a few times a week. 4 gringos total including myself and my companion.


11. Do you drive a car, bike, walk, ride a bus, a horse, a donkey? We use public transportation. We use 36´s which are just big buses but we mostly use what´s called a combi which is a big van that people just pile into and they drive all over so you just tell them where and they drop you off. I´ve only used a taxi once because they are more expensive.


12. Do you go trackting? We have barely tracted. We stay pretty busy with lessons of investigators that we have right now but we also spend alot of time trying to visit less active or part member families.


13. Are Peruvians really small or is that a wives tale? Peruvians are really small. It is no wives tale. About half of the front doors to get into people´s homes are about as high as my neck.


14. When you eat with members do they give you a lot of food? I haven´t eaten with members. We just eat what our Pensionist makes us.


15. What do you eat for a treat? We don´t have time to have treats. haha


16. Do the stores have candy? The stores have candy. People mostly get snacks and treats from street vendors that are just out on the sidewalk. There are street vendors everywhere. When cars are at a stop, people will walk out into the road to try and sell the drivers stuff.


17. Have you given any suckers away? I tried to give a sucker to this one kid that is in a wheel chair. He sits on the porch of his house all day everyday by himself. the one day i remembered to bring one though, he wasn´t outside.


18. Have you taken any pictures in Peru? I have taken pics. I´ll send them today.