June 27, 2013

Hey!! Our computers are slow today so the enter key isn't working.
Peru is really crazy! Our district has 4 elders and 6 sisters. Our
teachers are really cool. My favorite is Hermano Porras because he can
speak english and joke around with us. The first few days were really
hard but I'm really starting to like it! I´ve already learned how to
pray, bear my testimony and teach lessons in Spanish. Although the
lessons are really, really frustrating. Me and my companion Hermana
Moe really struggled to understand what our pretend investigator was
asking. And he doesn't speak any english. We were feeling pretty
frustrated until the next companionship came in and told us there
lesson was a wreck. And at the end of it they meant to give him a
scripture about  repentence but the accidently told him to read one
about how God will destroy the wicked by fire. We're getting better
everyday though and we're starting to understand most of what he says.
So here's the first crazy story about Peru! Today was our first P day and every P
day we get to go to the temple. We have to take a bus for about ten
minutes and then walk a few blocks. So every thing started off good,
everyone from our district got on the bus and we all payed our money.
The bus is crazy though! They just have someone in the doorway
shouting things I don't understand and as soon as everyone is in the
bus they just take off. And they really do pack you in like cattle.
They drive so fast and whoever honks the most has the right away. Our
district leader had us get off a little while later and we started
walking to where we thought the temple was. Turns out we didn't get on
the right bus and we ended up about 5 miles past where we should've
been. We ended up walking for about 90 minutes around Peru. We didn't
have any numbers to call so we started asking people. Most people
didn't know where the temple was and one guy lead us to a Catholic
church. Finally we found someone who spoke english who pointed us in
the right direction. When we were almost to the temple the MTC
president found us. We got on the bus at 6:40 and got to the temple at
9. Needless to say we missed our session but we got to do sealings
which was really cool, and we got to see a lot of Lima. After the
temple we went to Totus, which is kind of like walmart and bought some
snacks. We also got some Peruvian soccer jerseys and scripture cases.
It was quite the adventure. When it's not p day we get an hour for
physical activity. Hermana Moe and I always play soccer with some of
the Elders and Peruvians. We can't always understand eachother but
it's always a good time. The food here is hit and miss. They have rice
and rolls everyday and then usually some type of meat and soup.
Sometimes they are really good, sometimes they're not. Their desserts
are really crazy too but usually they're pretty good and they have
really good juice!! While we are in the MTC our email time is really
limited so my emails will be short but hope all is going well!! 
Love,
Hermana Benson

I Made It!

Dear Family and Friends,

 

I made it to Peru! On our flight from Salt Lake to LA there were only 50 seats and 28 of them were filled by missionaries. There was also a member of the seventy on his way to LA to train our new mission president so it was a pretty neat flight. The flight to Lima was long, really long. We had to fill out our immigration and custom papers which were in spanish and so they took about 20 missionaries to figure out what they were saying. The flight attendant also spoke in Spanish so I felt pretty confused most of the flight.

 

When we got to Peru the airport was packed. There were people cheering everywhere. We found out there was a Korean popstar on our flight and none of us even knew. At the airport we met up with about 50 misssionaries and traveled by bus to the MTC. The drive was pretty interesting. The houses are packed in the city. They pretty much just build on top of eachother. And most of the houses are covered with graffiti. You can tell which houses are the nice ones because they have tall gates with electric fences on top. There´s also laundry everywhere! They hang it wherever they can find a place. They do have a few fast food places like KFC, Starbucks, Burger Kind, and a Chilis in the city. The MTC is pretty nice though, and they have hot showers!! We have two huge fences and security guards so you feel really safe wherever you go. I really like a lot of the sisters here. One of my favorites is Hermana Hess. She went to Bear River and said she knows Justin. My companion is Hermana Moe. She´s from the Salt Lake area and we get a long pretty well so far. In our room there are 6 Sisters. Four English speaking and 2 Spanish speaking.

 

Even though it´s winter it¨s still pretty warm here. Sometimes it gets a little chilly but I´ve never put a jacket or anything on. The air is really smoggy. The sky has pretty much been grey the whole time. The people who work at the MTC are really nice. Most of them only speak very broken English so conversations are interesting but they are really helpful and friendly. For now I think our P day is on Thursday so that´s when I´ll be able to write. I hope everything is going well at home. Love you all!

 

Love,

Hermana Benson