Offices, Trainings, Sea Worms, and Rats (August 21, 2021)

 You know, most missionaries that forget to write weekly emails apologize to begin their emails. Following that pattern I should apologize for not writing and so forth and so on. However, I ain't apologizing today. So instead I shall begin by saying, time flies when you're more than 20 months into the mission. 

Most importantly I thought I would let you all know that transfers happened again and I was called to be the reference secretary of the mission. That means I'm in charge of every single reference that any of the missionaries in the mission get and also a few that are outside of the mission boundaries. This is not 3 or 4 or 20 references we are talking about here. I'm talking about ThOuSaNdS of referrals. It is quite a humbling experience to be a part of such a large work. To think that only about two years ago when I started my mission, we received an online referral once every two weeks. Now there are areas of the mission that receive more than 80 people every week! There is no doubt the Lord is hastening the work, I just wish we had a few more missionaries in the mission to contact them all. 

There's another thing, we did get some news on new missionaries maybe coming. Next week, we receive one Elder who is currently serving in the US, but the talk around town is that there are over 700 reassigned missionaries waiting to come to the country of Peru. Right now there is a 50-50 chance that they will get here before the end of the year. THAT would be a miracle. It pains me to see my mission slowly ebbing away as we lose more and more missionaries. What a blessing it would be for all the VISAS to go through and to get more missionaries before I head home. 

There is one problem though, and it's that Peru isn't doing too hot right now economically. Everything is starting to become more and more expensive. Their new President, political tension, and an ongoing worldwide pandemic definitely aren't doing any good here. One of my companions here is from Venezuela, and he said that this is exactly how his country started to fail, with a new president then all prices started to go up and next thing you know, they don't send missionaries to Venezuela from the USA. I really hope that doesn't happen here, for if it did, I would be one of the last gringos to serve in Peru for a long long time. Send a prayer for this country's future. 

This past week, we went on a roadtrip to almost the most southern point of the mission. It was about five and a half hours by car. We ended up in a fishing town called Pisco. We had a zone conference scheduled with all of the southern zones and I was to give a training to all the missionaries there. The night before the multizone, we slept at the church building. At about 2 am I feel something crawling on my face and so I whack it off my face. It definitely had fur and was bigger than a pool table ball. I didn't sleep after that. Plus I didn't have a blanket so I was just shivering for the next five hours waiting for it to come back. I told everyone in the morning and they told me that the church building has had problems with ´´pericotes´´ before, meaning black rats. Quuueeeeeee bueno eh? They also didn't have a shower so we bucket showered using the utility closet's mop filler. 

We have a pensionista again, which is someone who cooks lunch for us. It's a pretty cool thing to just go get food from him every day, but we don't really tell him what to cook, we just eat what he gives us. There have been a few very interesting dishes so far, including chicken feet and cuttlefish. Most recently we had a dish that was basically the ocean thrown into a styrofoam tupperware. The first time I tried to eat it I lifted a complete shell hidden in the rice. It was something you would find on the beach, yet it was in my rice. Then my companions started listing the things that were inside. Shrimp, squid, octopus, mussels, clams, sea snails, and sea worms all together with beans, rice, and spicy chicken sauce. Delicious, eh?  Almost as good as fried guinea pig. 

It's been quite the ride this past month. Monday I am getting on a plane to fly to Ayacucho to give a training. Two months ago I thought I would never have the opportunity to see the place but here we goooo. I hope you all are doing well just be grateful that rats are not crawling on you and if they are well, hey, you've got a friend in me. 

Also I thought I should let you all know that I was accepted to BYU Provo! Very excited to start my studies at such an awesome university. 

El nuevo im´peru´ving misionero,

Elder Baird