Dear Familia,
It's pretty different here, very poor and humbling. A lot of the people--3/4 of them have dirt huts, There wasnt any earthquake.* It's tough not being able to talk to anybody, including my companion. haha and I thought I knew the language! It's crazy! So we have a baptism date for David who is 9 years. His parents are members, but not active, and he was never baptized. The church is the nicest building I have seen here, fully functional with fans and all. I had the opportunity to meet all the members last Sunday. They are awesome, and Hrma. Mercedes is a member as well! I wanna give you a rundown of an average day here:
Alright first thing, it gets light here by about 6:15 and I'm guessing that it will stay like that year round considering we're on th equator almost. We wake up at 6:30 am, roll out of bed and pray then exercise for half an hour. Then I take a cold shower, if we have water. After that, it's down to desayuno (breakfast) at 7:30. Hrma. Mercedes always has some good, although sometimes odd grub ready! Then we go study el evanhelio (gospel) for 2 hours, one hour personal and one hour companionship. Then it's off to work at 10. If we don't have appointments, we tract in the HOT sun. It's similar to Lake Powell minus all the water, but it has tons of sand. Everything is always dusty. We do that till 1:30, when we typically have lunch, which is the biggest meal of the day here. That lasts for one hour, then we go up to the room and I study spanish and my comp studies English for one hour. Then it's back to work, either tracting or teaching, preferably teaching ahah. Then we have dinner at around 8pm. They do it late here haha, Dinner is an hour, and then we go and prepare for the next day and go to bed at 10:30 exhausted! Very exhausted. haha every day.
We have a goal of five baptismal dates this week, I hope we can make that happen with my broken Spanish and all ahha. The people, they have nothing, literally nothing and are so happy! i dont know how! It's good to see that light in people's eyes when they finally realize something new, like the gospel for example!
Anyways, I love you all so much. It's definitely different, hard, and sometimes I wanna just give up, but I know that it's all for a purpose -- to bring people to Christ, and I'm giving it all I got! haha I'll try to send more pics next week, the internet is slowwwwwwww here, but what can ya do? Ya gotta love it! Take care. Write me. It takes about a month for a letter to get here.
Much love!!!!!!! hope you are all doing well, and also I'm able to get dear elders here to!
Love,
Elder Pinegar
*We asked Alex if he felt the 6.9 earthquake in central Peru near Lima this week--apparently not--since he is so far north. Also--sounds like he could use a few letters--please take a minute and send a Dear Elder (see sending letters on blog)--it's easy and free!
Elder Alexander Cato Pinegar
