Many seemed to like the daily breakdown
of the week, so I’ll try to do it more often.

Monday: I handwashed my clothes again. We came to internet and wrote home.
Everyone was having fun in California without me, but that’s okay. We
watched Tangled and The Hunchback of Notre Dame for our P-Day. Afterwards,
we went to visit a less active. We also bought our tickets to travel to
Arequipa because we had a Zone Conference.

Tuesday: While we were out buying breakfast we ran into a couple returned
missionaries from Utah. They were hear touring Peru. They saw us in the
street and yelled out “Elders!” They were surprised to see Elders in the
little city of Chivay. Then we went hunting for a birth certificate for a
member that wants to be married then baptized in Arequipa. We went to Town
Hall and asked them to search their records for us. They said it’d be ready
about noon, but we left for Arequipa at about 11:00, so we were going to
pick it up another day. We packed up and left for Arequipa. One Elder had a
doctor’s appointment, so we waited in the office for him. We ate lunch
there then left on divisions with the office Elders. We gave someone a
blessing and went contacting, but didn’t have much success. We ordered a
couple pizzas to take to the mission home and left to go and eat and sleep.
We talked with President a little bit about the Branch and went to bed.

Wednesay: We ate breakfast in the mission home, which is always nice. Then
we had a Zone Conference all morning. We got out about 2, I think. I took
advantage of being in Arequipa and sent Josie and Dad their birthday
letters. Plus birthday letters to my friends in Norway and Mongolia. No
idea if they’ll actually ever get them, though. Hopefully they do. Then we
went to my companion’s old pensionista to eat lunch. We had a couple hours
left before the car left, so we passed by my old area as well. We went to
my pensionista for a few minutes to pick up the clothes I left there then
we went to my old lavanderia and talked with them a bit. We went back to
Chivay in a super small, squished minivan, so we learned not to go with
that company again.

Thursday: We had our weekly planning meeting in the morning. Then we had
our Branch Presidency meeting. It went well. Things are already starting to
get better with the new Branch President. We visited the youth today,
talking to them about the temple dedication and the importance that they
go. That night there were interviews for the temple with the new president,
but only 1 person came. I was busy during the interviews doing secretary
work. Getting directories ready for all the organizations and everything.

Friday: We studied, like always, then went to eat breakfast. Afterwards we
went searching for the birth certificate again. We didn’t have time to do
it yesterday. We found out it’s not here in Chivay, but rather up even
higher in the mountains in Caylloma, 4 hours away. And we were looking for
a ride to get up there, and cars leave at 8pm everyday or at midnight
Sunday/Monday morning. We thought we would be going today, using all our
P-Day, but we didn’t. We taught about temples and patriarcal blessings
today. And we were stressing out about the youth here, like always. There’s
nothing to do here in Chivay for the kids except go to the clubs. We tell
them not to, but we think some of them still do. We got our Seminary
lessons ready for tomorrow and had an English Class for the people of
Chivay.

Saturday: We made a ton of pancakes this morning. I was making them and
accidentally doubled the flour without doubling anything else. I didn’t
realize it until I was mixing everything together and it turned out more
like pizza dough than pancake mix. I then doubled everything else. We still
have some pancakes… Then we went to clean the Church. And I finally found
a spot to hang my hammock! We each laid in it for a bit and got the Church
nice and sparkly for Sunday. We also found a “field white and already for
the harvest” so we had to take a picture. We then ate lunch and taught
Seminary. Sadly, only 3 kids came. And they didn’t pay a whole lot of
attention. We went and talked to our investigator that we invited to be
baptized. He hadn’t prayed, so we invited him to pray again and ask if he
should be baptized June 20. He said he’d do it, but we haven’t heard back
yet. We had more interviews for the temple, but only 1 youth came again.
Then for dinner I had some yogurt and cereal. They have kind of watered
down, drinkable yogurts here. I got some green apple yogurt and it was
super good. I poured it over my cereal like milk. Delicious.

Sunday: We had our Sacrament Meeting like normal. We sustained the new
Young Women’s President and Ward/Branch Mission Leader. A bunch of people
had their temple interviews today, so that was good. On Wednesday, I’m
going to be teaching a Family History/FamilySearch.org class. The area
authority has said that if the people aren’t sending names to the temples
here in Arequipa, we’re never going to have a temple here in Arequipa. So
we’re helping the members find the names and dates of their ancestors to
help progress the temple work here. We had our Branch Counsel with the
newly called Branch Counselors, and I can see that everything is going to
be going a lot better with all the extra help. We went to varify the travel
times to Caylloma. They leave at midnight and get back to Chivay at 6:00pm.
We almost went today just to get the whole thing done, but we don’t know
who’s going to pay for the trip and everything, so we held off.

That was the latest busy week we’ve had. We’re always busy. There’s never
enough time to get done what we need to. But the work and branch are
progressing. Little by little. I hope everyone is enjoying their summer
vacation! Have a great week!

-Elder Kehoe