Things are going great here!
We didn’t have the baptism that we had planned for this week because she
didn’t come to Church, but we have another date set for her on the 27. We
should be having a couple baptisms that day. ‘Should’ being the operative
word.

Transfers happened this week! Elder Mananita and I thought that one of us
would be getting transfered, probably me, but we’re both still here in
Hunter for the holidays! We’re both really happy because 1) we didn’t need
to pack up all of our stuff and 2) we get to celebrate Christmas with all
the members that we know and are friends with. He’s also the new District
Leader, which means him and I will be going on a bunch of divisions with
the other Elders in our District. I hope it’ll be fun to visit their areas
and work with them and get to know them better. Only 1 Elder left our Zone
this time, so next transfer, tons are going to leave.

Christmas has started to pick up a bit. There are quite a few houses with
Christmas lights up now. Many of the members have Nativity displays set up
in their houses. On Wednesday, we’re going to have a Christmas activity
with President Zobrist and some of the other Zones in the mission. Each
Zone is preparing a skit to present, and ours should be really funny. Humor
is very different here, though. Probably my favorite type of humor is puns,
and they don’t exist in Spanish. It’s so sad. They also have a traditional
Christmas food called Paneton. It’s a huge loaf or cake of bread with
pieces of ‘fruit’ in it. There’s rasins and pieces of basically fake gummy
‘fruit.’ Everyone here loves it and thinks it’s the best thing ever, but I
just think it’s alright. I think my companion might be making some this
week and teaching it to the ward. He learned how when he worked in the
bakery, and everyone wants to know how to do it.

We went to a service project this week. We were helping prepare a house for
some members to move into. There was a huge pile of bricks outside and a 1
floor concrete building. They needed the bricks on top of the house so they
could keep building up, so we put some Elders on top, some Elders on the
ground, and started chucking bricks. There were a ton, and it was a bunch
of work. Then we went inside and sanded the concrete walls. I don’t know
exactly why we were sanding concrete, but we did. It was super loud and
took forever. We went with our District, though, so there was another
gringo there and we talked a bunch in English and had some fun.

Besides that, everything has been good! We just keep working! It’s weird
that it’s not cold here and that it’s the middle of December, but oh well.
Welcome to Peru. I hope everyone enjoyes the holidays! Be sure to enjoy
some of our homemade salsa for me!

-Elder Kehoe