We didn’t do anything special or exciting
for New Year’s. We worked like normal, tried to visit people (but nobody
was home because of the holiday) then came home and slept like normal. The
fireworks at midnight woke me up a bit, but we didn’t go and watch them or
anything because we wanted to sleep.

Then on the 1st of the new year, we met as a Zone and read 90 passages from
the Book of Mormon/Libro de Mormon together. The 90 passages are from a
sheet that we give to all of our recent converts to give help them read the
scriptures everyday. The idea is that they read a passage everyday for 3
months to help get them in the habit of reading the scriptures daily. It
doesn’t cover the whole Book of Mormom, but it touches most of the
highlights. We took a lunch break in the middle, but we were together
reading from 8:00 in the morning to 8:45 at night. It was a long day. I was
more tired after sitting there all day than I would have been if we were
walking around all day like normal. It was good, though. It united us as a
Zone, and we had a fun time reading it. It also helped our Spanish to read
out loud so much.

We did a bunch of service projects this week, too. 2 of them were moving
huge rocks down a hill to clear space for a house. We’re pretty sure the
rocks were granite. They were super heavy, and even though we were moving
them downhill, it was tough. I got a bit burned in the sun, but I just look
more Peruvian now. We also found 2 scorpions while we were moving rocks.
That was cool. They weren’t huge, but they were the first ones we’ve seen
here.

Also, we were visiting one of our investigators, and he told us that he’s
been wanting to change religion. It was awesome. We invited him, his wife,
and his 4 kids to Church on Sunday, and they said they’d come. We went to
pick them up in the morning before Church. As we’re walking up the hill to
their house, we call them to let them know we’re coming. They told us they
weren’t home and wouldn’t be able to come. It was super disappointing. We
turned around and walked back home. Hopefully we’re able to teach them some
more and get them to come to Church. They’d be so happy if they did, but
they don’t understand that yet.

It rained for the first time in my mission yesterday! I love the rain, and
it was great to see that it does exist here. It wasn’t very hard, but it
rained for most of the afternoon. I got to use my umbrella for the first
time. Haha, the word for umbrella in Spanish is ‘paraguas’ which translates
to ‘for water.’ I wish all the Spanish words were that simple. But yeah,
that was fun. And then this morning we woke up to see Misti (the big
volcano here) covered in snow. It looked really cool, but I didn’t get a
picture of it. I might send one next week.

I hope everything is going well back in the States. Everything is great
here in Peru! Have a great week everyone!

Here’s a picture from yesterday, and a random one that I found from when we
were singing in the Plaza de Armas on Christmas.

-Elder Kehoe