Week 7: El Campo

Hello Everybody! 

These last two weeks have been crazy!! It started with my last week at the CCM. Since the temple was closed last Pday we went to a catholic school for disabled kids and cleaned their wheelchairs for 2 hours. Then the rest of the week flew by, not a lot happened, they gave  us a bunch of field "training"but was super boring and didn't teach us anything. Then it was the last day which was a hectic day. We had more training, haircuts and classes. Then at 9 pm they finally let us start packing. But it was so hard because there were so many distractions. Lots of photos, goofing around, and tons of fun. It wasn't till about 1 am when I went to bed. Then at 1:10 my alarm went off and I got ready to leave for the airport. We left at around 2 am with all 21 of us going to Piura. 

At the airport I ate McDonald's and had a slice of Papa Johns, it was so delicious. The plane ride was about 1.5 hours, I slept the entire way. The airport at Piura was so small, and then we found out none of our luggage was put on the plane. So we went to the mission home, ate food, had some training and then had some down time to study, sleep, and play games. Then that night we went out contacting for 5 hours. We then got our luggage at 9 pm, the airline brought it to the mission home. The 8 gringos of the group stayed the night at the mission home and had our last warm shower. 

The next morning we went to the Stake Center where we met our trainer and found out what zone/area we're serving in. My new companion is Elder Nieskens from Oregon. And we're serving in the Tumbes zone in the Tablazo area. Which I then quickly found out is a 6 hour bus ride from Piura. So after a delicious Papa Johns lunch we headed to the bus station. 

The 6 hours went by pretty fast. I only slept for about 30 minutes, the rest of the time I just watched the desert of my mission. We arrived around 9 pm at night. When I walked in our apartment I very quickly realized that I just signed up for a wild ride. I had been spoiled in the CCM. I started asking myself why I would want to be here. Then the next morning when I found out that hot water doesn't exist and I was showering in a ice cold shower that is sprinkling water on me, I knew these next two years were going to be very different. But then the first day my companion wanted to walk around and get to know the members, investigators, and recent converts, and see if we could get any references. Every person who knew us, had the answer to why I would sacrifice to serve a mission. It was the big smile that each of them had when they saw us, when we talked to them they were so happy and I could see a big change that the gospel had on them. That brought me so much comfort. I'm here to share that joy and happiness with everybody. 

Now after a few days, everything is good, I love my room, and life is great. The next day we had noche missional. Where we invite everybody to the church to play soccer, volleyball, etc. and it was tons of fun. I'm pretty bad at soccer compared to everybody here, but I'm hoping by the end of the 2 years I'll be pretty good. 

Sunday was the Peru national census. So nobody was allowed to leave their room until 5 pm at night. There was no church, but luckily the zone leaders live right next to us, so we had 4 people to mess around and have fun. We did lots of studying, but we also listened to lots of music and also played monopoly. It was a quick game because I beat them all. 

Then today is Pday. Pday's here are awesome, in our mission we're allowed to listen to any music that is clean and uplifting. So that would be Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran, Disney, James the Mormon, Penatonix, anything that's uplifting (we just have to approve it with our zone leaders). Also we get to watch Disney/Dream Works/Pixar movies on Pday as well, as long as they are approved by the president. So today we watched How to Train a Dragon (in Spanish) and Moana (in English). You can buy movies down here for about 2 soles. Most are in Spanish but some are in English. 

I also learned that because I'm a gringo I get a lot of attention. People are so fascinated by me, everybody stares, laughs, points, etc. Because I'm white, have blonde hair, and blue eyes. I'm a rare find in Peru. Also my neighbors like to throw big parties. And there music blasts till about 4 am, but luckily my comp had extra earplugs otherwise I wouldn't have been able to sleep. Also I'm allowed to eat ceviche in the mission. It just has to be approved by the zone leaders. We were at a members house eating dinner and my comp asked if they had ceviche and they did so I had a plate. It was just raw fish with red onions and a aji sauce. It is really tasty!! Everyday is the best day ever!! I love and miss you all a ton! 

Love, 

Elder Luke Gruber

Pictures below were posted on President Rasmussen's 

Facebook page this week of a training meeting from Luke's zone.

Week 6: Off to Piura

No email this week as there was no P-day. But President Rasmussen posted these pictures on his Facebook page of the new arrivals.

Last picture in CCM, all the missionaries leaving. 

Arrival in Piura Peru 

 

First companion Elder Nieskens

Week 5: Five Days Left

Hello everybody!

Wow this week was amazing I loved it so much. There's only 5 days left here at the CCM. As much as I'll miss it, I'm so excited for the field. This week we had some pretty whack food. They made us pea omelettes, literally one egg and a cup of peas, I took one bite and almost threw up, it was so gross. Then they made us peach pizza, its a small personalized pizza about the size of my hand, and under the cheese they put peach slices. So it looked like a regular cheese pizza, but then you took a bite and it was a peach. It was nasty. There was a bunch of other just bad food that I cant really remember.

Thursday and Friday were just regular days not a lot happened but then Saturday was super awesome! After lunch we got bused out to the Lima East Mission (about 30 minute bus ride) and went proselyting for about 2.5 hours. I got paired up with an Elder from Chile who spoke very little English, so it was mostly in Spanish. We started by knocking on doors but had little success so we started walking through parks, we had a few small convos then met James a father of 5, and taught him about Jesus Christ and gave him a Book of Mormon, he seemed really interested so we set up a follow up appointment (unfortunately I'll never see the outcome). Then we started knocking on more doors and found Virginia (but they say it really weird down here, so I couldn't even understand her name). She opened a little slit in her door so we started talking through that, but she was so quiet and mumbled that I couldn't understand it, my comp did most of the work. But then she opened up the door and we taught a full lesson on her door step, it was really cool. Overall the experience was so much fun, I was able to understand about 90 percent of what was being said, and could speak what I wanted to say, but I had a hard time just coming up with what I needed to say. 

I did notice that the CCM is in the best part of Lima, outside is pretty bad. There a lot of destroyed building, and its not very clean, but its weird because there are thousands of car shops, to buy mods, fix cars, and even a lot of car washes. It surprised me how many there were.

Sunday was fast Sunday here, it was a pretty normal day except when dinner came around we all went at the same time (normally there are 2 separate times) so there was a super long line, and I was stuck at the back. So it took me 30 minutes to even get food but I ate that food so fast! Then I got asked to teach priesthood next Sunday and I'll be playing the opening hymn for priesthood opening exercises, its a song I've never played before so we´ll see how it goes.

Last night there was a huge soccer game, Peru vs Columbia, there was so much hype around the game. If Peru won they would have gone to the world cup for the first time in 30 something years. We walked outside just when they scored the tying goal with 15 minutes left and all we heard was madness, fireworks and a whole bunch of screaming/celebrating, unfortunately they tied 1-1 so they wont be going through :( That is all for this week. on Tuesday I leave at 2:30 am to Piura so that should be an interesting experience. I love you all, I'm having the best day ever.

Love,

Elder Luke Gruber

Ugly tie day, we found the ugliest ties in the CCM and wore them.

Floral Friday, we all wore floral ties, I had to borrow one since I don't have one.

Week 4: 1 Month

Hello Everybody,

It has now been 4 weeks here in the MTC, only 2 more to go, it feels like the month has gone by very fast, but it also feels like I've been here forever. Last week right after writing we went and started cleaning/making the beds for the new incoming missionaries. Then as the day went on they slowly starting straggling in. We played full field gringo soccer and got haircuts as well last pday. The new guys here are super fun but all the Americans are so tall. It was weird to see them all lost and not sure what to do the first few days.

We were finally able to set up a game of touch American football and it was tons of fun. The only thing is the turf is so old and bad that every time any skin touches it you get turf burns, so my knees, elbows and some of my calf is burned, but it was totally worth it.

We also have service every week and this week one of the workers took us to the underground boiler room where they also have under tunnels that cover the entire ground of the CCM, we weren't able to walk them but we were able to see them and it was fun.

General conference was Saturday and Sunday which was actually so much fun, each day went by so fast and I wish there would have been more speakers. I loved every minute of it. The best part were the congregational hymns, because there were no words on the screen and nobody knew the words except for the first verse, then it would drop silent, then we`d all pick up at the chorus.

Something I found out this week is that my companion loves to sleep all the time, I've noticed before but this week was bad, he can sleep through anything, at anytime, but he's super awesome. During this week I wrote a parody to the song "you´re welcome" but made it about missionary work and its called "be baptized," I only have one more verse to write and I need to rewrite it in a professional manner so you¨ll see it next week.

One thing I've really noticed this week, regardless of how much or how little I eat, I am never hungry, its normally only 5 minutes before meals that I'm  hungry but I think its more excitement to eat because its fun. Also some days here don't really feel like a mission, they are just fun with a bunch of other guys my age, I guess its a good thing because it makes the time go by faster and also helps me enjoy my time here more. The new Latinos here are super awesome, I don't know how but one of them started calling me Elder Trump because I'm probably the first white guy with blonde hair they´ve ever seen, so I did my impersonation of him and they all freaked out and loved it so I am now known as Mr. Trump or Elder Trump to about half of the Latinos. There was a line yesterday of Latinos that wanted photos with the "president," its funny.

Yesterday I got to find out how bad I am at sewing, there was a little seam that popped so I just had to sew it closed, I did a fairly good job but nothing spectacular. Today was my last trip to the temple, they are closing the temple for 4 weeks so we wont be able to go for our last pday next week, and this week we did a Spanish session, we got headsets so nothing was really different. I love you all, having the best day ever!!!

Elder Gruber

 Dorm Mates

 The guy that watches us clean the fence, we´ve gotten really close,

he's the one that showed me the underground tunnels.

 

This is the fence that I clean every week for an hour,

because they have nothing for us to do but we still have to do service.