Week 11: Peru Gano

This week was a great week, lots of work, lots of fun, and lots of great experiences. It started off with my first exchanges. Where I go and live with another Elder for 24 hours. It was fun to be in a different area and be with a different companion. I learned a lot and found different ways to improve and be better. There were also 3 earthquakes this week. I felt 2 of them, the 3rd I was asleep for. They weren't that big, but you could still fell them. There's rumors going around that there is going to be a big one soon. But I doubt it. 

Then on Wednesday night Peru played New Zealand for the last time, winner goes to the world cup. It was a really big game. Everybody locked themselves in their houses. So we were told just to go to our rooms and study since we weren't allowed to watch the game. But because we have a balcony we made dinner, and studied on the balcony listening to the screams of everybody. It was very obvious when something good went Peru´s way. Peru ended up winning 2-0. When the final whistle blew the small town of Tumbes went absolutely crazy. Everybody flooded the streets screaming, crying, blasting music, for a good hour and a half there was a constant stream of fireworks, cars honking nonstop, people yelling in the streets. It was absolutely crazy. It was super hype. The next day was a ¨national holiday¨ everybody was off of school and work, just everybody celebrating and still going crazy. That was the highlight of the week. 

On Friday we had a service project at a members house. We tore down her house. Half the houses here are just stick walls, with mud/concrete holding the sticks together. So we took crowbars, hammers, and with our hands destroyed their house. It was really fun, and was probably the best workout I've had since being here. It was great. Then we started cutting the bamboo type trees they bought to rebuild the house. Then that night we had a stake movie night to get investigators and members to come and have fun. But the stake chose a really bad movie (the one with Chris Evans and his daughter who is a math genius). It was fun, but the movie was pretty bad. Then on Sunday I was told I had to give a 15 minutes talk in sacrament. So Sunday morning I spent 30 minutes, wrote a good talk. Get to sacrament meeting waiting to be called up, but they never did, so that was nice I didn't have to talk. 

Other than that it was just a lot of work, contacting and teaching lessons. Not a ton of success this week. Today I travel down to Piura for a training tomorrow. So 6 hour bus ride down, then 6 hours back up tomorrow. I'm looking forward to it. I love and miss you all so much. Everyday here is the best day ever! 

Love, 

Elder Gruber