Called to Serve: Peruvian Style: Hola Familia!

Okay so I dont even know where to begin. This week has been so overly crazy and exciting and there is so much to tell you! To start things off, I LOVE EL CCM!! (MTC in spanish) it is seriously the best thing. It it like this little oasis of beauty in the middle of pretty run down city. All of the latinos here are so nice and friendly and love to help you with your spanish! About half of the people here are from the U.S. so there are a lot white people. The food here is actually really good, I didnt eat hardly anything for the first few days because I was scared that I was going to get sick but now Im just like its whatever. They have this really weird fruit called Granadía. It has a hard shell and inside it looks like a bunch of distugting jelly fish egss and instead of eating them you just suck the whole things out and swallow the jelly and spit out the seeds. It actually tasted pretty good but it looks so gross that I dont eat it very much. A huge flu epidemic has been going around the ccm and a lot of people are really sick. Me and my comp havent gotten sick yet but 3 of the girls in our room have been in bed for the past 3 days. Hermana Cardon ( presidents wife) makes everyone wear masks around everywhere and it is really funny. I havent gotten sick in any way since I have been here so hopefully we can keep it that way. I love my district so much! We have 6 hermanas and 4 elders and we all get along so well. I already feel like they are my family because we literally spend all day every day together. Everyone is from the U.S. and half of us are going to the Cuzco mission and the other half are going to the Iquitos mission... Haha and our poor district leader is going to the Lima Central mission. He is kind of like the odd man out when it comes to that but esta bien. We have 16 hour days that consist of studying, eating and then more studying pero esta bien. I am in class all day long which is kind of fun becuase we are learning lots but at the same time it is kind of long. ALL of our teachers speak only spanish. We really have the best teachers in the whole CCM. They are so funny and so energetic and they really make our day so much better. They love to say " que en el mundo" which means what in the world but they say it so funny, it always makes us laugh. Most of them are from Lima and only know a few words at best of English. My spanish is coming along really well and I actually speak more spanish than most of the people in my district. I have been acting as the translator this past week because they dont know what our teachers are saying sometimes and our teachers cant speak in English.... It is really fun! I like that no one speaks English here because it helps us practice speaking our español. My companions name is Hermana Hawkins and she is from California. She is amazing and I love her! We are already like best friends which makes this whole CCM thing so much easier. I am going to be really sad when we leave the CCM because she is going to the Cuzco mission. I share a room with 5 other girls and they are the funnest people to be around. They love us and we love them and we have a really good time together. The sad part is is that they are all leaving the CCM next week to go to their missions and me and Hermana Hawkins will be getting all new roommates.... Hopefully they are as awesome as these girls. We taught our first lesson yesterday to our fake investigator Marcos. It was kind of hard because he was really preocupied and not really paying attention and we were kind of struggling because we had to teach the whole lesson in spanish which is a lot harder than it sounds. Pero esta bien because we are teaching him tomorrow to so hopefully the lesson will go better and we can get him more committed! So we got to go to the temple in Lima today. Oh Lima...... where to even begin with this city! The sky is always a misty gray, there is no variation of white clouds and blue sky it is always just gray. Oh and also it is absolutely FREEZING here! Like no joke it feels like winter in Utah with no snow. I definitely was not prepared for how cold it is here. The driving here is so crazy I dont even know what to think. The rule is that pedestrians yeild to cars, not cars yeild to pedestrians. So if you are in the street and a car is coming you better run fast because the car is not going to stop for you. We went to the temple with 10 elders and 6 hermanas and everyone was American in our group. Let me just say that we kind of stuck out a little bit. There is this big really busy street that you have to cross to catch the bus and it was so crazy because pretty much you just have to wait for a tiny gap in the cars and then you just run as fast as you can across this road and hope that everyone makes it without getting hit..... it was super crazy stuff but really fun. After we crossed the street we had to get on the bus which was another adventure. They pack the buses like sardines with like 100 people in one baby size bus and then they literally drive as fast as they can to the next stop. They swerve in and out of traffic and they dont hit their brakes until they are about to hit the car in front of them... haha pretty fun. The temple was so beautiful. Lima is really run down and crazy and the minute you walk onto the temple ground it is beautiful and well kept so peaceful, I loved every minute of it. Next we went to the super market and got some authentic peruvian candy and snacks.... haha we were laughing at how much the elders were buying because everything is so incredibly cheap here. I love the ccm and I know that this is definitely where I am supposed to be. We are going street proselyting on Saturday in some little town which should definitely be an experience because we dont know alot of spanish yet but, oh well. I am super excited! Wish me luck! I love you all so much and I hope your week is going great. Hopefully I have time to send pictures! I love you, talk to you all next tuesday :)

love,

Hermana Allphin

Family: So I wrote you guys big letters but the mail doesn't go out til next Monday so you should probably get them sometime next week! I love you all and think about you all the time but just know that I really love it here and I know this is what I am supposed to be doing. Tell me everything about what is going on, I want to hear about your lives :) dont forget about me down here in freezing cold Lima Peru! I need to send pictures so I gotta go!