Elder Spangler - PERU PIURA Mission

What's up everyone! I'm back from another long yet quick week. I hope all of you are doing well. This week was super busy and we had some great moments. Here are some: We had exchanges last Tuesday and I had to lead the area for the first time! It was definitely stressful, but I got through it. It was also basically the most important day of the transfer so that was crazy. We were supposed to place like 5 Baptismal dates and we ended up placing none. The people just either weren't home or weren't in the mood to get baptized. For some reason the people here are rarely in the baptizing mood, it's kinda weird. But it's all good because we worked hard that day so I still felt fulfilled. We play basketball in the mornings with a bunch of grandmas and it's so fun. I'm also taller than everyone here which makes it more fun. But it's so funny because the people think I'm so much better than I actually am. After we played for the first time they were all ...

Hey everyone!  I'm back from another week here in Peru!  Life has been crazy, but I'm learning so much every day.   Last week a member fed us fried squid and it was actually soooo good. I don't remember what it was called but it translated to crackling squid, which is kinda sick. For some reason while I'm writing about this I keep thinking about Squid from the movie Holes. But anyways it was definitely the best thing I've eaten here so far. The people always give us so much food here, which I'm super grateful for, but sometimes it's so hard to eat it all. I've slowly been getting more used to it though. We went on exchanges again and I went with Elder Malaga. While we were at a member's house he picked up one of their cats and twisted its neck like crazy until it cracked a bunch of times. I was shocked. He then proceeded to do it to the two other cats that were there. It was crazy. I asked him how learned to do that and he said one day he was crac...

How's it going everyone! I'm back after my second full week here in Peru. It's been a pretty quick week. On Saturday I hit my 2 month mark as a missionary which is crazy. I'm already almost done and I feel like I just got here. I did two exchanges this week which was fun, and it also made the week go by a lot faster. One of them was with Elder Pratt, one of my Zone leaders. He is so awesome, a super good missionary. The best part about the exchange is that he speaks English haha. I know I'm learning a lot with my native companion, but it was so nice to be able to just talk in English for a day with someone. I could finally ask questions and receive answers that I could fully understand. He also gave me a lot of great advice about my mission and about learning Spanish. On Wednesday I taught an English class to a couple of kids and it was so fun. We just did the basics like the alphabet, numbers, etc. But the best part was listening to them try to pronounce the letter...

Wow.  First full week in the mission field.  It's been crazy, but it's also been awesome.   The food here is pretty good. It's basically chicken, rice, and some type of sauce for every meal. It fills me up. Sometimes, it can be a little sketchy. For example, last week we had cow intestine for lunch. It didn't taste awful, but the texture was just so bad hahah. But anytime I don't love the food, the quote from Ratatouille comes to my mind. "Food is fuel, you get picky about what you put in the tank, your engine is gonna die." Those are some wise words from Remmy's dad. If it weren't for him I'd probably be home right now.   We have no AC in our apartment so we've been using a fan every night which has been great. But I just found out that we have a rule that we can't use the fans overnight because one time one of them blew up in the middle of the night. Unfortunate, but hey, safety first. I keep hearing the word encima, and all it makes ...

¡Estoy Aquí! Hi everyone! I'm finally here in Peru! The MTC was so awesome but I'm so excited to be here. I took three flights to get here, one was overnight so I only got like 2 hours of sleep that night. We stayed at a hotel and crashed the first night. Next day we watched General Conference and met our trainers. My trainer is named Elder Alvarado and he's from Lima. He knows barely any English so I'm fully immersed in Spanish now. Sometimes it's a bit hard but I'm already learning some stuff and I know I'm going to learn so much more.  My area is called Puerto Paita and it's awesome. It's right on the beach so it's a lot cooler here than other places. We live in the smallest apartment in the mission, and it's pretty small. It's also disgusting so me and my companion are going clean it today. The shower is cold and the head is about where my shoulder is hahaha. It's amazing. I feel like I'm actually on a mission now.  The city i...