March 14, 2011

Hey family,
Its great to hear that everything is going pretty well at home. Everyone seems to be pretty involved in things at school and at home, although, I haven`t heard a lot about what Trevor has been doing lately. Im just assuming is busy writing awesome songs on the piano. :) Glad to hear that Trent is getting involved in the epicness of Pinewood Durby. (I think a Keegan word just showed up in my e-mail. "Epicness" ha ha) :) And it sounds like by the time I get back, Adam will be a Champion Trumpet player. Alex should also definitely be a pro soccer player. And of course, Megan is still involved in music, and oh ya, is going to be an Aggie. ha ha. I may have to remind her of that every once in a while. Being an Aggie is awesome. And Trevor is just being awesome.
Sad to hear that the Aggies continue without their respect. I don`t think it will change until they knock off a 4 or 5 seed. Hopefully this year will be the year so that in a year and a half when I am there, they will be an epic 3 seed. Changing conferences would help too.

This week was crazy in Perù. It flew by really fast. We had our transfer meeting. My Zone has grown and now has 20 missionaries, 18 elders and 2 sisters. Its pretty cool. Our mission has grown with the amount of missionaries we have and it is pretty awesome. Interesting news for dad. The first Argentine ever came to our mission (or as far as President Tyler knows). Needless to say, he is the only Elder from Argentina in our mission. He happens to be from Cordoba, and he happens to be in my Zone. Argentine Spanish is really weird. Just saying. I`ll stick with my Peruvian Spanish.

Clarification: Elder Linares has one more transfer after this transfer. So I will probably leave at the end of this transfer. Sorry if my typing is hard to understand.

Last Saturday we had an activity with the missionaries from the CCM here in Peru and they gave us a ton of references, so we worked with them all week. I was more tired at the end of the week then I have been my whole mission, but it was good. We found a few new people to teach. The sad news is that we lost 2 baptismal dates. Elisabeth and Betty didn`t come to church yesterday. We know why Betty didn`t come, I`ll talk about it a little bit later, but we have no idea why Elisabeth didn`t come. So we will have to move back their baptismal dates. We also have interviews with President Tyler tomorrow. Should be fun. I had heard about the earthquake. Perù got hit by the Tsunami that was caused by the earthquake. When it got here it only wound up being about a meter in height, but the afternoon that it happened all of the stores closed at 4 in Callao and the people were told to go home. Lima is actually pretty safe from tsunamis because most of the coast is cliffs. There are beaches below the cliffs, but no one lives there so the tsunamis hit the cliffs and then stop. Callao is the only dangerous place because there aren`t any cliffs. Its all flat. It also happens to be the poorest part of Lima, so the houses aren`t incredibly built. I think Ive talked about Callao before because its the most dangerous Zone in our mission, and I really want to go there. ha ha. Missionaries don`t get robbed there. a whole lot. Its okay though, Ive had someone try to rob me, and now he`s one of my friends. He always says hi to us as we pass. Ive found being friends with the thieves keeps you safe. Other missionaries have found the same thing.

Spiritual experience of the week. Betty.

I think I have told you about Betty`s husband, Joel, who drinks a lot.

Thursday we were planning to have divisions so that we could contact more of our references. We had been planning to meet in a members house, but they something fell through and we met in Hermano Chaing`s house (Below our room). Betty lives 3 houses down. We then had more fall through when one of the members was a little slow getting ready. We wound up leaving, and I believe that we were led by the spirit with these "holdups" We left and Betty and a neighbor were in the street asking for help because her husband, Joel, was having some kind of attack. He had pnemonia or something with being diabetic and he had been drinking. He was literaly dying. We helped load him into a taxi and they left for the hospital. Quite frankly it was a very nervewracking experience. He wound up being treated and he is going to be ok. But because of her husband, Betty wasn`t able to come to church. I know we were led there, and Betty knows. She said that she didn`t know what to do, and out of the blue came the missionaries, with 2 members, to help load her husband into a car. The spirit guides us and sometimes we don`t know it.

I love you all,
Tyler