2013-04-02 Elder Howlett's first p-day

Elder Howlett and his companion, Elder Laidlaw, at the Lima Temple
 

Hey everyone,

It’s pretty awesome here. I really like the food. It’s almost always some kind of meat with some kind of rice plus a side dish and a dessert. Sometimes there are potatoes instead of rice.
 

Elder Laidlaw and I get along well. He is huge and we are going to the same mission. We share our room with two Latino Elders. Elder Feller is 22 and from Buenos Aires, Argentina. He joined the church 2 years ago because his tango partner was LDS. He speaks a similar amount of English to the amount of Spanish I speak. He is outgoing and likes American rock music. The other is Elder Cotrina. He is 18 from Lima. He’s very shy. We didn’t think he spoke English hardly at all until yesterday we found out that he speaks perfect English. I’m not sure how it took us a week to figure that one out. I hope we didn’t say anything too weird in front of him since we thought he couldn’t understand us. We all get along well and have our hour of exercise at the same time every day.

Elder Howlett and his roommates

The MTC is beautiful outside and the weather is awesome except that it gets a little too hot most afternoons. We spend most of the day with our district where we have teachers who teach us about the Church in Spanish. That’s how you learn Spanish I guess because we don’t have any just Spanish classes. For the first half of the day our teacher is Miluska Loyaza. She speaks a moderate amount of English and really likes me and my companion. She gives me her ice cream at lunch. Also if she calls you in a year and a half it is because I gave her our home number and told her she could stay at our house because she wants to see Temple Square when she goes to BYU Idaho for a year. In the afternoon our teachers are Hermano Espinoza and Hermano Hvaita (pronounced white-a) Hermano Espinoza is probably the most excited person I’ve ever met. He speaks very little English but has a lot of energy and was Peru’s Tae Kwon Do champion. He gets married in November. Elder Hvaita speaks better English and gets married in a month. I’ve gotten to know my district well because we spend half of every day in those classes. Besides that we have workshops and firesides with more missionaries.

Elders Howlett and Laidlaw with a little
Elder from Colombia

There are less than 100 missionaries here which is nice. It is weird that Provo is overflowing but this MTC is at less than half capacity.

flags representing Elders currently at the MTC

The showers have a unique feature. They choose their own temperature and switch from scalding to freezing every 30 seconds. Literally. And when I say literally I don’t mean figuratively. It makes it kind of hard to shower actually.


 

Today was p-day and it is almost over. It was a ton of fun. First we went and did a session at the Lima temple and then went shopping at a Walmart-like store and then to a little church store. At the grocery store I spent 26 nuevo sols on drinks and snacks. Some stuff was really inexpensive and some was incredibly expensive. Pringles there are over 4 dollars per can. But I got 16 small bags of chips for about 2ish dollars. I think it’s 2.5 ns to 1 dollar.

Peru MTC grounds

I pretty much feel fine but my companion and a lot of other people have gotten sick.
Easter wasn’t anything too special but we did have an awesome sacrament meeting.
I’m out of time now.

love y’all,


Elder Howlett

 

 

 

 



There are two juices every day
 and there are 'tons' of juices.
Pictured are passion fruit and watermelon
 

2013-03-28 First day in Peru MTC

email from Elder Howlett

Yep, I got your email. And I made it to the MTC. I don’t have any pictures for you this week because I don’t have my camera cord with me but I’ve only taken a couple pictures anyway. Looks like I only have 30 mins to write you too, because there is a clock on the screen counting down.

There were 13 of us at the gate at Salt Lake, all going to the Peru MTC and almost half to Cochabamba. The plane from SLC to LAX was awful--super small and almost completely full. At LAX we got lost looking for our flight to Lima, accidentally left the airport. We think the tram driver told us the wrong stop to get off at. We made it to our flight anyway. The plane to Lima was awesome. It was huge and the seats were comfy and it was half empty. Me and a couple other missionaries got moved to the front row where there was so much leg room I couldn’t even touch the wall in front of me. It had awesome touch screen TVs except we can’t use them. Bummer. Diego the flight attendant was nice and came back and offered me m&ms and ginger ale often. We were also served two meals, chicken with green beans and potatoes and then a breakfast sandwich with turkey, tomato, and cream cheese. We got crackers with brie, cake, and a salad too. The food was all surprisingly good, especially the sandwich. Also, Diego is a pilot that flies private planes in Chile. If we ever go there, he gave me his email to have us fly with him. He helped us fill out our customs and immigration papers which was nice.

Also while we were on the flight, a lady from first class came wandering back to where me and the other 2 missionaries were. She started asking us questions and pointing at our name tags. None of us could really understand her but I spoke the best Spanish so she sat down next to me and we talked for 15 minutes. Turns out that my Spanish has really gone downhill. Bummer. It took almost 5 minutes to figure out she wanted to know if we were los Mormones. We are. After that we talked about her (mute?) son who lives somewhere she doesn’t get to see him. I think that she and her son are both Catholic. She asked me what the difference between Mormons and Catholics is. It was like a practice question from mission prep. Unfortunately we don’t practice in Spanish so I told her we believe families can be together after this life because that is all I could say in Spanish. She was nice and patient with my terrible Spanish and eventually I asked if she wanted the missionaries in Chile to visit her. She said yes and I took down her name and phone number. She took the pass along card too. Pretty good for a first day, huh?

bus that picked up missionaries at Lima airport

We didn’t leave the Lima airport until 2am and I didn’t get to the MTC until almost 3:00. We were given companions and room assignments and finally got to bed around 3:30. We got up at 9 and had breakfast. Good croissant, good thick mandrina juice. warm milk on cereal, not so good. Also mandarin fruit with green peel but looks like orange on inside and lacks taste, picture to follow. My comp is Elder Laidlow from Cali. He is who I rode to Lima with. Out of time and hard to type, keyboard is different.

love y’all,

Elder Howlett

2013-03-27 Reporting to the Lima, Peru Missionary Training Center

 
So, today was the big day.  We left for the airport at about 7:30 am.  Steven's flight left at 10:20 am and connected through LAX to Peru.  It's 9:00 pm as I'm writing this and he's STILL on a plane (in a middle seat!). 

Yesterday, as we were frantically finishing up last minute preparations, Steven's friend, Jenny, came up from Provo to show him a slideshow of photos she had taken of him and his "Provo friends" the last time they were all together.  Another friend, Miranda also came up to say "goodbye" and Sam C. was here, too. 

This morning before we left, Jarrett, Sam, and Connor and Serena and Angelica came over to say "goodbye" too.  They had tried to get Steven breakfast from Kneaders, but had to settle for McDonald's since it was the only thing open that early.

John dropped Steven and me off to check in.  I collected lots of hugs (but not enough to last 2 years!) and stayed to watch Steven through security. 

I was finally able to get the video from Steven opening his mission call uploaded!

Steven opened his mission call on September 27, 2012.  It said he should report to the Provo Missionary Training Center on February 20 but that was later changed (probably because of the change in full-time missionary age) to March 27 at the Peru MTC.