Everything's better when it's drenched in lime juice

Dear Family,
Our pensionista made us cebiche twice this week. If you don't know, it's raw fish in little pieces ("cooked" by sitting in lime juice for an unspecified period of time) with abundant onions, spices, corn, canchita (basically corn nuts), yucca (never ate that in the States, don't really hope to - it's a kinda stringy potato-like substance, high in fiber), all of it bathed in lime juice. It's delightful.

I took a cold shower every morning this week (operating under the principle that a cold one is better than none at all), except for Sunday, when the key to the next door shower miraculously appeared. Unfortunately, its occupant appeared (somewhat non-miraculously) this morning, so we're back to cold showers. It's not that bad, really.

We're facing some of the same struggles lately. At least 4 investigators promised to come to church yesterday, but we were disappointed when none of them showed up. We're working on getting the members involved so that they can help bring them to church. The Bishop has asked us to help inspire the other leaders of the ward to participate in missionary work. We've come up with a few ideas that should help them catch the vision.

I forgot to write about one investigator we visited the week before this one. His name is Jorge Chavez, and we received his name from one of his numerous (13) children living in our area. We taught his son Hugo over a month ago, and when we ran into him the other week, he referred us to his father. His father is 88 years old, fairly white for a Peruvian, wealthy, and walks around with a revolver in his hand. But Hugo assured us that his father - for being a lighter-skinned man - had plenty of interest in North Americans; so I did most of the talking at the door and we didn't get shot. After inviting us in, he tossed his revolver into a nearby chair (no, it didn't fire), and that made things comfortable. We're going to go visit him again this week, I'm sure.

Our most progressive investigator, Johany, has a baptismal date set for this 18th of December. She has probably read half the Book of Mormon for all the readings we leave her every time we teach. We've found more families to teach, and we have high hopes to continue with those we've been working with during November. We're going to be working with the members a lot this month, too; everybody's clamoring for a pianist for their Christmas musical numbers. It's the least I can do to help them out.

We usually have service on Thursdays. We invited the sister missionaries to accompany us to the house of a family with some marital issues - while the sisters visited with the wife (her husband at work), we would fix the ceiling and clean the house. Unfortunately, they weren't home when we arrived. We resigned to cleaning the trash at a park up the street. Many people passed by, and Sister Stokes talked to one of them who seemed to be in desperate need of the Gospel. I felt impressed that morning to bring a Book of Mormon along with me to our service activity (because I read in Preach My Gospel that we're supposed to use that book in EVERY aspect of our work); we gave the woman, Ana, the Book of Mormon and taught her a mini-lesson and set a date for a later appointment. That was a miracle. We were in the right place at the right time with the right materials. The woman who we had planned to serve in the first place eventually passed by and saw us at the park and approached us, and we completed our planned service at her home.

Good luck with all the wedding plans, graduation plans, Christmas plans, and all the other plans that are taking shape up there!

Love,
Elder Withers