Jungle Jane

June 27, 2016

Weeellll another week to report on from the jungle. This was a big one. We have had a lot of goings ons and things are going generally well.

On the health front, I´m 100% again but my companion is still bad. I feel really bad but I can´t really do anything. We are on a strict diet of no oil and no rice or fat or milk or anything fun basically. We are hoping that takes care of things. She is a real trooper though and we keep working even though I know it´s hard for her.

This week Pres. Gomez came for his last conference with us. It was sad and he gave a great conference that really helped me and my companion to put some things in perspective. I will miss him a lot. He has always been so kind and happy and smiley. We will see how Presidente Li will be. On Tuesday we had our last conference with them and then on Friday in the evening we had a goodbye meeting with all the members. The mission recently made a ¨Mission Anthem¨ and so we all learned it and sang it during the meeting. It is actually really catchy so my companion and I have been singing it all week. It´s called ¨De la selva su misión¨. We had piano and guitar and everything. It was rocking.

This week we were finally able to rescue Fred and Karen. I think I sent a picture with them a couple weeks back. They are less actives who weren´t attending before we got here and we have worked SO hard these three changes to rescue them. To be rescued someone needs to attend three Sundays the full three hours, have an interview with the branch president, and, if they hold the priesthood, bless or pass the sacrament. Fred and Karen have had everything, Fred just had to bless the sacrament and we have been working with that for weeks. This week it finally happened! He came early to church, had an interview, and then was blessing the sacrament. I felt such a swell of pride and felt like a proud little momma seeing him bless the sacrament all nervous and what not. It was a really gratifying moment to see their progress from attending only one hour and coming in jeans to coming early with his white shirt and tie. Cool moments.

We also had a chance to reflect this week on what we want to achieve in this area. There are only two weeks left in the change and it´s our third change together here so it´s very probable that at least one of us will have changes. We were able to look at what has gone on and we realized that we have to start from zero and we need to be 100% obedient to be able to see miracles in our area. It was something that we both felt and it has been so great to just work together and really just get going. I know that even if we don´t achieve all that we hope that we will have given everything we could have in this area.

This week was also El Día de San Juan!!!! It´s a huge holiday that they only celebrate in the jungle of Perú! It´s always the 24 of June. It really starts the day before because everyone makes juanes, the traditional food of the holiday. A juane is a leaf filled with rice, egg, chicken, and olives basically. But, it´s much more. It´s a whole process that takes forever and it has special herbs and what not. Also, they don´t just use any old chicken. Nah, para juanes it has to be a farm chicken. So, Thursday was prep day and it was basically just a massacre of chickens. It was craziness. There were chickens that we had seen for months being raised that finally met their end this week. Sorry chickens. We helped our pensionista make some juanes so that was fun. Then, Friday, when all the juanes are ready, everyone leaves and goes for a paseo which entails going to swim in a river, visit a pueblo, mostly river stuff, and take your juane with you. The day of San Juan everyone eats juanes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It´s a big deal. Lots of juanes. I ate one and I didn´t even finish it because they are huge but Chicky, the little four year old daughter of my pensionista, ate like five. They are pretty yummy. But, no one was in their house on Friday! We walked and walked and walked in the heat and it was a little trying but we ate juanes and had a good time afterwards.

- holding a chicken, laughing. this chicken was then killed to become my juane