Freezing

Hola Familia!!

How are you all? I am really pumped to hear more about this trip that

you are taking this week so don`t forget to take lots of pictures and

fill me in!

This week has been great!  It has flown by and I can`t believe we are

entering week 4 of this change.  Crazy crazy crazy.  Anyways I will

try to make up for my short letter last week.  Traveling to Puno was a

mini adventure.  First traveling from Abancay and Cusco is the worst.

I got a little car sick for the first time in my life and thought that

if Grace had joined me she would have died…haha love ya Gracie!

Anwyays after arriving in Cusco I spent the day in the Cusco house

just hanging out with other hermanas who were awaiting companions or

had changes.  At night Hermana Coooper arrived and it was the best to

talk to her in Spanish and share stories of our first area.  Then the

next morning we traveled to Puno.  Its an 8 hour drive but the bus was

super nice.  I was the only Hermana and traveled with some elders.

But mostly I just slept.

Puno is great! Its not as green as Abancay, and its more yellow.  We

travel around in the combi´s like we did in Abancay.   Did I mention I

still have massive hills in my area. Yeah my legs are super buff!  Our

pension for lunch happens to live at the top of Huascar so we always

have a great hike each morning.  We can see the lake from our sector

and it is beautiful. Its really blue and I am sure it is freezing just

like Bear Lake.   They also have a mode of transportation which is a

guy riding a bicycle and pulling people in a little cart behind them.

  I have yet to seen any transportation like Kip and Napoleon but I

will be on the lookout.

Like I have said we live with a 87 year old lady and we call her

Abuelita or grandma.  She is so sassy and hilarious.   When we arrive

home for the day she always yells. HERMANAAS and we respond and she

always asks us to do a small favor for her.  Usually buy juice or read

some kind of bill.  Shes absolutely hilarious and so blunt. This week

at 10 at night she asked us to accompany her to a neighbors to

retrieve her blender.  The whole time we walked over there she talked

about this blender and how her friend didn´t return it to her in time.

Well we walked over to the neighborhood and she had forgotten where

she lived.  So after we knocked on a ton of doors, we are so tired and

freezing, we finally find her friend who refuses to give her the

blender and they finally make a deal that she´ll bring it in the

morning at 10.  So we walk back to our house and go to bed.  Well the

next morning , her friend didn´t bring the blender until 11 and while

we were finishing our studies we heard them screaming and yelling

downstairs.  Oh my.  Old people are sasssyyy! Anyways.  The abuelita

is hilarious and always makes our life a little interesting.

Hermana Quezada continues to be the best!!  Seriously I love her.

She is so kind and self less and charitable!  She reminds me of mom

sometimes.  Especially because she has this cackle that she does when

we plan to set up our ward mission leader with a single adult or

something like that. It’s a little witch cackle which is just

hilarious and reminds me of you mom.  Also she noticed that I had a

mosquito bite on my hand that hadn´t healed so she bought gauze and

medical tape to tape me up…. Hah She is hilarious and I love her!!  I

don´t want her  to go!

Ungoogable facts about peru for this week.

1.       Peru raises chickens to fight.  Literally we ran into one

this week who wanted to fight us. So now you know that if you come to

peru you need to be aware of the dogs and chickens J

2.       When leaving a combi the worker likes to say ¨baja baja baja¨

which means like get off or leave.  The translation is a little hard.

When you get on the say ¨sube sube sube¨ and ¨baja¨ when you get off.

Well they say it really fast and kind with a nasaly accent.  I always

kind of laugh because I think they say it to hurry us but when a

really old grandma is getting off she´s not going any faster.

3.       Also people speak a little different here.  They are always

adding pay to the the ends of words like Sipay or yapay. At first it

was hard to understand but now that I am aware of it its easier.

Last p day was the  best.  We literally have the best pdays.  We went

to a giant lookout point with a huge bird and then we roamed around

puno and painted our nails later in the apartment.  Last week our

phone exploded so we have been without a phone for two weeks now.

It’s the worst and I don´t know how we survived! But we had a really

old phone and it really did explode!  Haha   The zone leaders have

been trying to find us a phone but they couldn´t. so last night we

were getting ready to go to bed and they rang the doorbell and la

abuelita started yelling for us.  IT was funny because we didn´t know

they were going to come so we had already changed and we were all

ready or bed. But really fast we through on skirts and shoes over our

pajamas and went down to see what they needed. They decided to give us

their phone because they have two, until we could get ours.  Anywoo.

Heraman Quezada was mortified that we were in our pajamas and she

laughed so hard later.   Haha.  I think we were a little tired.

This week I have been studying the testimonies of Christ in the Book

of Mormon. We have an investigator who is slowly starting to believe

in Christ and I have been looking for ways to help him. As I have read

the testimonies of Christ written by the Prophets I have strengthened

my own testimony. I know that Christ is our savior, that he died and

suffered for us so that we can overcome the physical and spiritual

death, and I know that the book of Mormon was written to help us gain

this testimony of our savior. I am grateful for this testimony and

grateful for the opportunity to share it with others.

Anways.  Love you all so much.  Thank you for your support and your

love.  It helps so much.  I love being a missionary! Be safe this

week!!!

Love Hermana Russell

Lookout point with a really big chicken!

View from sector Huescar

The Sisters!

They got hops