I have made it to Peru!

Hello Family,

I have made it to Peru.  I was glad I got to talk to you all yesterday.  It was a pretty exciting feeling when we flew over the city of Guayaquil on the way down!  We could see the lights from the city up in the plane.  Most of the elders on my flight are going to Ecuador.  I did not know there were so many missionaries in the MTC.  We arrived in Lima at 10:30. 

We all made it through customs fine, but waited for an hour looking for a missing elder in our travel group.  It turns out he had actually gone home from Provo two weeks earlier but the Peru MTC was not notified (We only learned this after our bus driver had made the decision to abandon him at the airport).

Thursdays will probably be our P-day.  My new companion’s name is Elder Hernandez.  He is from Mexico, which is rare for the Peru MTC.  Most of the native elders are from no further north than Guatemala.  He already speaks pretty good English, so we have had no communication problems so far.  We have not been able to talk much because they have us split up for today.  They got to start classes while all the North American elders had to do paper work and get a hair cut.  This is the second haircut this week.  They made us get a haircut when we left the Provo MTC so now I have almost no hair.

The campus here is beautiful.  There are three main buildings.  There is the administration building, the building with our classrooms and dorms, and the cafeteria.  We have a big soccer field, a basketball court, and some foosball and pingpong tables.  There is a big courtyard in the middle of the compound connecting everything.  As we wandered around the campus today, there was some sort of celebration outside with live music.  The flutes and singing certainly added a lot to our first Peruvian experience as we explored the campus.

Our dorm room, shared with 4 other elders

The meals here are good.  So far we’ve had chicken and rice.  For every meal we have different kinds of fruit juices.  Since the names are all in Spanish, I usually can't tell what kind of juice it is.  I think that a lot of them are fruits that we don't eat a lot in the USA.  They said not to send any packages to the MTC, but you still should be able to when I get to Ecuador.

Love, Elder G