Trap houses, looking like Peru -future

 Dislcaimer lol really struggling to figure out the shared phone lol sorry if this isnt working haha. 

What a week! Just kinda chillin down here tbh. Ok so there are about a million things that have happened so Ill just give a little summary. So we got here and spend the first night in the main city of Chiclayo. Im not sure how to feel about the city haha. It basically lookes like Iraq lol. There is sooooooo much flipping dust there especially but everywhere down here. all my shirts are allready brown haha. Its terrible. That has been the biggest struggle for me so far. Swollowing dust all day. Its also pretty humid so it just cakes on my face and arms. 

Anyways, Friday morning we met our trainers and they shipped us off to our areas. My comp is an absolute legend. Hes from Heber and says he knows Adam Clawson so that alone is enough to get convos started haha. We mesh really well. Anyways, my area is Motupe. It is about 2 hours outside of Chiclayo. Its basically just all of the pueblos in the northern part of the mountains. The actual city of Motupe is kinda just in the foothills, but our area is huge. It would take 3 hours in a car to walk from one end of our area to the other. It goes wayyyyyy up into the mountains. Where we are in the city isnt necesarily mountainous, but you can see the huge mountains, and we will spend a lot of time driving through them in mototaxis to get up into the other little towns. A cool place in our area is called Colaya. Look it up. Its dope. I love this area (Mostly because I only wake up with a thin layer of dust on my face and not a half inch.) 

Holllllllly ned the food. I am going to gain so much weight lol. So in my mission we have people called pensionistas. The will cook every single meal our whole mission and do all of our laundry. They are members of the church and are trained in making food that (hopefully) doesnt kill the missionaries. I wont cook a single time down here. So thats nice. The food is absolutely incredible. Tons of variety and flavors. Every single meal has been absolutely incredible. Obviously a lot of chicken and steak and rice, but also stuff like pasta, tons of potatoes, ice cream, rice pudding, french toast, tons of good juices, and incredible sauces for the chicken. I could go on and on lol. 

I am yet to find purple sporade, but the red is still pretty fire. It reminds me of my ecy days. Shoutout ecy crew. Also jugo de maracuya is something we drank a lot in ecy that we have a ton here. Its a passionfruit drink that is freaking good. 

The weather is interesing. In the city it is freaking hot from about 10 to 5. The mornings and evenings are actually quit chilly. Up further into the mountains its pretty cold all day. 

Theres a lot of stuff that I need to get used to such as dust, cold showers, not getting hit by motorcycles, freaking dogs (been here for 2 days and could allready rant), cockroaches in my bed (and rats), no water filter in the house Im in (I have to filter everything I drink through my water bottle), and many other things lol. 

The branch here is pretty cool. Theres about 40 people. The problem is we dont have much priesthood. There are probably 25 super devoted members. There are also probably 10 that come to everything, church every sunday and everything else but arent baptized because they wont get married (thats a common issue down here). So basically about 50 people. 

The members down here are inspiring. They have some of the strongest testimonies I have ever seen. My pensionista Hermana Gina allready feels like my mom. She is so freaking cool. And there are about 5 abuelitas in the branch that also feel like my moms too. I am in good hands. 

Everyone is sooooooooooooo nice. It is abviously awesome, but it kinda makes the work a little hard because people will talk to us for 30 minutes just because they want to and not because they want to learn. But everyone is super receptive. Of the 30 people weve met, theres only been one that said we couldnt return for another appointment. He cussed us out and yelled at us haha. But for the most part everyone is catholic and love Jesus Christ, so theyre willing to at least learn. Our goal is to get 3 new people to church every sunday. Which is a lot. So yeah, people are pretty receptive. 

Last night we had a super cool experience. We met a family La Familia Campos. There were 11 of them. One was baptized a long time ago, but none of them new anything about the church other than her. We talked for a while in their house. It was about as peru as it gets. Dirt floors, tin roof, kids playing soccer in the street outside, super loud music playing, about 8 nasty dogs in the house (one hairless one named dante like from coco lol). We gave out 8 BOMs and I was kinda tearing up looking at the 5 kids holding a book for the first time that I have known my whole life. I have a really good feeling about them. They let us walk back behind their house and pick oranges from the tree too so that was dope haha. 

We also had a super cool experience the very first night. Same thing, dirt floors, super humble place. It was with a family of three members. The mom, the grandma, and the daughter are members, but the dad isnt. That seems too be a trend, that the woman are way more receptive. They talked about how they had a daughter die, but know they will live with her again. Super cool. 

I didnt take many photos at all this week but heres some I guess. Also dont mind my terrible typing this computer doesnt have autocorrect or anything but letters and numbers haha. 

Love you all, Elder Pohlman