Bizcocho

 Yo whats up all. Great week here. Theres some sort of cold front or something going on here so the weather has been marvelous. The work is going well, and I found a new good panadería with some good bizcocho. Life is good. 

I realized this week that I have never in all my time as a missionary had someone read one or more chapters of the BOM by themselves and not get baptized. Missionary work is so incredibly simple. Seriously. Elder Nichols and I changed the missionary pourpose when we were together to be "Introduce The Book of Mormon, hype up our friends to read it, read it with them, and invite them to be baptized." In my time with Elder Nichols we did exactly that. And we saw unbelievable succes and miracles. It is so simple. Sometimes we overcomplicate it. As my Dad and Jake Woodward would say, it's either all true or it's all false.

Got proposed to this week

We put in an hour of contacting on friday from 7-8 unaware that peru was playing in the american cup at that time. We knocked like 10 houses in a row that were watching lol. Pretty funny. The streets were dead. Even the church "Fuente de poder: La santa Virgen Maria" canceled their nightly ridiculously loud singing/racket on the corner for the game. Ended up tying. I'm pretty sure our soccer team is horrible but the people are saying it's our year 🗣 and the cowboys obviously 🙅 if you guys could do some reasearch on the peru national team and let me know how we are I'd apreciate it because Im pretty sure all I get is biased information about how we're winning the next world cup

Transfers are this week. We'll see what happens. 

Had a baptism scheduled but she moved to Lima last minute. The elders there got a baptism wrapped with a bow on top. She getting baptized down there this next saturday. 

Got some more peruvian drip this week. I have a suitcase and a half full of shirts, ties, paintings, nativities, chess sets, cups, pants, you name it. 

Love you all

Elder pohlman 🇵🇪

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Happy fathers day

 Happy fathers day to all of the Dads reading this email. I love you all and am very thankful for all of you. I feel very blessed to have had many father figures in my life. My dad, grandpas, my dads friends, neighboors, ward members, uncles, my friends dads, coaches etc. I'm thankful for all of you. Especially my Dad. I am eternally grateful for my Dad. That guy is an absolute stud. Love you Dad. 

Absolutely crazy story this week. I have talked about the issues of people not being married here. Well there is a family we are teaching that isn't married. The lady is actually a member. They come to church and everything, they just aren't married so the husband can't be baptized. They have been being taught by the elders for like 6 years. They have been taught every single lesson like 15 times. They have just never wanted to get married. Because of this we don't visit them a whole ton because they know what they need to do, it has just been up to them. About a week ago we stopped by and taught a lesson. Familes and marriage. Something they have probably heard and been invited to do 30 times. But it was actually the first time we have taught it to them. I was extremely direct. Blunt. Promised blessings, and we left. I was maybe even a little too direct, even elder cutipa told me I needed to not be so direct or they wouldn't give us crackers next time. Well so this week we passed by again. We were planning to teach prayer or something. We said a prayer to start a lesson and then they dropped a bomb on us. They basically were like yeah after that lesson we just felt something. You were very direct and serious, but loving, and we realized we needed to get married. So we went to the municipality the next day and got everything ready and got married 2 days later 🤯 so crazy. Now the next step is baptism. The fact that it took 6 years for them to get married shows how tentative he is. We talked about baptism and he says the same thing he said about marriage for 6 years "I'm just not ready yet". I'm sure anyone in south america hears this every. single. day. "Todavía no me siento preparado hermanitos" such a classic. So he probably won't get baptized in my time here in Imperio, but holy cow is it cool to hear they got married. Super pumped for them. I've been in Peru for 9 months and never seen a wedding baptism. They just dont happen very often. Pray for the boy so he doesn't take 6 years to get baptized. 

There was some crazy air show with all sorts of planes here this week. Aparently the peruvian air force is doing a bunch of stuff in Chiclayo or something. I had not seen a single plane other than the one passanger plane that comes in and out of chiclayo every day until this week. People were here from the states for it. It has actually been really cool. I have always had a weird interest in planes like these ones. We'd be doing contacts and have to stop for 15 seconds for the loud ones to buzz the tower. Every dog in Chiclayo has been loosing it's mind the whole week. They cannot stop barking. 

The old dude Segundo that we baptized a few weeks ago was ripping off a sequence of racist, sexist, and just all around out of pocket jokes right before sacrament meeting. He had some absolutely crazy ones he was rippin. The old heads in Perú have 0 filter. I thought old timers in the states were bad. 

My knees have improved this week. I think my incredible mom virtually diagnosed me over facetime. She is so awesome. 

"If it's not rice it's not food" -Samuel James Peery

Lastly, congrats to my good friend and brother Park for returning. Can't believe he is already home 🦈

"I include in that call to fixed faithfulness every returned missionary who ever stood in a baptismal font and with arm to the square said, “Having been commissioned of Jesus Christ.” That commission was to have changed your convert forever, but it was surely supposed to have changed you forever as well. To the youth of the Church rising up to missions and temples and marriage, we say: Love God and remain clean from the blood and sins of this generation. You have a monumental work to do" -Elder Holland

Rodilla rota

 I've been told that all I do in these emails is complain. Count this email as a journal entry not a complaint.

This week was pretty tough. 

I have been having pretty intense knee pain for the past month or so. It came on out of nowhwhere. Just woke up one day and was in pain and it hasn't stopped since. I haven't said anything about it because I don't want it to affect the work. But this week it got even worse 

Here's my journal entry from Wednesday:

"Went to the doctor today. Holy ned. I cannot even begin to describe the absolute disaster that is the Peruvian healthcare system. It is seriously such a mess. There is the main room where you press a button to get a ticket to wait in line. From there they send you to different doctors to do different tests. None of the people communicate. Ok. Go to this room and have them weigh you. Then come back up and tell this doctor how much you weigh then go to this doctor to get this test. Where's this paper? What did this doctor tell you? Ok we will just take your blood again. They seriously tried to do the exact same blood test 4 times. I won't lie I got pretty frustrated. It is such a joke. And none of them have records of anything. So we were just running around from doctor to doctor while they're asking what this doctor and the other doctor said. It was such a nightmare. How am I supposed to tell you what the results of my Densitimetría ósea y Morfometría Vertebral test were that I took 2 hours ago with Doctor Sanchez? Good grief. Oh. They also X-Rayed my crotch for no aparent reason. I was under the impression that we don't just fire x-rays around willy nilly into whatever part of the body...The picture turned out pretty funny though. Gosh. I left pretty discouraged. I walked out of there convinced I have 55 different diseases."

They have nothing to tell me yet. Basically they look at it. Say "Dios mío! Está hinchada" then send me to another doctor to have them tell me the same thing. 

I'll be alright. No I am not dying. Sorry if this email was a downer. I said in one of my first ever emails from the MTC that I wasn't going to sugar coat my emails. I hate to be the guy to throw myself on prayer lists, but I could use it right now. I have a feeling this next week will be a great week.

I bought some pretty legendary pants this week at a little market.  They're so mello. Probably will never wear them again but I think they're hype. Picture attached

We found some dessert thing the size of a football (like the one dez caught). They're filled with dulce de leche, some other type of caramel, manjar blanco, and some other cream and topped with powdered sugar. I could've eaten 5 they were so good. They were 2.5 soles so like 60 cents. They were so good.

"In addition to having these global desires, many in this audience today have deeply personal hopes: hope for a marriage to improve, or sometimes just hope for a marriage; hope for an addiction to be conquered; hope for a wayward child to come back; hope for physical and emotional pain of a hundred kinds to cease. Because the Restoration reaffirmed the foundational truth that God does work in this world, we can hope, we should hope, even when facing the most insurmountable odds." -Elder Holland 

I think following up Elder Holland in General Conference has got to be the single hardest task one can be given. That guy is an absolute stud.