Quistococha...

Glynis Neves
Sep 24, 2018
5 min read

The Elders visit a zoo in the jungle. No longer the lone gringo. Some most excellent news!

Glynis here: Be prepared for picture overload in this post. Jacob sent home a lot of pictures of their P-day adventures at the zoo. I apologize, in advance, that I can't explain them. He doesn't send us much information on the photos, themselves. We just kind of have to do our best at guessing. Jacob is doing so well! He's happy, and feeling very successful. He told me that he is dreaming in Spanish, so that must mean he feels very comfortable with the language. Without anymore comment from me, here are the continuing adventures of Elder Neves!

Hey everyone! I hope you are all having a great time up there in the "holy land!" Hee, hee!

So this week was pretty great. The first thing we did, on P-day of last week, was go to a zoo that is located in a part of the jungle. We took this wooden bus called a Jumba to the edge of town where it meets the jungle. This place was called Quistococha, and it's basically a zoo that holds all the animals that are native to Iquitos so that tourists can see them. That was pretty neat! We also played volleyball on the beach as a zone and that was so much fun! So, just know there's going to be tons of pictures of me with all sorts of animals included with this, so be warned!

This week we also had a family home evening with the family we are preparing for marriage and baptism. We played a bunch of games like Simon Says with the kids, and then they left so we could talk marriage with the parents. They started talking to us about how they didn't know if they wanted to get married anymore. We taught them the importance of marriage and how happy it could really make them. Then we gave Hermana Mirla (the mother of the children) a blessing of comfort. I gotta say, giving a blessing in English is hard, but it is SO MUCH HARDER in Spanish! But, it's still a very powerful experience each time.

Also this week we went tracting, almost to the border of our area, which is on the border of the city by the jungle. We found this dried up riverbed. It was enormous, and we were told that it will be all filled with water by November or December. That's when the rain gets insane, apparently. Anyway, while we were tracting, we met a man named Eric Cordoba. He has a wife and one daughter. We started talking about our lives with him. He is Catholic, but he is interested in the Church. Somehow we got onto the topic of music, because he had a guitar in the room. He said, "Hold on one second. I have a songbook in my room." He left and came back with our church's hymn book! He knows all the hymns on guitar, and thinks they are really pretty, but he's never known the book was part of the LDS church. That was a crazy coincidence. Apparently, a friend gave it to him years ago, but didn't tell him anything about it. So, we sang some hymns with him and his family and we are going to continue to teach them.

Also, this week was transfers. That means that the rest of my group from the CCM arrived. It was so cool to see some familiar faces! There's also one Elder from Lone Peak, Jake Siri, and it was so cool to see him. I guess he was on the football team back home, so that's pretty neat. Anyway, they all got "hit" with the jungle, just like I did, and they were all asking me if you ever get used to the heat. I just told them I really have no clue. Ha, ha. It's seriously so bad. BUT, sometimes it rains, like reallllllllllly bad! On Wednesday it rained a storm; a legit tropical jungle storm! We were walking and it just started out of nowhere. We were completely drenched and almost all of our books were ruined. Luckily, my scriptures were fine, but all the pamphlets and Books of Mormon were soaking wet. We hung a rope to dry all of them in our house. It was pretty funny, not gonna lie!

Another funny thing that happened this week. After one appointment we were running late, so we decided to take a motocar (those 3 wheeled things) to our next appointment. The guy stopped and we got in and started talking to him. Not too long later, he pulled over and ran inside a store and came out with a pint of beer. He said, "A la Iglesia Mormona!" and chugged the whole thing. Then he got back in and drove us to our appointment. It was obvious that that beer was not his first of the day, because he was definitely drunk. We were trying so hard not to laugh, but looking back on it, that was probably really dangerous because he was drunk driving! Oh well! Ha, ha!

So, in our zone there a lot of new missionaries, and I'll include a photo of us so you can see the zone. They are all really nice, so that's awesome!

Elder Neves is no longer the only white boy!

In really exciting news, this Saturday I am going to have my first baptism!!! Hermana Wine accepted the invitation to be baptized on the 29th of this month and she wants me to baptize her! So I am so excited!!! We've been teacher her for a while, and her main problem was attendance at church. There's a rule that we can't baptize someone unless they attend at least 3 times before their baptism date. So it was imperative that she come this last Sunday. So, yesterday (Sunday) morning, my companion and I went to her house to bring her with us to church. On the way there was this path covered in trash that we had to walk on. As soon as Elder Sindayen took a step onto the path he submerged into waist deep black water that smelled soooooooooo bad! Seriously, it was horrible! I helped him out because he couldn't get out by himself and it was so gross! We went to Church and sat in the back because there was no time to go home and change.

Also, this week was Elder Sindayen's birthday and on Friday we had a chocolate cake! It was so freaking good! It was a miracle! Honestly! Ha, ha.