Carnaval!

This week we had changes, my new companion is Elder Villca, from Bolivia. I`ll be making sure he knows the sector well so the next missionary that`s with him doesn`t get lost here! Well this is an interesting week as in most of South America they celebrate a 3 day holiday called Carnaval. The holiday starts the day after valentines day and the point of the holiday is basically a huge water fight and EVERYBODY is the target. Well really, they throw water, eggs, paint, foam they shoot out of a bottle, even kitchen condiments. I was extremely surprised I didn`t get wet last year, but this year haven`t had that luck. All of our investigators are across this river, and to get across you have to go on a bridge. Yesterday right before the main bridge there were like 30 kids getting everybody that went by including cars wet with water baloons, buckets of water, squirt guns etc. So we went and found another smaller bridge, avoiding the groups of people playing Carnaval, including from the tops of buildings. It reminds me alot of The Great Wolf Lodge where My brothers and I would always try to get people wet. We got across the small bridge only to see ahead that the street on the way to the investigators had 2 groups of people with hoses, water baloons and foam bottles already soaked and painted. Of course we got a ¨little¨ wet going by but I thought it was way funny (they didn`t paint or egg us or anything like that though haha). They even were throwing water balloons through the windows of the buses! I think it`s a pretty funny holiday.

   To start off carnaval, on Saturday we got an investigator wet, as he got baptized! His name is Fabian and he has been attending church since Novemeber. I haven`t mentioned him before because the other missionaries were teaching him (We were 4 missionaries in the branch here, but they recently took out 2). He`s 21 and he`s a great guy. I`m happy he made this decision! I don`t have a photo because we weren`t able to attend the baptism, as all missionaries in our mission had to be inside at 6:00PM on Saturday for Carnaval, and the baptism was at 7:00PM. I didn`t mind though I`m just happy he was baptized!

  I`m loving it here and happy to be a missionary! Hope you all have a great week!

Elder Pollock