last minutes of 2009

As I mentioned, we're in middle of the visit of a new circuit overseer. Our congregation loves him! He's a great speaker, and really excited about everything. He's moved lots of brothers to fill out an application to regular pioneer, including a sister who can't read or write. New Year's Eve is crazy here. Cajamarca looks like a refugee camp/war zone, because everyone has little fires in the street, and they're shooting off any noisy things they sell here. Well... if you can imagine a refugee camp with constant loud music. They do something else weird here. Today I noticed at 3 different houses that people had made something that looked like a scarecrow, stuffed clothes to look like a person. (Or maybe I only saw 2 scarecrows and one really drunk man...) Well I guess at the end of the night they burn the fake person to represent doing away with all the bad stuff of the year that's over and getting a fresh start. A study was explaining to me that they would also take a suitcase and run around the block twice... but at times like that I think maybe I'm missing something in the translation, because that sounds just crazy.