26 January 2026

 Welcome back to the uniquely excellent weekly email of Elder Battraw! Every day brings change. My phone can't even recognize my fingerprint anymore.

We have been growing ripe with trunkiness this past week. I offer unto you all a modern parable-

Once upon a time, there was a group of missionaries. They all got together one morning and cut a tree down. The end!

This is actually a true story and evidence is available here:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/1ngGPb1awSYj1DL36

I hope you all learned something from that modern parable. Just like with our stubborn trunks and trunkiness, we just gotta get together with our friends and cut it down and out of our lives. If you don't have friends, then no worries, go on a mission and you'll make lots of them. 

Other nice events that happened this week, because pday is not long enough to write then all out in detail-

The End of the World:

Major city in Perú is smitten with plagues and afflictions

Hazardous Hopping:

Elder Battraw nearly gets sent home for injuries while parkouring through river boulders

Movie Moment:

We had a lit movie night last monday with our friends and converts, watched Joseph Smith, Prophet of the Restoration, tears were shed and it was excellent. As well as cookies

Super Sleepover:

The secretaries of the mission visited us and we had a Super Sleepover Party Bash. Would recommend

Crafts and Construction:

I built an amazing new cardboard house for a convert's new baby rabbit, ears included

The Return of Richard:

Richard comes back????? And he kindly invited us for a bite to eat and a sip to drink, which we politely rain-checked him to avoid 1. wasting time and 2. being sacrificed to demons

Anti-Anti:

A man speaks all manner of blashpemies and apostate statements to us, we kindly smile and chuckle

Tree Triumph:

We successfully topple the king of the mountain tree from somebody's backyard, Elder Watkins avoids imminent destruction by the measure of one pinky toe

Practice Makes Perfect:

I practice the wrong song for sacrament meeting only for God to come in and save the day in a miraculous manner 

That's all for this week- don't cry that it's over, be happy that it happened

-Elder Battraw

19 January 2026

Hello to everyone that still has ears to hear, eyes to read, and hearts to still care about what these weekly emails are all about! Another week has passed and now I have the great task of trying to make what I do daily seem entertaining. Here's a quick headliner of the cool things that happened. -Pushups Prowess Saturday I hit 1000 pushups in one day -Bull Brawl We sprint past a bull in our path, nearly get poked -Barf Bus My comp throws up four times on the comby on the way to Cutervo -Animal Attacks We nearly get clapped by the local dog gangs, pass by kittens, bulls, dogs, pigs, and guinea pigs within 5 minutes -Bingo Boys We play the finest game of Bingo this century has seen, only to get robbed by the announcer -Drunk Drama A potentially posessed returning friend comes back drunk and prophesies all manner of blasphemies and witchcrafts- "Experience, requires... SACRIFICE." -Consecrated Convert Maryelis is the Lebron James of missionary work, she has put in more hours visiting and working in the past week than the rest of the branch has in the past month -Crippling Comparison I get called a nerd and "the kid from the Polar Express with the yellow shirt" -Relentless Rain It rains for 5 days non-stop here in Chota But that's all for this week- stay tuned for the next one 😎

12 January 2026

Welcome back to the 40th edition of Battraw: Weekly, where few are called but many are emailed! Where the world keeps spinning and time keeps moving despite our best efforts. And what a cool seven spins around the axis it's been. The pushup goal continues! The goal is 100k for the year of 2026 and so far, it's going well. I've learned that I can't do 100k pushups in a year, and I can't do 275 pushups ever day, but I can do 25 pushups right now and 25 pushups in a couple minutes, over and over again. And those 25 pushups add up pretty quick! Focusing on the things we can do right now is the only thing we have to do. Pretty cool. We went caving last week in a Minecraft ahh cave. As we were entering the Legendary Cave Wizard appeared and demanded 2 soles for safe passage, or the curses and blood of all other stingy travelers lie upon our bones. So I gave him 2 soles because I've played too many video gamed to not pay the mysterious wizard at the start of main quests. It was a cool cave! Lots of rocks. Then we climbed the mountain that lied on top of the Cave of Doom and offered sacrifices to appease the cave spirits. Overall, nice experience and a cool photo shoot. But yeah! This past week has been a grind. But knowing that all I have to do right now is "25 pushups," something small and simple, heck yeah I can do that. My spiritual thought is that we need to build line upon line, precept upon precept and 25 pushups upon 25 pushups. And if we keep that up, we can do pretty much anything we set our minds to. Still doing pushups, Elder Battraw Pushups: 3,840/100,000 Intercontinental Ballistic Missionary:

5 January 2026

"Everybody's happy, it's a great time of year. Merry Christmas. But the real Merry [freaking] Christmas is when you wake up in the New Year when all that noise is gone, and it's just you." Hello and a happy new year to everyone that is staying hard! And a happy new year to this mission, which has never not stayed hard. Unfortunately for hard missions, missionaries are harder. Holidays far away from home feels pretty surreal. I know that on the other half of the world, there's snow and Christmas presents. Over here it's an ordinary day, albeit with more people drinking in the streets. As for updates this past week, not too much has changed at all. I did start a new personal challenge of 100k pushups in this new year, I'm currently at 1.2k. Not much is new this past week! We did have a baptism this past Sunday for Maryelis, she's pretty awesome and wants to also serve a mission. Anywho, I don't have anything else interesting this week, so we're gonna roll the dice again this next week and hope for snake eyes. That's all! -Staying hard, Elder Battraw

29 December 2025

Hello, and welcome to the 38th installment of the Battraw: Weekly! Unfortunately I'm fried and have little to no motivation to write anything. Unfortunately for me, because if I waited on motivation for everything then I'd still be back home watching anime. It is worth noting, however, that if my mission were a fetal child it would be viable outside the womb. Additionally if you bought low-acid canned goods or pasta around when I began the mission, you should consider refreshing your food stores. And Merry Christmas! We really didn't have much of a Christmas celebration, neither will we have a New Years celebration. But better believe we will work, and work, and then work again. After that, we will keep working. And when we run out of motivation and want to go sleep, we will work! As AI generated David Goggins puts it- "No Christmas lights, no fireworks, just the grind. I'm tired, my mind's whisperin' quit, but that's the enemy. I don't wait for a calendar to tell me when to push. I lace up my shoes, I hit the pavement, I count every step like a badge of honor. The pain? It's just a reminder I'm still alive. So I keep moving. I own the suck. I don't need a celebration to prove I'm hard. I prove it every da[ng] day, one mile at a time. Stay hard. Stay hungry." Beautifully put, David. I couldn't have put it better myself. For this "happy new year" we're gonna stay locked in and keep it pushing. Motivation or no motivation, keep that mentality tough and take the steps one at a time if you need but keep taking them. I guess what I'm trying to say, is STAY HARD! Adieu, and adieu. Staying hard, -Elder Battraw

22 December 2025

Welcome to the Legendary Weekly Efficient Email of Elder Battraw! Headlines for this week! I reunite with my long lost piano Elder Ybarra loses his lunch Elder Ybarra's lunch is found on my pants Cube, Rubix The Great Christmas Bash of '25 I move into Mission President's house Christmas Nativity: Starring Elder Battraw Unfortunately that's all we have time for this week, cya next time! -The Efficient Elder Battraw

15 December 2025

Hello all! My name is Battraw, Elder Battraw. Sometimes here, sometimes there, always "in between jobs." As the title may suggest, I'm slowly shriveling away into a sarcastic cadaver of my formal self. The other day, I fell down a hill and made Minecraft skeleton noises. That didn't hurt quite as much as when a 5'3" Peruvian lady called me skinny though. I've since resolved to eat more, because boy have I lost a lot of weight. Besides that, the week was good! We celebrated the same 5'3" Peruvian lady's birthday, and had a farewell party for Elder Sousa, doppleganger of Miles Morales. There was a baptism in Miles Morales's area as well. And our friend that fell off the face of the planet a week ago has returned and has a baptismal date again! Let's go! We also visited little towns in our area along the mountains and walked a lot! There was also a wild, angry bull that got loose and put itself on the path back to home. We tried going around, when it suddenly decided that the grass where we needed to go looked pretty good and moved there. So we ran back to the trail and started ninja sneaking along the path. The bull was maybe fifteen feet away from the path, just down a slight slope munching on grass with its head down. Elder Saccatuma headed in front, safely passing in a hunkered stance. I was moving past the bull when Elder Saccatuma yelled, "MOO!" and we took off sprinting. Fortunately we didn't get clapped by the bull and made it safely back. There has been great progress in The Swoley Bible! I'm hoping to finish it sometime in the next 16 months. Speaking of which, yesterday was my 8 month mark in the mission. Very cool. Time is going by pretty quick! And Christmas is pretty exciting. The main plaza here is decked out with tons of lights and decorations. All of the schools are having their end-of-year parties as well, which is very nostalgic. It is really cool, though. The mission has already been an amazing adventure. During the first week, I couldn't imagine I would even make it to 3 months, yet here we are. It sure does suck sometimes, but the good moments and people make up for the bad. I thought a lot about all of the awesome friends and experiences I've had while out here, and I can't wait to have more. Signing off, Elder Battraw