I can hardly believe it´s P-Day again. The days are long but the weeks
go by so fast! I know it´s what everyone says, but things are very
"rollercoaster" on the mission. One day will be amazing, the next day
will be ... nothing.
Last Monday, me and my companion took on the task of finding me some
black shoes, because the black shoes I brought are truly hideous. Here's
the thing though - Ecuadorians have small feet. I think the largest
shoes we found were an American size 8, which as you know is not nearly
big enough. We went to store after store and all of the store owners
tried to force my feet into size 8 shoes. Hermana Diez is convinced that
we will find some shoes, but I have given up hope. My Spanish that day
was really good though, I was able to converse a bit and I explained
many times that I do not dye my hair (I´ve gotten really good at
deciphering this question).
The next day was district meeting and verification. These meetings
are both the best and the worst. Verification is when we meet with one
of the zone leaders and go over how my training is going in the 12
Semanas program. I´m supposed to initiate lessons and contacts and many
things and uapsodfiuasdlkfjsdañlkfj I feel like it´s too much! It´s the
same goals for people learning a language and fluent speakers. So I
have to do practices with the zone leaders (who are awesome, but it´s
very intimidating) and I have to explain in my pitiful Spanish how
things are going and I greatly dislike it. Also, we have lots of
practices when we meet as a district, and because my companion is a
machete of a missionary, our companionship has been picked every week to
be the example companionship and give a lesson in front of the rest of
the district. Let me remind you that the Spanish still isn´t here yet,
and everyone else in my district speaks perfect Spanish. Also, when they
give the directions and explain the practices, I don´t completely
understand. So district meetings are the best because I learn a lot, and
it´s fun to meet up with the other missionaries, and they´re the worst
because I usually make a fool of myself in front of everyone, multiple
times.
After our meeting ended, the Zone leaders asked to meet with us
and lo and behold Hermana Diez is the new sister trainer for the area!
Told you, she´s a machete of a missionary.
This means that we traveled to Guayaquil for the big meeting with our
district leaders and zone leaders. We were going to put me on splits
with someone or do something so I wouldn´t have to go, but it didn´t
work out so I went, and I saw Hermana Seaver! I don´t think you know
Hermana Seaver, but we hung out a lot at BYUI and it was grand.
The meeting was difficult, because Presidente and Hermana Amaya
speak Colombian Spanish which is different Spanish than the Ecuadorians
and different Spanish than my companion. I´m trying to learn four types
of Spanish right now (the fourth being gringo Spanish)! I picked up bits
and pieces of what was going on, but for the most part I was just
trying to stay awake. Sometimes Spanish is white noise to me, and boy do
I get tired! Also, we did practices (we all know how I feel about
practices) and Presidente Amaya lingered closer to our practice than I
would have liked. But it was a good meeting, and Hermana Amaya is a
powerhouse of a woman. We were in Guayaquil all day, so we didn´t teach
any lessons or contact that day. The hermanas have to be in their
apartments at 8:30 because it´s dangerous, so yeah. We went straight
home.
That´s been something that has hindered the work. We can´t be out
late, but that´s when all the people are out and about! Lots of them
sleep all afternoon, and it´s almost impossible to do anything in the
afternoons, especially when it´s more hot than usual. Also, knocking on
doors doesn´t help, we really rely on member references. They haven´t
been giving us much, so we´re going to work on reactivation and
receiving references that way.
Let´s see... The day after the meeting was one of the good days. I
swear, some days my Spanish is pretty good and the next day I don´t
understand a thing. This was one of the days when I felt pretty good
about my Spanish. We spent the day with a lot of youth. Luis! I need to
tell you about Luis! Luis is 12 years old, and an incredibly deep
thinker (not even just an incredibly deep thinker for a 12 year old, I
mean this kid blows my mind!). His mom is a recent convert, but he never
wanted to be baptized and he went to church occasionally begrudgingly.
Hermana Diez told me that he would run away and be really unfriendly
whenever they talked to him, but we stopped by one day and asked if he
was ready to learn more and he said yes. From what I understand, the mom
of his friends talks to him about the Catholic church all day and
another about Evangelicos, so he came to us with tons of questions like
why does our church baptize by immersion and others by sprinkling, and
how exactly do prophets receive revelation and what does it mean when we
say we´re the only true church and how does the priesthood work and
what is the Holy Ghost and tons of questions like this. He´s 12. But
he´s ready to listen! He´s already heard most of the lessons so we just
have to do overviews and answer his questions, and he had his baptismal
interview and his baptism is this Saturday! He was very preoccupied
about repentance, and so he requested a non-white Elder for his
interview so he could talk freely, and our zone leader Elder Suarez is
awesome and helped answer tons of his questions, especially about the
priesthood, and he helped animate him for his baptism (I know the word
isn´t animate, but I can´t for the life of me think of the word in
English. I can´t speak Spanish, can´t speak English...). So yeah, that´s
Luis. He found a picture book in English and he wants to give it to me
because he doesn´t like English. He taught me all the jungle animals in
Spanish. The kid´s got an attitude, but he´s sweet too.
The next day was Zone meeting, where the zone and district leaders
and the Hermana leader teach what happened in the big meeting with the
President and yeah. I left this out before, but Hermana Amaya started
out her section of the training by saying "Elderes y Hermanas, English
is not an option. If you do not speak English, you will learn. In the
next meeting, we will call on you to say the prayers, and they will be
in English." (All of that was in Spanish by the way...) So to start out
the meeting, Elder Suarez asked me to pray in English, and then
explained after the prayer that all prayers will be in English from now
on. Anywho, I bring this up for two reasons. First, this prayer was
hard. Since day one of the CCM, all of my prayers have been in Spanish.
Personal, food, companionship, and all other prayers since then have
been in Spanish. I could not remember how to use thee and thy and thou
and I kept accidentally saying "y" instead of "and" and my grammer
wasn´t wrong, but my sentences just sounded weird. I´m glad only one
other person in the room probably realized how off things were. It was
weird! The second reason I bring this up is because now I am teaching
Hermana Diez English. She hates it haha and she gets so flustered
because she doesn´t understand how to make the sounds. My favorite thing
is to make her say frog, because she can´t do it. I´ve taught everyone
this word, and I haven´t met a single Latino yet that can make the "guh"
sound. It´s so fun to learn the languages together. I also taught a
bunch of the youth to say "what up, how it do?" so this is usually their
greeting to me. Here´s a fun fact worth noting, Hermana Diez told me
that I´m the first gringo/a that can pronounce the r sound perfectly.
Not the rr (even though plenty have trouble with this sound too), but
only I can pronounce just the r right. Apparently when they listen to
English speakers, what stand out is the hard r sound. I get complimented
on my pronunciation a lot, so yeah, I got that going for me!
We had an investigator named Belgica this week too. Her son is a
convert that is recently reactivated. She´s had all the discussions and
even a baptismal interview, but didn´t get baptized. We´re working with
her, but it is difficult because she lives in an especially dangerous
part of town. It´s dangerous to go there even before the sun sets. Her
son was robbed just two days ago and it wasn´t even completely dark yet.
She also works until early in the morning, and we can only meet with
her in the mid to late afternoon. We have to keep visits short, and if
we don´t have a guy with us, we can´t go. David (Knows Coop, was David
Archuleta´s zone leader) helps us out a lot and is an amazing
missionary, and Steven (recent convert, baptized Ronaldo, is dating
Emily) accompanies us on a lot of appointments too. Steven wants to
serve a mission! He´s been thinking about it a lot and had a dream that
he opened his call to New York. He´s only 17, so he´s got a little bit
of time, but I´m so excited for him because he loves the gospel so much
and he´s already doing a ton of missionary work with us. So things are
slow with Belgica, the woman´s got a lot of things on her plate.
Ronaldo also told us that he wanted us to come teach his little
sister, Milena. We met her, and she came to church, and we set a baptism
date!
She´s also going to come to FHE tonight (which is being held
at a part-member home). Mondays are the best, I love our FHEs! Last week
we played some bizarre game after and I was very confused and everyone
was laughing but it was fun. Good times.
HOLY HANNAH IT IS HOT!
I´m rocking a fairly sweet tan already and my bangs are bleached white.
At
lunch yesterday at the Torres´s house (David´s family), a
granddaughter/niece was talking to me about how I look like a doll and
was touching all the parts of my hair saying "this is yellow, this is
brown, this is yellow, like a doll" and I have blue doll eyes. It was so
cute, and after a sister or cousin or aunt or someone (there´s so many
people in the house at once, I never know the relationship) went through
my hair for a few seconds doing the same thing, and she´s an adult. My
hair is also often put up to other people´s faces to see how they would
look blonde.
My personal bubble is disappearing fast.
I love it here, I love the work, I love the people, I love the food!
The church is true, be good, I love you all, help the missionaries!
Hermana Rust
Juice is
so cheap here, and this entire gigantic aisle is
dedicated to juice. I thought it was worth noting. This is in a big mall
that has a grocery store in it....
