Monday, July 14, 2014

#37

Hello family! This week was swell.

No, I haven`t had transfers yet. Today two elders got transferred from my zone, but I`m still here.... I don`t want to have transfers until after my birthday though. There`s been too many whispered conversations just out of my ear-grasp so I know something´s going down. The next normal day for transfers in in 2 weeks, I`m sure I`ll be out of Valencia by then. 

This week... Monday, shortly after writing you all, we went to Quevedo and got into a taxi, and the taxi was playing Brick in the Wall. I couldn`t believe it. And then I realized that it`s actually kind of creepy that I liked that song so much when I was little.
 
This week has been challenging, but good.  We were blessed to find people that were legally married, which is nothing short of a miracle, but despite our best efforts we couldn`t get them to continue listening to us. It was especially disappointing with a family that has marriage problems, and we know that exactly what they need to fix their home is the gospel of Jesus Christ, but they turn away. We still have hope for them though, and we are working to help them feel the Spirit, because we already love them a ton.
 
In the mission, Sundays are the most important. Everything you teach and do is to help people attend church so that they can receive a testimony, feel the Spirit, and prepare to make covenants. You can teach a hundred lecciones in a week and you can have felt the Spirit and what not, but the truth is that if people don`t come to church, you feel like all that you did was in vain. Yesterday we passed by the houses of each of our investigators to wake them up, to tell them that we`ll be waiting for them in the church, and no one was in their houses. We were not too thrilled. But we decided to stop by and reinvite some old folks that we had contacted to come to church, but we firmly believed that they would not come, because they were old, they were pretty faithful to their church, they were poor and couldn`t afford a mototaxi and would have to walk a decent distance to come to church, and because they couldn`t read and they had trouble paying attention when we were teaching them. 
BUT THEY CAME. And we were thrilled!

It`s kinda funny that you had the snake issue Momma, because Hermana Flores was recently tramautized by a snake. We were visiting Yenny, our recent convert (she got baptized and confirmed this week), and to get to her house you have to cross a creek with a bamboo bridge and the path winds through cacao trees and banana and plaintain trees, and it`s a grand adventure. I really like walking to her house. But we saw a HUGE snake. Bright lime green and I would say it was about 7 feet long from what I saw and it moved SUPER FAST.
 
I really love this ward. As much as I want to leave and start a new adventure, this transfer is going to be cruel and brutal. I`ve included a photo of us, Francisco, Romina, and Luis, some of my favorite chamacos.



This is Yenny.
But I have to explain a few things about this foto.
1) It was the hottest day of my life. I was pretty sure I was going to die and I don`t think I have ever sweated so much in my life.
2) It was the sunniest day of my life. I`m not kidding, you could feel your skin burning. Also, i couldn`t open my eyes, which is why, mixed with the fact that I sweated off my makeup, I look like a blonde fat chinese baby. 
3) Yenny looks like she`s not happy, but she was super happy. I don`t know if you`ve noticed, but the adults generally don`t smile in fotos. This is a custom that I`m working to change. 

Me, Romina, and Francisco rockin´ Crocs. 

No comments:

Post a Comment