Hola familia y amigos!!
Well. This week was really, really . . . . . . . hard. So I´m not going to talk too much about it because I just want to forget it happened. I will tell you a few things that happened but for the most part I´m just going to stick it in the past and hopefully we can all just forget about it.
Anyway, the hardest thing that happened is that Familia Pino possibly won´t be able to get married for another 6 months to a year. One person told them that they could get married as soon as the divorce was finalized, as long as they went outside of Guayaquil. Well, the divorce was finalized, the papers were signed and then they were told that actually, they had to wait a "prudent time" (because apparently, 4 years isn´t prudent enough) to get married, because Hno. Eduardo had initiated the divorce. Well I won´t lie to you all, when I heard that, I broke down and cried right there in their living room. Bueno, when I first heard I wanted to cry but they were still there so I fought the tears back really hard and we taught them a lesson about patience (Mosiah 24-read it, it´s bomb.) Like they need a lesson on patience-I will say to you right now that I have never EVER met a family that has more patience, long suffering, or faith than Familia Pino. They are examples of everything that I need to improve, and I wasn´t ashamed to tell them that. Well we ended the lesson, they went into the kitchen to get dinner ready, and I broke down and cried. Because really, I just thought it was so unfair, and I told my companions that, to which Hna. Morán replied that it is fair, it´s all in the Lord´s time and we have to be patient and wait for His time. Well I know that but I still thought it was unfair. So I was having an emotional breakdown in their living room but I didn´t want them to see, because really, they´re the ones that have every right to cry about it and they were totally chill and I was kind of embarrassed that I couldn´t control my emotions. So I got up to go to the bathroom and blow my nose and get it together, and as I´m walking to the bathroom I hit my leg on one of the chairs and now I have a huge bruise on my calf. SUPER. So yeah, we are super bummed. BUT there is a little hope. Thursday they should find out for sure whether they can get married right now, because two different people told them two different things and they don´t know what the truth is. Please pray like you´ve never prayed before for Familia Pino!!
Anyway, lots of other lame and upsetting things happened this week but I´m not going to go into it very much. Suffice it to say that it was one of the biggest trials of my faith and I hope that I´ve come through it relatively strong. It was funny because the thing with Fam. Pino happened on Friday, and Thursday was really bad and I remember thinking, what the heck?? I haven´t even been praying for patience!! But then I remembered that I had been praying for faith, so I got a super hard week full of faith trying experiences. But we´re excited for this week and I really hope that it´s better than the last one!! (PS: Familia Balarezo came to church again. This makes my heart happy and hurt at the same time. I´m scared they´re going to turn into another Fam. Pino and that would be really sad.)
So now I´m just going to talk about all the random, funny or weird experiences that I had this week. First off: I´m going to talk about Carnaval. Carnaval is the Ecuadorian equivalent of Mardi Gras, and and I´m pretty sure that it´s the dumbest holiday ever and that I hate it. Pretty much it consists of people throwing dirty water and paint at other people. Sunday and Monday weren´t too bad and we didn´t get wet or dirty at all, so Tuesday I told the other Hnas that my goal was to make it through all of Carnaval without getting wet. Well, Tuesday came, we were going into an apartment building to visit someone, and some obnoxious twerp on top dumped a bucket of water on me and Hna. Morán. Nice. Then when we came down, there was another obnoxious twerp watching the door and telling twerp 1 on top when to throw the water. Well we stood in the doorway debating what to do for awhile, and finally Hna. López walked out, keeping to the side so she wouldn´t get wet. Well twerp 2 yelled up to twerp 1 and he dumped the water, but he was TOO LATE!!! MUAHAHAHAHAHA. He just barely splashed her, and while he was reloading, Hna. Morán and I ran out from the building and we all took off. I was laughing like a maniac because we´d outsmarted them, until we went into another neighborhood and some other dumb kids threw more water on just me, because I´m the white girl and therefore have to get more wet. And then it started to rain. Hard. Hilarious, Heavenly Father. Really hilarious. Carnaval=stupid. Seriously, how is possibly considered okay to throw water, or really anything for that matter, at people you don´t know??
So this is my favorite thing that happened all this week, because it´s really super funny. We went to visit Familia Bacaluna, who were less active but now go to church more or less regularly, last Monday, but we couldn´t go in the house because all the women that live there were out of town, so it was just Marcelo, who´s 24, and Carlos, who´s 17. Anyway, we were talking to them in the doorway bc we couldn´t go in, and I don´t remember how we got on this subject but we started talking about fat and skinny, and I told them that their grandma always tells me that I´m getting fat (which is true but she doesn´t have to say it to my face) and they thought it was really hilarious. Well I didn´t, and they must have seen that on my face because Marcelo said, Oh Hermana, usted no es gorda, es muy delgado (you´re not fat, you´re very skinny). Then Carlos said to me, Usted es pepa!! Well I had no idea what pepa means, but Marcelo turned to him with a scandalized look on his face and said CARLOS!!!!, Carlos ran away into the house, and Hna. López and Hna. Morán burst out laughing. I´m still standing there wondering why everyone is laughing, so poor Marcelo had to explain to me that pepa is the word that Ecuadorians use when they like the way someone looks. Basically, Carlos had just told me I was hot. Well then I understood the scandalized look on Marcelo´s face and I was a little disconcerted myself, because, well, you just can´t tell a sister missionary that she´s hot, it´s just not okay. But mostly I thought it was really hilarious, because again, you just can´t tell a sister missionary that she´s hot!! Well then Carlos came back to the door with a really sheepish look on his face and said, hermana . . . . uhhh . . . . I just looked at him and said, Carlos, I´m ashamed of you!! It was really funny. I´ll sum up the whole situation with this thought: better to be called pepa by someone you know than other names that you don´t understand by the creepsters in the street, which happens every day.
I did do one thing this week that I was really proud of. I decided that I eat way too much bread and that´s probably why I´m gaining a lot of weight, so I made a goal that no matter how many times we stopped at a panaderia this week, I wasn´t going to buy anything, and that I was only going to eat the bread that we bought at the store on Monday, the stuff that comes in a loaf, and nothing else. Well this week we stopped at panaderias a LOT, and Fam. Pino gave us bread when we went to visit them too. It was really really hard. BUT . . . . I did it!! I didn´t eat any bread from the bakery this week and I was super proud of myself. This week the goal is no ice cream . . . . we´ll see what happens!!
So how is everyone doing?? I love the emails and I´m glad everything is good, because yesterday I was really missing my family and I started getting all paranoid and thinking that maybe something bad had happened and that´s why I was thinking about you all so much. But you´re all fine and I´m just being my usual paranoid self. I´m pretty sure I just missed you all bc this week was terrible and I really wanted a hug from my mom and for my dad to tell me that everything was going to be okay and that I can in fact do this and yeah. But yeah, I´m better now, and ready for this week and glad that everything is awesome with you all and that you´re all being good. Keep being awesome, keep writing me, keep thanking our Heavenly Father for all your blessings and doing all the right things. The church is true, Heavenly Father loves us and has given us so much!! MUCHO AMOR!!!
Hermana Chamberlain
Monday, February 22, 2010
Monday, February 15, 2010
Seeking News From Purdueland!
CHUSO!! I am so angry right now. I had this super long email typed out and then the COMPUTER FROZE. So I lost my nice long email and have to start over. So, here we go!!
First of all, another change has come and gone and I am still in Huancavilca with Hnas. López and Morán. Although I thought I was going to the office this change because Elder Irwin played a dirty rotten joke on me last night. He called to tell us if we had changes and I answered the phone. He said, hermana are you waiting for changes?? I said, well we´re not going to have changes, so we can just end this conversation right now. He was like, oh really?? Well sister if you have that much faith, you can just hang up the phone right now. So I did. Haha. Well he called back after about 5 minutes, I picked up and said ahhh Elder I had so much faith!! He said well I´m sorry but I´m calling with the truth, can I talk to Sister López please?? So she talked to him, came back and said that I had to go to the office and be the nurse this change. I was way bummed out bc I didn´t want to leave Huancavilca yet and I also didn´t want to pack!! Fortunately Hna. López could only keep it up for about 10 minutes before she started laughing and saying that Elder Irwin had told her that she had to keep the joke up for the whole night, so that I would have packed and not slept well and everything, but she just couldn´t. Elder Irwin, therefore, is in big trouble, and if anyone has any ideas on how to get him back, digame!!
So we had a small miracle this week, Mario came to church!! Mario is an 18 year old communist revolutionary (you know the type) that we´re kind of teaching. Kind of because it´s tough to teach him, he has a lot of questions and can be kind of obnoxious. But he went to church for crying out loud!! I almost couldn´t believe it even when we were sitting there in sacrament meeting. Insane. Please pray for Mario bc I know he´s going to come around but it´s going to take awhile. And Hna. Balarezo and her kids came again too, which always makes me happy.
We found a lot of new people to teach this week, including a few families!! We were teaching one of them yesterday and I had a weird experience. After the opening prayer I couldn´t remember ANYTHING about the lesson!! My mind was blank!! And when it was my turn to talk, my Spanish was TERRIBLE!! It hasn´t been that bad since my first change!! So I stopped talking really quick and Hna. Morán started teaching about the apostacy and I was freaking out bc I KNEW that I was going to have to teach about Joseph Smith and that´s the most important part for heaven´s sake!! Well I was praying hard and and when it was time for me to talk, it was fine!! And the hermano was looking at me the whole time and listening hard and nodding his head!! Cool!! Usually when we talk about Joseph Smith people argue!! He was totally agreeing!! I can´t wait to see what happens with them. Also, I made a contact for the first time yesterday!! As in, I asked someone when we could come visit them!! It was so amazing. I´m not sure if we can visit them or not bc he was kind of weird and said he had to ask his wife, but who knows. The point is that I talked to someone.
Anyway, I don´t have a ton of time left, so I´m just going to comment on all the stuff that´s happening at home and be done. Kylie, I´m so excited about your baby and I can´t believe Daniel got hit by a car. That´s really funny, but only because he´s not seriously hurt. I laughed my head off at the Primary stories. I really miss those kids!! Was Sister Braun serious about Craig´s self confidence?? I hope not. And someone from the Purdue ward needs to tell me what´s going on there. I haven´t heard from any of you for months!!! Literally months!! Who´s engaged, who eloped, who´s going on a mission, where are they going, who´s dating, what´s the drama, I must know it all!! I was looking at the pictures that my mom sent me this morning and I came to that one where we´re all wearing those glow glasses, and then the one where we´re wearing the fake mustaches and Curt´s got a bike helmet on his head and a baseball bat in his hand and I just laughed and laughed. We are so weird. But awesome. Also, CURT´S ENGAGED???? WHAT??? He didn´t even have a girlfriend when I left??? Who´s Vanessa Cramer??? Why doesn´t anyone tell me ANYTHING??? SERIOUSLY. I need some news from Purdue, POR FAVOR.
Bueno. It´s time for me to go. I have to go find something cute to wear to Fam. Pino´s wedding, because anyone who saw the clothes that I brought on my mission knows that I don´t have anything good for a wedding. So like always, be good and read your scriptures and be nice to the missionaries and feed them well, but don´t give them a ton of rice. Funny story, we bought a measuring cup that we give to the mamitas now. I think we´re all going to lose a lot of weight. Chao chao!!!
First of all, another change has come and gone and I am still in Huancavilca with Hnas. López and Morán. Although I thought I was going to the office this change because Elder Irwin played a dirty rotten joke on me last night. He called to tell us if we had changes and I answered the phone. He said, hermana are you waiting for changes?? I said, well we´re not going to have changes, so we can just end this conversation right now. He was like, oh really?? Well sister if you have that much faith, you can just hang up the phone right now. So I did. Haha. Well he called back after about 5 minutes, I picked up and said ahhh Elder I had so much faith!! He said well I´m sorry but I´m calling with the truth, can I talk to Sister López please?? So she talked to him, came back and said that I had to go to the office and be the nurse this change. I was way bummed out bc I didn´t want to leave Huancavilca yet and I also didn´t want to pack!! Fortunately Hna. López could only keep it up for about 10 minutes before she started laughing and saying that Elder Irwin had told her that she had to keep the joke up for the whole night, so that I would have packed and not slept well and everything, but she just couldn´t. Elder Irwin, therefore, is in big trouble, and if anyone has any ideas on how to get him back, digame!!
So we had a small miracle this week, Mario came to church!! Mario is an 18 year old communist revolutionary (you know the type) that we´re kind of teaching. Kind of because it´s tough to teach him, he has a lot of questions and can be kind of obnoxious. But he went to church for crying out loud!! I almost couldn´t believe it even when we were sitting there in sacrament meeting. Insane. Please pray for Mario bc I know he´s going to come around but it´s going to take awhile. And Hna. Balarezo and her kids came again too, which always makes me happy.
We found a lot of new people to teach this week, including a few families!! We were teaching one of them yesterday and I had a weird experience. After the opening prayer I couldn´t remember ANYTHING about the lesson!! My mind was blank!! And when it was my turn to talk, my Spanish was TERRIBLE!! It hasn´t been that bad since my first change!! So I stopped talking really quick and Hna. Morán started teaching about the apostacy and I was freaking out bc I KNEW that I was going to have to teach about Joseph Smith and that´s the most important part for heaven´s sake!! Well I was praying hard and and when it was time for me to talk, it was fine!! And the hermano was looking at me the whole time and listening hard and nodding his head!! Cool!! Usually when we talk about Joseph Smith people argue!! He was totally agreeing!! I can´t wait to see what happens with them. Also, I made a contact for the first time yesterday!! As in, I asked someone when we could come visit them!! It was so amazing. I´m not sure if we can visit them or not bc he was kind of weird and said he had to ask his wife, but who knows. The point is that I talked to someone.
Anyway, I don´t have a ton of time left, so I´m just going to comment on all the stuff that´s happening at home and be done. Kylie, I´m so excited about your baby and I can´t believe Daniel got hit by a car. That´s really funny, but only because he´s not seriously hurt. I laughed my head off at the Primary stories. I really miss those kids!! Was Sister Braun serious about Craig´s self confidence?? I hope not. And someone from the Purdue ward needs to tell me what´s going on there. I haven´t heard from any of you for months!!! Literally months!! Who´s engaged, who eloped, who´s going on a mission, where are they going, who´s dating, what´s the drama, I must know it all!! I was looking at the pictures that my mom sent me this morning and I came to that one where we´re all wearing those glow glasses, and then the one where we´re wearing the fake mustaches and Curt´s got a bike helmet on his head and a baseball bat in his hand and I just laughed and laughed. We are so weird. But awesome. Also, CURT´S ENGAGED???? WHAT??? He didn´t even have a girlfriend when I left??? Who´s Vanessa Cramer??? Why doesn´t anyone tell me ANYTHING??? SERIOUSLY. I need some news from Purdue, POR FAVOR.
Bueno. It´s time for me to go. I have to go find something cute to wear to Fam. Pino´s wedding, because anyone who saw the clothes that I brought on my mission knows that I don´t have anything good for a wedding. So like always, be good and read your scriptures and be nice to the missionaries and feed them well, but don´t give them a ton of rice. Funny story, we bought a measuring cup that we give to the mamitas now. I think we´re all going to lose a lot of weight. Chao chao!!!
Monday, February 8, 2010
Cow Foot, Cow Stomach and Chicken Intestines...Yum Yum
Hola Familia y Amigos!!!
You´re not going to believe who came to church this week . . . . . . are you ready for this??? FAMILIA BALAREZO!!! BAHHH!! Well, only Hna. Marcia and most of her kids, but it´s a start!! We went to visit her this week during the daytime, taught an amazingly awesome lesson about why you should read the scriptures and pray and she´s been reading, praying and even reading the Liahona!! Cheverissimo!! Her husband is still being a jerk about the church, but she is really persevering. So we asked her if she would come to church this week and she said yes, which could mean yes or no, as you all well know. But we went to get her yesterday and there she was, ready to go with all the kiddos!! Grandma those lifesavers were incredibly useful in calming down Jimmito, until he finished it and wanted another one and I wouldn´t give it to him bc I had told him he had to be good for all the meetings if he wanted another one. But we´ve figured out that we have to take out one at a time so he doesn´t see that there are more. Haha. Anyway, it was incredibly awesome to have them at church, people had been asking about them and we are really excited to see what happens. I feel in my heart that eventually the Hno. will come around, but he might have to hit rock bottom first and that´s never fun. But if it works . . . .
Also, we were slightly worried about Marcos this week bc he didn´t come to church last week and was having all these issues with his knees and his family and then we couldn´t find him to teach him the lessons again all this week. But it turns out that he really was out of town like his sister said (sometimes she lies and tells us he´s not there when he really is), and he was at church this week, got the priesthood and is super excited about blessing the sacrament. Cool.
Anyway, who´s ready for some more good news?? Familia Pino . . . . . IS GETTING BAPTIZED THIS MONTH!!!! After four years of waiting and praying and hoping and being incredibly faithful, Hno. Eduardo finally got his divorce to go through. But, they can´t get married here in Guayaquil because there´s this dumb law that says they have to wait a year, because of the type of divorce that it was. So they´re going to go outside of Guayaquil to get married and then they´re getting baptized right after. YAY!! I´ve never been so excited to hear about a divorce in my life!!
Other than that, this week was pretty mas o menos. My question of the week is: did people in your mission think you were idiots?? Because this week a lot of people have seemed to think that we are. On Saturday we went to Jorge´s house to talk to him, and as we walked up to the door, Hna. Moran saw him through the window. We knocked and some girl showed up at the window and told us he wasn´t there!!! (Although to be fair, it could have been someone else because we both saw him from the back.) But then we went to Carolina´s house and Hna. Morán and I both saw her standing in the kitchen through the door. But then she went out so we knocked and knocked and finally her son came to the door and said, oh she´s not here!! Were were like . . . . are you serious right now?? WE SAW HER STANDING THERE!! But we couldn´t do anything, so we just left. I should add that it was POURING down rain and when I got home I looked like I had just taken a shower with all my clothes on. So I was not very happy that night, but the next day was awesome so I felt a lot better. But I´m starting to think that some people think that "Hermana" means "stupid." Because really, that kind of just blew my mind, especially since it happened twice in a row!! But you just have to deal with it I guess and keep on going.
So we´ve started visiting a couple of less active families in the ward, and now we´re hearing all new excuses for why they don´t want to come to church. Grandma and Grandpa Chamberlain, I got your letter and my companions and I laughed for days over the ones you sent me. We have this one family, Fam. Romero, who has a cute little boy who is 4 years old. We were talking about the Plan of Salvation and temple work and they were like, "oh yeah, I´d really like to do the work for my grandparents and my mother and . . . . . oh but I guess we have to be active huh . . . . " Yes, that would be one of the requirements for having a temple recommend. So then they told us they would come to church and didn´t. But I´m over it. We´re going to keep trying, bc they´re a super cute family and they know it´s true!!
So this is where I put all the weird stuff that happens to me. A couple weeks ago we were eating at the stake president´s house and she brought out a bowl of soup with something that looked like raw chicken in some kind of really thick skin. I had no idea what it was so I just ate it (although I was thinking, Nooooo . . . . they wouldn´t really give us raw chicken right??) It was squishy but not terrible. Then she brought out the main dish which was rice and some kind of meat in a sauce that I thought was chicken but when I put it in my mouth and chewed it was way too squishy to be chicken. But I ate it all because that´s what we have to do and then we left. And this was when my companions informed me that the stuff in my soup was cow foot. And the stuff in the sauce?? Cow stomach. I didn´t really know what to think after that so I just tried not to think about it. I have also eaten chicken intestines, I just remembered. It´s not too bad until you find out what it is. Also, I don´t know what they were thinking, but on Saturday night our downstairs neighbors decided they were going to have a party at TWO O CLOCK IN THE MORNING. They were seriously blasting music from two o clock until around 4 or 5, when the guy across the street decided he wanted to play "anything you can do I can do better" and started playing his music even louder and more obnoxiously. I was like . . . . . WHAT ARE YOU DOING???? WE ARE SLEEPING!!!! Keep in mind that this was the night that it had rained really hard and I was really tired and grouchy bc we had gotten blatantly lied to. We were not very happy missionaries in the morning, but I don´t think the offense of disturbing the peace exists here, so we couldn´t do anything about it. It´s funny now, but at the time I was really mad. Not cool.
Well I can´t think of anything else to say, so chao chao until next week and be good and read your scriptures and by the way, I´m devastated that the colts lost and when I read that I yelled OH NO in the internet cafe and everyone stared at me. It was sad. But it is only football.
MUCHO AMOR!!
Hermana Chamberlain
You´re not going to believe who came to church this week . . . . . . are you ready for this??? FAMILIA BALAREZO!!! BAHHH!! Well, only Hna. Marcia and most of her kids, but it´s a start!! We went to visit her this week during the daytime, taught an amazingly awesome lesson about why you should read the scriptures and pray and she´s been reading, praying and even reading the Liahona!! Cheverissimo!! Her husband is still being a jerk about the church, but she is really persevering. So we asked her if she would come to church this week and she said yes, which could mean yes or no, as you all well know. But we went to get her yesterday and there she was, ready to go with all the kiddos!! Grandma those lifesavers were incredibly useful in calming down Jimmito, until he finished it and wanted another one and I wouldn´t give it to him bc I had told him he had to be good for all the meetings if he wanted another one. But we´ve figured out that we have to take out one at a time so he doesn´t see that there are more. Haha. Anyway, it was incredibly awesome to have them at church, people had been asking about them and we are really excited to see what happens. I feel in my heart that eventually the Hno. will come around, but he might have to hit rock bottom first and that´s never fun. But if it works . . . .
Also, we were slightly worried about Marcos this week bc he didn´t come to church last week and was having all these issues with his knees and his family and then we couldn´t find him to teach him the lessons again all this week. But it turns out that he really was out of town like his sister said (sometimes she lies and tells us he´s not there when he really is), and he was at church this week, got the priesthood and is super excited about blessing the sacrament. Cool.
Anyway, who´s ready for some more good news?? Familia Pino . . . . . IS GETTING BAPTIZED THIS MONTH!!!! After four years of waiting and praying and hoping and being incredibly faithful, Hno. Eduardo finally got his divorce to go through. But, they can´t get married here in Guayaquil because there´s this dumb law that says they have to wait a year, because of the type of divorce that it was. So they´re going to go outside of Guayaquil to get married and then they´re getting baptized right after. YAY!! I´ve never been so excited to hear about a divorce in my life!!
Other than that, this week was pretty mas o menos. My question of the week is: did people in your mission think you were idiots?? Because this week a lot of people have seemed to think that we are. On Saturday we went to Jorge´s house to talk to him, and as we walked up to the door, Hna. Moran saw him through the window. We knocked and some girl showed up at the window and told us he wasn´t there!!! (Although to be fair, it could have been someone else because we both saw him from the back.) But then we went to Carolina´s house and Hna. Morán and I both saw her standing in the kitchen through the door. But then she went out so we knocked and knocked and finally her son came to the door and said, oh she´s not here!! Were were like . . . . are you serious right now?? WE SAW HER STANDING THERE!! But we couldn´t do anything, so we just left. I should add that it was POURING down rain and when I got home I looked like I had just taken a shower with all my clothes on. So I was not very happy that night, but the next day was awesome so I felt a lot better. But I´m starting to think that some people think that "Hermana" means "stupid." Because really, that kind of just blew my mind, especially since it happened twice in a row!! But you just have to deal with it I guess and keep on going.
So we´ve started visiting a couple of less active families in the ward, and now we´re hearing all new excuses for why they don´t want to come to church. Grandma and Grandpa Chamberlain, I got your letter and my companions and I laughed for days over the ones you sent me. We have this one family, Fam. Romero, who has a cute little boy who is 4 years old. We were talking about the Plan of Salvation and temple work and they were like, "oh yeah, I´d really like to do the work for my grandparents and my mother and . . . . . oh but I guess we have to be active huh . . . . " Yes, that would be one of the requirements for having a temple recommend. So then they told us they would come to church and didn´t. But I´m over it. We´re going to keep trying, bc they´re a super cute family and they know it´s true!!
So this is where I put all the weird stuff that happens to me. A couple weeks ago we were eating at the stake president´s house and she brought out a bowl of soup with something that looked like raw chicken in some kind of really thick skin. I had no idea what it was so I just ate it (although I was thinking, Nooooo . . . . they wouldn´t really give us raw chicken right??) It was squishy but not terrible. Then she brought out the main dish which was rice and some kind of meat in a sauce that I thought was chicken but when I put it in my mouth and chewed it was way too squishy to be chicken. But I ate it all because that´s what we have to do and then we left. And this was when my companions informed me that the stuff in my soup was cow foot. And the stuff in the sauce?? Cow stomach. I didn´t really know what to think after that so I just tried not to think about it. I have also eaten chicken intestines, I just remembered. It´s not too bad until you find out what it is. Also, I don´t know what they were thinking, but on Saturday night our downstairs neighbors decided they were going to have a party at TWO O CLOCK IN THE MORNING. They were seriously blasting music from two o clock until around 4 or 5, when the guy across the street decided he wanted to play "anything you can do I can do better" and started playing his music even louder and more obnoxiously. I was like . . . . . WHAT ARE YOU DOING???? WE ARE SLEEPING!!!! Keep in mind that this was the night that it had rained really hard and I was really tired and grouchy bc we had gotten blatantly lied to. We were not very happy missionaries in the morning, but I don´t think the offense of disturbing the peace exists here, so we couldn´t do anything about it. It´s funny now, but at the time I was really mad. Not cool.
Well I can´t think of anything else to say, so chao chao until next week and be good and read your scriptures and by the way, I´m devastated that the colts lost and when I read that I yelled OH NO in the internet cafe and everyone stared at me. It was sad. But it is only football.
MUCHO AMOR!!
Hermana Chamberlain
Monday, February 1, 2010
Shrines, Toilets and LOL
Hola hola!!
So this email will be nice and long, I promise. Even if it does cost me a fortune, because we´re not in our usual internet cafe today and I have no idea what I´m paying to use this computer. But it´s worth it to talk to all of you!!
So first off, last week´s highlights. You all already know that Marcos was baptized and confirmed, so I don´t need to go over that. We really did think he wasn´t going to show though, because he told us that he was coming at 6:30 and we showed up at 7ish and he still wasn´t there!! So we were freaking out and were pretty embarrassed because the elders from Marvinas had brought one of their investigators that is getting baptized and our investigator didn´t even show. So right when Hna. Morán and I were really freaking out and were trying to find an empty room to pray in, Marcos showed up, apologizing and saying that he couldn´t get a taxi (sidenote: if that´s the best Satan can do, I´m not very impressed.) Oh yeah, and our district leader played a dirty rotten trick on us too. He was interviewing Marcos for baptism, and it was taking a really long time and we were starting to get worried. So they come out, Elder Cruz looks us dead in the eyes and says in a really serious voice, "El necesita una entrevista con el presidente" (he needs an interview with the president.) If a baptismal candidate has ever committed a serious crime, participated in a voluntary abortion or a homosexual relationship, they have to be interviewed by the mission president before they can be baptized. So we freaked out, bc his baptism was in two days and moreover we had gone over the interview questions with him the day before and he hadn´t said anything about crime, abortion or homosexuality. Fortunately Elder Cruz can´t keep a straight face for very long and pretty soon he was laughing his head off. I suppose our faces were pretty funny, but I about threw something at him. But we had our revenge when he was filling out the baptism registry and wrote "Maxwell" instead of "Marcos". We´ll never let him live that one down.
Anyway, there were lots of funny things that happened last week but now I can´t remember them all!! But I do remember some of them. First off, the story about Carolina and the BOM. But first I need to give you some background about religion in Ecuador. In general, everyone is either Catholic or Evangelical, and all the Catholics have these statues of Mary and the saints and Jesus and all the other people that they worship all over their houses. Sometimes they have these little shrines set up with the statues in little cases. Now Carolina is a girl that we´re teaching, she´s 27 and has a 6 year old son named Martin. We found her through a reference from this lady that just walked up to us and gave us her name (cool). And in front of her house she has one of these shrine thingies with a big statue of the baby Jesus and a bunch of little statues and it´s all in this big glass and wood case. (If you don´t know what I´m talking about, ask anyone who´s served in a Spanish speaking country or anywhere else where there´s a lot of Catholics. I´m willing to bet it´s all the same.) Anyway, we´ve been teaching her for 2 or 3 weeks and had even committed her to be baptized, but she just couldn´t read the BOM. Every time we asked her if she read it she had some excuse for why she couldn´t. So one night as we´re leaving, I happened to glance over at the case where the shrine was, and the Book of Mormon was IN THE CASE!!! I had to work really hard not to laugh, it was just so funny and so sad at the same time. So the next time we came, we looked in the case and it was still there!! So when we asked her if she had her BOM so that she could read along with us, she went into her room looking for it, and we were just sitting on the couch laughing and trying to decide if we should tell her or not. We ended up not telling her but we probably should have, and we ended up just giving her another one. I think she said her aunt took it and put it somewhere, so she honestly had no idea where it was. But she did read it this week and hopefully she´ll keep reading. She was supposed to be baptized on 13 February but she didn´t come to church this week so now she can´t. But I was thinking that she needed a little more preparation anyway, so I´m more or less okay with it. Plus she´s really sweet and the BOM in the shrine case was just too funny.
So who´s ready for a gross story?? We went to visit this less active lady who´s in a wheelchair last week and we ended up doing some service for her. There was no running water in her house so we had to carry it in from this tank in her front yard so that we could wash her dishes. After all the dishes were done, we went out again to fill the bucket but I wasn´t sure why. Well it turned out that even though there was no running water, which meant that she couldn´t flush the toilet, she had still been using it and just dumping buckets of water down it to flush everything down. So when we brought the next bucket in, she wanted us to "flush the toilet", for lack of a better term. Which would have been fine except the toilet was literally FULL of poop. And my companions made ME dump the water down. I´m not sure if I´ve fully forgiven them for that yet, and I´m afraid to say that I did not have a very Christlike attitude about it (although I quit feeling bad about this after my companions told me that they felt the same way!!). But it was seriously gross, in fact I think it might have been grosser than most if not all the things I had to do at the VA and in nursing school combined. At least there I could wear gloves!!
So that´s about all I remember from last week. This week was kind of lame. We had a lot of people flake on us and disappear on us and tell us that they didn´t want us to come back (which was actually kind of refreshing, bc if they don´t want us to come visit them it´s much less of a waste of our time if they just tell us rather than telling us to come and then purposely not being there.) But I´m trying to be patient. We did find a lot of new people to teach, including a FAMILY!! YAY!! Hopefully something awesome happens with them. I´m trying to think of funny stories that happened this week but I can´t really think of any. Oh wait. There is one. So we went to our favorite bakery after a frustrating day, and I bought some of their budin because it´s really really good. But this day it wasn´t very good at all, and after I ate it I felt really sick. My compañions felt the same way, although they didn´t feel as sick as I did, and Hna. López said , I think there´s alcohol in this!! Not alcohol by itself, but because budin has a lot of fruit in it, when it sits out the fruit ferments and makes alcohol. So yeah, I accidentally ate boozed up budin, but I just thought of Dad and the story of the trifle with brandy and I laughed. Then Hna. Morán gave me some lime water and I felt a lot better. But I don´t think I´m ever going to eat budin from that place ever again. It´s dangerous!!
Oh I remembered another funny story!! So remember how I said that my sector is safe and there´s no dangerous parts?? I lied. Coviem is legitimately the ghetto. We pretty much never go there, and Marcos, who lives in Sopeña which is right next to Coviem, told us that we could only go there in the morning, because in the afternoon and the evening it´s dangerous. We went there this past week to talk to this lady that just moved into our ward, but she didn´t answer the door. So afterwards we were walking around, and I was like, okay this isn´t that bad, nobody´s bothering us and it just looks really ghetto but it´s not horrible (it was probably around 2 or 3 in the afternoon) but then we passed a wall and someone had written "Latin Kings" on it. So then I was like okay we REALLY need to get out of here!! Because if those are the same Latin Kings that we have in the United States, we´re in trouble!! But it was kind of fun to walk around because it was more like the Ecuador I had been imagining, with shacks and dirt roads and stuff like that. I kind of want to go back . . . . . in the morning.
One more funny story. We found this super old lady sitting outside her house this past week, Marieta, and we asked her if we could come and teach her and she said yes. So we came back and taught her, her daughter Patricia, and her granddaughter Salome. It was a really good lesson, the Spirit was strong and at the end all three of them said they wanted to come to church (sidenote: they didn´t come to church, but I´m not bitter about it). Anyway, we finished the lesson, prayed, and then Marieta asked us, ¿De cual iglesia son ustedes? (What church are you from?) I had to work really really hard not to laugh, it was too funny. And maybe a little depressing, but mostly hilarious.
Oh that reminds me of ANOTHER funny story. We were teaching Carolina on Saturday again, who lives with her mom, son and her grandpa who is 92 years old. Well her grandpa was telling us that his wife died, and I don´t know what came over me but I started LAUGHING. And I COULD NOT STOP. It was awful and I felt SO BAD but I just couldn´t quit laughing!! In fact I´m laughing now just thinking about it!! Then later that night we were talking about it and we were laughing so hard that we couldn´t even quit to say our prayers, and then when we finally calmed down enough and I was praying, Hna. López started laughing in the middle of it!! HORRIBLE. I think originally I didn´t understand what her grandpa said so I just started laughing bc sometimes when I can´t understand something that´s just what I do (but not anymore, trust me), and then once I figured out what he had said and that I had been laughing at the death of his wife, it was so terrible but so funny at the same time that I just had to laugh some more. And then my companions were laughing too. So bad.
Anyway, I can´t really think of anything else to tell you. Hna. López played a dirty trick on me this morning. President Johns called our house just to make sure that everything was okay with our apartment and if we needed anything. Hna. López answered the phone and afterwards came back to the room with her face all serious and said, President says that Hna. Chamberlain has to go with the nurses. So then I was really upset, because I don´t want to leave Huancavilca yet!! But then she started laughing hysterically and I laughed too. But I´m gonna get her back, you mark my words (evil Dad laugh here.)
So I hope this is long enough to make up for last week. I want to respond to other emails so I´m gonna cut this short, but I hope you all know that I love you and you all need to be good and do everything you´re supposed to be doing and be nice to the missionaries, because we put up with a lot!!
MUCHO AMOR
Hermana Chamberlain
So this email will be nice and long, I promise. Even if it does cost me a fortune, because we´re not in our usual internet cafe today and I have no idea what I´m paying to use this computer. But it´s worth it to talk to all of you!!
So first off, last week´s highlights. You all already know that Marcos was baptized and confirmed, so I don´t need to go over that. We really did think he wasn´t going to show though, because he told us that he was coming at 6:30 and we showed up at 7ish and he still wasn´t there!! So we were freaking out and were pretty embarrassed because the elders from Marvinas had brought one of their investigators that is getting baptized and our investigator didn´t even show. So right when Hna. Morán and I were really freaking out and were trying to find an empty room to pray in, Marcos showed up, apologizing and saying that he couldn´t get a taxi (sidenote: if that´s the best Satan can do, I´m not very impressed.) Oh yeah, and our district leader played a dirty rotten trick on us too. He was interviewing Marcos for baptism, and it was taking a really long time and we were starting to get worried. So they come out, Elder Cruz looks us dead in the eyes and says in a really serious voice, "El necesita una entrevista con el presidente" (he needs an interview with the president.) If a baptismal candidate has ever committed a serious crime, participated in a voluntary abortion or a homosexual relationship, they have to be interviewed by the mission president before they can be baptized. So we freaked out, bc his baptism was in two days and moreover we had gone over the interview questions with him the day before and he hadn´t said anything about crime, abortion or homosexuality. Fortunately Elder Cruz can´t keep a straight face for very long and pretty soon he was laughing his head off. I suppose our faces were pretty funny, but I about threw something at him. But we had our revenge when he was filling out the baptism registry and wrote "Maxwell" instead of "Marcos". We´ll never let him live that one down.
Anyway, there were lots of funny things that happened last week but now I can´t remember them all!! But I do remember some of them. First off, the story about Carolina and the BOM. But first I need to give you some background about religion in Ecuador. In general, everyone is either Catholic or Evangelical, and all the Catholics have these statues of Mary and the saints and Jesus and all the other people that they worship all over their houses. Sometimes they have these little shrines set up with the statues in little cases. Now Carolina is a girl that we´re teaching, she´s 27 and has a 6 year old son named Martin. We found her through a reference from this lady that just walked up to us and gave us her name (cool). And in front of her house she has one of these shrine thingies with a big statue of the baby Jesus and a bunch of little statues and it´s all in this big glass and wood case. (If you don´t know what I´m talking about, ask anyone who´s served in a Spanish speaking country or anywhere else where there´s a lot of Catholics. I´m willing to bet it´s all the same.) Anyway, we´ve been teaching her for 2 or 3 weeks and had even committed her to be baptized, but she just couldn´t read the BOM. Every time we asked her if she read it she had some excuse for why she couldn´t. So one night as we´re leaving, I happened to glance over at the case where the shrine was, and the Book of Mormon was IN THE CASE!!! I had to work really hard not to laugh, it was just so funny and so sad at the same time. So the next time we came, we looked in the case and it was still there!! So when we asked her if she had her BOM so that she could read along with us, she went into her room looking for it, and we were just sitting on the couch laughing and trying to decide if we should tell her or not. We ended up not telling her but we probably should have, and we ended up just giving her another one. I think she said her aunt took it and put it somewhere, so she honestly had no idea where it was. But she did read it this week and hopefully she´ll keep reading. She was supposed to be baptized on 13 February but she didn´t come to church this week so now she can´t. But I was thinking that she needed a little more preparation anyway, so I´m more or less okay with it. Plus she´s really sweet and the BOM in the shrine case was just too funny.
So who´s ready for a gross story?? We went to visit this less active lady who´s in a wheelchair last week and we ended up doing some service for her. There was no running water in her house so we had to carry it in from this tank in her front yard so that we could wash her dishes. After all the dishes were done, we went out again to fill the bucket but I wasn´t sure why. Well it turned out that even though there was no running water, which meant that she couldn´t flush the toilet, she had still been using it and just dumping buckets of water down it to flush everything down. So when we brought the next bucket in, she wanted us to "flush the toilet", for lack of a better term. Which would have been fine except the toilet was literally FULL of poop. And my companions made ME dump the water down. I´m not sure if I´ve fully forgiven them for that yet, and I´m afraid to say that I did not have a very Christlike attitude about it (although I quit feeling bad about this after my companions told me that they felt the same way!!). But it was seriously gross, in fact I think it might have been grosser than most if not all the things I had to do at the VA and in nursing school combined. At least there I could wear gloves!!
So that´s about all I remember from last week. This week was kind of lame. We had a lot of people flake on us and disappear on us and tell us that they didn´t want us to come back (which was actually kind of refreshing, bc if they don´t want us to come visit them it´s much less of a waste of our time if they just tell us rather than telling us to come and then purposely not being there.) But I´m trying to be patient. We did find a lot of new people to teach, including a FAMILY!! YAY!! Hopefully something awesome happens with them. I´m trying to think of funny stories that happened this week but I can´t really think of any. Oh wait. There is one. So we went to our favorite bakery after a frustrating day, and I bought some of their budin because it´s really really good. But this day it wasn´t very good at all, and after I ate it I felt really sick. My compañions felt the same way, although they didn´t feel as sick as I did, and Hna. López said , I think there´s alcohol in this!! Not alcohol by itself, but because budin has a lot of fruit in it, when it sits out the fruit ferments and makes alcohol. So yeah, I accidentally ate boozed up budin, but I just thought of Dad and the story of the trifle with brandy and I laughed. Then Hna. Morán gave me some lime water and I felt a lot better. But I don´t think I´m ever going to eat budin from that place ever again. It´s dangerous!!
Oh I remembered another funny story!! So remember how I said that my sector is safe and there´s no dangerous parts?? I lied. Coviem is legitimately the ghetto. We pretty much never go there, and Marcos, who lives in Sopeña which is right next to Coviem, told us that we could only go there in the morning, because in the afternoon and the evening it´s dangerous. We went there this past week to talk to this lady that just moved into our ward, but she didn´t answer the door. So afterwards we were walking around, and I was like, okay this isn´t that bad, nobody´s bothering us and it just looks really ghetto but it´s not horrible (it was probably around 2 or 3 in the afternoon) but then we passed a wall and someone had written "Latin Kings" on it. So then I was like okay we REALLY need to get out of here!! Because if those are the same Latin Kings that we have in the United States, we´re in trouble!! But it was kind of fun to walk around because it was more like the Ecuador I had been imagining, with shacks and dirt roads and stuff like that. I kind of want to go back . . . . . in the morning.
One more funny story. We found this super old lady sitting outside her house this past week, Marieta, and we asked her if we could come and teach her and she said yes. So we came back and taught her, her daughter Patricia, and her granddaughter Salome. It was a really good lesson, the Spirit was strong and at the end all three of them said they wanted to come to church (sidenote: they didn´t come to church, but I´m not bitter about it). Anyway, we finished the lesson, prayed, and then Marieta asked us, ¿De cual iglesia son ustedes? (What church are you from?) I had to work really really hard not to laugh, it was too funny. And maybe a little depressing, but mostly hilarious.
Oh that reminds me of ANOTHER funny story. We were teaching Carolina on Saturday again, who lives with her mom, son and her grandpa who is 92 years old. Well her grandpa was telling us that his wife died, and I don´t know what came over me but I started LAUGHING. And I COULD NOT STOP. It was awful and I felt SO BAD but I just couldn´t quit laughing!! In fact I´m laughing now just thinking about it!! Then later that night we were talking about it and we were laughing so hard that we couldn´t even quit to say our prayers, and then when we finally calmed down enough and I was praying, Hna. López started laughing in the middle of it!! HORRIBLE. I think originally I didn´t understand what her grandpa said so I just started laughing bc sometimes when I can´t understand something that´s just what I do (but not anymore, trust me), and then once I figured out what he had said and that I had been laughing at the death of his wife, it was so terrible but so funny at the same time that I just had to laugh some more. And then my companions were laughing too. So bad.
Anyway, I can´t really think of anything else to tell you. Hna. López played a dirty trick on me this morning. President Johns called our house just to make sure that everything was okay with our apartment and if we needed anything. Hna. López answered the phone and afterwards came back to the room with her face all serious and said, President says that Hna. Chamberlain has to go with the nurses. So then I was really upset, because I don´t want to leave Huancavilca yet!! But then she started laughing hysterically and I laughed too. But I´m gonna get her back, you mark my words (evil Dad laugh here.)
So I hope this is long enough to make up for last week. I want to respond to other emails so I´m gonna cut this short, but I hope you all know that I love you and you all need to be good and do everything you´re supposed to be doing and be nice to the missionaries, because we put up with a lot!!
MUCHO AMOR
Hermana Chamberlain
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