Nobody Knew About Wife #1

Hola queridos amigos y familiares!

First of all, an update on Nayely-we went to visit her this past Sunday and she´s completely better. She was complaining that she was hungry and had to wait fifteen more minutes to eat!! Her mom was so happy, and they both left the hospital the next day, when we thought she was going to have to stay another week. Miracle?? Obviously.

Anyway, this week has been much more tranquil than last week, mostly because nobody tried to die on us, but also because the missionaries have decided that they really aren´t that sick after all and haven´t been calling us very much. So we´ve been able to teach a lot more this week than we did last week. By Wednesday, we had already taught more lessons than we had all of last week, it was really funny. But we´re excited to keep working, everyone with baptismal dates is still in Guayaquil and is still letting us in to teach them, and even seems excited about being baptized, so I´m pretty happy about that. We should be having all of them these last two weeks of the change, unless something terrible happens but I´m exercising my faith that everything will be just fine. But I would appreciate prayers in my behalf, because anyone who´s served a mission knows that Satan works the hardest in those last few weeks leading up to baptism (and we´ve already seen the opposition working in not being able to find people to teach them and lame things like that) so all prayers in behalf of Jorge, Lourdes, Catolina, Linda and Eduardo would be much appreciated. Eduardo actually doesn´t have a baptismal date yet because we haven´t been able to find him to teach him and put the date, due to circumstances beyond our control (aka, his mom leaves so we can´t come in, or we come and he´s not there.) BUT-he goes to seminary at 5 am pretty much every morning, and he told us yesterday that he wants to be baptized after he learns more. We were like . . . . we can help you with that!! So yeah. He needs prayers just as much as the rest of them, por favor.

What else what else. OH. Ridiculous story. So this guy got baptized in January, Carlos Pacheco. Well he´s been really faithful ever since then, reading the Book of Momon, coming to church, second counselor in YMs, all that. Well we´ve not been able to find him lately and were wondering why. So then we run into Fam. Suarez, who gave us the reference of Carlos, and they tell us that he´s been kicked out of his house by his wife because someone showed up with divorce papers from his first wife that he was married to 17 years ago!!!! We were like . . . . . WHAT????? He was BAPTIZED!!!! So we had a few days of freaking out about what to do about that, because you just can´t be married to two people at a time, obviously (polygamy jokes are not appreciated here, thank you) and he was legally married to his second wife as well. So finally we got a hold of him, after a few days of not being able to, and he told us that he´s living in a different province right now and going to stay there, but that he really has been divorced this whole time from wife 1, just that they didn´t have the same system 17 years ago that they have now, so something didn´t work out in the paperwork. But that he is going to church and has his BOM and is almost done with it, but he and wife 2 are still divorcing (which is actually a good thing because she´s nuts and hates that he´s a member of the church and they were having a bunch of problems anyway and talking about separating even before this happened.) But it is in fact okay that he was baptized because he really was divorced. But it was a shocker for sure because NOBODY knew about wife 1!!!!!

Anyway, life goes on in Bolivar 1. We´re working hard, finding, teaching, baptizing, all that. Life in the office goes on too. Thursday we had pizza in district meeting to celebrate birthdays, and then the power went out until we left, which meant that the meds sheet that Hna Foster had just finished translating into Spanish was lost and we have to do it again. Lame. Funny story. Monday morning Hna Montenegro was poking me while I was sitting at my desk. I was trying to get away from her and I could feel the chair moving under me and I thought, I´m going to fall. And . . . . I did!!!!! The chair slipped right out from under me and I fell on the grown, scratching my arm on the desk as I went down. Hna Montenegro felt really bad and promised not to poke me anymore . . . . until the next day. So the next day I woke up and went to the kitchen to get breakfast. I opened the refridgerator door and found a sign in English that said, "HEY!!! THIS IS THE POKES DAY!!!! JAJAJA-GOOD MORNING!!!!!! I laughed and laughed and then took a picture. The sign is still in our fridge and Hna. Montenegro has not ceased to poke me since then . . . . . it´s a constant poke battle in our house for everyone.

So this is the part where I ask for stuff!!!! I need more of that Neutrogena eye makeup remover stuff, and some more base makeup and concealer (and if you can find something to make my face clear up from the acne attack that has not ceased since I got here, that would be good too. My face is worse than ever, it´s really sad!!) Also I need more body wash, the dove kind with grapefruit and lemongrass. Also I need more knee highs . . . . more and more get destroyed every day. And some really good stain remover would be awesome too. I drop stuff on myself constantly, it´s ridiculous. If you can´t send it right away, don´t worry about it, but just so you know. And I´m sure I´ll think of more stuff that I need as the days go by . . . . but I´ll just tell you about it when I call you in two weeks!!!! More on that later.

Well, nothing else to say. Love you all, be good, pray hard, love everyone and never forget-every single person is a child of our loving Heavenly Father.

MUCHO AMOR

Hermana Chamberlain