Today is my Second Month!!!

The first month fleeeew by. The second month? Not so much, but hey 2 months down! This week was a pretty good week, but yesterday was one of the weirdest days of my life. I’ll get to that later, but first I’ll recount what happened earlier in the day. So I have a cold AGAIN because the air here isn’t the best, and I had a crap ton of mucus in my chest. And before church, we went to pick up our investigators. The only two that came were cute Marilisa and Ronny, the little kids. Well during someone’s talk in sacrament meeting, I had a complete and total cough attack. It was so bad that I literally had to run out of the chapel to the bathroom because I thought I was going to throw up. My comps ran after me and half of the R.S. (Relief Society) as well. So I was not excited to return back to sacrament. Then later on I was supposed to teach the lesson for Sunday school, but none of our recent converts or investigators were there, so we didn’t have class, which was a tender mercy because I just didn’t feel good.

After church we had some time for studying, and then we had lunch with the stake president. He and his wife were chilling in their pajamas it was awesome. All of their kids live in Utah, and I believe one is actually in med school at the University of Utah. The food was awesome and they fed us so much veggies, meat and rice, then after ice cream.

We had two lunch appointments yesterday back to back. After the first one, we went to Hna Adela’s house. Hna Adela is an adorable recent convert that loves to feed us. She didn’t go to church because she slept in and she wanted us to come over. This was great because her sister Tomasa is one of our investigators who is ridiculously hard to get a hold of. She will only talk to us when she works and it’s on a busy street with so many distractions. She has had all the lessons, and her kids are baptized, but she doesn’t want to be. We found out it’s because she thinks her church and our church are the same and doesn’t see the point. She thinks the Book of Mormon is the same as the bible. So we have no idea what to do with her. My companion told her an analogy to try to convince her, which was if you could have a bag full of blessings, would you take it and a bag of something else? She didn’t want to take it. I didn’t understand it all.

Before we taught her though, we had another huge lunch with ice cream. Hna Adela has two little girls that are so adorable, and a son that is 25, but isn’t a member. I love going to her house because she is so loving. She is also a hairdresser and braided all of our hair it was so pretty. I will try to send a picture later.

Now to the weird part about yesterday. We visited the mission leader’s family later that night. Their house is like our second house, but I had no idea what in the world they were all talking about. During our visit, my companions lied to me and said we were staying the night here, and I was just ridiculously confused. Anyways, they were worried about my cough and gave me this drink, which felt so great. Then they had me go into a bedroom and told me to show them my chest. I had no flipping idea what in the world was going on, but the wife of the mission leader was doing something to help my chest not feel so congested. She got a shirt and a hot iron, ironed the shirt, and then pressed it on my chest. Then they decided to do the same thing on my back without asking me and just started to pull my sweater out of my skirt. It was so loco; I was surrounded by 5 crazy Chapinas (Guatemalans). But whatever they did helped a lot.

After their treatment, they wrapped a giant scarf around my neck and gave me a thick poncho. Let me tell ya I was dying of heat. I was also supposed to put the scarf on my nose while walking. I thought I was going to die of heat, but I feel much better today, so it must’ve helped. When I got home I took some melatonin and went straight to bed. Let’s just hope and pray this is the last time I get sick. I have Mucinex and some antibiotics left as well. My stomach is also feeling much better as well as the fleas for now.

Anyways, I want you all to thank Heavenly Father every day for your house and your laundry machines. Our house in Utah looks like an absolute mansion compared to here, and I will never complain about laundry, the house being dirty or anything like that ever again. We are so ridiculously blessed!!

We visited a family who I knew was really poor, but I didn’t know how poor until we brought them dinner one night. Their house is made of cement bricks and has two rooms, a tin roof and a dirt floor. There were tons of bugs, and there was just stuff everywhere because they have nowhere to put their stuff. This lady is a recent convert, and has a boy and girl who’re both about to be teenagers, and an older son. She doesn’t have a husband. There’s no shower, and their bathroom is a shack down a ways from their house, and I am pretty sure they only time they get to shower is when it rains. I wanted to bawl my eyes out. And yesterday they didn’t come to church so we went and asked why. At first she said there were no problems at church, but it turns out one of the ward members isn’t very nice to her, which breaks my heart. So look around at what you have and thank Heavenly Father every day. Don’t worry about what you don’t have. Things are not important. I just wanted to stress that.

You should also thank God that you have a washer and drier because we don’t have a pila of our own (a pila is where you wash the clothes). We used to have this awesome lavanderia that was soooo cheap, but now it is closed and it’s the worst. All of the other lavanderias here are ridiculously expensive. But thankfully Heavenly Father blessed us and Hna Vicky, the member’s house we live in, had her husband install a pila. So yeah don’t complain about dirty laundry because you have machines that wash them. Hahahaha.

Hna McGill and her companion had two baptisms this week from the same family on different days. The first one getting baptized is a very intelligent autistic kid, and the next day is his mother’s baptism. We went to his mom’s and it was so beautiful. She didn’t want to be baptized at first for a while, but she was beaming after she did. We brought cute Marilisa and Ronny with us, and we would’ve brought their mom too, but she was working. We explained to them what happens during the baptism and confirmation, and how the sacrament ties into it. After the baptism they said they wanted to be baptized. They are the cutest. I will try to get a picture this week of them and send it next week. Dora (their mom) works a lot and has a boyfriend, so she is harder to get a hold of, but their family seems pretty promising, especially the kids.

Cristian, our other investigator, is even harder to get a hold of it’s ridiculous! He’s either never there or one of his family members lie to us and tell us he isn’t there when he is. It’s so frustrating, we had such a great lesson with him and his dad, so we just want to teach them more. And every Sunday we try to get him to come to church, but it never works.

Spanish is ridiculously hard and would be absolutely impossible to learn without the help of the Holy Ghost. The other gringos always tell me not to worry and that I’ll learn. I am just grateful I’m not in panama like Evan because even the Guatemalans can’t understand them because they speak so fast. So I count my blessings

Oh my lanta, so the other day we had lunch with these cute sisters, and she gave us black salt to try with the fruit. Black salt is the best thing. Try to find it if you can. Its soooo good with fruit. Or as they say here, muy rica!!

Anyways I love you all, thanks so much for your emails! They are the best. Love you so much!

Hermana Lindsie