I eat so much. This is ridiculous. I on the other hand have miraculously maintained at least some dignity in my weight. And it has been hard. Let me tell you why. For the past 3 (please note that I said three, but I´m trying to be nice, It´s been more like 70) days I have been pressed upon to eat not one but 2 lunches. Usually one right after the other. Because people eat lunch at lunch time....and not later. It has been fun. And at least the food has been good. I got to eat mundongo again - we have recently learned that this family buys their meat for the whole month at the beginning - usually in the form of a medium to large carcus of some animal - and then uses all the edible parts. I had actually joked about the thought that she probably has a whole cow in the freezer, how funny to learn that I was actually right. But it´s okay. I don´t mind it to much. And we got to eat pudding at one family´s house and ice cream at the other. Love it!
But on to the more spiritual part of my life. This week has been good and crazy all at the same time. So, normal. We spent sometime this week working with a lot of less active families. Which meant doing a lot of listening. It´s interesting to see that the families that don´t go to church, are usually the ones who are lonely and just want people to talk to. And that´s what we did. We would go to these houses and just listen. In maybe an hour´s worth of talking between myself and my companion we probably spoke for max 5 minutes? It is unfortunate.
One family we did visit though was really nice. Well, they were all nice, but this woman, named Amelia, is a bit older, and had stopped going to church mainly because she didn´t have a way to get there. But she is super strong in her faith, her family was one of the first converted in Argentina, and all of her sons served missions. We´ve spoken with the Bishop and he´s arranged for rides, now she comes to church. We still visit with her, and through her we met her maid - who is not a member, and now we´re going to teach her as well. Blessings, Blessings all around!
And probably the most exciting portion of this week was with our baptism. Last week Ezequiel got baptized after church. So we had a week between baptism and confirmation. And lets just say it was an explosion of flavor. Things were going great, we were talking with him every day. And then mid-week he calls us up, tells us that we need to repent because we offended this woman whom we met on the street, and ends the conversation with my companion in tears. The woman is not an investigator, she used to be, but has adamantly refused to be taught, go to church, or do anything. But always asks us to do things for her. She´s always asking for pictures of Jesus, to bring her hot water, to watch her Flower shop while she goes to the Bathroom or something (we did this once thinking it would take 5 minutes and she didn´t come back for 2 hours!! Not happy was I or my companion). And then through Ezequiel we find out she´s so mad at us that she´s telling everyone she knows that we are liars, evil, and don´t care about anyone. Through her influence we´ve had a couple of investigators refuse to talk to us, and now Ezequiel was believing Sara, to the point where he was threatening not to get confirmed on Sunday. And we didn´t even know what we had done.
So we go to talk to S and E the next day, and, well first E pretends like there is nothing wrong. And then stops talking to us all together. So we start talking to S, and she just starts yelling at us, saying how we only gave her stuff so she would go to church and how we always held it against her (there was once a cold day and we gave her a sweater, but she decided to remember it as "We gave you that sweater so now you have to go to church") and I can´t really fully understand everything that is going on, but my companion is once again nearly in tears. So I tell S "Enough. You´ve made your point. Enough, Sara". Which is about all I knew how to say in the moment. Which of course shocked her into silence. Because I don´t really add to the conversation much. And my companion got the opportunity to apologize. Because we had no idea she had gotten offended. She´d been upset with us for almost 3 months, talking to her this whole time, and we had had no idea. She´d never told us. It was only through E that we even learned about it. Anyways, while Hermana Jones starts talking, E gets up and leaves, and then someone calls on the phone, so I go to talk to them, and H. Jones starts working things out with Sara. Sara starts crying and telling her whole life story, and it really is a hard life that she has lived. And in the end, she feels better, and decides not to absolutely loathe us anymore. Not that she likes us, but she doesn´t loathe us. So that problem got fixed. But E was still struggling/toying with us on whether or not he was even going to go to church this Sunday. But we leave, because we had an appointment.
The next day we go to find him, and we have to have another long explaining conversation with him to figure out what was wrong, why he was acting the way he was and everything. Turns out, he is so upset because transfers are in a week and one of us is going to be leaving. I´m thinking in my mind, this man is crazy. That was a bit of an extreme. He had decided that he didn´t want to get attached to us since we were just going to be leaving anyways, so he stopped talking to us altogether. Drama, drama, drama. But we talked about it, promised to stay in touch, and everything is all better now. Por Fin! I didn´t ever realize my life could be so dramatic in another country.
That was probably the most exciting thing of this week. Other than that, none of our investigators went to church, Ezequiel did end up going and getting confirmed, he is much happier now, and I´m glad he has the gift of the Holy Ghost because that should help him out a ton. And life is back to being the relatively normal state of a hard working missionary. Let´s just say we´ve been praying extra lately. Crazy, crazy, crazy. But the church is true. And I would highly recommend to anyone and everyone that if you are offended, at least let the person know. If you´ve offended someone, work it out. Contention is of the devil, and you can really feel the evil working in those moments.
Learn from my experiences. So you don´t have to go through it yourself. :)
Hermana Reed
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