Happy Thanksgiving! my Thanksgiving dinner was two baleadas and two dino chicken nuggets... but I got to eat the nuggets with ketchup, so it tasted like heaven!
So I thought Thanksgiving was last week. we didn´t really do anything special, we just helped people recover from Wednesday´s storm. I´m thankful that we live on the second floor of the apartments! for dinner, we were hanging out at Hna. Osiris´house in the evening helping them set up their Christmas tree. and they were nice enough to make us sandwiches. I think the cold cut meat might´ve had some turkey in it, so I´ll count it. people here know about Thanksgiving but they don´t really celibrate it much. Kinda like how we celebrate cinco de Mayo by having carne asada, but don´t feel a cultural attatchment to it.
Semana del Frente Frio
we had a storm! tons of rain, no joke, walking home we were wading up stream in knee deep water! The river rose up a huge amount, and almost reached the top of the bridge. they had to shut the bridge down because it was shaking like it was gonna wash out. during the worst of it, we helped Hna. O, wife of our Ward mission leader, and the lady that does our laundry. her roof was leaking, so E. M climbed up on the roof in a pair of women´s flip flops in the dark with hard rain and wind, and Me and a neighbor handed up cinder blocks, and sheets of tin roofing that shook, almost out of control, in the wind. That was one of those events that i´ll only get on my mission. But our efforts kept the rain out. In the morning (Thursday) we went to the family that fixes our lunch and bailed out water from their house using brooms and dustpans. for about 3 days La Ceiba was in "Alerta Roja" (red alert) because of all the water. That meant that all work stopped, and everyone was supposed to go home and stay in their house. That was good for us missionaries because it meant that more people were home for us to teach! we still got some teaching done in those days, it was just hard to stay on schedule in such crazy circumstances. The river water was so full of sediment that they couldn´t turn on the water for about 4 days. when we got home during the worst of it, we had used up the water we saved from the tap, and I said "Puchika, we´re out of water." then E. M reminded me that a lack of water wasn´t our problem right now. it was literally falling from the sky! so we put our buckets outside and caught rain water. it actually got cold too. we were out working and we were breathing and we saw our breath!!! :0 everyone said they´ve never seen that in their time here. that night I took a shower by candlelight (because the power went out) using cold rainwater and seeing my breath the whole time. that was an experience i´m not going to forget soon. every night´s shower now is like a polar bear dip. cold showers are a blessing in the summer, and a curse in the winter. there´s supposed to be another frente frio today or tomorrow, so that´ll be exciting. people are more prepared for this one though i think.
So I thought Thanksgiving was last week. we didn´t really do anything special, we just helped people recover from Wednesday´s storm. I´m thankful that we live on the second floor of the apartments! for dinner, we were hanging out at Hna. Osiris´house in the evening helping them set up their Christmas tree. and they were nice enough to make us sandwiches. I think the cold cut meat might´ve had some turkey in it, so I´ll count it. people here know about Thanksgiving but they don´t really celibrate it much. Kinda like how we celebrate cinco de Mayo by having carne asada, but don´t feel a cultural attatchment to it.
Semana del Frente Frio
we had a storm! tons of rain, no joke, walking home we were wading up stream in knee deep water! The river rose up a huge amount, and almost reached the top of the bridge. they had to shut the bridge down because it was shaking like it was gonna wash out. during the worst of it, we helped Hna. O, wife of our Ward mission leader, and the lady that does our laundry. her roof was leaking, so E. M climbed up on the roof in a pair of women´s flip flops in the dark with hard rain and wind, and Me and a neighbor handed up cinder blocks, and sheets of tin roofing that shook, almost out of control, in the wind. That was one of those events that i´ll only get on my mission. But our efforts kept the rain out. In the morning (Thursday) we went to the family that fixes our lunch and bailed out water from their house using brooms and dustpans. for about 3 days La Ceiba was in "Alerta Roja" (red alert) because of all the water. That meant that all work stopped, and everyone was supposed to go home and stay in their house. That was good for us missionaries because it meant that more people were home for us to teach! we still got some teaching done in those days, it was just hard to stay on schedule in such crazy circumstances. The river water was so full of sediment that they couldn´t turn on the water for about 4 days. when we got home during the worst of it, we had used up the water we saved from the tap, and I said "Puchika, we´re out of water." then E. M reminded me that a lack of water wasn´t our problem right now. it was literally falling from the sky! so we put our buckets outside and caught rain water. it actually got cold too. we were out working and we were breathing and we saw our breath!!! :0 everyone said they´ve never seen that in their time here. that night I took a shower by candlelight (because the power went out) using cold rainwater and seeing my breath the whole time. that was an experience i´m not going to forget soon. every night´s shower now is like a polar bear dip. cold showers are a blessing in the summer, and a curse in the winter. there´s supposed to be another frente frio today or tomorrow, so that´ll be exciting. people are more prepared for this one though i think.
S. is old, sick, toothless, 9 fingered, poor and likes to talk a lot. life´s done crazy stuff to him, and so he´s just confused about who God is and how we should worship him. But his son is baptized, and he wants to find the truth and be baptized correctly so he can die in peace. he´s opened up and has been more happy, now that we´ve come over more often. we visited him and Daniel on Wednesday just as it was starting to rain really hard. we went in their house, and they literally live in a barn. they cook in a clay stove outside, and for money, Daniel collects plastic bottles and saves them to sell back to the companies. They have a backyard pool sized volume of plastic bottles that they´ll add to until Febuary. We taught in the pouring rain and we had to just about shout to be heard. We went over the baptismal interview questions, and Simon is ready, all he had to do was give up coffee. He and Daniel drink it because it gets cold at night, and they drink it to make themselves shiver and stay warm. so we had to tell them to give that up! that was tough! I brought him the longsleeve shirt another sister gave me, and a pair of my nice warm Nike socks. I also shared the 100 grand bar you sent me (the one that i´ve been saving because it´s my favorite) with them at our next visit. I had gotten a thought "you know, I bet they´d really love to have some american chocolate." but I wasn´t sure if I should share it or not. and then I thought "it´s better to be on the safe side, and just give. and besides, I´ll have the whole rest of my life to eat as many 100 grand bars as I want, and if I give now, for the rest of my life when I eat a 100 grand bar, I´ll be able to remember when I shared with S and D." so I shared the chocolate, and now I feel much better. Like the poem by an unknown author that Pres. Johanneson shared with us in priest´s quorum:
I have wept in the night
for the shortness of sight
that to somebody´s needs made me blind
but i never have yet
felt a tinge of regret
for being a little too kind.
I have wept in the night
for the shortness of sight
that to somebody´s needs made me blind
but i never have yet
felt a tinge of regret
for being a little too kind.
I got to help with a kitten! I asked first to feed it, but she said she just fed it a half hour ago, so I asked her when the last time she pooped him, and she said "yesterday" so I grabbed a napkin and got a ton of poopoo out for such a tiny kitten! it was fun to help! I told her she should put something warm, like heated up tortillas under the blanket to help the kitten sleep. I feel like a kitten pro after helping with the batch of 8 we had before I left. |
This week was good. we switched houses which is awesome! We have two new elders, one Arizonan Elder R, and a chapin (Guatemalen) Elder P. Elder R is leaving in February, and Elder P came out with me and we played Uno the first night in Honduras. That first night I couldn{t talk to him, we just spoke the international language of Uno, but now I can talk great, and he{s learned lots of English and likes to practice a lot. Elder P is someone it{ll be fun to be associated with for 2 years, and go home at the same time too.
We{ve started getting fed Tamales, which I hear that we missionaries get drowned in tamales. EVERY food has bones, and sadly, tamales are no exception... See you next week if I survive it!
We{ve started getting fed Tamales, which I hear that we missionaries get drowned in tamales. EVERY food has bones, and sadly, tamales are no exception... See you next week if I survive it!