Buenas tardes, Presidente Murphy,
Well, this week was rather odd. We have three investigators with a baptismal date. However, we will once again need to change the date of Carolina and her family, because her son needed to come to church this past week, and none of them did, so he can't be baptized on the 13th. However, we were able to have an excellent lesson with Delia, Carolina's mom. it really is funny that Carolina was so surprised that Delia let us in initially, because she is great. Everything makes sense to her, and she doesn't really have a loyalty to another church, and so we are really excited to see how she will progress. It would be ideal if she and Carolina and her two kids could all be baptized together, but we will have to talk to Carolina about it.
We also have Carmen Vera with a date for the 27th, but we are worried because we haven't been able to find her for two weeks. We have to find her this week, although we are hoping that with her member granddaughter, she was attending church in Milagro, but that's another thing we need to verify.
No one came to church this week. Five people told us they would come and not a single one did. I'm guessing that everyone forgot that it was New Years, and so they forgot about the parties and everything. We are really hoping that we don't have a repeat this week. Hermana Caceres is ready to leave her training. She's getting better at controlling teaching situations and teaching everything, and she knows the sector now. She still doesn't feel very confident in herself, but she will get there.
That's about it for this week. Thank you for your hard work and counsel. Happy New Year!
Hermana Kennedy
Seriously, this week was rough for missionary work because NO ONE was here. Everyone was traveling to the coast, probably because that's where the majority of people are from. Hmmm, I wonder why. Could it possibly be because the hottest place outside of the coast is here? Tal vez. Anyway, we contacted and contacted, and nada. But it's okay. It's a new week, and everything will be fine. Next week are transfers, and maybe I'll be here, maybe not, but Hermana Caceres and I are separating :-(
Okay, anyway, remember last New Years when we all made the foods from the different countries, and then during the night we were all sick with diarrhea and vomiting? Well, lucky me, I had a repeat. Yep, at 3 a.m. on December 31st, my eyes flew open after having a dream about my stomach hurting, and I ran to the bathroom. However, I didn't make it in time, and yep, you guessed it...
I pooped my pants.
Like a three year old.
Then, as I'm sitting on the toilet, pooping my guts out, I get the sudden feeling of losing my breakfast. Or dinner.
Yep, you guessed it.
Our shower is right next to our toilet, so as I'm suffering with horrible diarrhea, I'm also vomiting my guts out into the shower.
All without my glasses on.
Probably better that way though.
I can't believe Hermana Caceres didn't wake up.
As always after vomiting, I ended up just laying on the floor, because I never know when I'm going to start vomiting again. However, our bathroom is tiny, and so there wasn't actually room in the bathroom to lay down, so I just laid outside the door for a while.
That was fun. Anything I guess to remind me of all the fun times at home!
However, when I woke up in the morning, I couldn't even stand up, because I was so nauseous. It was the first time I've ever taken a sick day on my mission, but it was Sunday, so at first I was like, "I'm fine. I can make it to church." Unfortunately though, I still needed to go diarrhea every ten minutes, and getting to church involves a 25-minute bus ride, so that wasn't happening. But I got out of bed and sat down and curled my hair, and that's as far as I got before I just had to lay down on the floor. So I called the nurse, and I just straight up told her, "Hermana, I'm vomiting and have diarrhea every ten minutes. I just need your permission to stay home." However, she had the speaker phone on, so the three hermanas she's currently living with heard it too. Thankfully one of them is a friend from the MTC, and I love her, so she told me that she CAN'T poop at all, and she wanted to know my secret :-) It made me feel a little better, considering how awful I felt. And as it turns out, it was actually okay, because not a single one of our investigators showed up to church....
Another problem? Our mission leader planned on making us missionaries lunch that day, but he didn't want to do it at his house, so we ended up going to a member's house down the road. That was also rather miserable, because bless their hearts, they can be kind of clueless sometimes. I told them that I wouldn't be eating anything because I was horribly ill, and I thought it was all fine, but after an hour, the daughter brings me a huge bowl of chicken and potato soup. I looked at her and just said, "Hermana, I can't eat this." She took that as, "I can't eat that much," so she comes back with a slightly less full bowl. One of the elders then says, "Hermana, she shouldn't eat that. It'll make her sicker," and she half yells at him that her mom's soups are medicinal and will help me.
Needless to say, I had diarrhea again several minutes later. So much for "medicinal".
Also, fun little thing from this week that doesn't involve bodily explosions...but does involve food (wicked thing that it can be). Here, they don't have Hostess cupcakes, but they have the Ecuadorian equivalent called Biri Biri. Well, as I was passing a stand a couple of days ago (before the apocalyptic diarrhea), I saw that each package of Biri Biri has a unique JUSTICE LEAGUE STICKER!!! AHHHH!!!! There are twenty designs total, so guess what this week was all about? The great Justice League sticker hunt. Turns out, they are also on packages of Twinkies! So by the end of the week, I found them all. And as you can imagine, I gifted a whole heck of a lotta cupcakes and Twinkies to elders in my zone. They were very grateful :-)
And finally, funny things about Ecuadorian New Years celebrations. It's a bigger holiday than Christmas. Super weird, I know, but everything is closed and no one works, and they burn the old year.
Wait, what??
Yes, people make these viejos which represent the old year, and they can be in the form of characters from movies or shows or real people (think of life-size voodoo dolls), and at midnight of the New Year, they burn them. So, when I woke up at 11:56 p.m. on December 31 because of the dog next door barking and the bomb-like fireworks, I saw the light of big fires around our complex. Also, it was fun to see fireworks.
Here's an Ironman viejo. Yep, they burn that giant thing.
Anyway, I think that's about it for this week. And that is quite enough.
Have a wonderful new year, and only 45 more days until Valentine's Day!
Love,
Hermana Kennedy
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