Another cool thing is I have a sweet moon-shaped eye scar now that’s pretty cool but the problem is idk [I don’t know] where it came from. Either way it makes me look pretty manly. Haha
Well, good news, I finished 4 months on the 22nd so only 5 more spaces of time like that and I’m as good as being a pile for two weeks straight and watching the movies I missed and listening to all the music I missed. When you get deprived of music you really begin to understand how much it plays a part in our daily lives, I’ve been having some pretty wicked music withdrawals.
More about the culture, is that I forgot to tell you we eat habanero chili peppers with almost every meal and wow sometimes they’re not very hot but others they can be lip swellingly caliente!
Almost one in 3 cars here is either a Volkswagen bug or bus, which is pretty sweet. I think this place is probably a lot like Havana Cuba.
One other thing is there are way to many stray dogs here. In the day time all they do is bark, but at night they get all riled up and straight up chase us. I’m not too worried because honestly most the dogs here are malnourished and tiny so if one was to take a bite at me I could probably throw it about 40 feet. But ya, they form packs and the other night a group tried to surround us. I was a little spooked, but all you have to do is raise your hand preparatory for a back hand and they go running squealing.
About the area here, it’s a little sad for a missionary because it’s soo big we really have to think and plan just to know where to go next. On a good day we can teach about 7 lessons here and that’s only if all the people are home. And it’s a different story altogether to try to get people to go to church because it requires a bus ride and about 11 blocks of walking just to get to the chapel. Altogether it’s probably about a 40-minute excursion to get there, so in this area were stuck between a rock and a hard place to baptize. Because people are more than happy to let you in they’re door, and they receive our message usually pretty well, even to the point where some have told us they wanna be baptized, but to be baptized it’s a requirement to go to at least 3 sessions at the church. And no one wants to go to the church because it’s so flipiddy-do-da-far. We usually have about 10 households committed to go every week, but even if they are for surely committed to go, the only way to get them to go is if we show up at their doorstep that morning. Our Sunday mornings are pretty hectic running all over town trying to visit every one. And even that’s a gamble because most will bull their way out of it, like "oh no puedo se infermó mi mama y etsa en la hospital, otro dia" the next time we visit them we'll ask how their mom is and they won’t have any idea what were talking about. And it’s sad because most have a genuine desire to change their lives, but in the end they aren’t willing to put in any effort for the sheer convenience of it.
And that’s really one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned here, is that to change for real it takes effort. It’s pretty easy to talk about change, but you really don’t know how hard it is until you’ve tried it yourself.
Well I’m outa time.
Later Kelly Slaters,
Elder Smith
Our cool broken fridge.
My companion Elder Villanueva
Tarantula buddy
No comments:
Post a Comment