I can´t believe you didn´t get my e-mail last week! I´m so sorry. It said it sent just fine. Good thing i sent a few personal messages or you probably would have thought that I dropped off the face of the earth, huh? I´m glad I was able to re-send Week 38. And thank you Dad, Mom, Sarah, Ashley, Amanda, and Grandma for e-mailing me even without my weekly update. Oh and Andersons, I got your drawings in the mail last week. So cute! That really made my day and whenever I need a pick-me-up I just take them out again. You´re so thoughtful. It makes me happy. :)
This week was pretty tranquilo. Spring is really coming on, with little baby lambs, flowers, fruit, and hot lazy afternoons. We have become expert blackberry eaters. Blackberry trees are all over the outlying neighborhoods, and every time we pass one we stop and feast. It doesn´t matter that everyone else does that--even if the lower branches are picked bare, I´m tall enough to pull down the higher ones and give my little companions access to the untouched ripe berries towards the top. I´m glad I can be useful. :)
The fireflies and frogs are becoming more and more active at night. When we pass through the unlit areas in the evenings I keep finding myself stopping to just stare at all the twinkling fireflies or better, the stars, neither of which are easily seen in the middle of town. The stars are different in the Southern Hemisphere--Scorpio is a lot more prominent than I ever noticed before. And my sisters and cousins would go crazy for the frogs. They make the biggest ranch toads look like wimps. My companions are terrified of them, which makes me laugh. Hna. Rivera especially just kind of doesn´t pay attention to the ground at night, and she doesn´t question when I randomly steer her to the side because she´s about to step on one. They´re everywhere, and it takes a lot of effort on her part to pretend not to see them.
My companions are also afraid of anything long and thin that we see on the ground, but I have yet to see an actual live snake. Funny story: the other night we´d just gotten rejected at a house (again) and we headed back to the main road. We had to pass this little bridge over a swampy ditch. I was last in line, and out of the corner of my eye I saw a frog jump. I paused to see if it would jump again, and it did--right onto my foot. It took me by surprise, so I screamed and leaped away. When I quickly recovered, i realized that my companions had gone running in the opposite direction screaming their heads off, thinking that a snake had attacked. Good to know that they´ll be there for me when a snake really does attack. :) I´m still teasing them about that.
I had two questionable food experiences this week. The few people who feed us are really nice and selfless to do so, but sometimes I´d rather go hungry than fill my stomach with some of the things they feed us. The first experience was with soup where the broth looked and tasted like leftover hamburger grease. The noodles were okay, but the meat was...not. We each got something different. Hna. Rivera got a chunk of beef. Hna. Alvarenga got a drumstick (lucky). I got a chicken wing that was literally skin and bone. Apparently the woman feeding us realized I´d been shortchanged, so she threw in a random hard-boiled egg yolk, too. Her daughter got a SNAIL in her soup, which she happily sucked out of its shell. *shudder*
The second experience was in the Elders´ area of Remansito, which is a lot poorer than Villa Hayes. We stopped at a member´s house to pick something up after a district meeting, and she made us sit down and eat. She used to be in the military, so when we told her we had lunch plans she said, "This isn´t a question, it´s a command." And she meant it. She stared us down the entire meal, and seriously it´s a miracle I managed to keep a straight face and not puke. Again, it was REALLY nice of her to feed us, but I would have rather gone hungry. She fed us this weird type of spaghetti noodle that had a strange pink sheen that made it look like brains. It had a texture similar to brains, too, and made this awful squishy sound as we scooped it up. She served it with what looked like salami when she gave us each a slice, except that when it hit the plate it lost its shape. I whispered, "What is this?" to Hna. Rivera, and she said, "It´s...um...just eat it." That made me feel loads better, you can imagine. Hna. Alvarenga is a stubborn little thing and she had a will as strong as the woman´s. When she refused to eat, she wasn´t made to. But the rest of us had to. Especially me. If I were to refuse a meal, I´d be forever hated as "That American gringa who was too good for our food." I felt sick the rest of the day. If she hadn´t given us a roll to wash it down, I don´t think I would have made it.
Anyways, enough of the silly secular stuff. :) This week was really nice spiritually. On Saturday we got permission to go to Loma Pyta for me to see Justito´s baptism. Miguel didn´t get baptized with him, sadly, because he got shipped off to the chaco. (When parents get fed up with their childrens´ misbehavior, they send them off to live with their distant relatives in the jungle. I´m not kidding.) Anyways, it was nice to get to visit Loma again, and the baptism was really sweet. Justito was so excited to be baptized, and his parents looked so proud and happy. It was great to get to see a baptism of somebody who I really found and taught from beginning to end (almost).
It was kind of weird going back to Loma, though. I can´t believe I´ve only been away from there for a week and a half. Even weirder, though, was when we went to Mariano yesterday for District Conference. That was a great day. We had a bus just for us to take the members from Villa Hayes and Benjamin out to Mariano. President and Hna. Madariaga were there, as well as the temple president and matron and a visiting Area Seventy--Elder Avila. Their talks were so great. They all spoke about eternal families, preparing to enter the temple, and treasuring the scriptures. And it was amazing (but weird) to see my old Mariano family again and go to my old chapel. I had to say hi to EVERYBODY of course. In the end the bus was honking at me because I was the last one to get on, and I hadn´t even seen Hna. Tua´one yet. I had literally five seconds to give her a hug, have her tell me "Be good," and promise to call her later. What a bummer. But I´ll see her next week for General Conference.
My personal study time this week has mostly been devoted to reading the Liahona. I LOVE THE LIAHONA. On Tuesday I got my very own English copies of the September and October issues, and I love them so much. I´ve read them twice already and am going through a third time to take notes and study them more in-depth. September´s theme is eternal marriage, and while marriage isn´t my main objective at the moment and I don´t have anyone waiting for me or anything, I still feel like every day on the mission is preparing me more and more for married life. I realized yesterday that if I hadn´t come on the mission, I never would have learned the things that I now realize are necessary for a celestial marriage. Maybe I would have found the perfect eternal companion, but I wouldn´t have been a perfect eternal companion. I´m still not, but at least now I know what I need to change.
October´s issue was AMAZING. I love that they dedicated the entire issue to the Book of Mormon--where it came from, why it´s important, what stories we find in it, how it supports the Bible, etc. It made me so incredibly happy to read testimonies of the Book of Mormon from people all over the world, and to be assured that even when people here don´t receive the Book of Mormon very well, it really DOES change peoples´ lives and the world. I feel that now, after reading that Liahona, I have a much greater appreciation for the Book of Mormon and its teachings. It really was written for our day. Everything inside it is meant to help US in these last days. When we read we need to ask ourselves, "Why did the Lord have Mormon include this? What am I supposed to learn here?" Now when i read the Book of Mormon, I really try to find a personal message. And I´m so sad that I never got into a habit of reading it before the mission. I´ve promised God that from now on I will NEVER miss a day of reading the Book of Mormon. It really is the keystone of our religion and of who I am--without it, I´m gonna fall. I hope you all read the October Liahona (or...Ensign...) and are as touched by it as I was.
Well, the clock outside just chimed 4:30. It´s about time for me to go. (The Catholic cathedral has a bell tower, AND there´s a soap factory nearby that rings a siren every hour on the hour, which is very useful but makes me think of Cinderella everytime. "Oh that clock...!") I´m sad P-Day is almost over again. Especially since we receive Changes tonight. Hna. Madariaga hinted that both Hnas. Alvarenga AND Rivera are gonna leave me. That....freaks me out. A lot. I LOVE the Hermanas so much. We decided that we´re a lot like characters from Ice Age 2--they´re the twin possoms (Crash and Eddie, I think?), and I´m the mammoth, Eli, who thinks she´s a possum. In our case, they´re the twinner latinas and I´m this huge American who´s pretending to be latina, too. :) Anyways, I´m going to be seriously depressed if they both leave. This last week and a half has been the most fun of my mission so far. I know that the Lord has everything planned out perfectly, and that whatever happens is for me to learn by, but I would love to stay with the Hermanas for at least another six weeks. If they leave, not only will it probably not be as fun, I´m going to be in charge of an area that I still barely know. When we plan, I still have to ask, "Uh...who´s Juan?" I guess I should study the area book and the map and whatever, but I´m more than a little daunted by the task of leading here. Pray for me!
Take care everybody. I love you so much. I hope you know that, and that the Church is true and that only by living the Gospel can we truly be happy. I´m the happiest now than I´ve ever been in my whole life, and I know that it´s because I´ve distanced myself so much from the money and the movies and the toys and worked so hard at drawing closer to the Lord and doing His will. I hope you´ve all had--or WILL have--a similar experience as me. Stay true to the faith and never stop smiling!
I LOVE YOU!!
---Hna. Springer
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