Hey familia!
This week has been nuts! I feel like we are just running as
fast as we possibly can. Time is flying!
It kinda makes me panic. Hermana P
extended her mission 3 weeks but is going home tomorrow. It just makes everything feel so real. I love the mission and I really don't want it
to end but I am trying to develop faith that God has other great things planned
for me. It's just... weird.
Divisions have been great.
I got to go with my hijita Hermana C last week. It was so cool to see how well she has been
progressing after her training. Man, I
love that girl.
We have a baptism lined up for this weekend. Her name is P and she was a referral from our
new best friend, Jennifer Lopez. Yes,
that is her real name. She is a middle-aged
member in the ward who insists we call her Hermana J Lo.... It's pretty weird. But, her referral is coming along just great!
She really has been a miracle as we have struggled to get traction in this
area. LS is great but it is wealthy...
The majority of my converts live in tin houses with dirt floors.
BUT! Challenges aren't impossible. We have a very interesting pool of
investigators right now. One of them, M,
is a 20 year old girl who works in the house of an inactive family who lives in
a gated neighborhood in our area. She is
super cute, came to church and loved it, and really wants to know if the church
is true...
... The only challenge is that M is from Quiche, a village
in Northern Guatemala. She speaks very
little Spanish just quetchi´kel (dialect) and doesn't know how to read or
write. No one on the ward speaks this
dialect.
Does that sound like a challenge or what?! Our lessons are
more than anything like a weird cross between charades and Pictionary with the
occasional interpretive dance of the first vision thrown in there. It's fun, and crazy, teaching with such a
language barrier. PRAY FOR M!
I just keep telling her ¨oshk´atimi lok!¨ which means we
love you! And ¨cashno´k!¨which means GET BAPTIZED!
Our other hilarious teaching challenge is named Kim S. He is the father of a recent convert, K. K is half Guatemalan and half Korean. His dad has 14 years of being in Guatemala
but really has never learned Spanish.
The most interesting part is that his wife and his kids don't speak
Korean.... I don't really understand how they communicate with each other but
they somehow get by. The other day we
went to visit Kevin and his dad was home, half drunk and smoking a cigar. He asked us to teach him and we politely
agreed.
To make the situation interesting, he asked us if Mormons
drink. We explained to him that we do
not and he completely launched into orbit.
He began sputtering a whole lot of Korean mixed with English and the
occasional unconjugated Spanish verb. By
some miracle, I was able to understand him.
This is what he said...
¨But I am pretty sure that Jesus got drunk sometimes but
then he just went home and took a nap. I
am Catholic, and I drink and God still loves me. I am also Buddhist. Buddha totally smokes.¨
My companion ¨God wants you to stop drinking and smoking so
you can be blessed with health¨
Kim ¨BUT I AM ALREADY HEALTHY!!! GIVE ME YOUR ARM!!! Let's
arm wrestle!!!!¨
My companion looked panicked but I mean really, what else
can you do when a drunk Korean investigator wants to arm wrestle you? You just have to give it your best shot.
She totally won. We
followed up that insightful message with a Mormon message that we watched on
their laptop. We tried to watch it in Korean,
but ended up watching it in Portuguese. So
no one understood. That was an
adventure. He is totally going to get
baptized one day.
But, those have been a few adventures of this week. It's been great. I really can't believe how fast the mission
is moving along.
Just trying to enjoy every second of it.
LOVE YOU ALL! (hasta pronto)
Hna Wise
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