9:29 AM (1 hour ago) |
What a week, that is all I have to say . . .this week was one of the hardest, funniest, interesting, and nerve racking weeks of my life so I´m just going to go through it day by day.
Monday: So I was super sick all day this day, we weren´t sure if it was Dengue but it really felt like it. I slept until almost 6 and then got up got ready, took some Ibprofen and some Tylenol and headed out to work. It wasd a good night I was kind of just concentrating on not crying the whole time but it was a good day. I ran a fever all day and my body felt like it was going to explode but it got better. That night we recieved some great news though. Sunday me, Hermana Knapp, and Antonela fasted for her to be able to find a good job that worked with the hours of Venus´s day care and paid well. Well we showed up to Anto´s house and she met us with a big smile and said that she found a job that is from 8 - 5 and is right up the road from her house. She didn´t know how much they were paying her so we worried about that for the whole week and Anto has quite a lot of jobs before just because she doesn´t like it or doesn´t think that they pay good enough so we were really worried that we were going to show up the next day and have her tell us that she was going to quite her job because she didn´t like it. So that was the great blessing and the great worry of Monday and basically the rest of the week.
Tuesday: Guess what I woke up sick, with what i had the day before, and then on top of it a super bad soar throat and a bad cough and I didn´t have a voice. IT was really entertaining. Actually I felt really bad for Hermana Knapp, we went out and worked all the same but she had to do everything, she had to teach all the lessons, do all the contacts and everything. I couldn´t help her a bit I just kind of sat in the corner in a ball. We showed up to Anto´s house around 730 and she met us at the door with another huge smile and said "my job is perfect!!!!" we were so excited, she loves her job and the people. They feed her lunch everyday and everything and they are just a sweet family that have a family business and they are super good to her. We are excited for her. At this point we were just hoping they paid well. because we were worried that with Lunch and only working 8-5 that it wasn´t going to pay that well.
Wednesday:My voice was starting to come back a little bit that day but Hermana Knapp still did a lot of the work and everything, i just mostly bore my testimony at the end of lessons because that is all my voice could take. But we did have a fun lesson that day. WE were out knocking doors and here there are a lot of houses that are set up for the neighborhood to come and pray to Mary type deal. Well we clapped this house (and yes dad we clap outside the gates instead of knocking) and this guy came out and was like come in come in. Well we went in. We walked into the room with and realized that it was a small Catholic congregation praying to a giant Mary in the middle of the room. We didn´t think that were going to be very nice and we didn´t think that they were going to let us share but we thought we might as well ask and they accepted. So we sat down right in front of the giant Mary satue and began to teach lesson one to a small congregation of like 10 Catholic's. It was really interesting. The spirit was there and they let us talk and teach and they were really kind. At the end most of them said that they weren´t interested in listening anymore but one guy, Ceasar, said that he wanted a Book of Mormon and wanted to read it because if there was more scripture and more sources that teach about how to follow Christ he wanted it in his life. The only problem is he is so poor he doesn´t have a house and he just goes from friend´s house to friend´s house to sleep so we couldn´t get an address which was sad but oh well, he will join the church someday. But that was our adventure of Wednesday. oh and one more quick story. So we have been contacting old investigators this week and stuff and we found a guy that has like 6 assists to the church and such and so we thought we would contact him. Well we did last Saturday and we came to the church to set up an appointment with us for Wednesday. Well we went to pass by and we met him . . . so we thought. . . outside his house and he said that he was the twin brother and that both of their names were Jose and such it was really interesting and so we thought that this guy was crazy or something. We decided that we weren´t going to pass by again because we seriously thought he was crazy. Well Hermana Knapp was speaking on Sunday and who walked in. The twins José it was really funny and we talked to them and we are teaching both of them tomorrow.
Jueves: This was day of a rejection and we just aren´t going to talk about it. I was still sick and Hermana Knapp was getting sick and everyone . . . almost everyone rejected us. Our girl that was supposed to be getting baptized hid from us and itw as just a hard day so let´s move on to the adventures of Friday.
Friday: Well it was a pretty normal day excpet for the fact that we didn´t eat all day. We both woke up sick and didn´t feel like eating and so we didn´t and then it got to be like 6 and we were hungry. So we stopped and bought soem stuff to eat, we ate it. Then we went to Antonela´s and she fed us dinner. . . . everything was fine and dandy until we went to the birthday party of Erika Paniagua. We thought maybe we would have a little piece of cake or something but no Ramona Made a HUGE meal. We were already super full from Antonela´s and so we really didn't want to eat!! Well we went in and started eating. Both of us praying that we would be ok and would be able to eat all the food in front of us. I took a break half way through dinner and went to the bathroom and emptied my bladder trying to make just a little more room. Then I finished dinner. Thinking that was it. But then out came the cake . . . yes cake and we both looked at eachother with looks of death on our faces. Well they dished us up a piece and there we go. I took one bite and my body said, "nope, sorry not taking one more thing in!!" I asked very quickly if I could us the bathroom ran to the bathroom that is to the side of the kitchen that has a thin little door and where the light doesn´t work and puked my guts out. I have never thrown up so much in my life. The toilet was completely full. It came out my nose and everything. But man it felt so good at the same time, I hate being full to the point that I am sick and then I was really really sick!! Well I got up off the ground from throwing up and went to go flush the toilet but to my great delite the toilet didn´t flush. I didn´t know what to do, it just wasn´t working (which is pretty common for here) so I just left it, I really didn´t have a choice. I was really worried that it was going to offend Ramona, because she would totally get offended over that. She already didn´t like me much and so I was super worried but I couldn´t do anything. Well we got home, Hermana Knapp was sick just because she was so full and we just went ot bed because we both didn´t feel well.
Saturday: this was probably one of the best days of my mission, it was just so fun and had a lot of great memories with it. So we were at the chapel waiting to teach the English class with the Elders, just there waiting for people to show up and then all of a sudden Ramona Paniagua calls us (oh the story with them is their dad won´t let us come by anymore because he doesn´t want his girls to be part of the church, but basically he is a control freak and doesn´t want his family in anything that he can´t control). She tells Hermana Knapp that her husband isn´t there and that she needed to talked to us right then, like right then. So we told the elders that we had to leave, packed up and started running toward the Paniagua´s figuring somthing horrible had happened. well we show up and Elisa is like hey can I talk to you. I thought she meant both of us but she wanted to only talk to Hermana Knapp. I thought I was dead, I was in a room alone with Ramona and I had thrown up her food in the toilet that Í was positive she had cleaned up that morning. I was so nervous, I seriously thought that she hated me. Well we started a normal little conversation and then she asked me how I liked the food from last nigth and I told her I liked it and then she was like but you threw it up, then I explained to her that I had been sick all week and my stomach still wasn´t feeling the greatest. She was satisfied with that answer and just let it go and we just talked about her day and such. Well then Hermana Knapp comes out and we head off, we get outside and she was like "the Paniagua´´s all think you are bulimic" Romana kept telling me how skinny i was and how I was getting skinnier and skinnier everytime she saw me and such but I didn´t know she was hinting toward that. But it was really funny we laughed about it for the rest of the day. We calmed their fears though by telling them I was sick. The rest of that day we went contacting references. We were trying to contact this guy and all of us a sudden they shut down the street and we were wondering what was going on. The other side of the street was still open just not the side we were one. Then all of a sudden there were a bunch of bike racers so we watched this bike race for a couple of minutes and then we headed off to go knock some other doors, the guys that were giving water to the bikers stopped us and gave us water and just thanked us for doing the work of the Lord and teaching about Christ, that was really good to hear after having kind of a rough week, but it was nice. Then we saw Richard (Antonela´s husband) and we freaked out, he had no reason to be here, his parents live like an hour away and so we were worried, and then we got even more worried when Antonela was like an hour late from work. but everything ended up being ok.
Sunday: Well it was a normal Sunday . . . not really, I taught gospel principles BY MYSELF in Spanish. I was a little upset after the class just because i didn´t feel like it went very well but it´s ok the Lord was preparing me for what was going to happen later in the day. So that class was hard, I almost cried, and it was hard to teach a whole class in Spanish by myself, I was petrified but you know it gave me the confidence that I needed. I taught a whole lesson in Spanish, for an hour, by myself and I needed that. I will now tell you why I needed that experience. So we were on the phone with our district leader telling him our numbers last night and then all of a sudden Hermana Knapp starts freaking out because president Callan was calling (he never calls, only if something bad happens in the family or something big in the mission) Well Hermana Knapp answers and he talks to her for a second and I decided that it had to be her family but then I heard president say "is Hermana Hubbard there, I need to talk to her" I started FREAKING out!!! I thought something had happened to someone in the family, I was so so so worried. But then he siad that he needed to talk to both of us and to put it on speaker phone. Well we put it on speaker phone and this is what he told us.
Well I´m out of time, love you all, oh and you can put this on the blog if you want to it´s not necessary.
Oh and I forgot to mention that Anotnela got paid really well and they paid for her passage to the day care and everything. We are so blessed and I love how loving our Heavenly Father is. It is such a testimony to me if we do our part the Lord will always do his!!!!
Oh and the last picture is of Ana and Pablo with their son Andreas. She is a member and we are working with Pablo.
We made the comment to be extra careful in the Jungle and Hermana Hubbard responded like this:
Everything will be great, president says that it is a really secure apartment and that all the members are really excited for us to come and it should be good, we are always safe. . . tell Dad to have a little faith, I know how to follow the promptings of the Lord and he will never lead me into a dangerous situation.
