We’re working really hard with Blanquita’s family. Their two parents are inactive/ reactivating. The dad came to church with five of his kids this Sunday from a soccer game they were watching, and he’s really excited to come back to church. We’ve been trying to get his wife to come too, but she’s been hiding from us for some reason we’ve yet to discover. Blanquita and one of their other sons Javier are going to get baptized this Saturday, and we’re hoping Giovani and Daniel can get baptized next week. Evelyn seems to have some trouble because her older sisters go to an Evangelist church, and she is going to both our church and theirs. (There are 11 kids in this family. And the oldest is 17 and it goes down to like a one-year-old, it’s crazy, and they’re the poorest people I have ever met).
Something interesting about this place is that people say, “Hey, man,” but it’s kind of Caribbean style, like, “Hey, mehn.” I thought it was pretty funny when I first got here and they were saying “Hombre” (man) all the time, but here, they actually say the English word. Crazy Salvadorians. One of the things people say a lot that I couldn’t figure out until I asked someone was they often say, “Nooommmbre!”
…Why are you saying… “name?”
But it actually is a slur of “No hombre,” or in the words, “no way, man!”
We found this family yesterday, we were getting all warmed up and excited about talking about eternal families and how they needed to get married to be in harmony with God’s commandments.
Hna Ellis: “So is that something you’d be willing to do? (Get married?)”
Luis: “Uh….”
Karla: “Mmm, no.”
Hna Ellis: “How long have you been together?”
Karla: “Three years. Well, three years before. We’ve been separated for 7 months.”
Hna Ellis: “Oh….”
Karla: “These aren’t our children, just that one asleep, the others are mine.”
Me: “Well, the Gospel isn’t just for husband and wife, Hermana. The gospel helps other families too. It can help you help your daughters….etc…”
It was funny. Hna Ellis was pretty embarrassed.
I had a pretty bad morning, I’m not going to lie. I went to clean the bathroom so that we could go play volleyball, and Hna Stegelmeier (we share our house with two other sisters, Hna Stegelmeier and Hna Sanchez) handed me a broom to clean the shower. Yep. We clean the showers with brooms here. Anyways, I started cleaning and then after a moment I noticed they were worms crawling on the wall. I was like, sick, and so I was sweeping the few worms down the drain, but more kept appearing. “What the heck!?” I kept trying, but worms just kept appearing. I realized after a minute they were coming from the broom, but I thought I was almost rid of them, but after like 20 minutes of washing worms down the drain I got pretty upset and I put the broom away. Hna Stegelmeier and Ellis thought it was pretty funny that I was so mad, so I went back with a bucket to wash the worms down the drain and poured bleach and soap around to try and kill the worms, but a while later when I came back worms were crawling out of the drain, so I went whining to Hna Ellis and she said to use raid.
So I went raid crazy on my shower, and so now my shower is covered in dead worms and bug poison.
Hna Ellis and I were kind of having a hardish time the first few days I got here, I think, not much, but we were a little disappointed to be together after President showed us this numbers about how old missionaries don’t baptize as much as the people with a new missionary and we both really loved our old companions that we’d only been with for one cambio, and I was sad to leave Candelaria, but my testimony of prayer has grown a lot in the mission. I prayed that I could love her more and she as well could be more used of me, and already I feel like we’re really good friends. We were all right before, but now it’s suddenly easy.
We also prayed and fasted that we could find Michelle, who had a baptismal date except that she didn’t go to church Sunday, and we haven’t been able to find her because she moved to live with her dad, but we passed and about the third time we looked for her we finally found her and were able to put up a return appointment.
It was great to hear from everyone Sunday. 🙂 I keep you in my prayers always. I love getting letters too, especially with pictures. 😀
Love,
Bek
