Yeah for Davy! I LOVE the photo collage of him and I can´t wait to see all the pictures that have been taken of that little kid since I´ve been gone! Happy Birthday precious, cute little boy!
I know, in one short quick month I will be at the half way mark!
This week has been a tough one. Ok, does there really have to be opposition in ALL things? The answer is yes, but I wish it was "opposition in most things until Sister Jensen just can´t take it anymore and then I will send a family of 12 a knocking on OUR door begging us to teach them." Or something like that. Allow me to vent a sec and just get it over with… if I have to endure many more weeks like the last one, I just might just.....well, you get the idea. It was so tough and so fruitless. UGH! And I´m not even just talking about the numbers. Almost everything went wrong and we lost the only two married couples we had to teach!
Would someone please give me a run down on the process of getting a divorce in the states. Basically I want to know how much it costs, how long it takes, and what the biggest obstacles are. Divorces here are about as hard to achieve as is admission to Harvard Law school.
In Zone Conference the area doctor came and told us a thousand things that just made me have stress. And he told us that we´re not allowed to take herbs because they are too risky because there can be up to 5000% difference from one pill to the next from the same bottle of how much of the ingredient each pill really has in it. I'm not worried because I know that Nature's Sunshine has the highest quality of processing and I received permission to continue taking mine for kidney stone prevention.
I gave a talk in church the other day and it went well...beings it was in Castellano, and a General Authority (Elder Zivic – of the seventy who lives in our ward) was there. He stopped me after to tell me I had done a good job. Relief!
The other day we passed the carcass of a dead dog that is literally disappearing as the maggots eat him away. It´s funny because you see the fur that is becoming the ground and you know it´s a dog because his paws and skull are still 3-D. Don´t worry I took photos!
We found a turtle on the sidewalk the other day and stopped to take pictures and play with it. It is about the size of a quad scriptures and we decided we couldn´t leave him because he´d surely get run over by a car. So we took him to our neighbor that is our landlord and the bishop of another ward. They adopted her and named her Karla Stacey after our first names. They also o told us that they are endangered there.
Mommy: Can you send me the lyrics to "All my days" I want to translate it and try to sing it in Castellano. Thanks!Oh, if you were going to send me an envelope in the near future, could you throw in some eye makeup remover? I´m almost out and I can´t believe I only brought one. How dumb.
Jason- I remember the letter you gave me with advice about training.... unfortunately I got all ditsy and sent the letter home, so I don´t know what you´re advice was on the subject. Can you send it to me again?
Nata- I loved your letter and had a question about te echaremos… what does that mean? I know the numbers game is tough, but it´s amazing how you just have to play it.
Daddy – you´re right, I try to never let myself get tied up in the numbers and lose focus of what is most important. I know that would keep me from taking advantage of a teaching moment that might not come again. I wish I could say that there were some of those moments last week, but it would be a lie. I´m not even kidding… I don´t think a single person listened to us and understood the message.
The good, the bad, and the ugly: brace yourself… my companion has "sarna" (SCABIES!) But the GOOD news is I don´t. What a miracle! Even though it is highly contagious and we are together 24-7 and use the same hand towel in the kitchen and stuff like that… I have remained sarna free. It truly is a tender mercy of the Lord. Don´t think that I take it for granted.
The BAD on the other hand is I have some kind of stye or something under my left eye that I have been treating with vaseline and neosporin… it seems to be going away, but isn´t very pretty. I also have a reaction on my neck that is a result from the gel that sprung a leak and got all over me as it left my cool neck cooler. So now my skin is getting over that. I doesn´t hurt or itch or anything, it´s just UGLY.
I learned that next to the cans of tuna in the grocery store there are similar cans of Jurel. Whatever that is. I bought some because it´s cheaper and it´s almost as good as tuna. When we get back at the end of the day and are starving I open up a can, add some salt and mayo and eat it by the spoonful. You should try it.
I am curious about something. I bet you all think that my Castellano is just honky dory and that I understand all that is going on and can always communicate with the people. I just thought you should know that that is my fantasy, but not the reality. I cannot believe that I have been in this country almost 6 months and still have serious problems with understanding and being understood. It gets to me sometimes because I remember being promised when I was set apart that "I would understand the people, and they would understand me." When will that prophesy be fulfilled… as I´m boarding the plane to come home? Please excuse my frustration.
Yesterday I was almost bit by a dog. Translation… the dog charged out of the door of the woman I was talking to and went straight for my hand which rested next to my thigh. Before I could even react the dog was attempting to bite my hand. His slobber was on my hand and his teeth touched my skin, but the woman grabbed his collar and pulled him back before he penetrated the skin… but there is no doubt that he was going to bite me because I felt his teeth and thought to myself "uh, oh" It´s a real good thing he didn´t bite me because I would have had to go through the "just in case" procedure to find out if the dog and me then had rabies… so sayeth the doctor in his talk. Another tender mercy…
Mommy- I forget the name of the book, but you need to ask Hermana Benton about some book she showed us in her "first aid kit talk" because I´m sure it´s a book you´d love to read. I wrote down the title, but don´t have that paper with me, so ask her and let me know if you´ve already read it. She said it´s really good!
My new area Haedo #1 doesn´t yike me. My companion can testify that the people here just love blowing up on me. I seem to have a giant target on my back and they love to aim for the bulls eye. I try not to let it get to me, but you´d be surprised how you can be completely innocent of any wrong and yet the people are angrily venting on you about who knows what because you can´t understand what they´re saying to you, or why they are blaming you. It makes Hermana Roy mad that for no reason different things keep happening. I try to laugh it off, but after a half dozen times you just want to ask "what gives?" Like today… I swear the entire country woke up on the wrong side of the bed.
This area is without doubt way tougher than Castelar. Thanks for your prayers on behalf of Sophia. She is being really brave and has a practice baptism with the man that is going to baptize her tomorrow. Please pray extra hard that the practice goes well.
Ok, no more whining… don´t pay my complaints any heed. I will get over it, it was just a really demanding week. And allow me to tell you the two worst parts: Anamaria – convert of 5 months back who is a doll and came back to church after a month or so of being inactive… told us that she is not going to continue with the church and that she "is choosing another path" which is to not attach herself to any church. It was like being dumped by your boyfriend and then of course the "we can still be friends" because she said she will keep receiving us and let us visit her, but she will not commit to anything. What really hurts is knowing that her 9 year old daughter that also got baptized now has little hope of staying active because who is going to take her to church? We are going to try to make arrangements, but even still… they have plans to move in a few months and she will probably fall through the cracks. We cried. It was awful because being the senior companion… and being that my companion was not in a condition to speak (crying much more than me) it fell to me to respond after she delivered her "I´m leaving your church" explanation. She told us not to be sad, and not to cry and what left my mouth was "it is impossible not to be sad because it´s hard to watch someone we love distance herself from the truth… because there was at least one moment that you knew this church is true." Anyway… that is reason number one.Reason number 2 – that SAME DAY… about 6 hours later we got a phone call and found out that the ex – husband of the mother and father of the 13 year old daughter that both got baptized two days before I got transferred into the area… had died… just died… probably heart attack, the autopsy hasn´t come back yet. The next day we went to visit her and basically cry with her and it was rough, but what did my heart good was to see the RS Pres. come with food and a shoulder to cry on and then accompanied her the next day to take care of all the paper work and stuff at the viewing place. The church is such a great support system… it really is a miracle that this happened just after she got baptized because if not… she would have had basically no one besides the few members of the family to help her get through this.
Anyway, all things will pass. I´m ready to have a better week! The week started off with an adventure which I cannot do justice to tell you in an email, so you´ll have to remember to ask me about the story about the water spraying at me from the wall in the bathroom. It is a great story, but I´ll have to draw pictures and explain them as I tell you the story. Basically it was so funny that we all ended up laughing… even the complete stranger woman that took pity on me and let us use her bathroom… that I then flooded! Good times!
The take home message is… even if some of the stories in this email leave you feeling sorry for me… stop it. It´s my problem, my stress, my adventure. Not yours. Don´t worry about me, just keep praying for me to be tough and then even tougher when things are blowing up in my face and not a single soul wants to be saved. I´m happy, I´m protected, I´m cared for, I´m not alone. I am doing my best and growing. I volunteered for this…. "I signed up for this" Never fear!I love you with all my heart and pray for you daily!
Hermana Stacey Wacey Jensen!
