Dear Family and Friends,
It has been a very eventful week. It is still incredible to me how everything can change from one day to the next in the mission. Transfers were on Wednesday and as a result Wednesday morning I woke up with Hermana Griffeth, helped her lug her suitcases down three flights of stairs and waited with her at the bus terminal as she went off to her next assignment in the province of Misiones. Then I headed to the mission offices and met up with all the other missionaries who are training this transfer.
So...I´m training! I feel kind of like a teen mother and I am still a little shocked but things are going well. A lot of elders arrived this transfer but not too many sister missionaries. There were three new sisters and, interestingly enough, the other two sisters training arrived with me in September, so I don´t feel too alone in my young motherhood. It seems that Pres. Heyman is choosing a lot of younger missionaries to be trainers.
My daughter is Hermana Hobbs. She is from a little town in Southern Arizona. She is actually here to be the mission nurse, but for her first 6 months she will just be a normal missionary as she practices and improves her Spanish. After 6 months she will probably still function basically as a normal missionary but carry around a special cell phone and take calls and consult sick missionaries. Before her mission she worked as a nurse for children with terminal diseases. She is amazing. She is still struggling to speak and understand Spanish but she is learning very quickly and I know she is going to do great.
Her first days in the mission have been quite eventful so far. On her very first night proselyting it was raining and all of our appointments fell through on us and then I got us hopelessly lost and we walked around in circles for about an hour. I didn´t realize before Hermana Griffeth left how much I was still relying on her to make our way around this area. I have most of it down but there is this part in the middle with tons of apartment buildings that is hard to navigate. But I am proud to say that I am getting better at reading maps and I haven´t gotten us lost again since that first night.
She also was almost robbed by this punk kid on a bike on Friday. He started grabbing at her backpack and then she pulled it back and moved away quickly. I was a little ahead of her but when I realized what was going on, I turned around and yelled at the kid in Spanish for her and he ran away and everyone was fine. In crisis situations I tend to lose my ability to move but I still have my voice and thankfully in this instance it managed to scare him off. I just yelled "QUE ESTÁ HACIENDO?! NO TENEMOS NADA!" (translated: what are you doing?! We don´t have anything!)
Then this morning she woke up with a nasty stomach bug and was throwing up all morning. But we called the elders and they gave her a blessing and after sleeping for a few hours she woke up good as new. It´s been a rough start but she is quite resilient and excited to work and I think we´re going to have a good transfer together.
Wish me luck!
More next week with pictures,
Hna. Parker
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