I feel like I have several weeks to summarize and recount and I am going to try my best to get it all in.
First things first, our companion exchanges went well. Barrio 1 is a different world! Coming to this area from Goya felt like coming to the BIG city, but spending a few days downtown in Barrio 1 made me realize what it really means to have a city area. They are right downtown with all the shops and plazas and..TRAFFIC LIGHTS. I think there are 3 traffic lights in my area. There are tons in barrio 1.
Hermana Sweet is great and we learned a lot together. It really is nice just to see different teaching styles and different ways of working with members and different door approaches.
So exchanges were great, but I have to say after 2.5 days I was happy to come home. Mostly because in the sister´s apartment i Barrio 1 they do not have air conditioning. That was torture. I hardly slept. Also, although last week I thought I was almost recovered, my stomach troubles continued through our exchanges and I was barely eating and finally when I got back Hermana Hobbs "put her foot down" (she literally said "can I put my foot down for a second? You are not well and this is not normal") and called sister Heyman and we were instructed to stay in the apartment for a full 24 hours to rest. Hermana Hobbs did a little nursing checkup on me and gave me good sound medical advice and was very kind to me (you know, turning on fans and off lights and on music and off music and bringing me things when I needed them). Let me just say that I feel so blessed that the one time I have gotten legitimately sick on my mission I´ve had a nurse as a companion. She put her foot down at the exact right time too because that day I only got worse. I will spare you the details. But now, really and truly, I am better. We hardly worked this week, so there is not much to share in terms of missionary work. But I am back in tip top shape.
There was ONE great thing that happened while I was in Barrio 1 is that our investigator Matias agreed to live the word of wisdom and told us he wanted to be baptized. He even handed over his pack of cigarettes! It is going to take a little more work to keep him tobacco and alcohol free (he is pretty seriously addicted to both) but we are going to work hard to help him and I know that if he has true desires and turns to Jesus Christ for strength in the atonement that he can do it. Yesterday at Ward Council several people offered to come to our lessons with him because they themselves had to overcome smoking before getting baptized. So we have high hopes!
As far as Karina and her kids go...well the story has gotten more complicated and we are going to have to see how well they continue to progress until baptism. I will keep you updated when I know more. But, even if there are some bumps in the road I still can´t say enough how special this family is. We scheduled to have an FHE with them on the same night as Hermana Hobb´s birthday. When they found out they prepared everything: empanadas, a homemade cake, balloons! It was so sweet. We sang and ate and Hermana Hobbs and I taught a little lesson about the Plan of Salvation and we brought over this giant life-sized board game that we found stashed in our apartment one day when we were cleaning (complete with a giant die!) The idea is that you start off standing in the pre-earth life and then take turns rolling the die and moving forward through birth, baptism, confirmation, etc and confronting life´s obstacles and whoever makes it to the celestial kingdom first wins! I am not sure how much I agree with the principle that teaches when you think about it ("earning" exaltation. competition for salvation. the fastest/strongest/smartest one wins, etc) But it was fun nonetheless and no one thought too hard (thank goodness!). Plus, we couldn´t pass up the chance to play with a giant die.
Speaking of our giant die, Hermana Hobbs and I were talking the other day about the quirky little details we will miss about our area once we get transferred. As we shared, we discovered that we both had some favorite graffiti from around town that we wanted to remember. My absolute favorite is scrawled HUGE across one of the brick walls in green spray paint and it says "Mi Dios No Juega Dados" which could translate to mean something like "My God Doesn´t Roll the Dice" which I feel like is something that Albert Einstein once said? I am not sure. But we decided that as long as we had a giant die we might as well take pictures with the die and the sign. There is another place in our area that says "Hasta mi sombra brilla en esta ciudad" which means "until my shadow shines in this city" which I find endearingly poetic. The last one is right by our stairs to get to our apartment and it says "Nacidos y Malcriados en Barrio Provincias Unidas" which just means "born and spoiled in neighborhood Provincias Unidas." Not too special or profound but it was the graffiti that helped me remember which stairs to climb to get to our apartment. Also, it is a nice shout out to the little neighborhood we live in. There is one more piece of graffiti I will have to snap a photo of sometime. When I first saw it with Hermana Griffeth I shouted excitedly "Oh!!! YODA!!!" (pause) "...or, Satan." I didn´t see the horns at first and it looked a lot like Yoda. Unfortunately I think it is the devil and not our friend from Star Wars. I am fond of it anyways.
To close, I wanted to write a little more about our experience in the cemetery a couple weeks ago.
It was a BLAZING hot day. The kind of day where you take 5 steps outside and you are already dripping with sweat. We left the apartment right at 11 and started our journey to the cemetery which is on the far side of our area. On the way we bought a huge bottle of grapefruit juice (our favorite drink here, and they sell it everywhere!) and we downed it all as we walked among the towering graves. We both felt the slight irony and ridiculousness of celebrating a birthday among the dead--but I have always loved cemeteries and it really was quite a beautiful and serene and new experience. There was an eerie peaceful feeling walking through the cemetery in the midday heat. We rarely saw another living soul. There were large crosses and stained glass windows of Jesus with his crown of thorns or the virgin Mary. Here, rather than burying everyone underground they have these little family tombs, that just look like little houses with shelves inside where they stack coffins and little tables or altars in the middle where they put pictures and candles and flowers. There were also endless rows stretching out as far as the eye could see of these little memorial boxes where loved ones leave pictures and flowers and trinkets and dedications and burn candles for those who have passed on. As we walked we often paused to read the inscriptions. So many people, who, on an empty afternoon such as this, seemed a little abandoned or forgotten by the world of the living. But, as we walked, the truth dawned on us, that even if it was an insurmountable task for us this day to pause and truly reflect on each and every name as a real person, a human life--that each one is endlessly loved and remembered and accounted for by God and that is a truth that is both hard to comprehend and so so beautiful.
Anyways, I was touched by our little trip to the cemetery and I hope that some of these photographs we took capture that feeling.
That is all for this week. Wish me health!
Love,
Hermana Brooke Parker
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