Tuesday, October 20, 2015 -- Month #8 - Week #36 - Day #246 - Santa Cruz de Yojoa

This morning we went and bought and hauled our 5 gallon jug of water to our house. I sometimes pretend it's a big, awkward child that doesn't want to move but has to be carried all the way uphill and into the house. My arms are tired.

Today we Hna Escobar and I gave the capacitacion during Reunion de Distrito. We've ALL been having somewhat of a rough time right now, for one thing or another, whether it be impatience, poor health, waiting girlfriend troubles, almost finishing the mission, can't sleep at night, having difficulty with Spanish, some tension between companions (Hna Escobar and I are totally fine on this one, don't worry!), misconceptions some ward members have of the missionaries...all sorts of stuff is happening over here.

So we decided to have a message mostly about our well-being as a whole and kinda help ourselves get back on track and re-centered in our calling to be full-time missionaries. We each shared our testimonies in turn, and each spoke about some things that were special for them, and we all felt better and more at peace afterward. And to help us laugh and be happy, we played with La Lechuga Preguntona from last night's FHE, and gave out some candies. So in all it was a good time, so we were happy about that.

And in the ruta I received a letter and I GOT MY PACKAGE!!! Thank you family!

Box from home!

My flat iron!  Guess mom didn't like me taking a regular iron to my head?!!

We also got a box of copies of the Book of Mormon, 3 packages of folletos about the Restoration, and some first aid kit items. So we were heavily laden as we traveled on the bus and hiked all the way to our house. (From the bus stop to our house it's about a 10-15 min walk on a 40-degree grade, which isn't too bad, but with all those blasted rocks and our boxes and backpacks and everything, it was a little more tricky than usual, and I was already tired from hauling water and not eating a filling breakfast). We were very hungry and thirsty and tired when we got home, to say the least. But we got everything up to our house (even our "yard" is hiking uphill in calf-high grass), collapsed on the floor, turned the fan on high, and started going through my package and snacking on gummy worms and freeze dried ice cream and Goldfish.

It's the little things that bring you back home...just for a second!

So we were a lot happier then. Got everything put away, and made ourselves some lunch and settled our heart rates.

We then took off to go clean the church as some service, and I got to clean the baptism font! Whoohoo! So that was probably my favorite part. Got to take off my sandals and hike up my skirt (to my knees, thank you) and slide around in the bubbles! Hna Escobar hadn't cleaned a baptism font before, so she watched in awe and laughed as I enjoyed myself swishing around. Service with a smile, right?

It also rained today, but that's becoming quite normal, and honestly not my favorite thing in the world, but it happens. Just to let ya'll know.

And we practiced again with the choir...problem is that this is the Semana de la Familia, and everyone wants to do a musical number all of a sudden, so that doesn't work out very well for accompaniment. But, we'll get along eventually. Growing pains.

Monday, October 19, 2015 -- Month #8 - Week #35 - Day #245 - Santa Cruz de Yojoa

Today we went to El Cajon, the (I think) biggest dam in Honduras, so that was really neat.

Typical dangly thingies in cars / buses - everyone has religion out the wazoo!

We made it to El Cajon!!

The dam is REALLY big!

One of the guys there said that it was built by the Italians, which surprised me. We walked across the top of the dam and farther along on the ground, and also a bridge that's being built, so that was also very cool.

An "Indiana Jones" style bridge that we did NOT go on!!

We had a heck of a time figuring out rides to and from, as there's not actually normal transport that runs over there, so we ended up hitching rides with buses and rapiditos, as a district plus our zone leaders (8 missionaries) which made it even harder as most of those busses and rapiditos were already full, but we were all safe and ok. I will say that it was a totally typical Honduran adventure. Yeehaw!

So we got back finally from all that fun, and wrote and bought some food, and got back home to change and get ready for a FHE with a less active family we're working with to help teach their 9 year old daughter and prepare the dad so he can baptize her. So that was fun, we prepared a game with La Lechuga Preguntona that turned out really well.

It was fun because her whole life, Hna Escobar had thought that you say lettuce like "leht-WEES" with a French accent, so we had a good laugh when I figured out what she meant. Ah, languages. But I recently learned that eggplant is berenjena and artichoke is alcachofa, somewhat similar in pronunciation. Everyone has a hard time with saying fruits and veggies in English, so I'll just stick to learning what everything is in Spanish!

Good day overall, we didn't have time to wash clothes due to our excursion all day long, so we'll have to find time during the week to do that. But, good news, we've had water in the pila and the house these past few days, so that's been wonderful!

Sunday, October 18, 2015 -- Month #8 - Week #35 - Day #244 - Santa Cruz de Yojoa

Whoohoo! I have 8 months! And Hna Escobar has 7!  Next month I'll be halfway through the mission. 

Today was good, had good meetings in the church, and I played all the hymns again, although they changed the Sacrament hymn on me. I love it when they do that.

And we did a Supercontacto this afternoon as an activity of la Obra Misional, and had pizza afterwards. I'll tell more about that later, but basically we got a bunch of members together and the other 4 elderes and we all did divisions and contacted all around our area for 2 hours. It was awesome!

Hna Escobar and me! I love that girl!

Saturday, October 17, 2015 -- Month #7 - Week #35 - Day #243 - Santa Cruz de Yojoa

It's fun because I'm learning a whole bunch of words that are Honduran, just like the other latinos that come here for the mission, so that's a fun little factoid. Everyone's learning here. 

Some words so far are:

- chinear (carry-give a lift-hold on lap)

- macizo (cool-neat)

- pichingo (cartoon)

- va'pue' (go on then, alright)

- pollo chuco ("dirty chicken", fried chicken with tajadas)

- macanudo (cool-crazy-fun)

- que pasada (what craziness: like when responding to someone telling a story, as a side comment)

- chiki (referring to persons, people calling from rapiditos if they want a ride: "Maeco, chiki, maeco van")

- cheque leque (okey-dokey)

- chancho (pig-animal)

- dentren (come in, really isn't a word, should be without the d at the beginning)

- piscina (pool, but they say "peekseena" which is incorrect pronounciation)

- costurar (sew: normally it's "coser")

- la calor and el tele which is using the incorrect gender of words

- revuelto (all mixed up, a mess)

- churros (chips)

- pulperia (those little house stores that sell churros and soda)

- guirro/guirra (boy/girl)

- Ejene (the way they say "ensene")

- compa (man/buddy)

- chasta (bad/that sucks)

- chuna (barefoot)

And other assorted words. I love Honduran Spanish.

And everyone's convinced that I'm a ballerina, so that's fun as well. It is true that I know the basic ballet forms, but everyone says it's because I sit up straight. No one sits up straight here.

And cows literally cross the roads all the time. More when you're going up to el Zapote, but there's always a whole ton of chickens and dogs and everything all over the place. I love animals!

And we made a fun little FHE teaching tool: La Lechuga Preguntona! You write little questions or things to get to know people on pieces of paper shaped like leaves, and tape them to a ball, and then you pass the Lettuce around like hot potato and then you have to answer the question when it lands on you. We're gonna use it in a FHE we have planned for Monday.

La Lechuga Preguntona! :P  

Friday, October 16, 2015 -- Month #7 - Week #35 - Day #242 - Santa Cruz de Yojoa

Hna Robles and Hna Archila have 18 months! Can't believe they finish the mission on the 28th. El fin se acerca, y hay poco tiempo!  (The end is near, and there is very little time!)

Me playing around with my hair, Hna Escobar is astounded
with my braiding skills!

And we were told that we had Coordinacion Misional a few hours beforehand today, so that was hard because we already had set plans to be in el Zapote in the afternoon, so we were kinda late to the meeting, but we never start on time anyways so we didn't feel bad. Then we went around looking for a reference we received, but as the addresses here aren't really addresses, so good luck. You always end up contacting at least 5-6 people while trying to find someone, and when you finally get to the right house they people aren't home or don't want to listen. Just how the world works.

But as we were wandering around, we met up with a family and I finally learned how to form and cook flour tortillas, so that's pretty neat. I'm still a little uncertain on the recipe part, but we're making progress! I really enjoyed playing with the masa.

It also rained a whole lot this morning/afternoon/night, so it's been pretty wet and cool. We decided to go to el Zapote in the afternoon and stay there for lunch to not take up so much time traveling, but it started raining, so we took shelter in the porch of a house that nobody was living in to eat. Nothing creepy, just sat on the cinder block ledge and ate our PBJ's.

As it was raining, a dog decided to come join us as well, really nice animal. Of course all the dogs live in the street, so he wasn't the most beautiful dog ever, but he had a nice white coat and brown and blue eyes. We named him Quasi because his eyes are different colors. 

Quasi - Our Protector!

 We gave him bits of our sandwiches, and some granola, and he let us rub his head. Then a boxer dog came in under the porch, and Hna Escobar got a little concerned because they're very aggressive dogs and get big, so we were afraid to have the two dogs in the same spot, but Quasi sat himself in between us and the boxer and curled his body towards us and everything was alright until the boxer left a few minutes later.

Hna Escobar said that Quasi was protecting us from the boxer, so that was neat. Good dog, gonna miss him and I'm sad he doesn't have a home. 

And we finally found this one lady we've been trying to visit for the past few weeks, we found her washing laundry in the pila, so we decided it would be a very good idea to help her, as she's 8 months pregnant and her tummy was enormous. So we got to wash clothes for an hour, but we got a lesson in! Whoohoo! I actually enjoy washing clothes, it's fun to play with all the bubbles.

We also met some wonderful Catholics who had no idea about the Trinity/Godhead (the same word in Spanish: Trinidad) which was a little strange as that's a very Catholic idea. So we taught them some more about that and the Plan of Salvation. Good people.

And I've also seen 2 children with Down's syndrome here in Santa Cruz, the dearest little kiddos. God sends spectacular spirits in imperfect bodies.

And I thought I'd mention that I'm reading the Book of Mormon in Spanish from beginning to end, and studying with the manual from Rel 121-122 as well for every chapter (also in Spanish). Really neat experience, Nephi is seriously awesome. Laman and Lemuel are knuckleheads, but everyone else is pretty good. I enjoy having the different perspective of a language and the commentaries from the manual. Good stuff!

Thursday, October 15, 2015 -- Month #7 - Week #35 - Day #241 - Santa Cruz de Yojoa

Planeamiento Semanal, did some visits, Coordinacion Misional got canceled on us, so we did some more visits, and went and played for choir practice. I think we're gonna have this be a permanent thing (at least for another 6 weeks if I don't go this change on the 28th of this month) with practice on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. It also rained again all day long.

And we had hamburgers for dinner! Granted they're not the same as American burgers or the ones we always made at home, but they were reasonably close and tasted pretty good.

We were also informed that the lady that gave us dinner on Fridays isn't able to anymore, so that's interesting news. We'll just eat at home, and it gives us some more time to go teach, so we're not upset or anything.

But, Hna Escobar and I made cookies! Whoohoo! Partly because we felt like making something yummy to offset so much rain, and have something to share with the elderes. So we were pretty happy tonight. They're no-bake cookies (we don't have an oven, just a 2 burner stove), as they hardened up in the fridge, but they're a very welcome burst of chocolate and peanut butter and sugar. So that was really fun.

Wednesday, October 14, 2015 -- Month #7 - Week #35 - Day #240 - Santa Cruz de Yojoa

Divisions with the Hnas Lideres Entrenadores! Things went well, they came late so we didn't have quite as many lessons as we wanted, but good day overall. I finally went with Hna Archila for the first and last time, as she's finishing the mission on the 28th with Hna Robles. So we'll see who's the new companion of Hna Estracuy (the nurse now) and who'll be the new companion of Hna Delgadillo. Changes are coming!

Really wasn't that exciting of a day, to be honest, just went around and did our stuff. Got rained on, but that's becoming a normal occurrence.