Week 14

I now officially have three months in the mission! only 15 more to go....! ahhh!

So basically this week was kind of uneventful ... nothing really crazy or cool or interesting happened!

This is Yolanda.  She is very sweet and comes out with us to visit people.
She is moving and wanted a picture with us!  

We went to help this sweet elderly couple wash their clothes this week, and needless to say their "house" is really humbling.  I don't even know if I could even call it a house. It has four walls and a roof, but nothing else.  The walls are just pieces of wood that are kind of stuck together to make a wall and the roof is just a giant thing of metal.  They have two rooms, a room with a bed and another with a table. There's no oven or anything to cook with, and the bathroom is in the backyard.  It doesn't have a sink or anything, just a toilet. It was really sad... it definitely made me appreciate the house that I do have and in the United States.  So if you even find yourself complaining about your house.. remember that at least you have a sink. :)

Here is me hand washing clothes ... it's actually a lot easier than I thought it would be! 

We also went to visit a family of less actives this week, the mom and the daughters are so awesome.  They want to start coming back to church and they try to read their Book of Mormon whenever they can, but the dad is struggling.  He´s an alcoholic that keeps saying he wants to change but he can´t.  We keep telling him ... God will help you! He wants you to overcome your addiction and he will help you! It will be hard but have faith in God and yourself! and he still doesn´t do anything... he´s like "no matter how hard I try I will never change".  So we´re kind of at a loss for what to do to help him.  We´re trying to find members who at one point in their life were struggling with an addiction to help show him that it is possible, but there's not really anyone. We pray for him all the time but we can't really help him if he doesn't try to change.. at least the rest of his family is progressing and can show an example!

Our Golden family is now going to get married the 27th and baptized the 28th. We finally got all the paperwork in and were just waiting for the birth certificate of the dad to come in the mail so they can go get married.  It seems like the date just keeps getting later and later.. I hope we don't have anymore problems because we´ve been waiting for this day for like a whole two months!! 

My Spanish is somewhat getting better.. haha basically I can say what I want to say most of the time when we´re teaching lessons and talking about church things, but when we have conversations about like normal stuff, I'm clueless. But at least I can function in lessons, which is the most important thing for now. 

Two sweet little girls named Genesis and Nicole.  They are like six and four.  They are daughters of two of our recent converts.  They call us "chicas bonitas" which is just like pretty girls and the love to pet my skin and try on my glasses.  

Sorry I have no funny stories... except I guess my Spanish is funny cause everyone laughs, although I couldn't tell you why it was funny cause I didn´t understand their joke!  haha

I love you all!

Hermana Gurney

I had a couple questions ... 

Are you a adjusting to the heat?  

I don't know if I've adjusted to the heat or if I've just adjusted to sweating all the time.  When it rains it really cools down, so I love it when it rains, and in the nights its pretty cool too.  I only really have problems with the heat when we work in the mornings.  But I've really strengthened my forearms by fanning myself with the pamphlets we have hahaha.. everyone keeps telling me that Iquitos is the hottest place in the whole mission, so if I get transferred outside of Iquitos, I wont worry too much about the heat, so I'm looking forward to that! 

I asked if she eats in member's homes... 

Most people don't offer us food, sometimes members offer us dinner and I tried explaining to Hna Tituaña to explain to them that we can't eat it because I don't want to get sick, but she always accepts the food so then I feel bad not accepting it.  I usually pray and ask that the food won't make me sick before we eat it. But then after I got sick that one week, it kind of scared Hna Tituaña so now we just politely refuse and say we have a pensionista.  Most often though they offer us sodas or crackers from their store, and those were allowed to eat, so I accept those.