Happy 4th..... 5th of July!!
IN all seriousness, I was really missing home yesterday. I really wanted to smell BBQ and blow something up. But we at least bought a cake on saturday and they wrote "America" and "234" for us. 234 because that's how many years ago it was since the Declaration of Indendence for all those who slept through US history. The only thing it lacked was vanilla ice cream, but beggars can't be chosers.
So first awkward experience of the week. We've been doing door contacts all week trying to find people. One of the houses we sent to the guy sounded a little off while we were talking to him. The stuf he was saying almost sounded recited. He realized who we were and started rattling off all these things about the church. Stuff like the prophet, how 'powerful he thought the Ensign is, asked about conference. What really threw me was he said he has "Jesus the Christ" memorized. But I believed him because he told us how Talmage talks about a discrepency between two of the gospels and even cited the page. We ended the contact because he said he liked his church, but I had to take some time and digest what had happened, and then realized that he was autistic. Normally they have an obsession with numbers, but for him it was religious facts. It was so insane. We walked by his house another day and sure enough he was there reading some religious magazine. I was seriously trippin' out about how much he knew.
Then this Saturday while we were walking around we heard something buzzing. We looked up and saw it was something on the power lines. There was this arc that was just raging and it got super hot. So much so that the coating caught on fire. Which actually was really awesome because you had this really bright arc surrounded in flames. We thought (hoped) it was going to blow up. But it didn't. It was still a great precursor to the 4th of July. Just goes to show how ghetto it is in Ecuador.
Health advisory. When you haven't eaten for 24 hours it's not a good idea to load up on hot stuff. I had just ended my fast when we went over to a member's house to have lunch with them. I brought over this hot sauce another member made for me from a local pepper called ají. It also had these things called rosilla which are decently spicy. I normally eat the sauce with anything so I wasn't worried about adding a lot. Only thing is before I went to eat my rice I added more, and had forgotten how much was already there. Then Elder Robinson added a lot more with four rosilla bulbs. It started eating the bulbs and my rice, and it was pretty spicy, even for me. But when I finished my rice I felt really dizzy and my eyes couldn't focus. It started to feel almost drowsy too. When we went back home afterwards I realized, "wow I ate a crazy unhealthy ammount of ají on an empty stomach and I'm probably hi right now." I don´t know what it was, but it was a bad ride and I just wanted off. in conclusion. Kids don't eat too much ají, it's a train that just doesn't end. haha.
I met the president this week (again). He called a huge meeting to meet a lot of the missionaries and kind of talk to us about what he's going to change. He's already made alot of changes. It's really different from how it was before. A lot of missionaries are having a hard time, but it'll just take time to understand what he wants to do with the program. He's much more business than President Johns, so it'll be interesting to see how that translates to the mission program.
As far as the work goes we're still looking for people. We found some good people, but they haven't progressed or don't want to anymore. We still have those two awesome kids though Kevin and Yulexey (Do-lex-e). The whole family is just great and really open and accepting of the message. The parents just need to fix their marriage situation, but for now the two kids have the baptismal dates. We're going to start to have to work in the more dangerous third of our sector because we've kind of run out of room otherwise. So it'll be interesting to see how the week turns out. I'm guessing two robberies one with a knife the other without. hahaha jk.
So "suggested reading" for the week is a talk by Elder Holland. It's called "The Best Is Yet To Be" and it referrences Luke 17:32 where the Savior cautions, "Remember Lot's Wife". It's really really powerful. It talks about living in the past and how by not letting the past be the past (but still learning from it) we inhibit ourselves from learning the great things God has placed in front of us. It's really helped me and my comp during this time of change and also for when I get a wave of homesickness. Love you all, and hope you have a great week.
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