Rebecca's Baptism

cutting up the questionable innards

I met a cuy

i swear the pots get bigger at every activity

this week:   

i got a little sick tuesday through saturday, mostly due to just being sick, but also because we were helping this lady get ready for her son to come home from the mission, and she gave us some pretty questionable yahaurlocro, and i dont think the large chunks of innards were cooked all the way. it was kind of a bummer, but i wasnt too bummed to lose a few pounds. the nurse said if it doesnt get better i have to take a stool sample and send it to a clinic, but once i actually got around to buying the pee cup, i felt better. who knows if it was all psychological or what, but im feeling better now and am back to eating normal (at least by ecuadorian standards).

 monday through wednesday, we were with hermana wright, one of my white friends, while she was waiting for her first daughter (the first brand new missionary she will train) to arrive. it was cool to be able to speak in english for a few days.

this is you sleep in a trio.
 you have the two normal beds,
 and then some plywood in
between with a mattress on
 top...i.e. super bed.

 

thursday we went over to one of the rich mamitas and we made a ton of chocolate chip cookies for the baptism on friday. her family used to live in spain, and she said her kids havent had any cookies since the moved back a few years ago. needless to say they were all VERY excited to eat the cookies. basically the whole ward is obsessed now and i have a feeling ill be makeing them more often.

 
on friday the zone split, but we actually had our first zone meeting together (the two new zones) anyways because no one had phones yet and no one knew where or when to meet. but starting next week we will be officialy zona otavalo norte. as the reigning kichua queen of the zone, i was delgated the job of coming up with a new catch phrase. before, it was otavalo manda shinlli kanchi, which means we are the strong/hard of otavalo, and now (with the help of alot of mamitas) we came up with otavalo ñaupama shuk shungulla maki purashun, which means otavalo norte, working with one heart and one hand....or something like that. translating between 3 languages gets a little confusing.

 that night we had rebecas baptism. while we were setting up for the baptism we found a few kids that had come in the gate and were "washing limes to sell.." these kids are between the ages of 9 and 11. two are brothers, and the other one is another friend. they started asking us questions about why were we in the church, and why were we filling up the bathtub. we explained about baptism, and ended up giving them a tour and the first lesson. afterwards they were like yeah come meet our parents. so we went by and introduced our selves and set up appointments for the next day. the two brothers ended up coming back later for the baptism and told us they wanted to get baptized.  we went to go teach the other kid and his mom who are evangelicals, but one of the moms sisters just got baptized a few months ago in another ward, so she was pretty open to the whole idea. they accepted baptismal invitations, but said they couldnt go to church yesterday, but next week for sure. wellll during lunch yesterday, our mamita told us that the mom of the little boy is acutally the lover of one of the excomunicated members in the ward and he fathered the boy that we found washing limes. to make things even more interesting, said ex-member is the boss of the girl that got baptized last week, along with the rest of the family who are 100 percent active. needless to say, we dontknow if shes going to end up getting baptized, or the son...but were going to see what we can do about it. the other two kids have a bunch of family members who are members in other wards, but the mom said basically that shes catholic and she wont change. but she is down to give permission for her kids to get baptized if they want to so we will see how that goes.

Rebeca's Baptism

the baptism went well, and during her testimony after her baptism rebeca was totally crying and it was the most heartfelt testimony i have ever seen. she was so prepared, i feel like we didnt even have to teach her. 

yesterday at church we all went in anaco because the stake presidency came, and after lunch our mamita taught me how to put it on alone. its actually a very lengthy process, and it takes alot of practice, but im learning little by little.

 then after church we went to go see a couple that weve been teaching. hes less active and shes not a member. they got together pretty young and have two little girls. shes thinking about getting baptized but cant get baptized until they get married. they have some pretty strong marital problems, so we are working through that hurdle first. anyways, the family that they live with (i think the mom is the aunt of the husband of the couple...or something like that) are members who are pretty active but they attend the other ward, even though they are in our boundries (it happens alot in otavalo because there are so many chapels). in the middle of the lesson, the 4 elders of the other ward came to teach another non member that lives in the house...even though its in our sector. i wanted to hit all of them, but i resisted the urge and went on our way after our lesson. 90 percent of the manual labor in otavalo is people working in the flower planations up in the mountains. apparently almost all the flowers exported come from these huge plantations since its like perfect growing conditions here. anyways the family gave us a few of the "leftover" flowers that they get to take home after valentines day and i cannot express how perfect these flowers are. thats pretty much all the news for now, and were working on finding new investigators to get baptized in march, so we will see how that goes.

i also realized i have a slight shopping addiction here in otavalo (or...at least more so than before) so to justify my shopping i got super artsy this morning and took a bunch of pictures of all the things i have bought. 

HERMANA HARLOS