Hey, I'm back... (Week 16)

March 10, 2014

This is my first normal P-day in a looooooong time, it feels like.  It's at least my first normal one since getting to Cuenca.  My first week here we had to pack up our entire house and move to our new apartment in another part of the sector.  It was insane.  We literally didn't do anything else all day.  We were really lucky that there's a tienda right downstairs or we would have died of starvation.  (Oh yeah, here in Ecuador there are little stores everywhere.  They're literally just parts of people's houses and they'll sell a bunch of food and it's really great and convenient, I think they need them in the States.)  Then the next week was Carnaval, so our mission president decided that all of the missionaries would go straight home after church on Sunday and wouldn't be allowed to leave until Carnaval ended.  So we were in the house all Sunday afternoon and all of Monday and Tuesday, and for that reason I didn't write last week.

Anyways, onto the news from the last two weeks: two days after we moved houses, Pres. Torres stopped through Cuenca to give the same...capacitación (I'm not really sure how to translate it) that I heard in Santa Rosa two weeks before.  So as you can imagine, didn't take a whole lot of notes.  I got to have another interview with him though.  It seems to be a pattern that right when I really need to talk to someone about something, he's shown up twice now, so I hope that keeps occurring in the future haha. 

That Friday, the hermanas that we live with decided they would take part in the festivities and surprise attacked us as we got home.  They had bought this big can of foam spray that people had been selling everywhere for Carnaval and got home and waited in the dark for us.  I'll admit, they got us good.  It's okay though, because exactly a week later we got them back with a water gun that we had bought. 

The next day, we had a baptism--Hna. Camacho's last one on her mission.  Lourdes Zhizhpon (yes, that's her last name--people literally have the weirdest last names here and I can almost never understand them when they tell me) is such a special lady.  I really like her a lot.  The day before her baptism she was telling us how much her life has changed and how she's so much happier and that she's really grateful to us for helping her find the church.  Hna. Camacho was already teaching her with her previous companion when I got here, but I still felt really happy to know that I helped a little bit.  It was really exciting too, because her husband and all of her kids came to her baptism too.  It was a big deal that her husband went, because he'd always been really cold and opposed to all of this.  He kept saying beforehand that he wasn't going to go to her baptism, but in the end he did, and a bunch of us (including me) swear we saw him cry during the baptismal service.  Really huge.

This week was really strange with Carnaval.  We were basically under house arrest.  The custom here during Carnaval is to that the people will throw water at each other; whether they dump buckets or blast you with water guns or water balloons.  But since we're in Cuenca and it's cold here, it really sucks to have water thrown at you...trust me.  On Tuesday morning, Hna. Camacho left for Guayaquil, but we had to go to the (far) bus terminal at 4 in the morning--it was awful.  We ended up waking up at like 2:30 in the morning and found a taxi faster than we thought we would, so we got there at 3:40am.  No one else got there until about 45 minutes later.  It sucked.  A bunch of other people got cambios too, and my new companion was actually already in our zone.  It was actually really funny. 

Katie's new companion, Hermana Catmull

My new companion is Hermana Catmull from Gilbert, AZ--my first gringa companion.  When she first got to Cuenca about two months ago, she was with Hna. Murri (an hermana that came in the same group as me but from the Mexico MTC) in our barrio (ward), Alamos, for about a month.  Then she got cambios to Barrio Tarqui, which is literally the neighboring ward.  She literally moved like 5-10 minutes away and was still in our zone.  She was there for 3 weeks and then got put back in Alamos, but in the other sector with me (there are two sectors in Barrio Alamos).  It was funny when the other hermanas in Alamos woke up (we just have two companionships of hermanas in our ward, no elders) and Hna. Murri saw Hna. Catmull, she just yelled at her, "Why are you here?!" over and over again.  It was really funny.  But yeah, we ended up having a really last minute baptism on Saturday. 

When I first got to Cuenca, Hna. Camacho and I had gone to visit one of their investigators and he was super, super drunk.  So we told him not to drink and other things and came back the next day to see if he was better.  He wasn't.  We stopped by for 5 days in a row, and every time he was outrageously drunk.  It was really sad, because he's a lonely old man that lives alone in his room--not an apartment, he literally lives in a room.  After we passed by Sunday and he was still drinking, we stopped visiting him.  Exactly a week later, we saw him in the street before church and he was totally fine.  He actually hadn't drunk at all since the last time we'd seen him.  So we invited him to church, and he went!  Since he'd gone to church once before that, he had two attendances and could get baptized.  So we talked to him on Thursday, had his interview on Friday, got baptized on Saturday, and was confirmed on Sunday!  He's literally the cutest little old man.  We have an appointment with him tomorrow night to visit his daughter and his niece.

Cesar Mejia after his baptism (he's such a cute little old man)

I don't have enough time to talk about everything I want to, but I'm really glad to finally be able to write.  I can't send any pictures today since I forgot my SD card reader home, but next week for sure haha.  Take care everyone!

Love,

Hermana Iverson