So I kind of fell...

July 28, 2014

Soooooo...this week was definitely more interesting than the cows.  It started out with Hermana Whitmore and her new companion coming last Monday to be the first hermanas in Azogues, the city about an hour north of us that´s in our zone.  They´ve been living with us since they still don´t have a house, but I don´t mind.  Hermana Whitmore and I are bffs from when we lived together for two months in Santa Rosa.  She can stay as loooooong as she wants.  But yeah, the week was pretty normal until Wednesday rolled around...

It all started after lunch.  We had gone to Santa María del Vergel, the far end of our sector up in the hills.  We had gone off of the main paved road onto a dirt road to go visit a less active family that lived there.  I´ve probably walked down this dirt road at least a dozen times in the two weeks I had been here, and it barely slopes downhill at all.  It was not steep at all.  But here I am, walking as usual, when my foot suddenly twists weirdly underneath me and I instantly fall to the ground.  I literally just laid there for several seconds just wondering how I even fell.  There was literally nothing there.  But I scraped my left knee pretty badly, and my right foot, that I had fallen on, really really hurt.  So we limped the 40-50 yards or so to this member´s house to clean up my knee.  After that when I realized that it hurt way too much to walk, we called the nurses and they told me to elevate my foot and ice it for 20 minutes.  So we went inside the house, and the abuelita brings me some frozen peas and goes to get the abuelito.  The abuelito walks into the room where I´m lying on the couch, and suddenly he thinks he´s an experienced doctor that knows exactly what he´s doing.  He started feeling up my foot, asking where it hurt, and when I nearly screamed as he pressed where it hurt the most, he just kept massaging that exact spot, saying it was necessary.  So I´m lying on the couch, dying, yelping in pain, and my companion was just like, "Uh, hermano, maybe we shouldn´t do that...maybe you could just leave it be..." but he kept at it.  His accent is so thick that no one can understand him, but the abuelita explained to us that he thought these two bones in my foot were dislocated, and that if we pushed them back into place, it would stop hurting.  We were almost completely positive that was not the correct solution, but he was convinced that that was what it was.  Then all of a sudden he started getting ready to "push them back in" and we started to freak out.  Hermana Adams got up and was trying to stop him, saying "Hermano I really think that we shouldn´t do this...we´re just gonna go to a hospital and have a doctor look at this hermano please STOP."  Between her and the abuelita, they convinced him to call a taxi and to just let it be, but then he just pressed the ice onto my foot and it hurt really bad.  Although I was in a ton of pain, it was actually extremely funny the whole situation.

We got a taxi back to the house (the taxi driver spoke perfect English, which really threw us off at first, but it was super cool and we talked to him about the gospel and it was super spiritual and neat), and then from there the nurses told us to go the emergency room.  We went, and they took some X-rays and lo and behold: I had fractured a bone in my foot.  The solution?  They put my foot in a cast.  After that, we had to wait two hours to leave the hospital because the mission was having trouble paying since I had come back so recently that they still hadn´t put me back on the insurance yet, but we eventually left at 9 o´clock at night.  The next morning the nurses dropped off some crutches, and we´ve just been staying in the house ever since.  I´ve only had permission from the mission president to go to the first hour of church yesterday, and today I could only leave to write.  It´s been rough.  We´re pretty sure we´re going to die from being inside for so long.  My companion has washed every piece of clothing she owns, it seems.  Worse, today there are cambios, so we´ll see if we stay here or not.  I think we might, since I can´t really go anywhere or carry two giant suitcases, but who knows.  I really don´t want to leave, and I really want to go out and work.  It´s been hard.

The worst part of all of this?  While we were in the hospital on Wednesday, the family that we´ve been teaching, this single mom with her two kids, texted us saying that they no longer wanted to listen to us and were going to stay with their religion.  Her son was going to get baptized this past Saturday, three days after.  She and the daughter were going to get baptized in a few weeks.  The next night, Hermana Adams went with Hermana Whitmore and the zone leaders to go talk to them, and I guess the mom´s parents called and said some really really bad things about the church and since she was afraid of her parents (a grown woman who takes care of her own family), she just decided she didn´t want to know more.  We had been teaching them for a month, before I even got there.  The son who was getting baptized was crying, this 14-year-old kid, because he really wanted to be baptized.  It was awful.  She knows this is the truth too, but nope.  It was really upsetting.  So now we have no investigators, which is actually kind of a good thing because we couldn´t visit them if we had them anyway.  Yupppp.

I don´t want you to worry about me, I´m doing fine.  My foot actually doesn´t hurt me at all, and personally I think Presidente is overreacting just a teeeeeeny bit.  But gotta be obedient, no matter how frustrating and upsetting it is.  But don´t worry about me, I´m going to be fine.  I´ll only have a cast for a month, two weeks with crutches and two weeks with a...heel thing that I can walk with (I don´t know how to translate with the doctor said).  I´ve gotten pretty good at walking with crutches, so I should be fine.  

I love you all and think about you even more than usual (since I literally have nothing else to do this whole week).  Take care,

Love,

Hermana Iverson

Chútica I forgot how cold it gets here

July 21, 2014

So this week wasn´t as exciting as last week...but it had its moments.  Mostly this week was spent trying to find people and them not being home.  That are continually having people tell us they weren´t interested when the Spirit in the room was so strong you could have cut it with a knife.  Like after one lesson with very nice, very faithful woman who was very not interested in the Church even after that very spiritual lesson, I said to my companion: "I´m really tired of watching people deny the Spirit."  Pero la plena, that´s been happening all week.  I had that challenge to talk to 100 people a day, and even though I never even got anywhere close to that number (10 was our record), we were still really working hard to put ourselves out there and try and talk to as many people as we could.  We were teaching people all the time, but none of them have progressed.  It´s been really frustrating, especially when the only people we do find that are interested in listening to us don´t live in our sector.  Our sector is huge, but how it works is that the people we find either don´t live here or are barely home if they do live here.  Yup.  

But other than that, I like my sector.  It´s really pretty here in Cuenca, and it´s neat because we have part of the city center in our sector.  Do you remember when I took a picture in front of that cathedral and sent a picture way back in April?  That was the Cathedral San Blas, and that is now in my sector.  Pretty cool.

Katie & Hermana Adams trying to stay warm

I really don´t know what else to talk about.  Nothing else overly interesting happened this week, just little funny things here and there.  Like how on Wednesday we were at a less active member´s house, and we were sitting in a room right off the main gate, and in the middle of the lesson as I happened to look outside the door (I was sitting closest to it) at their mini-yard in front of the gate, there were suddenly a bunch of cows passing right through the gate toward the back of the house.  It was so unexpected that it scared me, and I jumped about half a foot in the air, and I might have even yelled, I don´t remember very well.  I just remember it scared me so badly hahaha.  I scared my companion and everyone else in the room and everyone burst out laughing at my reaction as four cows were ushered by the abuelita to the back of the property.  By the time we finally all calmed down and the cows were gone, exactly at that moment there was a loud mooing right outside the door, and it scared me even worse this time.  I remember, that time I did scream, and made my companion scream because I had screamed.  As we broke out laughing even harder, the member mentioned that there were in fact five cows.  Kind of figured that out the hard way haha.

Katie's Zone

Any other stories...welp on Saturday we tried carrying a box of copies of the Book of Mormon from our zone meeting to our house (the chapel was like a less than 10-minute walk away), and Hermana Adams, my companion, was carrying it.  It was really heavy, so we tried sharing it by balancing it using her jacket as a hammock thing, but it wasn´t working.  I put down my end to try and balance it, but she ended up with most of the weight, and since she didn´t have it balanced either, she dropped the (heavy) box right on my big toe.  Needless to say, after laughing for several minutes, she continued carrying it as I limped the whole way home.  It got better and stopped hurting though, so don´t worry.

But yeah, nothing else to report.  I miss you all and I hope you´re all doing well.  I can´t believe it´s already been almost two weeks since I left.  Feels like I just got here.  Time goes by so fast here in the mission.  I´m so so so so so happy to be back though.  I didn´t realize how much I truly missed it.  This is where I feel I belong.  

Love you all,

Hermana Iverson

p.s. Oh!  Almost forgot.  We went and picked up two hermanas from the bus terminal this afternoon.  They´re going to put hermanas in Azogues, the town about an hour north of us.  There have only been elders there, so that´s exciting!  Even better is that one of them is Hermana Whitmore, whom I lived with in Santa Rosa for two months and we be tight.  Love that girl. :)

Saw this in el centro today--I really love English mistakes here hahaha.  But really my companion and I were laughing so hard when we saw this haha.

No place like Ecuador (Week 27)

July 15, 2014

Katie back in Ecuador!

First things first: I made it back to Ecuador!!!!  I literally got in to Guayaquil at like 10:30 at night or something, I don´t really remember.  I did end up having to move to a different plane in Dallas, so I had three flights (as usual) to get there.  While I was in Miami, I met a new elder who was going to my mission!  He´s from Utah but was only going to be in the mtc for 2 weeks but had issues with visas so he had to stay longer, thus he was coming with me.  We ended up flying together to Guayaquil, and now he´s in my zone up in Azogues.  He´s a funny kid.

Katie's new companion, Hermana Adams

The next day, I met my new companion in the bus terminal.  Her name is Hermana Adams and she´s from Colorado as well (nope, still not Nathan´s mission).  When I met her was when I found out that I was going...back to Cuenca!!!  I´m now in the Tomebamba ward, which is literally the neighboring ward to the Totoracocha branch, which was my last area.  Like we literally share the same chapel.

I found it actually wasn´t too hard to jump back into missionary work--it was kinda like riding a bike.  I had no problems with the language, but getting used to teaching again was a little awkward at first.  I like to think I´m getting better.

Ingapirca

Now, for the reason I didn´t write yesterday...we found out this weekend that Presidente Torres was going to be comingon Monday to give us a training meeting (I don´t know if that´s what you call it in English, I´m translating from capacitación).  We were pretty bummed at first, like come on, on P-day?  But we went and it was super great as always, but then we finished like super early, like before lunch.  Then Presidente told us that we were going to go see Ingapirca, some Incan ruins that were a little farther north than Azogues!  Our zone leaders had told us to bring tennis shoes, and now we finally knew why.  It was super neat!  It was also freezing.  Like the wind would blow so hard I thought we were going to die, but I really really enjoyed myself.  When we got back to our sector, we just had time to print our emails.  

This morning, we had interviews with Presidente, and he challenged me to talk to 100 people a day for a week, so I guess I´ll tell you next week how that goes.  I´m still not sure if we even see 100 people a day, but hey, I can try!

I know that this time will go by fast, so I have to make the most of it now.  I´m literally so happy to be back.  I was grinning from ear to ear and even almost teared up when the plane touched down in Guayaquil.  It felt like coming home.

Talk to you later!  Les amo muchísimo!

Love,

Hermana Iverson

Coming Home :(

May 22, 2014 to July 8, 2014

Katie on her way home after a very long flight from Ecuador

As many of you now know, Katie came home on May 22nd.  She has had a recurring problem that needed medical attention (minor--don't worry).  It is church policy that missionaries serving in foreign countries be sent home to attend to their medical needs.  We are so grateful for that!  We were called on Wednesday afternoon, and picked up Katie at the airport on Thursday.  She didn't have much more notice than that either.

At first, she was really reluctant to share that she was home.  As you can imagine, this was a disappointment and a bit of a difficult transition to make.  She was a trooper though and we were really fortunate to get quick appointments with a superb doctor.  Her recovery was swift and nearly painless.  We feel so incredibly blessed.

While she was home she had some incredible opportunities.  She attended Lauren's graduation, her Aunt Laurie's wedding, and her cousin Becky's college graduation.  She helped Lauren register for college, celebrated Lauren's & Mom's birthdays, and visited with lots of family and friends.  For such a short window of time, a lot of people were seen.

Lauren's graduation

Dinner with the whole family, celebrating Mom & Dad's 25th anniversary

Katie cheering for Ecuador during the World Cup

Becky's graduation

She happily went back to her mission in Ecuador on Tuesday, July 8th.  Again, we feel blessed.  Often missionaries are reassigned stateside to complete their missions.  Not only is she returned to her original mission, but she will finish her remaining time.  This was a pause, not a loss, in her service.

Before she left, she remarked on how fortunate she has been in her life to have such wonderful friends.  She is mindful of your support and unconditional love and acceptance.  She treasures her friends and the strength you all give her to achieve difficult tasks.

Thank you for being there for my girl.

Leaving for Ecuador (again!)

Anita Iverson (Katie's Mom)

Short and Sweet? (Week 26)

May 19, 2014

Well, this has definitely been an interesting week.  On Tuesday night, Hermana Carollo got the phone call--cambios.  She left Wednesday morning.  My new companion came in the afternoon.  Her name is Hermana Castro and she´s from Honduras.  I had actually met her at the beginning of my mission in Santa Rosa (in her 15 months in the mission she´s spent collectively 12 of those months in Rama 3 in Santa Rosa--like she´ll get cambios somewhere for a couple weeks or a month or something and then she´ll get sent right back to Santa Rosa).  But yeah, she actually has about 15 months in the mission (I think she started the week before my cousin did) and she´s a really good missionary.  We´re already having more success in the area since she got here.

Also, I got my family´s package on Saturday!!  I got it exactly a month after they sent it--I think that´s a record.  I was so excited to open it that I was trying to use the house keys to cut it open on the taxi ride home from the zone meeting haha.  I was very very happy.  I´m wearing a pair of my new socks right now. 

Welp, this weekend I got sick...today is the third day I´ve been sick.  I really hate being sick in the mission.  It is not fun.  I finally started feeling well enough to leave at around 3pm today so we could go write and I feel mostly okay.  My stomach just still kind of hurts.

I think this is all my news for the week.  Keep it real folks,

Love,

Hermana Iverson

Happy Post-Mother´s Day! (Week 25)

May 12, 2014

Wow, I´ve had quite the busy day.  Today we went to the Feria Libre (which was in my old sector, Álamos; got some serious deja vu going back) for an hour and bought some stuff we needed/wanted (I got a grandma sweater, I am very happy--will send photos soon), raced back to buy groceries and whatever we needed, then went to a member´s house so she could dye my bangs.  I´ve been wanting to dye my bangs a lighter color for a couple weeks, and so she bleached it for me and put on the color.  It was starting to look a little too light so she added just the teeniest tiniest bit of dark color to balance it out, and it darkened it almost back to what it was before.  But you can tell it is lighter now, so that´s cool.  We´ll see if I´ll dye it lighter or not.  Right after we did that, we had to race to a cyber to write.  My companion wrote for an hour, and just as I started to get onto mine, the power went out.  That was at 4:45pm.  We had to race to find another cyber so I could write.  We cut it close, but here I am!  Super stressful.  Oh and we´re starving because we haven´t eaten all day, but oh well.  We´ll get around to it.

I was so happy to be able to skype my family yesterday!!  My mom looked so pretty.  I´m pretty sure her hair has gotten a lot longer.  Lauren´s hair is about a million feet long, I love it.  I have the most attractive family.  We´re all such beautiful people.

OH MY GOSH THERE IS THE BIGGEST SPIDER ON THE GROUND RIGHT NOW IT IS SO HUGE OH MY GOSH IT CHARGED US WE´RE GOING TO DIE IN THIS CYBER OH MY GOSH IT´S ABOUT TO CRAWL ON THIS GUY´S FOOT DO I WARN HIM HOLY COW AHHHHHHHHH IT´S ON HIS FOOT MY COMPANION AND I ARE DYING AHHHHHHHHH I DON´T KNOW WHERE IT WENT THIS IS SO NERVE-WRACKING PRETTY SURE I MIGHT START HYPERVENTILATING

Um anyways so now I´m writing with my feet raised above the ground, I´m not risking anything.  But uh yeah so uh this week what happened this week I´m too scared to think.  Yeah, so on Wednesday we did intercambios with the hermana leaders.  Don´t know how to translate that, but basically my companion went to their sector and one of them came with me to our sector.  We were in intercambios for 24 hours--the first time I´ve done exchanges for so long (oh yeah, that´s the word).  It was interesting...but I kind of missed my companion by the end of it.  We´re back now, so everything´s fine.

Friday we didn´t have lunch so we cooked in the house!  That was pretty cool.  I kind of just made it up and bought the ingredients and it turned out pretty good!  I made a pasta with tomatoes, carrots, and onions (as well as mayonnaise--everything is better with mayonnaise), and my companion made chifles and deviled eggs.  It was super delicious.

What a feast!  Deviled eggs, pasta salad & chifles (fried plantains)

Also, this whole week I´ve been making smores.  I´ve been super duper happy.  I bought more stuff to make smores today...don´t judge

My converso Yinson gave me and my companion bracelets!  He made them with our names.  He had some trouble making the V on mine haha.  Last night he called us because it was raining really hard and he was worried about us haha.  He´s a good guy.

Yup, so it´s just been raining a lot around here.  It´s kind of cold, but I´m doing alright.  I´m really happy here and I´m so glad to be on a mission.  I love you all, and I´ll write y´all next week!

Hermana Iverson

Happy (Almost) Mother´s Day! (Week 24)

May 5, 2014

So this week was both exciting and not that exciting at the same time.  It was exciting because we finally moved into our new house!  This is now the second time I´ve had to change houses.  I hope this isn´t a pattern in my mission.  But yeah, it´s just me and my companion living by ourselves there, and it´s really nice!  The owners have a wood manufacturing company like right next door, so there´s really really nice wood everywhere.  It´s a really pretty apartment.  I´ll send pictures.

The not exciting part is that not much of anything else happened.  We´re still trying to look for new investigators, so there´s a lot of walking--which sucks because our sector is like all hills.  Getting quite the workout here.  Also the weather has been awful--lots of rain.  On Friday, it was starting to sprinkle as we went to visit the branch president´s house.  Within minutes of getting there, it started to rain harder and harder until it was a torrential downpour with winds and everything, a little unusual for here.  The kids in the house tried to go grab some towels or something that had been hung out to dry and accidentally lost their umbrella.  It had gotten caught by the wind and had flown away!  Since my companion and I had our rain coats we offered to retrieve it.  It had gotten caught on a stop sign at the end of the street, a good 50 yards away!  We got soaked trying to get it, but it was quite the adventure.

Not really much else happened this week I think, but then again, I left my notebook with my list of things to write about in the house, soooo....oh well.  I´m really excited for Mother´s Day to talk to my family!  It feels like I just Skyped them last month or something.  I can´t believe it´s almost been five months since then already.  Wow.  Imagíne, next Mother´s Day I´ll be home.  Nope gonna stop right there, too weird ha ha.  Anyways, love you all, and talk to you soon!

Love, 

Hermana Iverson

PS Oh and I made s'mores today :D  They were quite delicious.