Back in Santa Rosa

September 15, 2014

Welp, I had an interesting week as well.  First of all, no, I´m not in Guayaquil; just whenever we have cambios we always have to travel there before going to our new sector--even if it would just be much faster to just go straight there.  I had to pack up all of my stuff in about an hour and a half, two hours and then travel back to Guayaquil--for the third time that day.  By the time my companion (for a day) and I got there, we were so exhausted it wasn´t even funny.  We then had to somehow carry all of our luggage alone between the two of us because the asistentes weren´t there to pick us up.  We were dying, running all over the bus terminal with all of our stuff to find the place where the missionaries always go but couldn´t find because we got turned around where we got dropped off.  Then we couldn´t call them because our phone was beyond dead and we didn´t have a charger (we always borrowed from the other hermanas...kind of makes you think of the 5 foolish virgins who didn´t bring enough oil), and they showed up an hour after we got there.  I was literally falling asleep standing up.  It was awful.  Welp, we spent the night in the house of some hermanas there in Guayaquil, and the next morning we went back and found out where we were going: I was going back to Santa Rosa, while my companion was going to open a sector in Arenillas, a town about half an hour away from Santa Rosa that´s usually just had elders.  So now I´m in Santa Rosa, but in Rama (branch) 3, when before I was in Rama1.  I´m with Hermana Gutiérrez, who is from Honduras and was actually here in Rama 3 when I was in Rama 1.  She came back about a month ago.  She´s a really great missionary and I´m excited to be her companion.  Right now it´s still the cool season here, so I got here and was shocked that it could actually be cool here.  About an hour ago it was actually kind of raining.  I´m wearing a sweater today.  It´s super weird.  And then there are days like yesterday where the sun was absolutely burning us at 8 o´clock in the morning.  That´s what you get.  But I guess next month it´s supposed to start getting really hot again, so we´ll see how that goes...

My foot´s doing alright...the week before last my ankle would just hurt if I walked too much, but it wasn´t like unbearable.  More just that it was a little annoying.  But after I got to Santa Rosa, it started to get swollen--like REALLY swollen.  I think it´s because it´s hotter here.  But now it doesn´t get so bad.  I went to a doctor on Friday and he took an x-ray and said that the fracture is almost completely healed back to normal, that the bone didn´t heal funny.  So that was a relief.  It still kind of hurts to walk for a while, but I´m supposed to be resting for an hour in the afternoon every day, so it works out.

Hermana Iverson 

A quick note...

September 8, 2014

hey mom I can´t write you right now we´ve literally had cambios all day like i´ve gone to guayaquil and back to cuenca and I have to pack all my stuff and go back to guayaquil I´m gonna try and get permission to write tomorrow im sorry love you talk to you soon

katie

The cast is off

September 1, 2014

The cast is off!

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 Well the biggest news is that I no longer have my cast!!!  Because we wrote so late last week, we showed up like 20 minutes late for the appointment, and sat there waiting to be let in for almost an hour, so it was probably about 7pm when he finally did take it off.  I have a couple videos that my companion filmed with my camera of him sawing it off, but I think the file is too big for me to send.  Phooey.  But yeah, after it was off, I couldn´t walk on it because it hurt to put pressure on it, so for a couple days he told me I´d have to use one crutch since it´s still healing and I wouldn´t be able to put pressure on it without it hurting like crazy.  By now I can walk without it pretty easily, but I still have a slight limp since I can´t put a whole lot of pressure on it still.  Sometimes I can even go up the stairs like a normal person, not going up one step at a time.  It´s really exciting.  

Well, not too much else happened this week until this weekend.  On Saturday, there was a ward activity that ended up being really good.  They had some grills going and music playing and people were playing soccer and basketball in the court.  They had some really good music; my companion and I were dying because we just wanted to sing and dance along.  Our investigator Eddy almost immediately on his arrival started helping out with the grilling, and ended up helping out the entire time.  His eyes hurt really badly from all the smoke, pobrecito.  That night was his baptism!!  He was really excited for it.  It all went really well.  The next day at church we had a scare because he was late (only by 5-10 minutes, but he HAD to be there for his confirmation), but with a lot of faith, prayer, and phone calls, he showed up and we sat down just in time for the opening prayer.  He got confirmed without any problems.

Yesterday afternoon my companion went to Guayaquil with the other hermana leader to go to consejo, so guess who´s 24-hour companions with Hermana Whitmore again?  Meeeeeee!! :D  We´ve been having a lot of fun.  Today we found some really really really cute artesania and I finally managed to successfully barter some stuff down (the guy was being ridiculous but he finally caved when we said we could find it somewhere else and started walking out--hehehe).  It´s been a good day.

I can´t believe that Raquel is going home so soon!  It feels like a million years since I´ve seen her.  She only writes me in Spanish whenever we do remember to write each other, and she uses a lot of Chilean slang that I don´t understand haha.  Soy ecuatoriana pues.  When you see her give her a big hug from me.  The time goes by so fast: I already have 9 months--that´s half my mission done.  It´s so strange.

I love you and everyone else in the family.  Yeah, it´s been difficult around here for a while, but this week in one of our zone meetings they talked about humility and I decided I needed to be more humble and accepting of the plan that God has for me.  I´m working on not murmuring so much--I want to be like Nephi, not like Laman and Lemuel.  It´s a process, but it helps. 

Love you all!  Besos y abrazos,

Hermana Iverson

The cast comes off today!!!!

August 25, 2014

found a red trombone today!! :D

The cast comes off today!!!!  At 5:30, in roughly an hour and a half.  I´ve been counting down the hours since Saturday (Saturday I hit one month with the cast).  Speaking of that though, I had an interesting afternoon on Friday.  We had just come back from our appointment with our investigator when the enfermeras called to ask where we were, if we were going to leave, and then what our exact address was.  Very mysterious.  Later the other hermanas we live with got home, and the enfermeras called them, and told them that basically President Torres was in Cuenca.  Our mission president had come from Guayaquil on his p-day--no one´s even allowed to call him on that day, unless you´re literally dying.  Right after, the zone leaders called to tell us that not only was he here, but he was coming to our house, so we had to clean up right now!  We started cleaning like madwomen.  We waited for more than an hour in our now immacculate house, when finally he came with the enfermeras.  He just came right in and talked to me alone with the enfermeras about my foot.  He said that he wants me to take calcium pills with vitamin d, and that I have to eat better and be really careful to not jump or do anything drastic with my foot after the cast comes off.  He was probably only there for 20 minutes, and then off he went.  It was so strange.  But kind of cool.  It´s nice having a doctor for your mission president.

Yesterday we almost had a heart attack, because our investigator, who needed to come that third time to be baptized this Saturday, didn´t show up to church!  We waited and waited, and finally after the first two hours ended and we called for the 100th time, he answered!  He raced down and was able to attend the sacrament meeting of the other ward, in Totoracocha (where I was before).  We went in with him, and since just that week they had taken out both of the hermanas there and no one there knew yet, everyone thought that we were the sister missionaries there now and that I´d come back!  It was kind of funny.  But yeah, really scary, but don´t worry folks; he´s getting baptized this week!

Well, I have to wrap up, we need to finish early to go to my appointment.  I love you all, and I really am happy that you all have had fun.  Last week it stopped bothering me to read about your trip, so don´t worry about it.  

Love you! 

Hermana Iverson

Another week in Cuenca

August 18, 2014

So this week was a little easier walking with the heel.  It still hurts a little bit, but about halfway through the week I just kind of stopped bringing my crutch around and now I´ll just walk by myself.  I think I probably should have brought my crutch with me today since we walked around a lot more than I thought we would, but I think I´ll be okay in the end.  I´m really excited because this week will be a month with the cast, so by next Monday I should be cast-free!!!!  I´m so excited to get it taken off.  *knock on wood*

Wednesday night we got a surprise: Hermana Adams got cambios!  We thought we´d be together until I got my cast off, but nope.  She just went to the other zone in Cuenca, to the Tarqui Ward.  This is funny because we literally share a border with Tarqui, so she barely went very far at all.  It was a trade-off: she went to Tarqui, and one of the hermanas from Tarqui came here.  My new companion is Hermana Espíritu.  That´s right, her name is literally Sister Spirit.  She´s from Peru and has 16 months in the mission.  She´s really fantastic and I´m glad to be companions with her.  I´ve heard about her a lot, since she was in Alamos for 6 months and I got there two months after she left.  She´s probably the oldest sister in the mission, at 30 years old, but she´s only been a member for 3 years.  She´s super nice and understanding, so that´s great, especially with the whole cast/being ridiculously sick this whole weekend situation.  

Oh yeah, so I started to get sick the day that Hermana Adams left (she had been sick for a week), and within two days I got really bad.  I had a really bad cough with headaches and a runny nose and everything hurt--the whole package.  By Sunday, it got so bad that I just slept all afternoon but still felt really bad.  Today I´m a little bit better, but my head still kind of hurts, and my nose is still runny, and I still have a cough--but I don´t cough that frequently now!  I´ve kind of just accepted now that if something can happen, it will.

Welp, that´s pretty much all that happened this week.  I´m trying not to be so down, but it gets really tiring to hear everybody tell you to be positive about the situation. But I´m doing the absolute best that I can.  Been praying and reading the scriptures a lot, that´s for sure.

Well, I´ll talk to you later.  Love you all!

Love,
Hermana Iverson

p.s. Almost forgot!  Saturday night there was going to be a baptism at the chapel, but there wasn´t water (don´t ask, I´m not sure) so we had to go to the stake center, which is in Tarqui.  A little girl in our ward was going to be baptized, and we had taught her a few lessons and were close to her family (her aunt and her uncle are two strong families in the ward).  Hna. Adams was so sad to miss it, but then we ended up seeing her there!  She was so excited.

well this week was una vaina

August 11, 2014

Me being super frustrated and angry after having the heel put on

wooooo got to go in the cart again

So the only really exciting thing that happened this week was that the tacón (heel) got put onto my cast!  It was really annoying, because we were supposed to have had it done on Wednesday, and the enfermeras even called us to tell us that the hospital said that the doctor was there in the morning and that everything was fine, but then after going all the way over there (the hospital is in the other zone) we sat and waited for a loooooong time before a nurse came out and finally told us that the doctor we were waiting to see wasn´t even there!  He was working in a different hospital that morning and wouldn´t be there until the afternoon.  So she gave the enfermeras his number to call him and make an appointment, but they were being kind of flojas about calling and getting in to see him that day, so we had to wait until Thursday.  It was especially annoying because we spent almost $5 in taxis for nothing.  They got us an appointment Thursday night with him, at like 6:30pm.  So we go to his office, which is in a building right across the street from the hospital, and we have to pay $25 for the consultation fee.  We walk into his office, and he says "Well, we were going to put a heel on it, right?  You can go the the clinica across the street to go buy it.  Here´s a little paper with what you need."  Lame.  So we go across the street to buy the stuff.  He made us buy not only the heel, which wouldn´t have been that expensive, but also the special bandage stuff to put it on AND his gloves, all of which added up to another $25.  The man is a doctor and he doesn´t have his own gloves there in his office?  Grrr.  So we go back, and he starts putting the heel onto my cast.  Now it wasn´t a normal, functional, logical contraption.  It wasn´t like a boot, or even a shoe-sole kind of thing that would cover the whole bottom of my foot.  It was a giant 2"x3"x1.5" rubber block, uncomfortably placed far back towards my heel.  It´s got to be one of the stupidest looking things I´ve ever seen.  The doctor told me that I still have to use one crutch on my other side to walk.  It´s like, what is even the point of having this thing?  My companion, Hermana Adams, was literally sitting there watching the whole time with the funniest look on her face, of total shock and disbelief, like "What the heck is going on?!  What is he doing?!?"  She even asked him where he studied hahaha (luckily latinos tend to not notice sarcasm a lot).  I was so mad.  As we were leaving his office, we were both half yelling about how dumb this thing was.  When we got home, all of the hermanas were already home, since the hermanas in Azogues always get home early and the other hermanas have had to stay inside too since one of them is sick.  Two of the hermanas left to get pizza, and I sat in bed yelling with my companion at the ones that were still there about how ridiculous my stupid heel was and how I wanted to rip it off.  I just wanted to sit and scream, I was so frustrated.  I´ve just been using both crutches since then, because it hurts me to just use the one and walk on the heel.  My foot hadn´t been hurting at all, and then he put that on and it hurts every time I walk on it.  I´m hoping when my mission president sees the photos we sent him he´ll let me take it off.  We´ll see.

Other than that...not really anything else happened this week.  We´ve just been hanging out, leaving for an hour every day.  I´ve written a lot of letters.  Oh, that reminds me, I got another card from the Poelmans!  It was from Miho.  I thought it was funny that I´ve gotten more mail from them than I do from my own family.

Yup, that´s my life right now.  Kind of really frustrating.  Every time something happens and I get sad or upset or frustrated about it, by the time I finally accept it and am okay with it and am handling things with a better attitude, something even worse happens.  I´m not a fan of this cycle.  Pero solo hay que seguir adelante.  No puedo perderme la fe, o realmente me volveré loca.

Love,

Hermana Iverson

this week was really boring, but I still wrote a lot about it...yup

August 4, 2014

To answer your questions, I didn´t exactly break my foot so much as fracture it.  It´s actually a tiny little fracture, but I ended up with the big whole cast.  Kind of annoying.  We were going crazy being inside this week, because the nurses kept giving us weird excuses from the mission president as to why we couldn´t go outside, stuff like that he was afraid that my cast would break if I walked on it.  ...but I don´t walk on it, because I have my crutches.  I have crutches so that I don´t walk on it.  And either way, the fact that it would break is just ridiculous.  We were getting frustrated, so finally on Wednesday afternoon (a week after I fell) I called my mission president to see what was really going on.  I was kind of terrified, but I knew that he wouldn´t get mad at me because he is practically charity personified and would just answer my questions, but I was still scared to call.  But I did it!  It was kind of funny because at first I got nervous and just asked him why exactly I couldn´t go outside, and he was just like, "Well...you have a cast, right?" Well you´ve got a good point there, but still.  But after we talked for a few minutes, he told me that if I really wanted to and if I thought I could handle it, we could leave for an hour that day to see how it went.  So we went out for an hour, not really sure who to talk to since we lost our only progressing investigators the week before.  We ended up finding this one guy and after talking to him for a little bit, he accepted a date for baptism!  We were so happy when we got home.  It was exactly what we needed.  Ever since then, the nurses have been letting us go out for an hour every day.  Victory is mine.  We even got to go to all of church yesterday, so everyone in Totoracocha (where I was 2.5 months ago) saw me in my cast with my crutches.  I should have counted how many times I told people "¡Me caí!" upon them asking what happened.  My convert Yinson saw me and was freaking out.  It was kind of funny.  My favorite reaction though was from one sister who we had visited in her house.  When I was there, she was recovering from a torn tendon or something and couldn´t leave her house very often, and after a while only left to go to church in crutches.  Now she walks around totally fine without any help, but when she saw me in my crutches and my cast, she just started laughing because it was so funny how we had just switched spots.  That was entertaining.

Since this is the first Monday of the month, my companion (being the hermana leader) went to Guayaquil with the other hermana leader and the zone leaders for consejo with presidente, so I´ve been with the other hermana leader´s companion: Hermana Whitmore!!  I´ve been really excited to be 24-hour companions with her.  She´s my best buddy here in the mish.  Today we made oreo balls and bought stuff to make s´mores, and Hna. Whitmore made fresh orange juice because as we were leaving the house today there was this truck outside our house selling 25 oranges for $1!!!!  We couldn´t pass it up.  

My foot is doing fine and doesn´t hurt me at all (I´m not even taking medicine because it´s not necessary) so don´t worry about me.  I´m getting a heel/boot thing put on my cast on Wednesday so that I can walk on it!  Just two more days with crutches!!!  Yessssss.

But yeah, nothing else really going on right now.  Love you lots and hope you´re all doing well. 

Love you and talk to you next week,

Hermana Iverson

p.s. we went grocery shopping today and they gave me a motorized cart to use and it was awesome--but it would beep as it would go in reverse so I did everything I could to not have to go backwards