Snowman in July!

Missionary snowman in Portillo

28 July 2014

Hola Familia!

I feel like Jenny Lee from "Call the Midwife" this week. I love the people and I am here to serve them, but there are moments when I am shocked by their circumstances. We did a service project for a member this week (which it sounds like you saw pictures of on Facebook). We cleaned her back patio. She is raising three kids in that house and doesn't have a husband present to help her. She can't go to school because her kids are all tiny. We went to her house last Pday because she offered to paint our nails. It was after we bought our groceries for two weeks and we realized that the money she gets from the government every month is half what we spent on groceries. She is feeding twice as many people for twice as long with half as much as we just spent. And I thought we had budgeted better than usual that trip.

After we cleaned her patio on Saturday, I washed her dishes with another Hermana. She doesn't even have a kitchen sink. We washed them in her bathroom sink. There is only cold water in that sink. The bathroom doesn't have a door. The shower doesn't have a curtain. That's where she washes dishes. And then we put them straight into the cupboard because there is no drying rack and no dish towel. She's 25 years old. This is her whole life.

Hermana Dodds and I didn't forget to celebrate the 24th. We bought sopaipillas on the street and my genius idea was to bring powdered sugar in a zip lock bag. I have never been so resourceful. (People eat them with ketchup here but we think it's a sweet food.) The lady we bought them from cooks them in a shed. We walked in and saw her stirring them in the pan with a stick... like from a tree. My immune system is going to be top notch when I get home. But it was the best 150 pesos (30 cents) I will ever spend.

Friday President Videla had a meeting with all of the leaders, which included trainers like my companion. So while the trainers were in Santiago, the trainees were left to manage the field. Hermana Scarr came and slept over. She entered the MTC four weeks before me but we arrived in the mission field the same day. She nominated me as the senior companion because I took Spanish classes before the mission and because we spent the day in my sector. 

Our biggest success of the day was finding the house where we ate lunch with the ward mission leader and his family. I had never been there before and didn't even have an address. We took public transportation (in Spanish) to a neighboring city and found the house with only the directions Hermana Dodds left, "It's by the plaza. It's a blue house. It kind of looks like a store from one side because it doesn't have windows." We arrived early. Are you impressed? I would like everyone to remember that I'm the girl who used a GPS to find UVU after living in Orem for 14 years. That's what you call "humble themselves before me and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them." 

Today we went to Portillo, a ski resort, with a group of ten Sister missionaries to play in the snow. Some of them had never seen snow in their lives before. We built a snow missionary and went "sledding" with some garbage bags.

Until next week,

Hermana Colorina

(That's what the ward mission leader calls me because he can't remember my name. Chileans call redheads colorinas)

 

Service with the members and sister missionaries

Bring your own powdered sugar sopaipillas                                         The Gourmandise of Chile!