It´s been an interesting week. Also there´s going to be some gross stories in here, so... you´ve been warned.
Before I forget, yes, I think I will be skyping you on Christmas, not sure what time yet though.
On Tuesday we had divisions with the zone leaders. I was kinda nervous, mainly because I didn´t know what to expect. It went pretty well though. I was with Elder Allen. He looks really familiar to me and I think it´s because of baseball. He played superleague but didn´t play in high school (he went to Bountiful) because he messed up his shoulder and couldn´t throw anymore. But I must have played against him before because he looks really familiar to me. I forgot to ask him what superleague team he played for though. Anyway, we stayed at their place that night and then in the morning we went with them to zone conference. We learned a lot of things there...or at least I tried to learn a lot of things, sometimes it´s hard to understand. But they gave us a new guide for teaching the restoration by mentioning baptism throughout the lesson in order to lead up to the baptimal invitation. We´ve used this new guide in our practices and lessons this week and we like it a lot. We got 2 more fechas with it. Our mission is really pushing for baptisms this month as I think you know. Each companionship is trying to get ¨Cuatro for Cristo¨. And I think for the whole mission we´re shooting for over a hundred baptisms. If we can find a way to get our investigators to church then I think we can get 4 this month, but that is proving to be difficult haha.
Anyway after they taught us this they took us to this pretty cheto restaurant for lunch. (Cheto means like fancy or expensive I think, not really sure but people say it a lot) The food was pretty good, but if I´m being honest I probably would´ve prefered going to the Wendy´s that I saw there. Also they gave us both Pepsi and Coke, which is the first time I´ve ever seen Pepsi down here. The pepsi was pretty good but I don´t think it can beat Coke. Mom is probably going to disown me for saying that. Also they gave us some of the best ice cream I´ve ever had. Luckily I sat next to the Hermanas and so when they all didn´t finish their ice cream they gave it to me. On our way back from zone conference we had an experience that I´m definitely never going to forget, but I´ll save that for the end.
On thursday, our p day, I got sick. My stomach hurt all day and so after we did the stuff we needed to, like go shopping, I just layed in bed most of the day. I knew I was going to throw up, I was just waiting for it. Finally at about 3, I threw up. I felt a little better afterwards, so at 5 when P day ends I got dressed to go out. But I got super sick again and felt like I was going to pass out so we decided to stay in for the day. It was pretty rough, I didn´t have anything left in my stomach so I was dry heaving for the rest of the night. Well that night my comp started to feel sick too, and he felt really bad the next day as well so we didn´t get much done on friday either. Luckily we´ve all recovered now.
So yesterday we went to visit a reference that the bishop gave us. It was an inactive member named Cristian and his girlfriend and little kid. His girlfriend isn´t a member. So we had been talking with them for quite a while, not entirely sure what about to be honest, when I started to hear this weird noise. I quickly realized it was coming from the little kid on the mom´s lap. There was no mistaking that sound. That kid had just messed his pants, and it was definitely diarrhea. Well the mom reprositions the kid onto her shoulder and then grabs for the towel that was on the table. I´m like, oh no it must have gotten on her, but she just sets the towel on her lap and we continue on our conversation like nothing happened. Then the smell hits me. It was terrible haha. I´m trying my best to keep a straight face at this point, my comp is doing all the talking. Finally, after quite a while she decides to do something about it. She starts ripping off paper towels, and I´m thinking, is she gonna clean the kid right here in front of us? But no, she was cleaning herself. It had apparently ran right through that kids diaper and all over the mom. It was on her shorts and had run down her legs. She uses the paper towels to wipe herself off. Keep in mind that she doesn´t stop talking during all of this. Like we´re still having a normal conversation while she´s casually cleaning herself off. After she wipes it all up she finally takes the kid into another room and cleans him up. After all this we finally start lesson 1. During the lesson she breast fed the kid several times, but that is normal really, it happens during a lot of our lessons. Anyway, despite all this is was actually a good lesson and she was really open to what we were saying, and we now have a date set for her in January(because they still have to get married, which takes a long time.)
Alright, to get back to what happened Wednesday after zone conference. To be honest, some people might not want to read this. We were on the train that was headed to Lobos with 6 other elders. A ways into the ride, when we had just got up to full speed, we suddenly came to a hard stop. Everybody was confused because we were inbetween towns, definitely not at a station. A bunch of the passengers started saying something and then suddenly everybody was getting off the train. We were pretty confused, and at first my comp thought the part of the train had disconnected or something. We got off the train and saw that the train was still in one piece so it couldn´t have been that. That´s when we saw the big crowd that was gathered a ways back on the tracks. We went to go see what was up. I think at this point we realized what had happened, but we went anyway. When we got there most of the people had already left, and there were police cars there. If you haven´t already guessed, someone had been run over by the train. We were pretty close and got a view that I will definitely never forget. I won´t describe the details and you probably don´t want to know, but it was pretty bad. I didn´t sleep very well that night.
Well I probably shouldn´t have ended this on a bad note, sorry. But I´m doing great down here and we´re going to have another great week. Hope you guys have a great week as well. Thanks for the music btw, keep it coming.
-Elder Shelton
