First and foremost before I forget to tell you, next week is transfers so I will write you next Tuesday instead of Monday.
But your voice recording was awesome. Your voices were clear and your song was my personal favorite.....so appropriate. The street looks absolutely frozen....and their is a new Disney movie?! I will see it when I get back, glad to hear that its better than Brave. And the Olympics start in a couple of weeks?! What the heck! They are in Russia this year right? So crazy. Glad to hear all is well. I love reading everyones little part in the email. Everyones personality shows through in the writing and if you all wrote me anonymously I could still figure out who wrote it......cause Im awsome (: Ha...just kidding.
Anywho........this week was another one for the record books. We taught lessons to investigators and menos activos...and they are all progressing! With some of them the progression feels slow, but they are all moving forward in one way or another. Marisa is finally going to Neuquen this next weekend to get married, and we have several other people who are all kind of at the same spot. They are listening to us, reading the Book of Mormon....experimenting in their hearts, and we are working on getting them to the chapel for Sunday and on date for a baptism. We walked a lot, consumed gallons and gallons of water, and had lots of adventures!
There is a watermelon truck that goes around selling only watermelon. The truck is so old that every time I see it I am sort of surprised and mostly impressed that they even got the thing to start. There is one guy driving, and another in the back with a megaphone advertising. They just drive all around town selling them.
The branch here is preparing to go to the temple in Buenos Aires. The members who want to go have to pitch in money and they are all going to rent a big bus and travel together. (Its like 6 or 7 hours). They are going to stay there for the day doing temple work and then get on the bus and travel home again. They have been planning this event for forever and its cool to see the people who are interested to go and the sacrifices they are making.
Something that is kind of sad that I have learned is that a ton of people have diabetes here, but they also dont have any means or way to take care of it so they are just sick all the time. Its really sad.
When it comes to traffic here....the general rule of the road seems to be "hit or be hit" If you walk on the sidewalks all is dandy, but the cars and motorcycles out in the road pay no attention to the speed limits, stop signs, intersections, or lanes. Its sometimes scary to watch!
So......sort of an unfortunate adventure happened this last Thursday. We were outside on the front lawn of one of our investigators house talking to her husband. He was really nice, and was just weedwacking away at his grass (because thats what they do....everyone just weedwacks everything, they never use a lawnmower). There was a motorcyle to the left side of the lawn on the driveway and that is the side I was standing on. I didnt realize I was so close, or that anyone had just gotten back....but my leg brushed up against the exhaust pipe and got burned. The pipe stuck out further than I realized, I wasnt paying attention, and my leg only toucehed it for about half a second. But it hurt sooooooo bad. I tried not to make a scene, and did a pretty good job if I do say so myself considering the pain I was in (my companion or the member we were with didnt even notice)...but the man we were talking to still noticed because I kept looking at my leg. He went inside his house, and came back out with a knife. My heart skipped a beat because I wasnt exactly sure what his intentions were with the knife, but he went around the side of his house where he had a huge aloe vera plant, and he cut a leaf off. Then he cut the leaf open and then handed it to me to rub on my burn. I rubbed it on and it helped a little, but it was tender for the rest of the evening. It formed a gigantic blister, the blistered popped the next night, and now its just open and healing. We also had interviews with president this week and while we were waiting for the elders to finish up so we could have our turn we talked to Hermana Giuliani. She looked at it, took a picture of it and sent it to our mission doctor, and told me to go to the pharmacy and get a cream called bactroban (which was 91 pesos....communism!- but in reality only like 18 dollars). It hurts but I can still walk no problem. I have cleaned it, and cover it up with gauze and tape before we ever go outside to protect it from dirt, dogs, and the like, and have been putting the cream on. I am doing my best to take care of it so I dont get an infection...and I think so far so good. Basically ...the moral of this story is that exhaust pipes on motorcycles are hot and not meant to touched! I just wanted to let you know that it happened. Im still in good spirits and health!
But we had interviews with president this week which really was fun. I love talking to him. And because we were the last ones from our district to get interviewed, they gave us a ride in their air conditioned car from the chapel to our area while they were on their way out of town. It was sweet.
This last weekend here in La Paz there was a big triathalon. Its one of the only events this town has, so everyone went nuts supporting it. It was like a parade....everyone lined the streets drinking mate. And instead of sitting down drinking mate adn watching people walk by like everyone here loves to do, they just watched them bike or run by instead. Also, people stood on the curb with a pitcher of water in thier hand waiting for a racer to come by....and then they chucked it at them. Im not sure if it was suppose to be considered a public service or not.....because it just looked really annoying. The finish line was exactly 1 block away from our apartment so there were tons of cars and people.....but it has all cleared out and we are glad its over. We feel like we can have our area back now, because the main part of the course was main road we have to walk on every day. It was kind of tricky this last weekend...but its all calm again!
I love you all lots and pray for you all everyday! I love you more than the number of people who asked me what happened to my leg in the last few days (like every single person we have talked to) because when its wrapped up it looks like I just returned from war.
Keep on keeping on!
Hermana Withers
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