Hermana Hannah Ingram: Week 16 Feliz Dia de Gracias! November 30, 2015

We found real, fake Christmas trees!...so a picture was necessary.

Wow I have truly come to realize that the branch and the members are the base for missionary work!! Update on the last sacrament meeting.. One of the teachers forgot to man the door during the passing of the sacrament so a few stray dogs strolled on in... President was pretty mad and tried to chase them out, it was quite the scene him running around with his arms spread out trying to heard them out the door. The person who had been assigned a talk for sacrament meeting bailed last minute so the two counselors to the pres (the Elders) did a quick rock paper scissors to see who had to cover and give a talk on the spot. During the president's talk he asked a hypothetical question like "And why is it important to repent everyday?" But before he could answer his own question the members started chiming in "Its because of this! or No this!" I think they forgot that there are no discussions during the first meeting... Then to top it off, one of the members who is a bit of a snake said the closing prayer, at the end he closed with "In the name of the father, of the son and the holy ghost" a little bit on the catholic side, he's been a member for years and years so it's surprising to me that he still says catholic prayers. This is just to help you get a small idea of what we are working with here, so our base right now is like the consistency of my Thanksgiving mashed potatoes... not very strong and supportive.

Since Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday there was no way I was going to miss out. So we cancelled the pensionista and whipped up this Dia de Gracias in an hour and a half. I have to say, the mashed potatoes and gravy and rolls were actually delicious! The corn...well, my comp sure liked it!

Earlier this week we went out knocking doors and found a lady to go and teach. She lives in a more sketchy part of town next to all of the borrachos (drunk guys) It was kind of funny walking to her house for our appointment one night. All of the neighbors were out sitting in their plastic chairs and started yelling "Gringa!(white girl) What are you doing here? Turn around go back! There are borrachos!!" But we needed to go to that appointment so we dodged the drunk guys and made it safely in her house. When we sat down with her we just started talking with her to try and get a feel for what her needs might be. During the conversation she reached down to her leg and unwrapped a dirty rag from off her calf, underneath was this massive flesh wound. It was oozing a lot of liquid and was really deep. Her skin on that part of her leg was completely black. She told us that she has had it for 7 months and no doctors have been able to help her. She said it started out as a pimple (a motivational horror story for all of you pimple poppers out there, (Uncle Shane.. mom..) and then she had basically picked at it and it turned into what it is now. It honestly looks like rotting flesh to me. It was super sad though because you could tell that it causes her a lot of pain and she feels helpless at this point. We had an awesome lesson with her though and the spirit was so strong she cried the whole time. What's frustrating is that we haven't been able to get a second visit with her! We have gone to her house everyday and she either isn't home or she has her son answer the door to tell us that she's too busy. That's a common scenario with a lot of investigators, it's like we teach them once and then the next thing you know they have fallen off of planet earth! I'll be honest, there really hasn't been a lot of progression here! Super frustrating, but we'll just keep on working!

Hermana Ingram