Week 44 Life Changing Field Trip! June 14, 2016

I love Hermana Sandison!

Monday night we went to our Family Home Evening that we had planned. When we showed up, Juan Carlos (investigator) was completely drunk!! When we asked him if he was drunk (borracho) he said "No hermanas!" So of course I thought it would be a brilliant idea to draw a line in the sand and make him walk it. I laughed until I had tears rolling down my face. He was so confident in his ability to walk that line, when in reality, the line was like 6 feet to his right... a little off. Then he kept balancing on one foot in a ninja-like pose while saying, "I can do this" then switching feet, "...and I can do this!" We had to post-pone....

Our postponed Family Home Evening (Juan Carlos was sober)

Hermana Bertha (member) wouldn't smile at the camera!

Tuesday: In just one hour Hermana Sandison was able to eat:
8 turkey sandwiches (on small rolls)
1 bottle of grape juice
1 cup of Jello
1 plate of spaghetti
1 Chicken leg
3 potatoes with sauce
3 pieces of candy
1 cookie
Then she says to me, "Lets start a fast!"
Drinks 1 Liter of fast-preparation water
5 minutes later I find her on the stairs puking... she exceeded her maximum capacity.

The poor thing...We laughed about this ten minutes later so don't worry!

Sunday was amazing!! Hermana Samantha was able to come to church for the very first time! (previously her husband has intentionally kept her from coming) What a miracle! I was able to give a talk about being an example and I shared this story:

A little over a year ago my mom asked me if I would take my little brother and his friends to a concert in Salt lake. So we drove up and all went inside the venue. When the music started, it was completely fine! Nothing derogatory, no profanity, just music. Not long after, the entire environment began to change. It became more and more uncomfortable. After texting my mom back and forth I decided it would be best if we left. So I searched through a crowd for my brother. After finding him and telling him we would be leaving he looked at me with a relieved look on his face. He wasn't comfortable either. Later on we sat in the kitchen and talked about the situation. Harrison told us that in the middle of this concert he made a comment to his friends like, "This is kind of inappropriate." Sadly, one of his friends responded by saying, "Yeah, but this is normal!" Upon hearing that my mom, a little frustrated, said, "Well of course it's normal! Just because something is normal does not mean you have to go along with the majority!"

If you read Thomas S Monson's talk titled "Be An Example and A Light" He talks a lot about the fact that We Are Different. And that will only become more and more true as time keeps moving. To be a Disciple of Christ sets you apart from everyone else! To be a Disciple of Christ makes you different! To be a Disciple of Christ makes you happy! So as our standards skew farther and farther away from "normal" we will be asked to be more and more courageous. That's what Heavenly Father needs, the courageous.

Teaching our little family! Good news! Felipe is getting baptized this Saturday!!!

Yesterday was so FUN! At 4am we woke up and rode a three our tour bus to Canchaque. I said about 6 prayers that the bus wouldn't roll off the side of the cliffs..... You would be amazed at what a giant tour bus can do, it's about the same as any other four-wheeler!

Our tour bus almost ran over the poor cows!

We spent a full day as translators for a Park City based non-profit organization called Hope Alliance. Doctors, Optometrists, and volunteers packed suitcase after suitcase of eye equipment and thousands of pairs of glasses, then trekked it all the way to a remote town in the high mountains of Peru. Pretty cool right? So we helped a little over 300 people get glasses! It was extremely gratifying watching 70 year old people see clearly for the first time in maybe their entire lives. It was like rediscovering the world and their smiles stretched from ear to ear! One lady walked in who had a glass eye in her left eye. I helped her back to get her one working-eye checked, we gave her a pair of glasses, and then she asked me, "Excuse me Hermana do you think they could put a stronger prescription (pointing to her GLASS eye) on this eye?" I just stared at her blankly and thought, "Should I tell her she doesn't actually have an eye there?....hmmm probably not." Ignorance is bliss!

Patiently (or some impatiently) waiting for their eye exam. Some children walked over tow hose just to get an eye exam!

How do you feel with these glasses?

Sooooo happy with her new (used and then donated) glasses! How special!

It really was such a cool experience! It even changed my life just a little bit! (: I met some super awesome fun people that I wish I could have spent a little bit more time with. What was so weird to me was when one of the volunteers asked, "So how long did it take until you felt like you were fluent in Spanish?" I have never thought that before! Being fluent? No way! It reminds me of the Language Learning Analogy:

When first learning a language in a foreign country its as if someone has placed a big cardboard box over your head. You are lost, confused, and completely in the dark. But with time, you begin to recognize a few words. Then you can begin to distinguish between words in a sentence. You learn when to say this, or that. Each time, someone pokes a hole in your cardboard box and just a little bit more light begins to peak in. As time goes on, you get more and more holes poked in and you feel less and less confusion. There are only 6 tenses in English and 14 in Spanish. Complicated. Frankly, I still feel like I have pieces of that cardboard box on my head. Until I learn the last 4 hardest tenses I'm not sure I can say I'm fluent! But yesterday converting English to Spanish and Spanish to English was such a fun experience. It's cool to see how far you can come in such a short amount of time!

Well time is up and last week I made it TEN MONTHS! Woohoo! Can you believe it? Me neither. I miss everyone more and more everyday.

Con mucho amor,
Hermana Ingram

The girls

The cute school kids

What a cool grandma she is! She and her husband brought their two grandkids all the way to Peru to have such an awesome experience.

Lane and her mom from Park City, UT. Such fun people to get to know and work with!

This is 14 year old Sonya! She is from the Bay Area in California, her parents both met at medical school and she aspires to be an Orthopedic Surgeon! I was so amazed by her maturity and intelligence. I loved being able to follow her around as she worked and translate for her!

They fed the Translators a cute little breakfast with a view before the world started, and were completely shocked when we turned down their home-grown, ground and brewed coffee!

Hermana Sandison and the coffee plants! Behind her is the little hospedaje that the doctors stayed in.

I love adventuring with my best comp!

The poor donkey!