March 5, 2017

March 5, 2017

So me and my bad Spanish might get me in trouble some day!! Ken and I were in a store one day to buy some laundry soap.  I asked the store employee if they sell sopa para la lavadora.  He looks at me a little strange, so I repeated, se vende sopa para la lavadora?  Still a strange look, but he turned around kind of scratching his head to figure out what I was wanting to buy, when dad steps in finally and told me what I had asked for!!!   Sopa in Spanish, for those of you who do not know is SOUP, not soap!!!  I knew that, but it just seems so right for sopa to mean soap, right???  Anyway, that happened several days ago and I’m still laughing at myself.  The guy must have thought this gringa was absolutely crazy asking for soup for the washing machine!

I had a crazy experience with one of our piano students, the branch president.  He’s been faithfully coming to class and really putting forth the effort to learn.  Anyway, a couple of weeks ago he came to class when he was the only student and we were working on a couple of exercises at the piano, which he was barely able to do.  Then he proceeds to tell me that he wants me to help him learn a couple of songs so he can play them when the casa de oracion (their meeting house, which is not a church-owned chapel) is ready for them to move into in a couple of months.  Ok, show me which songs, I say.  He shows me two songs in the Hymn book, one has two sharps and the other has two flats, and I wouldn’t even attempt to learn them myself right now.  I was speechless!  We are just beginning to learn the names of the notes and where they are located on the music, he has no idea what a sharp or flat is, he can’t play a simple exercise, and he thinks that he can learn a complicated song in two months!!!  No, TWO complicated songs.  Anyway, it was difficult for me to keep my composure, I was just blown away.  The trouble is, he doesn’t know how little he knows!  So, I tried to convince him to choose a couple of songs from the simplified hymn book instead.  I haven’t seen him since.  More power to him, though.  Maybe he’s more gifted than it appears!!!

This ratty little town that we live in reminds me of a beach town…not that it’s pretty or cool though.  It’s like everyone is camping out…many of them live outside the house because it is so blasted hot inside, not many have AC, and they have shade trees.  So they eat outside, sit outside on the patios, cook outside, some shower outside, sleep outside in the hammocks, play outside, etc.  Most of them don’t have glass in the windows either, just bars and then curtains for use at night.  And many of them have only a sheet hung in the doorway also.  The streets are all very sandy and people dress in shorts and skimpy tops and flip flops.  I have to say that there are also some nice homes, but most of them have high walls around them and we can only see the tops.

And it is hot. We’ve already hit 100 a couple of times.  Everyone keeps assuring us that it will get a lot worse before the rains come in June to cool it down.  Oh, and we had a couple of earthquakes last week two days in a row.  It was so weird, we both heard them coming a few seconds before we felt them.  I’ve never experienced that before.  We live on the bottom of a three story building of concrete, which could be a bit dicey in a strong quake.

Wow, we had a missionary payday the other day.  It was cooking class and the District President and his wife came became she wants to come and they only have one car so he came and just watched.  By the way, he’s a trained chef and some of what he does for his living is to teach others how to make different foods and specialty items to serve in restaurants.  Anyway, we made a carrot and apple muffin that day and after tasting the finished muffin he got a copy of the recipe and proceeded to figure out how much it would cost to produce.  Dad and I are trying to teach them things that they can duplicate and possibly sell as a means to supplement their incomes.  Anyway, President Olquin broke out in a “sermon” about the worth of the things they are learning in the cooking class.  He told them that he would have charged 800 pesos (about $40) each to have taught them the same thing, told them how much they could make selling them, how to sell them, and tried to encourage them to do so.  And then he told them about a woman he knows who is raising two girls by herself, learned how to make a similar type of muffin and began a business making and selling them to support her family!  One of our elders told us a few months ago that his aunt in Costa Rica started a business selling bananas that she dries, so we know it can be done.  Anyway, the same night one of the ladies told me that she comes to our class to learn the new recipe and then the following week she teaches the ladies in her branch who can’t come to our class because they work.  Which is way cool.  I had no idea she was doing this, but thought that to be pretty awesome!

Last experience is about our trip to visit the branch in Huazolotitlan for their branch conference and must say that I was a bit surprised.  We rode a camionetta, (an open truck) to the little pueblo, got out and started walking to the chapel following a path that weaved in and out of peoples’ yards and ended at the “chapel.”  It was nothing but a ramada situated kind of in the middle of three or four members’ homes, in a very tropical setting with large beautiful trees and flowers everywhere.  The chapel even had an outdoor bathroom with curtains for a door and a big barrel of water that you dip a small bucket in to get water to flush the toilet!  During the sacrament service we had a dog wandering in and out and could hear the goats bleating and the roosters crowing from the neighboring yards.  In all the places Dad and I have been to all over this world and attended church this was a new experience for us.  I loved it.  The priesthood quorums met outside under the shade of a couple of trees and there was a 5 gallon bucket of drinking water for people to enjoy, using the same cup to drink out of!  In case you are wondering, neither one of us used the toilet or had a drink of water!

President and Sister Avila was here last week for Zone Conference and took all of the missionaries to have lunch on the beach.  It was a very enjoyable day.