MIS AMIGOS!!! What is UP?
This week was epic! Here's the highlights:
Slept through an earthquake. Lame. My comp woke up and she said it was really cool and lasted more than a minute. She even tried to wake me up... I'm just a deep sleeper I guess.
Got my hair braided by a Haitian woman. And learned that if you want to keep your hair, you should not let Haitian women play with it. She pulled SO HARD. When she combed my hair (yanked the comb through my hair is probably a more accurate description), I could literally feel chunks being ripped out. Then she braided it and she got every single one of my baby hairs in and pulled it so tight I couldn't even yawn til I took them out. I was involuntarily crying. I looked tigre for like three days but not worth it.
Made mango sticky rice. We got gifted like twenty mangos this week and last night our friend gave us mangoes in an old rice bag. That combination gave me an instant craving for Thai Evergreen mango sticky rice. It was apparently compelling enough that I came home and made it even though I had no recipe and also no idea what the ingredients are. #chef? It turned out actually really good. The best part of the experience was the reactions though. When I put my comp's plate down in front of her she was like, "what the..." then our roommates walked out into the room and the American was like, "weird", but the Dominican and the Guatemalan went crazy cuz they thought it was so strange. My comp said it was really weird but she ate it and I think she enjoyed it haha.
Taught a lot of lessons. Lots of them were really sick. We taught this one couple about the Book of Mormon and the guy goes, "Hey, I think I've read that Book before... hang on, I think I got baptized into your church. Yeah, I remember I passed the sacrament when I was like 13. You have to be baptized to do that right?" Then he turns to his wife and goes, "Honey, you have a Mormon in the house!"
On one day we had a confirmed lesson and finally got a member to come with us. But five minutes before it was supposed to happen, the people we were gonna teach canceled. I was like, we are going to use the member cuz she's the only one that hasn't canceled on us this entire week. So we called every single one of our progressing friends to see if they were home at that moment and NO ONE was home. Finally, out of options, we went with our member friend Leslie to go visit Marleni, one of our friends who doesn't have a phone but is always home. Even she rejected us, for no apparent reason. I was already out of ideas at this point, but I was like, I guess we could visit Marleni's neighbor who we had contacted looking for Marleni's house and didn't seem that interested. She was home, she let us in, she chastised us for not coming back and said she'd read our little restoration pamphlet four times! Literally like seventeen lessons had to fall through for us to decide to visit her. I love how God makes sure that His plan happens, even if sometimes his missionaries are a little too caught up in their own ideas about how they want things to happen.
And there are way more cool stories but to not be ridiculous in my novel writing, I'll wrap it up there. I love El Dorado and I am so excited about so many of our friends! The transfer's wrapping up which is crazy, and we're gonna see all of the fruits of our labor next transfer so hopefully I stay here haha.
Remember that God's grace is sufficient for you! It isn't just between perfection and giving up. The Lord loves effort and His plan is all about change and growth. The expectation is "better than yesterday" not "perfect". There's an amazing talk by Brad Wilcox called His Grace is Sufficient that I have listened to so many times that when I read it this week I could literally hear his voice in my head. If you haven't read it before you totally should and if you have it's always a good time to come back to it.
This is a quote from it that I love:
"When a young pianist hits a wrong note, we don’t say he is not worthy to keep practicing. We don’t expect him to be flawless. We just expect him to keep trying. Perfection may be his ultimate goal, but for now we can be content with progress in the right direction."
Keep the ultimate goal in mind but don't let yourself forget the Way to the goal, Jesus Christ! His grace is sufficient for you, no matter what shortcomings you have or what trial you are facing or why you are facing it.
Keep being amazing! Love all of you!
Hermana Cazier
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