Nastiest Thing I've Eaten

Hey everyone!!!  I hope everyone started school alright! My week was good, here's what I did:

 

1. New comp! So I'm staying for now in my area, and my new comp is Hermana Jency Hidalgo! She might be the sweetest little dear Ive ever met. She's from El Salvador and has 10 months in the mission and has been in this zone with me my whole time, just a different area. So we already knew each other pretty well and I was super excited to be her comp.  Things are a little crazy in the mission right now because there is a group of Mexican missionaries who have had trouble getting their visas, and are going to come in a few weeks in the middle of the change. My comp is going to train one of them, so Ill probably leave in a few weeks. Until then, Hna Hidalgo and I are going to work really hard!

 

2. This week we've been doing lots of contacting (tracting) because we hardly have anyone that we were teaching.  I haven'tcontacted very much until now because we usually have references from the ward, so its been really good practice. My trainer would be very pleased to see that I've improved a lot in contacting -- I even kind of like it. It's kind of fun because you get to talk to lots of crazies, sometimes you find people that are interested, and if nothing else, you have a painfully awkward experience and get to watch Guatemalans try to lie to get out of having to talk to us  (they're terrible liars).  I just laugh to myself the whole time. So we're really hoping that through our hard work contacting and with some good references thatwe've received, we can start seeing some results in a few weeks.  We've been working really hard. Its the most satisfying thing in the world to work hard all day long.

 

3. So this week we ate a few really weird/disgusting things that I know my mom would love to hear about. The first was when I was in trio for a few days with hna hidalgo and her old comp hna Alston. We went so that hna hidalgo could say goodbye to some of their converts who lived out in the boonies. They very generously brought out 3 plates of pork stomach...EW!!! Ay no. They were pretty large pieces, rubbery, chewy, and slippery, with a weird layer of fat or something. And of course no one has knives to cut the pieces smaller. And it smelled like PIG! I think if we had put our pieces together we could have pit the stomach back together. We tried various strategies to eat it, like wrapping a piece in tortilla, trying to cut it with a spoon. The best strategy was just swallowing them whole. Nastiest thing I've eaten yet, I think. And it's sad because these people have nothing but they so kindly share the little that they do have, and we about died eating it. Of course all the time we acted like we loved it. Oh man...

 

The other nasty thing was last night, one of the recent converts served us some juice. We were drinking and I thought at first it was my cup that smelled really bad, like moldy. But then the lady started explaining how she made the juice. Oh dear. She said it was juice of vinegar with bugs -- I definitely thought I heard/understood that wrong -- vinegar and bugs?! Nope, that's what it was. Apparently you let the vinegar go rancid until there are larvaes growing in it. Then you drain out the worms and add sugar and water. That's what we drank!! I'm quite sure she didn't get all the worms out. Aah how gross is that!? Where the heck did she even get that idea!?

 

So yea that was my week! I surely have parasites now if I didn't already ha-ha. Even despite completely disgusting foods like that, I really enjoy being here! I know that this is the Lords work. I'm learning so much. Thanks for all your support and prayers! Have a wonderful week!!!

 

Love, Hermana Gilland