On Top of the World!

Ladies and gentlemen and blog-readers of all ages,

This week started great. I was on top of the missionary world. People shut the door--oh well. People hid--doesn´t matter. I´m just skipping around this town because being a missionary is so great and wonderful. I´m not sure what happened, but I hit a wall. Maybe you could call it trunky, but I´m coming to realize that ¨trunky¨ encompassses a whole slew of feelings, most of which don´t have the slightest thing to do about flying home. It involves excitement, impatience, fear, sadness at leaving, uncertainty, feeling pressured, rushed, feeling like time is going too fast, feeling like it´s not going fast enough. It´s that ¨gasp, we´re almost in July! ah!¨ and then the ¨sigh, we´re still in june, and it feels eternal¨.
Say what you will--I´ve frequently judged other missionaries as they work through this time--but maybe it´s something I just had to finally put on those shoes and walk a couple kilometers.
Speaking of walking lots of kilometers, my poor companion, who just came from La Venta which is a tiny area, is now having to get used to walking and walking and walking. She´s gotten at least 3 shades darker since coming here, and has started walking around with an umbrella like me. Survival mode. (fyi, she has 6 months, this is her 2nd area, she is from Chicago, and she is great.)

Anyway, she helped me out a lot by suggesting that we read Elder Uchtdorf´s talk about gratitude together. It was just what I needed. A spirit of gratitude and the ability to be truly grateful for every minute.

Yesterday, we passed by Rosanny because she didn't go to the district conference yesterday. When we arrived, we found out why....the chicken gumba! or Chinkungunya as it's really called. That epidemic that´s going around. She's almost done with her very first personal progress activity.  Hna Conrady was inspired to read with her 3 Nephi 17--where Jesus heals the sick and blesses the children one by one. As we read the words expressing this beautiful experience, Rosanny's father was nearby, drunkenly harassing the kitten, yelling to the sky, Maria, or anything else about the injustice of life. I guess life does seem a bit unfair with the wrong perspective. (ie, from the inside of a bottle.)  Anyway, the moral is that amidst that, and what I´m sure was for Rosanny an embarrassing experience, the spirit spoke so quietly and so strongly to my heart that nothing else but the gospel can allow us to feel the love of our Heavenly Father, even if our earthly parents aren't up to par. Nothing else can fill us with so much happiness just by reading the same words I've read so many times. Nothing else can give purpose to this unfair life. Nothing else can let you have a guilt-free conversation with your conscience as you lie under your mosquito net at night and think about your day.
This is it folks, this is where peace and purpose are found.

So if the week started and ended well, I guess it was a success.

Love you all,
Sarah

P.S. We hiked a mountain this morning with Rusbert and Yoanna. 

Wander did family history! He will be taking his dad's name to the temple to be baptized on the 16th of August.  

I really want a chihuahua waiting for me when I get home. Please????

Last week Sarah sent this picture of the garbage outside their house.  I asked her, "Do they pick up garbage every week?  Do dogs get into it when it out like this?"  
This is Sarah's reply:
"They´re supposed to pick it up every week. Doesn't happen. And yes, dogs get into it. But the neighbors get mad if we have too much trash, but we´re out working when they pick it up, so we have to leave it out, and then when they don´t come on Tuesday when they´re supposed to, the dogs spread it all over the streets. It´s a problem."
So I replied, "So you need to introduce big metal garbage cans to the DR."
Sarah's reply: "I made a speech about that, but then they logically pointed out that that could never work, because they would all be stolen to hold water in."