Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Gringo Doctors in Piura...cr​azy!! - Email from 22 May 2013

So this letter is coming to you on a Wednesday because the last two days, I`ve been translating for doctors from the Hope Alliance organization. They came down with about 7000 glasses to give away!! It was super fun, but at the same time pretty crazy... We ended up having to get up at 5 am on Monday to go out to La Matanza with them. We translated ALL day and got home at about 8 at night. What a long day! Tuesday was the same thing.

It was strange having to talk in English...not gonna lie, there were about 4 or five times when I turned to one of the gringos and talked to them in Spanish. They had to tell me that I wasn`t speaking in English, or I wouldn`t have realized it!! Makes going home look that much more difficult...

It really was a pretty cool experience...I got to help a lot of people see! There were some people that haven`t been able to see a thing for more than 5 years!! They could barely see my face it was so bad! When we put the glasses on them, their eyes just completely lit up! Way cool.

As for our ward...we`re kinda going through some tough times! There is absolutely zero unity here, and we`re trying to stay afloat. We haven`t had a ward council meeting in over 3 weeks, and things are starting to fall apart. We`re trying our best to stay positive.

On Sunday, we called a missionary coorelation meeting, with just us missionaries because our ward mission leader is pretty much inactive. We talked about the issues we`re facing and how we can help the ward get back on its feet. I felt super good about that meeting and I feel like we`re going to have a lot of success in the weeks to come. We`re going to begin visiting each and every leader, one by one, and help get some more activities going.

This last week I also got to deal with a fun little problem. :) One of the elders in our district left a girlfriend behind in his other area, and tried to sneak a letter to her. It was caught in the mail room. It makes me sad to know that that`s going on here in the mission, but that`s just the way things are sometimes!!

On a whole other note, this week has been pretty awesome! So...I sent a picture of a burn mark on our kitchen counter. Wanna know what that is? That`s when I almost died this week. Ya. So I decided I wanted to make some melon juice, and was pretty excited about it! I cut up the melon, put in the sugar and water, and hooked up the blender. The light came on and everything! Then I turned the dial, and it didn`t do anything at first, so I turned it up a notch....

BOOM!! Ya...that`s right! It exploded! There were a few sparks that began shooting out, almost right in my face! Thankfully, my companion came to the rescue and pulled the plug on it, but I was THAT CLOSE to losing my life.

Afterwards...I decided that I shouldn`t waste my sugar water and melon, so I ended up drinking it all up. :) Fun times.

The other thing we discovered this week...PICKLES!!!! I have not seen pickles in over a year and a half!! Today when we went to Tottus, which is basically like WalMart, my companion saw them stuffed away in some shelf! I was SO EXCITED! We pretty much jumped for joy! I took a video of us eating it too, I couldn`t believe how good it tasted after so long...how incredibly juicy...it`s funny how we miss out on the little things of life here. :)

Well, I hope that all is well with you! Keep doing the little things that will bring you closer to God! It`s funny because here in the mission, it seems like I`ve been given a HUGE secret: the purpose of life is to prepare ourselves to meet God. All the people around me seem to just wander around clueless. Is it really that hard to realize?? There`s really no point to studying if you`re not getting ready to meet Him. There`s no point listening to music if it doesn`t help you either. It`s like they just wander around trying to be happy doing things that really don`t make you happy!

I guess I could put it this way: 1 plus 1 is 2. I know that. You know that. So stop trying to make 1 plus 1 equal 5. It NEVER will. You can`t avoid the fact that we WILL go back to meet God again. I just hope that we can all be prepared to meet Him again. :)

Well, love you all so much!! Have a great week!

Love,
Elder Schofield
 



 

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