OK I know I say this every week.... but this was a week of miracles!!! Ya, I know I'm sure you are all sick of miracles by now. So I'll start out with swimming.
This
week we went swimming in the river! Well... not really. What happened...is due to weird hurricane trends it rained even more than it usually
does. So, the river rose and flooded a lot of houses in our area. We just
happened to be eating this day...right next to the river. It started
pouring right as we were finishing up, which, we would normally just say
NI MODOS and leave in it.
But, something told us to stay and wait a bit.
SO we used this opportunity to help out the Hermana with some family
history. Suddenly, her mom comes running in screaming, "SAVE THE
CHICKENS! SAVE THE CHICKENS! THE RIVER´S RISING!" We looked outside to
see the river was indeed rising, and very quickly. So we helped move the
chickens (well... Hermana Baker did.. I'm still scarred from when I killed a
chicken a while ago and can't touch them really...)
Then everyone
just kind of stood around taking videos and pictures. I asked everyone,
"Are you sure it's not gonna flood the house? It's pretty close."
But
everyone said, "No, don't worry. It always rises a little bit, and
usually floods the street. But, in our 35 years living here it's never
flooded the house."
Bueno. So everyone just stood around taking pictures
for a while. Then suddenly we hear, "THE RABBITS! SAVE THE RABBITS!!" We
had neglected to see the river was flooding in the back of the patio,
and was about to drown the rabbits!
Everything went really fast after
that.... a bunch of screaming, "THE DOGS! SAVE THE DOGS!" and "THE
CHICKENS!" and "THE PARROTS!" and "WHERE ARE THE KIDS" and "THE
MATTRESS!! SAVE THE MATTRESS" and "THE PLANTS!"
Perhaps the weirdest
of all, was when the river started going down people started screaming, "THE FISH! SAVE THE FISH!!"
Here are a bunch of houses filled with water and damaged, but almost
everyone on the street was outside looking for the little fish that had
been left behind, to throw them back in the river! Hermana Baker and I were
laughing so hard.... like Ron Weasley would say, "Where are your
priorities??"
But it was such a good thing we stayed. We were
able to help out quite a lot, and there might have been more damage or
some dead animals if we would have left right after we were done eating
like we had planned.
Another
fun thing that happened is we went to Izapa with our cookie family,
Hermano E, and Hermanas Y and D!!!! We saw the rock of the tree of life... but it
was kind of lame because its been badly taken care of... so you couldn't
really see it... We also climbed a pyramid that looked just like a hill...it hasn't been completely uncovered yet...and some random pyramids that were
pretty cool. Also we wore pants and did some long needed head stands. Long story short, it was a blast.
AND
for the miracles. Hermanas D AND J GOT BAPTIZED!!!! I've talked about their
conversion stories in past letters, but it was amazing! Hermana D got
baptised in the morning, then we rushed off to Tuxtla Chico for a
rescate. We came back just in time for Hermana J's baptism!
In Hermana D´s baptism, her mom
came down from Comitan and spoke. Hermana Y. spoke as well, and it was
just a beautiful, spiritual experience because she is the last of the
family to get baptized!
In Hermana J's baptism, when she was sharing her
testimony, she said, "I bet a lot of you think I got baptised for my
boyfriend. BUT NO. I did this for ME, and for GOD, because I know this
church is true!!" ESOOOOO.
Love this lifffeeeee.
Hermana Hansen
