Monday, February 16, 2015

Carnaval...cuidado

What a week! Full of rain! I think we worked three nights in a row in the rain and returned home soaked from head to toe. We had some cool experiences this last week with the people that we are teaching. We have a family that we are teaching that the dad is a member and the mom not, but she is super sweet and they are just awesome and so willing to listen and she wants to get baptized and married. We went with a member to visit them and only found the mom, but we talked with her and taught her about coming to church and she said that she attended the church before but without her husband. Now she wants to attend church with all of her family. They weren't able to come to church yesterday and we don't know why, but we are going to work with them this week.
We left with a member one of these days and we finally found these twins that are less actives that we have been searching for since we got here. They are 17 years old and identical twins. They are super sweet but we went to go visit them with a member and it was hilarious because they talked for probably 45 minutes about the monkey that they had that died in November. They told us everything about this monkey named Martin. He was like a normal person; how he slept, how he ate, everything you could possibly think of. They talked about all of it about this monkey. We wanted to share something with them but they talked so much that we couldn't inturrupt, it was pretty funny. :)
We also left with another member this week and there was a returned missionary that served in Iquitos 21 years ago that was visiting. We heard he was close by so we went to go say hi to him and talk with him. He was very nice. He served in some of the same areas that I did, so we talked a lot about that and he gave us a ton of references which was awesome. He companioned us to a reference that night and it was pouring rain, and the street was full, it looked like a swimming pool. It was cool to see that it is possible that I will return to visit Iquitos :)
Yesterday at church, the bishop got up and made an announcement to the ward that they needed to start gathering food storage. Why? Because it is raining so much in Iquitos that the river is growing a ton and he explained it is going to grow so much that we could be in great danger by living here and the members need to be prepared. It was something really interesting because I could see the worry in his face. So please keep the people of Iquitos in your prayers. :)
This last week was Carnaval, I don't know if you guys remember last year when I wrote about it. Well it was that time again! We couldn't leave our house again. Carnaval it where it's basically like a huge water balloon fight all day. But it all starts on a Saturday and they put up this huge tree thing called the Umisha, with things on top, like Tupper wear and things like that. A bunch of people put them up, there is like 4 or 5 on every street, then Saturday at night, there is this group of people that come around dancing around the Umishas at midnight with masks like a night of Halloween. Then Sunday is when it really starts. All day Sunday they are throwing water  and dancing and drinking. It is nuts. They dance around the Umisha and do this ritual thing where they cut it. They dance these dances called pandillas. But we couldn't leave our house because they don't respect anyone. They throw water at anyone they see, especially the girls with yellow hair and green eyes ;) ha ha! So, we were stuck in the house doing nothing yesterday. We studied, talked, ate, it was interesting.
But now everything is peaceful in Iquitos. Everyone is sleeping and exhausted from yesterday. :)
Well I hope everyone has an amazing week and enjoys every minute.

Hermana Larsen





No comments:

Post a Comment