Sudar All Day Long

Sudar All Day Long

 May 19, 2014

 Hey everyone! It´s preparation day, yay!!

OK, "sudar" means to sweat, and let me tell you, I´ve been sweating. Friday or Saturday it was 107 and I seriously cried. Its only May; I´m coming home a melted Dallyn-cicle, for reals.

It´s been a super crazy week! Here are some quick highlights:

 

-I was bitten by a dog (a member’s Chihuahua, so no big deal. There were like three drops of blood and it was my fault).

-We tried to rescue a blind kitten without touching it. It was super gross –don´t touch it! – but super sad, so we couldn´t just leave it. We tricked it into walking into someone’s yards with a fence. I hope a dog didn´t eat it.

-For some reason I will sweat on my whole body except my face. This has confused more than one person, including me.

-Colors are awesome. Pink and orange and lime green and electric blue are perfectly acceptable house colors here.

-There is a window in our shower that leads to the kitchen. That way, if you´re hungry while showering, you can ask your companion very nicely to hand you something. Not that I´ve done that. No, really, I haven´t. But I have definitely thought about it.

-I´ve been called gringa, gringrita, and gringita bonita a LOT.

-Someone told me that I looked like a Barbie (a first for me) because I am so “cute, tall and skinny.”

-One foot is mysteriously swollen and I don´t know why. Maybe from an insect bite? The Mission President´s wife is looking into it. It doesn’t hurt; it´s just super unflattering kankel-ville.

-The people here are super-prepared. Not even joking.

-I extended my first baptismal invite!---and she had no idea what I said.  #languagebarrierprobs

-A drunken man practically proposed to me. He kept saying I was the most beautiful in the world, wouldn´t let go of my hand, kept stroking it and was just all around too drunk. We gave him and his friend pass-along cards with the church address on it. Then I used hand sanitizer, then washed my hands, then used sanitizer again.

-Mexican ice cream is the best. I´m fairly certain there´s not much more to it than frozen water and flavoring, but it is seriously the most delicious frozen thing I´ve ever had in my life.

-Apparently Anderson is not an easy name for everyone to say.

-People talk way too fast. And quiet. And have funny voices. The great thing is, I´m white – super white – so no one really expects me to know Spanish. They will slow down, repeat themselves, and use whatever English they know.

-The days are stupid hot but the nights are absolutely perfect.

-I had my first mission fast! Super-duper draining, but blessings most certainly have come from it already!

-Lime and salt is actually pretty delicious (no, there was no tequila with it, calm down).

-Some of the sidewalks are really broken up here, so I just pretend that for that one second I´m actually in the mountains hiking.

-Humming hymns is like magic: it´s less hot when you do.

-I have a new appreciation for the hymn line “there is sunshine in my soul today, more glorious and bright than shines in any earthly sky” Not even joking. It´s a whole new world down here.

There´s more, but that´s all I can think of right now. I am in Ciudad Obregon itself, and my companion is Hermana Ortiz. She is a cute little lady from Mexico City. Emphasis on little. I´m pretty sure she doesn´t even come up to my shoulder. Plus she used to be a ballerina, so every once in a while when I´m sitting next to her I feel like a great, big, lumbering Viking for the first time ever. No joke. She´s been out more than a year and is the bee’s knees. She´s smart, kind, intelligent, and really organized – pretty, and pretty much the perfect trainer for me! Heavenly Father just knows me so well.

 

This is super-duper, really, really hard. No joke. But it is also really, REALLY awesome. And really hot (did I mention the Dallyn-cicle thing?). In some ways I totally feel prepared, but in others, haha! … not even close. But, considering how abnormal my MTC time and arrival here was, I´m supposed to be RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW. So I´ll just smile and keep going.

Oh, for all my friends reading this that have a mission call with a foreign language: practice listening to it. Go to LDS.org and listen to a talk, some scriptures, a lesson, whatever you want, and practice listening. Reading the Book of Mormon before I left was really great and really helpful and you should do that too, but it´s been hard to listen and comprehend Spanish, both here and in the MTC.

I love you all so much!! As difficult as it is, I know that I’m going to love it (if I don´t melt first).

Hermana Anderson