03/13/23 Where's my water?

 Buenos días mis amiguitos, esta semana fue medio difícil en algunas maneras! Pero sigo adelante todavía! 

Some things that happened this week: 

Tuesday night we came home after a long day of rejection, and i have this habit of, the moment i walk in the door, I wash my hands. So I went to go do that, and nada. The toilet, shower, kitchen sink, washer, nothing works.... so we call the front desk of our apartment complex and the dude is like, ok? What do you want me to do about that? After some convincing on my part, he helped me figure out who to call, and after like 45 minutes of people trying to tell us how to fix our water, we realize.... there's a pipe missing. So we bring the dude from the apartment complex over to the closet thing where he can see the pipe, only he's not listening to us, and he's got this attitude of, silly gringas, they don't know how to turn the valve thingy.... so he turns it with all his strength, completely on.... but as I mentioned there was a pipe missing, and we TRIED to tell him. 

He got soaked 

I was dying laughing and so was my comp and the dude was sooo mad, and we felt so bad but it was so funny. We're gonna bring him cookies this week so he doesn't stays mad at us. 

But after many phone calls, and the elders coming over (to the hallway, they didnt enter the apartment), and the one who's a latino being able to understand waaayyyy better what was happening, we were able to find out what happened... the water company came over and took the pipe, and won't give it back until the bill is paid. So for 8 months or so, the mission office hasn't paid the bill! Which is to say, for the ENTIRE time that missionaries have lived here! And they're just NOW cutting off the water  so we called the mission office and they were like yeah we'll pay it tomorrow... so, we got ready for bed in the church building at like 11:30pm, which fortunately is only a block away, but its always weird being outside after 10  

Well, the next day we got ready for the day in the church building, and the elder in charge of finances was like, it's all paid! And the people from the water company told us that within 6 hours of it being paid it'll get fixed so we were feeling pretty chill about the situation.... and we worked hard all day! Had a really good lesson with a really golden family (which to be honest was really long), found some new people, although none from our sector, and we came home exhausted... and our water still wasn't fixed. So we got ready again in the church building, and did the same in the morning, and made 1000 phone calls and things... basically they had been paying the Pierces' water bill instead of ours  

It finally got fixed Thursday evening, just in time for us to come and deep clean everything because the hermanas from Copiapo were coming to do Intercambios. At 10pm that night. 

So then we had intercambios. It was interesting, and again we worked a ton. It's always a little weird trying to get used to a different comp, and I'm NOT looking forward to the day when I have to say goodbye to hermana Sorenson 

That night I was upset about something and ended up... crying  in the plaza. So it was dark and I don't think most people noticed, but this random guy who was very drunk comes up to us and was being a normal drunk dude, talking to us and being weird, and went to shake my hand and I looked up and he suddenly realized I was straight up crying... so he was like ohhh you're like, crying... and then started to fake cry like an actual baby.... and then walked away. We were silent for a full 10 seconds and then both burst out laughing. And then we bought donuts. 

Other thing that happened... we had an attack in another sector because we have a goal for every sector to baptize someone this month and they're the only ones without anyone on date. 

We were in their sector for 2 hours and the people were SO rude and closed off!! I've never seen people who are so closed off in South America... but we found two people who were maybe interested, and they put one of them on date the VERY NEXT DAY. Very cool. 

Besides all of that ive had some mental struggles... sometimes the pressure of the mission can be so heavy and I feel like I end up comparing myself to others, and even comparing myself to the image I have in my head of what a missionary is "supposed to be" and well, that image is NOT me. I'm goofy and awkward and I get angry easily when someone insults us and I get distracted really easily. But something I'm trying to learn and figure out is how on earth I can accept myself, being imperfect, and use my strengths to strengthen the Lord's kingdom. And I have my moments of pure joy and success in that manner, and I have other moments where I wonder what I'm doing out here, where I feel my particular skill set doesn't work very well for the work I have to do. But I guess that's kind of why I'm here, right? To try and figure out how my skill set works in the kingdom of God. So yeah that's my little rant about that theme. 

I love you all so much, thank you for your support and love, even if I'm not grateful enough, I do appreciate all the people supporting me from afar! 

xo-hna griffin