This week was different. I feel like I start all emails off that way...because in reality all weeks really are different! This one especially. This will be short. We have a doctors app we need to shimmey on to in a min.
Chritsmas came! We had lots of plans for it but sadly the morning of me and my companion woke up sick with a flu sort of thing. It could have just been food poisoning again...who knows. Anyways..we had to change plans a bit for that. We ended up just getting up for the bare minimum....callling our families and visiting the abuelitas we had promised to visit. It was a good day despite the inconvenience of sickness.
Here the main event of Christmas is Christmas Eve. Everyone has a big dinner around 11 at night and then a huge sleepover. The next day most people just go to the beach or up to the mountains. Its just a normal day. So Christmas eve we spent with one of my favorite families in the ward. We sang every single Christmas hymn in the book and chowed down on MEAT! The sweet hermana of the house made us all stockings and stuffed them full of chocolate (chocolate is pretty rare here). They even called a taxi for us to ride home in beacause they live in a really dangerous part of town and it was past 11:00. It was great!
Saturday was a special day because it was MARIA´S BAPTISM!! We really thought we had everything ready for that but since it was my first baptism...there were things I just hadnt thought of. Like filling up the font…
Two hours before the event we remembered that important detail and ran to the church building. We turned on the faucet and watched as none of the water would stay in the font! The drain was completely broken. I was all for just getting on a bus and having the baptism in the ocean but instead we got trash bags out of the trash and started stuffing the drain with them. We thought that would do the trick so we turned the water back on and watched it fill up nicely. Until it was about three feet full when the trahs bags rose to the surface and the water slowly started draining. There was a moment of panic as we tried to decide what to do. We didnt have time to wait for it to drain all the way before we fixed it...so we just dove in. We splashed around in the water trying to unscrew different drains on the wall and connect pipes. I was wishing I was a bit more educated in plumbing at this point.
The water was also coming in freezing cold so I was trying to connect the water heater with the foucet....basically it was a mess. Eventually we stuffed enough bags into the drain to stuff it up and then put a stack of plates on top of it to keep it from floating up. We got the water to heat up and then left to go pick up Maria while it filled up all the way.
Maria wasnt ready when we got there so we sat on her couch waiting. It was a super hot day and had already been exhausting. We may or may not have fallen asleep on her couch. Eventually she came out and looked so excited and happy and I was able to remember what we were actually doing that day. We had a little program and then we all walked over to the hallway where the font is. We were greeted by a partially flooded hallway and a very very much overflowing font. Appartenly someone had turned on the cold water faucet to speed up the process....and well it really sped it up! We spent some time mopping the hallway and taking buckets out of the font (I was not going to mess with that drain again!).
Once the whole water situation was taken care of we had a beautiful baptism! We were sopping wet at the end which turned out to be a blessing because of the heat. Next time I am going to put someone else in chrage of the font. hahahahaha
We are looking forward to a little more calm week ahead. I´m about out of time.
Hope everyone has a great New Years and makes lots of really aweome goals!
Hermana Orchard
P.S. My sweet friend and companion in the MTC, Hermana Page, has been super sick and in the hospital for three weeks. Please pray for her to get better TODAY so she can stay and that they can figure out what is wrong!
Pictures: Christmas eve
Me on my third cumplemes!
Maria´s baptism. I know Maria looks unhappy but she really does smile when we arent taking pictures!
Another cumplemes picture and cutting tomatoes on my hand Christmas Eve. (sorry you have to tilt your head on that one)
Christmas eve...and my meal at home on christmas. A boiled egg, rice and an empanada. The meal on christmas eve also
