Hello Everybody!
First off, thank you Katie, for the letter. Also Lauren and Jamie, I loved the pictures!! How cute you little mommies are! Congratulations April! I got your wedding announcement.
This week I will start off with a good and also very true story.
Yesterday we went to Zuleta again. It takes an hour to get there in bus and it is one of the most beautiful drives I have ever seen. But once we are there, catching the bus home is a little bit of a timing challenge. We don’t really know how often it passes or what the schedule is. So, we were sitting on the ground teaching Laura, a native woman, who was embroidering, surrounded by her piglets, chickens, mangy dog, cute puppies, and the two youngest of her 12 children when we heard the bus honking. We needed to be back for a cita in Ibarra so we ended with a prayer and started running down the hill. Now really, what looks funnier than two giant gringas in dresses running down a huge hill to catch the bus? Anyway, after the 7 minutes of running down the hill we saw end of the bus and realized that we had missed it. Once at the bottom we asked around to find out when the next bus would be leaving. They told us 30 minutes which really means an hour. So that’s when we started to pray. We jokingly asked God to send cows. Cows to block the road and stop the bus until we could catch up to it and then we started speed walking. You know “get on your knees and pray and then get on your feet and go to work” After several minutes of walking we kind of gave up on the cow idea. We met another nice native woman and chatted with her for a bit. As we were walking and talking an atypical bus for that area passed that was empty apparently it wasn’t carrying passengers, but we asked for a ride to Ibarra and they accepted. About 10 minutes into our trip the bus slowed to a halt and to our surprise we looked out the windows and saw surrounding us a huge herd of cows. At least 30. We both just started laughing. I know it wasn’t a coincidence and I am pretty sure that God has a sense of humor. We got through the cows and because our bus wasn’t carrying or picking up any other passengers we got home in half the time of the bus we missed. We even passed on the way.
English class was also a bit of an adventure. I was trying to explain about adjectives that end in –ed and –ing. I think I confused everyone…a lot. My English really has deteriorated and my Spanish isn’t much better. English words still pop out when I am speaking Spanish and Spanish ones when I am speaking English.
We set up a branch mission plan with our branch president and the other leaders on Wednesday. I think it will give us good results. Everything is so good! Do I say that too much? If I had to describe the mission in one word it would be, HAPPY. I love you all and miss you!
Love,
Hermana Jones
