Literally, that means go with 100 eyes. It is apparently a saying that originated who knows where, but it means go with caution. There are lots of sayings that I have started using, and almost all of them end up meaning different things than what the book I am currently studying told me they meant. One that did work, though, was "paso a paso andamos lejos," which means "step by step we go far away." Also, I have to explain lots of things to the people here because my companion has a really gringo accent, and a lot of the time no one understands him. But it is all right.
The new area is really strange. Almost all of the families we teach (yeah, families, not people) the parents are not married. Legally. It is incredibly common to live in "free union" here. Almost all of these families have more then 10 years together, but they do not see a need for marriage. They are not married legally. The reasoning is that for them, they are married, and God knows their hearts, so obviously for him they are married, too. Interestingly, almost everyone we talk to accepts a baptismal date and goes to
church here even though the church is in another town and you have to
hire a taxi in order to get there. But when we explain that marriage is something they have to do before they can be baptized and that they cannot be baptized due to the nature of living with someone you are not married to, they refuse to understand because it doesnt fit their life style. But on the 14th (go figure, valentines day) there are free marriages, so if the excuse is lack of money that one goes out the window. But, a family of 6 we were waiting to baptize accepted a marriage date (that is very strange to say, that we challenged them to get married) will be getting married and then baptized.
Oh, at this point I would like to explain a little about the ward. They are really great. Of the 600 (more or less) members in the directories only 140 (more or less) go to church The active members are incredibly active. They all want to help us all the time, and there are always activities planned. In addition, the list that says which members are going to feed the missionaries goes out once a year. You have to plan a year ahead if you want to feed us. That is absolutely ridiculous. All of the contacts we do end well. We get invited back to every house and person. About 1/3 of the people we talk to end up being less active members, who invite us to their house, we eat and share a message, and some of them come to church afterward. Everyone accepts the challenges we set and almost all of them do what we ask.
I am afraid I have to write about this. One of the investigators who came to church with us spent the entire time nursing her 4 year old kid--without a cover or anything, which I found rather strange, and I am sure it was distracting for the bishopric. Apparently it wasn´t all that strange because noone did anything about it or even deigned to notice. And when I say the entire time, it was the entire time--sacrament, the gospel principles class, and during the joined class we had the last hour to talk about goals in the reactivation of less active members. It was very strange.
This area is gigantic. It includes 4 townships, which are all part of
one big city. But it takes about an hour and a half to walk to the
farthest one, and a half hour to walk to the nearest one. We take taxis a
lot.
I have started using balloons more in my teaching (why not? they
are fun.) and I do figures to illustrate points in lessons--how we
pray, what is effective study, the works. For example, the Book of Mormon is like an uninflated balloon. When we pray before reading, we
put air into said balloon. Then reading chapters are twists, pondering
things that we don´t understand are folds, and studying references are
bear´s ears, which is one way to fold a balloon that I like a lot. If we
do not do all these things, we cannot arrive at the figure at the end,
because we did it wrong. That is how we get the spirit to testify, if we
put in the work. But I am running out of balloons. Kids come up to me in
the middle of the street and demand random animals (like ducks, for
example). The favorites are a chihuahua and a monkey, although I end up
doing other strange things. It is fun, though, and it makes their day, so
there is no reason not to do it. And.....
I finally weighed myself Wednesday, and I was very pleased to note that I dropped (how fat did you think I was? A lot, or a little?) 40 pounds, from 230 (yup, pretty fat) to 190. I still got some room to drop, though, so I will continue to work on that. And my clothes look just fine. If you do not know that they are gigantic, than they appear to be perfectly normal. Suit pants and white shirts are nice like that.
That is all I have for right now. it is good here.
Yup. Love ya.
Saludos, Amor, y Todo que puedo ofrecer a tí,
Salutations, Love, and All that I have to offer you,
Elder Scott
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