WHOA. Are you all ready? **Bring in the SpaceJam music*
Nah, jokes. But seriously, this week was kind of...Una locura. It was crazy. Nuts. Out of my mind. Might have even changed my future career haha. Wanna know why?...Alright, let´s set the scene...
The mornings are a little chilly here, but on Thursday morning it wasn´t too bad. Either way we head outside and get to walking out the more neighborhood part of our areas. We call it: The barrios. We didn´t have any planned appointments or anything, because I have never met an Argentine who wants to meet up with a couple missionaries and talk about God at 9:30 in the morning. (: BUT, anyways, we had a couple contacts to go track down. We come up to one house, knock, and she´s nuts I think. Plus half-asleep, so she gets a little short and cranky with us. Door? Closed. Deal. Back-up plan? Another person who we had chosen to try and visit that morning. The house is pretty close, so we head up the same street, in search of this other contact. I´ve got a habit of walking on the street, because the sidewalks are usually too small for 2 people or just too broken up to take a decent walk, but being the great companion that I am (Ha (; ), I go up on the sidewalk, following behind the rockin´ Hermana Hales. We´re walking up towards the end of the block, and we´re just going along as normal, thinking nothing of the car at our right. The super calm morning suddenly going crazy insane.
There happened to be 2 decent-sized dogs under the car that suddenly FREAK. The black one starts barking and snarling first, and right after, the cream one gets going, too. Reflexively, I take my bag off my shoulder to protect SOME part of me, since we had mostly gotten past them. They didn´t come straight at us, but they were close, so I jump down onto the street as I see another dog inside the gates of the house we were walking by. I get down and away from the house and dogs, while Hermana Hales just tries walking quickly to get away from the first two dogs. She didn´t see the dog running up to the gate from the house. She almost passes the fence, but the dog sticks his head through the bars, and from what I could see, looked like he might´ve bitten her. A little surprised, she gets past the gates and backs up against the brick wall. I see feathers go flying from her jacket, and so I ask her to show me her arm. My great comp, super chill, trying to keep calm, lifts up her jacket sleeve, and I see two deep gashes in her arm with not only blood coming out.
Wanna hear the crazy blessing we had? Right there, on the corner, happened to be two cops in their car, and they saw the whole thing. They asked if we were okay as Hermana Hales shows me her bite. She kind of starts going into shock mode. I tell her to take off her coat and scarf, and the cops offer to take us to the hospital. We throw our stuff inside, I take off my scarf, and we get her wrapped up as we´re heading to the hospital. We know we´ve gotta call SOMEONE, but we really don´t know who. First off, we try the nurse from the mission offices. Fail. She´s not in. Alrighty then, Hermana Avila it is, the President´s wife. We finally pull up to the semi-sketchy hospital, and we´re dropping everything as we get into the building and thanking the cops. We get inside, and we legit DO NOT know what to do. Someone finally tells us to knock on the door, and they let her in immediately. She goes back, I call back Hermana Avila to better tell her what happened, get all our stuff together, and I go back to watch my wonderful companion get sewed up. (: She´s such a good sport. Had a shaky rest of the day, especially when we tried going back to the house to get some info, BUT...The good news? My comp is a rock. She´s not too stoked to have some crazy scars on her "wedding-hand arm" haha, but she´s a champ. A couple minor freak outs, but nothing bad. She just can´t read about rabies or else she flips. :P
So I now think it´s be kind of fun to be a nurse haha. I´ve gotten to take off the bandage and do the cleaning and wrapping and such, annnd it´s been pretty fun haha. I´ve learned a lot. I´ll totally have to copy over the video we took when we took off the bandage the first time. (; But Hermana Hales is healing up well, and she´s typing emails to her fam with both hands and EVERYTHING! (;
Anyone remember the one and only scarf I brought on the mission? The white one, because it goes with anything basically? Yup. That´s what we used to wrap up her arm in the police car...Anyone ever heard of the scripture in Isaiah about sins being red as scarlet and white as wool? Yup. The bloody white thing is a freaking MIRACLE SCARF. It´s white as new. (:
Alright, that´s kind of been the drama for the week. The bishop also called us up one night and tells us that he´s got a couple referrals for us and an appointment. WHOA. Two bomb new investigators! Now we´re just gotta get them married, too! (:
Spiritual thought of the week: The Miracle of Forgiveness. Not the book, although that one´s way good, too. But just the power to forgive and forget. I´ve definitely got some reasons in my life that I could use to go "inactive" in the church, just as every other person does, too. I´ve also seen and heard of many other experiences from other members here who would have every right in the WORLD to drop the church. But Forgiveness. That´s not something from this world. I fully believe that we have to have trials in life to be able to be better people and learn. I would never trade any trial in my life for something a little easier, because I would not be who I am today had I not had those experiences. I know the power of forgiveness. But not just forgiveness--the power to forget, also. Even the Lord tells us that He will forgive us and then remember not the sin. Who are we to think we are better than Him? If He is able to forgive us and then forget it, we must do the same for others. Is it easy? No, never. But it is so...filling. And possible. I know these things through the power, name, and love of Jesus Christ.
