A Little Something Sweeney: Family. Friends. Fiction. Food.

I really don't know why I've become so very enamored with using the word Azua in so many of my titles, but it is just Delicious to me. And Azua, being what it is (ridiculous) needs to be mentioned as often as possible. Just because. But speaking of titles, I have the suspicion that the one I used last week is a repeat. That makes me a bit ashamed, as I pride myself so very much on creative titles and one-liners. But I'll stand by my double title, if necessary. I can hardly remember the date, much less the title of a blog I'm not even managing myself. So now you know and can have one less thing to stress about. I know I feel better. But yeah, Azua is still special as ever. Which means I am never short of weird occurrences/moments of good cheer/unfortunate events. Why don't we go down the list and give an example of each, shall we? My weird occurrence will put me straight back into sitcom mode, or maybe just a throwback to my college years. Or both, ...

Hello again to all my friends, I´m glad you came to play. Our fun and learning never ends, here's what we did today! ( 10 mental pesos to whoever knows where that magical quote is from). Anyway, back when I was just a wee little baby being trained on the mission, I developed the saying that would eventually one day become the title of today's blog. It all started when I must have had a rough day followed directly by another. It got so I would just look at Hermana Brown, pull a dramatic face and intone, "it's going to be one of THOSE days..." And when you have a day here, you have a day. And Hermana Lund and I have made it up to a week. For many of the appointments we made while contacting door to door, we saw no results because, well, the people weren't in their houses, and I think Newton had some physics law about the improbability of teaching to a personless house. People might think we are crazy than we actually are. But I think I realized t...

Well, my senior companion said it, so it must be true. It´s different here. Much like Ozzy, I feel like I´m on a crazy train, and I´m pretty sure said train bears the name Azua. Actually, I really just feel like I´m in a cartoon. We teach a lot of our lessons outside on peoples´porches, and especially on the street of Bartolome and Nicholas Mañon, there is A LOT of motorcycle activity. It’s really the transportation of choice here. So, everytime I go to open my mouth to teach some spiritual principle or idea, BRRRRRRRRMMMMMMMNHHHH!!! There go the Hell’s Angels. Seriously, the people here travel in teams. Or maybe they are just so plentiful that is just seems that way. But all I can think of when I’m teaching a lesson and this occurs is of the episodes of Looney Tunes I used to watch as a kid. Sometimes Daffy would go to open his mouth, and even when he tries just a weeeee little bit, somehow out of nowhere comes the sound of a train steamrolling past, or a thousand dish...

Well, Jesus said it, so it must be true. "If the blind lead the blind, then they both fall in a ditch and are lost." That's essentially been Hermana Lund and I all this week. I'm so used to following Hermana Brown around La Yuca because she knew it like the back of her eyelids, and so because Hermana Lund was here for a transfer before me, I keep feeling like she should know where we're going. And then I remember we were both whitewashed to the area she hadn't been contacting before, and it's starting to dawn on me that it might behoove me to pay attention. So I'm gonna give it a go. Street names and directions have never been my thang. As my family loves to say, I couldn't find my way out of a paper bag. It might depend on how transparent to paper is. But I digress... Anyway, so let's just say Hermana Lund and I have had quite the time getting to know Azua, meeting the locales, you know, the whole missionary thing. Or maybe you don't. I s...

Ok, so I finally have a full-on, non-English blog title. Oh yeah, I went there. But it´s not what it seems, because the first half of it is in Latin. MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! In a nutshell, En Media Res means “in the middle of things.” It´s the essential rule to any good script or story. Most of the time we as an audience will be joining the life story of someone else while their already in the middle of living their life, and either something dark haunts their past that we have yet to discover or we´re about to embark with them on some great journey. But we could never really start at the beginning with anyone´s story because that would mean we´d have to have been following them since their infancy. And I think most people already know how I feel about babies… Anyway, this concept I´ve been describing has become the axis around which turns my life. I arrived in La Yuca with the work already in progress, and I just came and took someone else´s place to help move it along. And n...