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

Well, it´s true. We all have our moments, and right now, my life is one. Long. Moment. I guess it happens to the best of us. But my companion said it best while walking stiffly with pus oozing from her hideous leg: "this is my life right now." They always say the things that are true are funniest. Add to that the fact that she actually said it in English and you have wet-your-pants hilarea. But my life right now is an extension of last week, when I didn´t get a change to write. Why didn´t I? Well, at the risk of repeating myself, "THIS IS MY LIFE RIGHT NOW!" We came into the Internet center, sat down, got down to business, and five minutes later... bye bye sweet electricity of mine. So we played that game where you keep sitting at your computer, hoping the power will come back. It doesn´t but you keep a-sitting and a-hoping. And then you´ve found you´ve sat for so much time that it seems silly to leave because we all know as soon as we do, who will come back? Why, t...

I would like to know if there is an easy way to inform someone of a potentially embarrassing situation. We all know that if we say, "hey, your fly is down," or "there´s an enormous bogey in your left nostril," that these casual observations can quickly convert into feeling of shame and sadness on the part of the offending party, especially if said observations are reported after a manner of announcing them in a rather public way. But what do you do if shouting is your only option, and even when you do it, know one can here you? So as usual, I have no idea if I mentioned previously how house contacting, street contacting, or communication in general works out here in the D.R. To talk on the phone, you have to buy cards from the colmados or phone stores with a set amount of minutes on them. Actually, I have no idea how many minutes are on them, because it only tells you how many pesos you paid for the card. So I know I have a hundred pesos worth of minutes, and I stil...

And how! Remember this, never forget this: A mission is never JUST a mission. It is also a grand opportunity to figure out what you want to do with the rest of your life. And after listening to many an investigator "confess" their life story to us, I realized that quite frankly, I could never be a psychologist. It´s just too much of a drain on my energy resources. As I´ve mentioned before, I don´t know what it is about being a missionary, but everyone seems to think we´re walking confession booths. It´s like George (who I refer to as our gangster investigator) pleaded with us to consider: "I hope you guys don´t judge me now cuz of some bad choices I´ve made. Not all deportees are the same." I suppose they´re not. No one is quite like anyone else, but after listening to enough stories of defeat, disillusion, drugs, delinquency, doubt, and doom, I feel like the common thread is that it all started with small decisions. No one grows up dreaming to be a drug dealer, or ...