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

Well, normally I´d say that the mission isn´t a lovely stroll through the park- but sometimes it is. At least, it was yesterday. Sometimes on the mission, you just find yourself with a lot of time on your hands and few people to teach, so Hna. Bryant and I decided to go to a park situated close to a grandiose, honey mustard Catholic church. We gave out pass-along cards and just told everyone we could find about the church. We met groups of people from Santiago (the more northern part of this country) that were touring San Cristobal, and another man who spoke French and English but no Spanish, and yet, somehow, was hanging out with all Dominicans who don´t speak English. Wonders never cease. The encounter that wins for most amusing and flustering was a lady who was like, "I´ve always wondered about the part of your name that says "of latter-day saints. Do you believe that we can know exactly when Jesus will come again?" She was Catholic, so I think she was both curious a...

Over the course of having a mission blog, I´ve come to realize that most of my titles are pretty dramatic and attention-grabbing. I guess if it was false advertising, I´d have to feel guilty about that. Fortunately, the causes behind said catchy titles are usually well-found and deserved. This week is no exception. I should have remembered from the last time Hna. Bryant and I were together, but somehow, I let myself forget- we have an unhealthy amount of adventures when placed together. And also an unprecedented amount of Deja vú. If you think or read back into the past, you may remember me mentioning such things as ridiculous quantities of mangoes being gifted to us, or crazy, broken down washing machines... things of that nature. Well... it´s happening again. It´s not even mango season, and everyone we visit who happens to have a mango tree in their backyard is handing them to us. I don´t even know what to think, but I don´t have too long to dwell on it, because there´s also the fac...

Oh, what a world, what a world. There is a popular candy here that, like the Laffy Taffies, gives you double your money: a joke AND treat. What more could you ask for? (warning: if you do want something more, I just don´t care to hear it). But one of the most common thread of jokes found in these candies talks about someone being at their wit´s end. Well, I can relate in a very personal way to these jokes now, because I´m nearing the end, and that´s apparently the cue for life to get harder, sometimes in a way that´s so horrible, it´s, well, funny. First of all, let´s start out with how one day this past week, I made the very foolish decision to get an early morning drink of water without shoes on. I enter the kitchen, turn on the light, and my foot comes in contact with something that proceeds to fly across the room. And what should it be but one of my least favorite creature of all time, the cockroach. it was all curled up into itself, almost dead, and hideous to behold. I don´t...

Let´s just be honest- it´s been a jolly while since I´ve last written. I have so much to catch up on, but no hot dog to put it on. Anyway, first and most importantly, I will speak in metaphors. "I got my baby back, baby back, baby back..." "Reunited, and it feels so good..." "Guess who´s back? Back again. Bryant´s back. Tell a friend." Ok, well, all dramatics aside, the gist of it is, I got transferred, and I got transferred good. I don´t know why I thought I learned the lesson of how I´m always wrong on the mission, but I didn´t. Hna. Bryant, during our intermittent correspondence during the 7+ months we were away from each other told me, "man, I wish I could kill you (be your last comp.) You could see how chill I am now." And I was like, "hey, that´s not funny. You almost killed me the first time! And p.s.- never gonna happen." Oh, but it has. I am finishing the mission in San Cristobol, which is more or less the campo again. The part...

You and me and the Devil do NOT make three. I am not a witchy woman. What is with the people this week? Answer: They are no longer people. They have turned into a hideous sub-species of perpetual drunkards. I don´t know if the people who are telling me I´m a blond American devil are drunk or just crazy. Yesterday, Sunday, the supposed day of the Lord (go figure), is when people started freaking out on me. One bearded gentleman (why do most of them have beards?) started chasing us with his big metal pole telling me I´m the devil, so I ignored him and entered in my apartment complex. He left me alone. As Hna. Paus and I, later that day, were walking up to the craziest street in this entire country, the Dr. Defillo, when I lady with Medusa-like hair and milk streaming from her mouth yelled for us to cross to the other side of the road, because, you guessed it, I´m a giant devil. I think she had me confused for someone else... but anyway, I couldn´t help but think how lucky I am not to h...

Remember that time when everything is different than how it used to be? Yeah.... But sometimes that´s good and sometimes that´s bad. How profound. But, as Jesus was know to do now and then, he gave some good insight into the human condition when he observed that no one who has old wine will automatically want new wine because they will claim the old is better. He was referring to the new, higher, better law he had brought to the people to replace the Law of Moses. But it can be applied to any other life change as well. We seem to either want to cling to past traditions/habits, even if there is obviously a better way presented to us, or sometimes we take the opposite stratagem and try to abandon everything, hoping that going to a new place, starting over, whatever, will make everything from a shattered past become a forgotten memory. However, I think the real trick is, unshockingly, finding a happy balance between the two. Forgiving, forgetting, and moving forward, but remembering that...

Howdy Partners. This is your capitán speaking. Well, capitána. But the feminist in me refuses to acknowledge the genderizing of nouns and verbs. Which means I may be doomed to have terrible grammar, but at least I´ll be getting my point across, even if I´m the only one who knows it. Anyway, as some of you may already know/taken for granted, this week was the great big day of thanks. And I feel quite ashamed of how I have been mistreating my American roots this week. I just realized that for 6 months, o sea, half a year, I have been living with pure Latins. What? How? So this week has been quite an adjustment for me, because I now have another American in the house, Hermana Dawe. Which means i´ve been speaking a whole pile of English. I can´t even stop it. It is English-rrhea, which is a lot better than the real thing. And because she only has a couple transfers in the field, she´s been able to catch me up on some of the stuff I´ve been missing over the last, oh you know, 16 MONTHS...