I don't think I'll ever get used to the way people stare at me. Like, I'm used to the cat calls and the serenades. Now they since "Hey Jude" to me instead of "Call me Maybe" so that's a nice change. But I just don't think that I'll ever accept how much I stand out despite how normal it is. Normality is the abnormal. I was walking with Sister Lang the other day, a girl just as white if not whiter than I am, and I acknowledged, "It's going to be weird when we're invisible again." And she just laughed and replied, "Oh, it'll be so wonderful." And then at that moment a man across the road screamed, "I LOVE YOU, PUTI" at us. Puti is short for Maputi, which means "white". Twice this week, family members of investigators took pictures of me without permission.
Sister Siola'a and I had an adventure this week. The trash needed to be taken out, but we couldn't take it to the truck stop until the morning, so I put it outside the door so the house wouldn't stink. When we got home, trash was all over the ground since the stray cats got in it. While I was lifting up the bag to put it in another bag, a mouse ran from it into the house. I roared a battle cry, and ran after it, waving my stick broom in the air. After looking all over, we couldn't find it, so we figured it had ran out the open back door. After resuming our daily planning, the mouse started crawling up the wall two feet away from me. I shrieked and scooted my chair backward three feet, running to get the broom. The mouse ran under my desk, and Sister Siola'a grabbed the other broom and we waited. Nothing. Finally, Sister Siola'a moved the desk and the mouse darted back and forth all along the wall, beneath bags and our desks and Sister Siola'a just chased it back and forth yelling while I screamed and hopped up and down and pointed and was effectively useless. Of course this was the perfect time for the other sisters to come home too. And they were just watching in the doorway of Sister Siola'a and I losing it. But then, like the crazy awesome Tongan she is, Sister Siola'a killed the mouse with the broom. We hugged afterward, both of us wigging out. We are wild women over here people.
We had a crazy experience this week though. We were teaching an investigator outside, squatting on some buckets, and it just wasn't going well. She wasn't focused at all and it was just sort of frustrating since she wasn't absorbing a single word. So while she got up in the middle of the lesson to cook, another woman walked by. She stopped and asked who we were, so we told her. And she started asking questions. And we asked if we could share with her, and she told us her home was too messy, so we agreed that the church would be best. So at eight at night, we walked with her to the chapel. I told the bishopric we were there, and they invited us into the office. We shared with her, and when I told her she could change her life through our message, she just said, "Oh, thank you. Thank you." Her name is Jessica, and on that first lesson, we asked if when she knows these things are true, if she would be baptized. She just kind of stared at us and then said, "Bakit hindi?" or "Why not?"
She came to church yesterday and enjoyed it immensely. We had another lesson with her and she asked how many Sundays she has to attend to qualify for baptism. She's really great. She has a lot of problems, but she's completely prepared to change her life, which is so incredible. We didn't find her, she found us. Tender mercies of the Lord are happening every day!
Speaking of miracles, we had NINE investigators come to church. Progressing!
Have a good week, everyone! This might be my last week in Daraga! Ugh, this transfer was so quick!
Love,
Sister Green
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