April 10, 2023 THE HOPEFULLY NOT SO BORING ADVENTURES OF ELDER WILLIAMSON CHAPTER XXV

aghhhhhhhhhhhh.. this week.. has been.. an entire week?.. *we did nothing again on monday, cuz that's how things go here (we at least played a lil house frisbee golf tho) *we had zone council, and it's a bit boring and sad now cuz almost all my old friends left, and now it's just me and elder macdonald (and one of the sisters) who have been here the longest *i read a lot of the friends magazine in spanish now as language study *i fished for water from a well *i had "beans with sweet" for the first time.. basically just baked beans but like half as good, and it's another thing that they put random stuff in (including raisins) *i went on an exchange with elder macdonald and went over to his area, and that was super fun (still haven't done any rEal exchanges where i actually leave cambita, buttttt) *it's a tradition here for holy week for the little kids to go sit in little kiddie pool, and everyone goes to the rivers and the beach and stuff *someone flooded our house again, but we caught it a lilll sooner than the last time * saturday night, most fire night everrrr!!.. basically first we are walking by the play (a park where everyone plays all of the sports) and we see a helicopter just sitting in the middle of it.. sooo we go to see what's going on, and we get to watch it take off, and blow a bunch of dirt in our eyes.. and then we are walking to our next visit avoiding all the people drinking, and blasting unholy music for holy week and easter and stuff, and we finally come to what is supposed to be our 2nd to last visit of the night.. so we're talking to the lady we're teaching (caroline) (she has 4 kids, 3 boys (carlos: he has an extra finger on one hand, and he's super nice, but a bit of a punk around his family) (bravelis: he's super chill, and probably my favorite of them) (and then chiquitín, he's craZy, he's covered in roadrash cuz he leaves the house naked all the time, and just does crazy stunts and stuff, and he gets smacked by people so often that he is literally immune to pain, and he's how we found all these people) (who are crAzy and some of my favorite people ever) and one girl who died of cancer a couple years ago) and carolines' boyfriend (josias) just got put on date for baptism, so we're working really hard on these 2, and it's chAos.. fortunately, i LOVE chaos.. so basically we're there, and her boys are running around creating havoc, and making a ruckus, and she's yelling at them to stop, and then 2 of carolines' friends show up, and one of them has a gigAntic "6 month year old baby".. so caroline is yelling at her 3 boys to go clean up the mess they've just made (she says she's already cleaned the house 3 times today), and to shower, and to put on clothes, anddd it's all just hilarious to me and my comp.. and they're playing with the giant baby, and they're all getting slapped at random times because they're doing dum stuff, and not cleaning, and we're trying to talk to the 3 ladies, and the kids are trying to talk to us, and thennnn... it starts raining... and at first we don't think about it too much, we're just talking, and we've been here for a bit now, and my comp says "we gotta go", and i'm like "you wanna go in this rain?" and he's like "you wanna stay here?" and i'm like (in my head) "uhhh yah man, this is super fun" but i just say "well where's somewhere we could go, where they'll still let us in if we are absolutely soaked?" and then we think about the lorenzos (the family we had plAnned to visit next, but they live super high on a very steep mountain (which would have been a fun slip n slide i'm sure, but we also may have ended up being impaled by trees and machetes and haitians and dominicans and all sorts of rabid animals on our way down)... so anyways we decide we can't go there, and there aren't really a lot of other places that will be productive.. so we decide we probably need to go home, because at this point the water is getting a bit high outside.. and i think it was around then that the oldest kid runs in and says "THERE'S WATER COMING IN THRU THE BACK DOOR!" and caroline says "WELL CLOSE THE DOOR THEN" and he says "IT ISSS CLOSED" (i may be paraphrasing a tiny bit cuz this was in spanish).. so anyways my comp jumps up to go see the water coming in thru the back door, and i follow him and sure enough, there is water coming in thru the closed back door.. so we're looking for why, and we're sloshing around in water, and the oldest kid goes "mom, you left the straightening iron on" and she is like "oh i forgot about that" and my comp goes "how is the water getting in?" and she opens the door to look at what's happening, and she gets absolutely pummeled in the face by wind and rain "wow it's kinda windy" she says.. and we aren't really sure what's going on, so we're looking for something to stop the water from coming in, and then we get distracted helping the boys clean their room (which means shoving all the stuff in their closet, cuz that's obviously the best way to clean a room) and then 2 of the boys go out to look at the other side of the door, so my comp makes his way towards the front door, and i ask what we're doing now, (cuz i'm always lost ofc) and he says we're going outside to fix the problem, so we go outside, and it's kinda wet out there, but we're having a blAst, and the lighting is striking all around, and the thunder is so fetching cool, and we walk to the back of the house.. so i hold the phone under un umbrella (cuz it's super cracked and not waterproof in any way, and we forgot to leave it inside), and my comp climbes up the side of the house a little bit and reconnects some pipe on the side of the house that was causing the problem, and then we go back inside.. they the ladies are all super shocked that we had gone outside and gotten wet, but it was super fun, so we don't care.. so anyways fast forward, and we're eating some food, and playing with the kids, and then one of the kids runs towards the front door (cuz why not), and lighting struck (and i swear it was right outside, because there was no delay between the flash and the boom) and this kid got so shocked he slipped on the wet floor, and it looked like he got absolutely just struck down (and that was the funniest thing i've ever witnessed in that house, which is saying a lOt).. and then they are throwing a ball, and it flies close to some breakable things, so i smack it away from there, and it smacks one of the kids right in the face (causing his tubberware of soup to spill all over the couch).. and then one of the kids pours me a tall plastic glass of some cold bean "juice", and i'm playing a type of dominican patty cake with the kids, and my comp is beating the kids up, and the 3 ladies are milling about cleaning up water and eating food, and the giant baby is just vibing and spitting up everywhere.. and then some man in a terrifying yellow rain coat (from the movie IT (or demille)) appears with one of the flashes of lightning, and this man has a plastic bag of eggs, and he sells them to the lady, and then disappears again... annnd that's pretty much the whole night, we walked home in the rain after that, and just had a fun time *and then we had easter.. we didn't hunt for eggs or anything (cuz thAt is sUper weird) but we had only an hour of church but hey, congrats, you got a longer email this week again.. it might be a sec till that happens again, we'll have to see.. love you guys tho, have a great week! 2 nephi 16:8 Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying: Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then I said: Here am I; send me.