Hermana Y Elder Borup

I learned another lesson in life. First are GREATLY affected by personal motivation. AS you have read over and over again, I have been very excited about getting out of the office and into the cities with people and members and missionaries. Hermana Borup liked her job in the office and was very uncertain about moving away from a very comfortable life, with lots of knowns. I spent much of my time last week helping to get things ready for the move on Monday. We thought things were nearly done. My first impression was, "this looks great, yea it's a little dirty (from construction) but we have everything we need and more". Hermana Borup didn't overlook the dirtiness as easily as I did. We have a history of that. She had a hard time seeing the Air conditioning, the nice stove and big nice refrigerator. She saw a whole lot of dirt and grime left over by some very hard working men who don't clean as well as they install things. Let's just say our first night in Azua...

As the title says, we aren't in our new home yet. That's the bad news. The good news is that we are going to have 4 working air conditioners and we have been staying with the Buhlers who are feeding us well. I have made several trips to Azua and back to start putting things away and help get things installed. The man preparing the house is a man that works for us repairing missionary houses. He was a Stake president here. He is one of the kindest people I have been around. We did some errands around town as we are getting things for the house. People that don't even know him just light up when he interacts with them. He also speaks the best Spanish in the country. He is used to talking to missionaries who are just learning so he knows how to speak slow and clear. When I don't understand him he just says it in another way until I understand.  The moving part of the week has kept me busy most of the week. We moved a lot of things from another house that Senior Missiona...

Sorry for not having many pictures. We're going to find out if you visit the blog to read it or just look at the pictures. This has been another week of nothing typical. Last Sunday I started to feel the symptoms of a cold and by Monday I was under the weather. By Tuesday I had a sore throat and didn't even go into the office. But don't worry there is a pharmacy on every corner here and they are just as good as doctors. They knew just what to give me so by Wednesday I was back at it in the office. As I mentioned a few times, we're moving to Azua and just as expected when you're not good with the language and just getting to know the culture things don't always go as smooth as you would like. Last week we said our goodbyes in Nizau because we thought we had a signed contract on the new house and so could pay our first months rent. The area office likes to pay Landlords electronically through the bank. Our new landlords are an older couple in their late...

Sometimes we have to just pinch ourselves to know this is all real. Mostly because of the amazing experiences we are having. Other times life has a way of letting us know without any pinches that it is real. Hermana Borup has been sick now for about 2 weeks. By sick I mean not even well enough to go for a run. That may not be very sick for some of you but for her not running means she is very sick. This week on Thursday she was finally able to get out the door. She says she is really all better now. The way she describes her illness is "you don't want to know! I don't want anyone to ever feel that bad". I'm glad she is feeling better it was hard to see her suffer like that. I think it helped us to be more sympathetic to sick missionaries. I made a couple of trips to Azua this week to find and secure our new home. Elder Buhler had to go to Neyba (which in the South of the Mission) to find a home so the missionaries can return. Remember they were kicked out of ...