Expect the Unexpected

these cute twins in our ward want to be missionaries!

yes, yes he is

one thing i've learned (serving in the amazon) is to expect the unexpected. last tuesday, as we were finishing our weekly district meeting, the zone leaders suggested that we have an hour-long english lesson - then announced that i would be teaching it! what? haha, improv is always fun. :)

then, one morning this week, our water didn't work. we have water stored in two-liter bottles and in a big green bucket, so i just used the bottled water and a hardened shell (from a fruit called "wingo"). it was a little rugged, but i just scooped the water out with the wingo bowl and showered with that. definitely worth it before going out to work in the heat of the day!

kiddos' baptism!!

classic baptism selfie

in other news, alonso, gian, and sebastian were baptized this week! they all live with their grandma, who has wanted to see them baptized for a very long time. she was so happy. :) we are also teaching another of her grandkids named pierro, who is 17. he will hopefully be baptized on the 27th! and, we had four investigators at church!!!! couldn't even believe it!!! the lord is blessing us so much!!

i am so grateful this week for the atonement of jesus christ. it literally gets me through everything. i love my savior, i love this work, and i love all of you!

hermana wood

More from this week's message to Hermana Wood's mom:

hey, mommy! thank you so much for understanding about the return date change [february 7th, instead of december 21st]. it's just a few more weeks, right? we got this!

life in the rainforest

so, my whole mission i've been craving spiral mac and cheese with hot dogs, right? and, guess what we had for breakfast this week? the peruvian version! the hot dogs sort of disintegrated in my mouth (ew) and the cheese was weird, but IT HAPPENED!!! for breakfast!! then, dinner last night was three mandarin oranges and a huge cup of jello. #nutrition

More from this week's message to Hermana Wood's dad:

this morning in personal study, i noticed a ton of ants on my desk (more than normal) and then more and more...and then, i looked at my english quad and it was FULL OF ANTS!! like a colony of ants in my scriptures! and, this has happened to my comp's quad, too. apparently, the ants like the glue that holds the bindings together. so, i was killing the ants on my desk with a disinfectant spray we have to clean the bathroom (thank heaven we bought it the other week, or we would've had no way to kill them), while hermana garcia was knocking my scriptures on the ground to get the ants out. as they would fall on the ground, i'd spray them with the spray. eventually, there were so many that we had to pour alcohol down the binding to kill them all, and even that didn't do it completely. it was insane - and took up half of personal study time!!!