'Wowzuhs! Who's that?!' 'Umm, that would be me, sans 60 lbs. and A LOT more hair!' LOL!
An old mission comp of mine, Tavis Bennett, has a website with some pix from the mish on there and he has graciously allowed me to use them.
Danke, I mean, gracias Tavis!
Tavis and I were assigned as missionaries in the town of Sogamoso to ONLY work with less-active members of the Church. The guy in the back/middle came back to Church and baptized his daughters, up front....then they all went inactive! UGH! But why focus on that? So I won't, or I'll try not to.... ;)
A pic with the missionaries from Sogamoso and our AP - the sisters were in the Magdalena ward.
I'm in P-day clothes...so we were either helping somebody or it was P-day. I'm including this just to show how I felt during a lot of the mission - TIRED! I still think when we say that people are lazee, they probably just have the 'TIRED' gene ;) Yeah, that must be what I have...the 'tired' gene ;)
Next I'd like to introduce you to the 'most wonderful place in the world' in my experience. It's called Barbosa. I've thought about it so much and still to this day Barbosa is the most beautiful place I've ever lived! The green hills stretching out in the distance, the weather was sunny and warm...I always felt 'comfortable' temperature-wise there.
Barbosa has a neighbor town where there is a rivalry and an artist from Barbosa made this mural to try to 'unite' the two towns. One day we ran into him and asked him if we could come teach him, he said sure. We showed up and the guy had invited two Reformed 7th-day Adventist preachers also. I think now that he just wanted to see a fight. He started by turning to the preachers and asked something like 'so you're saying that these two young men are going to Hell because...' And the preachers started off saying 'yes' and 'because', etc. My companion leaned forward to say something and I just put my hand on his arm wagged my head (this was NOT inspired in my opinion - probably more like I was SO tired of the WHOLE 'fight, fight religion' thing, I was just like 'let's just sit here') the next thing that happened was HILARIOUS and AMAZING! The artist suddenly 'took up our cause' and started bashing and yelling and saying all sorts of things to these guys that I would have loved to have said, but couldn't as a missionary ;) Anyway, in the end, he ordered them out, told us we could come back - nothing came of it though...he tried to tell me I should convert to Taoism and go visit his 'teacher' in another village, but....lesson learned - conflict and fighting are STUPID!
Barbosa from the surrouding hillside...
Oh Barbosa! How beautiful you are! I have never forgotten you nor will I!
Thanks Tavis for helping me relive some memories...
