Every body heals with love

 happy is the heart that still feels pain.
darkness drains and light will come again.
swing open up your chest and let it in.
just let the love, love, love begin.
everybody, everybody wants to love.
everybody, everybody wants to be loved.

7-28

Happy Peru independence day! I have to admit I was disappointed at the lack of festivities today. No parades! It seemed like a normal day. But ‘they’ said that everything happened yesterday. (the school parades). A lot of people weren’t feeling good today, me included. We met with Hermana luzby (because she cuts hair/is going to school to learn how to cut hair) because our women’s group activity was going to be cutting hair. So she pulled out all of her supplies and showed them to us. She has all the works and a huge amount of combs. She is going to let us borrow her supplies so we just have to purchase combs. There are going to be three models and Hermana Luzby and Janet (another lady from church) are going to cut their hair in different styles. The details are still a little unclear to me, but I have a feeling it will work out. So Hrma was going to call Janet to make sure they both show up at 2 until 4. Then we went home and I curled up and fell asleep for 4 hours! Then I woke up and didn’t want to wake up. But I did. And I read in Mosiah 4:21 “And now, if God, who has created you, on whom you are dependent for your lives and for all that ye have and are, doth grant unto you whatsoever ye ask that is right, in faith, believing that ye shall receive, O then, how ye ought to impart of the substance that ye have one to another.” Last night we were walking to the phone and then to get some ice cream. I was with one other team member and we passed this boy sitting on the sidewalk with his head down on top of his arms hugging his knees bent to his chest. I didn’t have anything on me except money… but I was saving 1 sol to get some icecream… and then I needed 1 sol to get back home… and then I had 30 centimos left over. Before I carried candies or bracelets. But I don’t have either anymore. And I keep coming back to the principle in my head “if you give out money, you are teaching a person to beg”. And I just walked by the boy. And it made my heart drop that I would just walk by and not do anything. It made me sad because he wasn’t a grown man sleeping on the street, but he was a boy curled up in a position I would assume as being sad. I think just acknowledging his presence would have been better than walking past him. It made me really sad. Then we went to ESL and that turned my spirits around… And I loved teaching the class… and that kind of made me sad that I felt happy and was able to/did put in the back of my memory of the boy sitting there by himself looking sad. And so, back to Mosiah… it made me see it differently. Despite my treating other people wrongly, there are so many blessings nonetheless. It really overwhelms my understanding how merciful God and Christ are. It also put me in my place… that we (as people) are so indebted to Christ and so it is the very least we can do to serve Him by serving his people… and so later on in the day, I got frustrated… but then I was reminded of this lesson and felt I wasn’t entitled to feel frustrated at this person. But I didn’t think denying myself of ‘negative’ feelings was very natural… and because of that… even good. So I came to the conclusion that when frustration or anger so naturally come up, it is all we can do to not let that affect the way we treat people. Because in the end, we are so utterly dependent on our Savior for creating us and for giving us the opportunity to repent... Especially when we promise to act in the name of Christ, it is all we can do… and the essence of being… to try to be like him, do as he would do…. in everything we do… (but right now I am thinking mostly of: in having mercy and giving of oneself). Just as I need forgiveness for walking by the sad boy and buying myself an ice cream (Because what if all he needed was a tap on the shoulder, a 10 centimos, a hola, anything) What if because I didn’t do what I was suppose to do he suffered because of it. Who knows maybe he was just tired. Maybe he was waiting for his mom. I don’t know. And I won’t ever know. But I know that Heavenly Father still loves me even when I was being selfish. And because Heavenly Father loves me for being selfish, I have to replicate that love. That was a very round about way to interpret that scripture. But I learned some things as I was writing it. I think writing things out is very therapeutic (or even talking). Sometimes there is a voice in my head making me feel scared at silly things and when I explain it in words, I can think more logically. And even though it gets busy, there is plenty time to think. Well... really… there is always time to think. And healthy thinking influences healthy thoughts.

            Then we went to the grocery store to get food for the week. We went a little crazy with the vegetables because we got the ingredients to make guacamole. Then we came back and started the curriculum planning. We made curriculum for basic ESL and continued making books. Then we went to meet with Meritza (women’s group leader) and talked about the purpose of the women’s group and the upcoming Sat. event. We decided that because the building is unavailable this Sat. and a lot of people went on vacation that we should hold the event the first sat in august. So instead of doing the 2^nd and 4^th sat we are going to do the 1^st and 3^rd sat. This is good because that means we will be here for the 3^rd Saturday! So we went over how we would like to have a meeting with her and the other leader to talk about what we are going to do after we leave. And we also talked about in other activities where we use a lot of materials, the women need to give some money for their fulfillment and for the sustainability of the project. I was really excited because meritza gets the idea, she gets the purpose of the group. She talked about how she is trying to start up a group of women (about 20) to learn crafty skills then sell them. They need a machine, so they would put in money to buy a machine together, learn different skills, and then sell those items they make. Which this just so happens to be one of the projects of another team member. His dad donated money to begin loans to a lady he is working with and another group of women that are neighbors to Ernesto. So I told her that he could talk to her about how to find people… and the steps to take to get started and then maybe by next year we could give a loan to this group of women. So potentially the women’s group could turn into an exclusive business, skill-learning group of women. We will see how the next women’s group events go. After we came back we did some more curriculum planning. However, because of the independence day, the ward was partying in the center of town… which left us without a key to get into the building. So we had class in the park across from the church. We split up into basic and advance levels… then split the basic in half. We reviewed what we learned yesterday. Which was a little disappointing to find people forgot what we learned yesterday (How are you… I am good) But after some song teaching (Abc’s, hokey pokey, head shoulders knees and toes) I think they learned what we taught them tonight. (we went over body part vocab words). They did really well. We didn’t get to have music class though so that is also tomorrow night. Which is good because we didn’t do a very thorough job of planning that out.