Carnaval

My shoelaces broke. Luckily I was able to find some new ones.

Yesterday we spent the whole day sitting, and during the night I got tired of sitting.

We'll see what happens this transfer. We just got an email from President Gallego, saying that transfers are going to be on Thursday. They'll call us Wednesday night. Barranquilla is having Carnaval right now, which basically means that everyone's out getting drunk, dancing, and breaking a whole bunch of commandments out in the street. The missionaries aren't allowed to leave their houses. They've been indoors all week. Tomorrow is the last day, so they're moving transfers to Thursday morning. But he also said that there will only be 16 transfers within the 88 companionships in the mission, so it won't be too stressful. We'll see what happens. All I know is that if President Gallego calls me in these next few days, I'll probably be a trainer. I don't think it'll happen, but if I've learned anything here, it's that you can't trust anything in the transfers. And to answer Dad's question, what happens in transfers is that usually one of the assistants calls us on Monday night at about 8 or 8:30 and tells us what's going on. And then on Tuesday, at about 7 am we have to go to the bus station to take a bus to our area if it's out of the city.

Other than that, this has been a pretty normal week. But the cousin of W. decided to get baptized! We've been waiting awhile for this. She wants to be baptized, but she's been waiting for her boyfriend to come from far away. He comes about once a year, and they have 3 kids. But he hasn't come, and she's starting to think of telling him to not come back, because she hasn't seen him in over a year. So she accepted a baptismal date for the 18th of March, as well as her two older kids! We'll have to see if she keeps firm in this decision, I hope she does.

I've been having the chance to listen to a lot of music (unwillingly) in the street. Here in Valledupar is the home of Vallenato, which is basically accordion music. If you want to hear what I get to listen to all day in the street, look up Diomedes Diaz or Silvestre Dangon. Especially the song "ya no me duele mas." I hear that song so, so, so much. And that's basically what I get to listen to all the time. It's interesting. It makes me want to learn how to play the accordion.

That was basically my week, it was pretty fun. Nothing too out of the ordinary, just normal mission stuff. I'm really happy to be here, I love it a lot. I love you all and hope you have a great week. Bye!