"One of the Least of These"

Last weekend was a whirlwind from the conference, and then Tuesday hit.  It was a dismal day for me or absolutely nothing!  I remained in my pajamas all day, and for the first time here (which I think I did pretty good making it 3 1/2 weeks!) I went crazy in my mind because I have no responsibilities.  I tried to study, but I felt completely worthless.  Apparently the people in Colombia don't like being served and after 3 1/2 weeks of diligent searching for service opportunities I had turned up none!  I felt sorry for myself for a day, and wondered what I was doing with my life.

Wednesday morning I woke up and earnestly prayed for a service opportunity.  The following is a journal excerpt:

           "This morning I prayer fervently for an opportunity to serve.  I listened to Elder Holland’s conference address and it’s inspiration to be a disciple of Christ made me feel like I was running against a wall, I didn’t know where to serve in this country so foreign to me.  As I went to the grocery store with Hermana Martinez I expressed my feelings of being lost without a responsibility, but she just confirmed what everyone else did—that there wasn’t a place right now for me to serve.  My friend, Rachel Sanchez, was talking to me on facebook and when I lamented not having a responsibility she said "Be responsible for relaxing!  Sometimes you have to be responsible for that especially after you've been too responsible!"  Haha.

            After lunch Andrés discovered that one of the 5 puppies wasn’t responding.  At first we thought it was dead, but on closer inspection it was breathing very shallowly and far spaced.  We rushed to warm and revive the little fellow.  He was the smallest of all the puppies and I rubbed him with little response from him.  I place him inside my shirt on my chest, and put my alpaca beanie over his little body, then placed a water bottle with warm water along his back.  After breathing warmth on him for a little while his chest started to rise a little higher.  What followed next was one of the funniest experiences of my life!  Hermana Martinez and Andrés milked the mama dog!  This produced very little milk as she is a small dog, so we used a little cow milk and with some coxing the pup ate a tiny bit.  Next I searched online for what to do and we followed as best we could.  One suggestion was to get puppy powder, but they don’t have that in the little stores close to the house, so Hrm Martinez ran to her sisters house who has a bigger dog that just had puppies and milked her.  This produced much more milk that I was able to get the runt to drink a little more of!  All afternoon was taken to warming, and feeding, and reviving this little guy.  At one point I heard in my mind “In as much as you have done it unto one of the least of these, you have done it unto me.”  I had prayed for an opportunity to serve, I had supposed it’d be another person, but this fragile little pup certainly qualifies as “one of the least of these”.  God works in mysterious ways!"

And that is what I have been doing all week since.  Every 2 hours during the day, and every 3 hours during the night I feed this precious little guy!

It's the one of the bottom right:

This one is the fattest, and I named him Gus Gus like the little fat rat in Cinderella.  

It looks like I am squeezing him, but he is just that skinny :(

Here is a better picture of my cute little guy!  One night at dinner they said I was like his mom and the 16 year old quickly corrected "More like GRANDMA!" Bahaha!  So this is my grandson.  To keep the theme of Cinderella Anrés named him "Ceniciento" (Cinderello).

Unfortunately his is not a fairytale with a happy ending on earth.  One week after he was born, this little guy died tonight.  I am sad, but like I told Andrés "Heaven is way better then here!"  We did all we could do, and we loved him when he was with us.

Sorry to start out on a sad note, but the majority of my week was studying and caring for Ceniciento.  For a while he was really improving, but by yesterday I was pretty sure he wasn't going to make it.  It was a sweet opportunity to take care of him.  If you know me at all you know I have a super soft heart for animals, so I loved every minute of caring for him.

Friday it hit me that I DO have another responsibility!  And that is to study spanish!  There is a time and a season for everything, and right now the more I improve my spanish the more I can improve my service in other areas when I get home.  So I have 7 weeks left and need to get cracking!  So less e-mails, less facebook, less other distractions, it's crack down time!  (And I thought I was studying a lot before).

It's been a pretty chill week other then that.  Here is my first pizza in Colombia!  (If you didn't know pizza is my favorite food.)  My verdict is: mine is better.  They don't really have sauce on their pizza (or at least I didn't see or taste any), but it was alright...probably won't be eating it again.

And to end on a funny note, two things from today: 

        1- I was talking with the older son (who knows a bit of english) and I mentioned something about only knowing 2 other girls in high school with my same name.  One was cool, one was less then that (and then I said I didn't know the word in spanish).  After some guesses and hints, one being "ella era como una mujer de la noche", his face lit up as he said: "OHH!  Como "playa".  I was confused for a second until I said the word out loud in English "beach" and then I laughed SO hard!  

       2- I get asked to pray A LOT here, more then I have in my whole life.  I don't know if they think it's funny to hear the white girl pray or what, but the family, church classes, all the time!  So for F.H.E. tonight I was asked to pray and whenI started to thank Heavenly Father for this day of rest I forgot the word "rest" and after a pause still couldn't produce the word so I said essentially "thank you for this day we don't have to work".  The family is getting pretty good at holding their laughter till after "Amen" but all their faces were red and they busted as soon as the prayer ended.