Week 13

It has been the most eventful two weeks of my mission life so far! First of I would like to introduce you all to my new companion Hermana Winder. She is from South Jordan Utah, went to Bingham High School (shout out to all my Bingham friends you know who you are) goes to BYUI, loves to sing and sings beautifully, she is about 5' 4'', long blond hair, is terrified of squirrels, and has an abnormal sensitivity to smells (please see picture below for more info). She is fantastic but I am already mourning her loss; she goes home this next transfer.

I will start from the beginning. So we all pretty much knew that Hermana Garlitz would get transferred and so we kind of started to say good bye to all the peeps down in Mayfield but it still hadn't hit home to me until we got the call Saturday night. All of a sudden reality hit and I realized that I would be getting a new companion. It didn't help that Sister Tenny (one of my mission heroes) was going home and Elder Bishop my favorite Zone Leader was also being transferred. Okay pretty much everyone got moved around because we had a very large number of greenies coming in and a lot of missionaries going home. You  might have noticed that I did not email last week that was because Hermana G and I were too busy trying to see as many people as we could and pack everything up and clean. Also it had been Hermana Garlitz birthday last Sunday and it seamed that everyone wanted to have Birthday dinners. And on top of all that there have been tornados and flooding for the past two weeks and last Monday the flooding hit Paducah. It started raining hard at about 7:30. At 8:00 Hermana Garlitz and I were sitting in the car stressed because we had planned a Noche de Hogar and no one was coming because of the rain. I suggested that we just go out in the rain and dance (I had been wanting to do that for a while) so that is what we did. We were parked out my a members apartments and sweet Hermano Zaragoza came out with his umbrella to try to save up but we didn't want to be saved. He invited us up to his place to eat a piece of ice cream cake that he had bought for Hermana Garlitz' birthday it was supper sweet:) As we walked out to the car soaking wet a lady runs up to us and says that everything is flooded and that she thought we shouldn't go out. We thanked her but then went and saw... the water came up to my knees! Hopefully we were able to make it back to the apartment before 9:30 or we would have turned into pumpkins;)

On a happier note I have been getting eaten alive by mosquitoes, ticks, chiggers, bed bugs, flees and who knows what else. I cant tell them apart anymore all I know is that I will have scars for the rest of my life.

*(warning this might be too graphic)*

On an even happier note I woke up on Saturday morning with a soar throat. I had shrugged it away. It had gone away till after lunch and then the soreness came back and then... I started to feel a bubble forming in my throat. I got up to get some water and as soon as I had chugged some down I realized that the bubble was not going away but that it was getting bigger. I went to look in the mirror to see what it was and what I found was not pretty. There was a white soar right on my throat that Hermana Winder described as gum like. I reached back and touched it but I didn't feel anything. We freaked out and I wish I would have taken a picture of it but we immediately started calling people. I grabbed another glass of water and started chugging and then..... it was gone.... I had swallowed something. I look in the mirror again and the sore was gone. I had eaten it. I went to show Hermana Winder and she realized that it was growing again like some sort of puss except for I would keep swallowing it. We got a hold of the Presidents wife and she told us that it was probably a throat ulcer. She wasn't too worried about it and it calmed me down. I just kept drinking water and the pain eventually went away. Not to worry I am all better but I will for sure take a picture next time:)

We also had a wedding this week. The brides maids were the bishop's wife, and two sister missionaries and the grooms men were the Elders! What an epic wedding:) The new couple will be getting baptized on Sunday.

The work is going good! I have high hopes for this new companionship and we expect some baptisms this transfer:)

Well I'm off to more adventures and happier days! I love you all. This church is true.

Cheers,

   Hermana Orellana

PS I'm thinking of dying my hair.....

PPS Happy Birthday to my fabulous friend Michelle Nguyen! I hope you had a fun time and expect something in the mail sometime this week;)