6 August 2018

So, to start it all off this week, I got bit by a dog on Saturday. This particular dog has the nickname of "The Tank," given to it by one of the previous missionaries who served here. It's actual name we found out is "Muñeco," which means "little doll" in Spanish. We think that The Tank is a much more accurate description. He's a big pit bull who is always chained up in the front yard of some trailer, and whenever we pass by him he runs to the end of his chain and barks like crazy. Well, on Saturday, they didn't have him on a chain. I don't know why, but they didn't. So we were walking by (we frequently visit this particular trailer park) and as we were turning his corner, he starts to run at us. I was used to this, but I thought he still had a chain on. He didn't'. I saw that and still wasn't too worried because he wasn't barking like normal. I thought he was being friendly. (We've tried to befriend this dog, but it wasn't happening.) Then, as he was right in front of me, he jumped at my arm. At that point, I realized, "Oh, he might not be so friendly right now." This is where I think that God intervened. I hadn't even really comprehended what was going on when he had jumped. I don't remember pulling my arm back at all, but apparently I did. And I'm pretty sure it spent a lot of time in his mouth, because I had slobber on my arm almost from elbow to pinky. I'm pretty sure that I can't move all of my lower arm past a dog's mouth before it has time to really bite down, but that's what happened. I did get bit a little, but it wasn't anything major. At the same time, I kneed it in the chest/side to get it away from me a little, and then the owner called it off and it walked away. I was bleeding a little bit, but if God hadn't intervened, I would have had a 75+ lb. pit bull hanging off my arm. So that's really my miracle of the week. I'll have a picture at the bottom, but it's not bad, almost just a scratch. With some minor swelling. But that's since gone down.

In terms of the work for this week, it was pretty good. We got to meet a family of 3 who seem way open to listening more, and they really want to learn. The dad is named Roberto, and he's a taxi driver, so he even has a pretty regular schedule, which is super uncommon out here. Like, ridiculously uncommon. I think he's only the second non-member Hispanic I've met out here whose schedule isn't just absolutely insane. We're really excited for them, and we're meeting with them again on Wednesday. And something very interesting happened in terms of less-actives: We found two that we didn't know existed. One is from the Dominican Republic and hasn't gone to church in over 15 years, and the other is a 16 year old girl from Hondorus who got baptized when she was 11 and just fell away. But she seemed super open to us, and she and her aunt live with another person we've been trying to teach. She said she wanted a Book of Mormon, so we're going to go by and read with her and everyone there in it, and hopefully they'll both start going back to church. That's it for this week, talk to y'all later!