Monday, November 18, 2013

Week Eight: Ana Maria

I saved the big email for last this week, which in retrospect was dumb.

Dwanna hear a story? Yeah? Ok:
A couple of months ago, Elder Leavitt baptized an old woman named Ana Maria. Since then, she lost her job. She lost her house because she couldn't pay for it.  She can't afford to pay for the medicines that keep her sane. So now, she is nuts and she gets mad about the smallest things.  She calls us her Angelitos because we help her when we can. We find members to give her food and we try to convince her family to help her.

She comes to our house a few times a week and yells until we come downstairs.  Last Monday, she yelled until we came down and then started to complain that her chest hurt (she has breast cancer). She sat down in the restaurant and then wouldn't stand back up and started to fall asleep.  We straight up thought that she was dying.

We ran to one of her family members houses but they refused to help her. Three different households of her family made up lame excuses of why they couldnt help her.  I got snippy and asked one of them, "if she dies, and its your fault, youll be ok with that, really?" And this woman looked me in my eyeballs and nodded.

We went to the hospital but they said that they couldn't take her because there weren't any medics on duty  The firemen helped us by putting her in a firetruck. The rest of the night, we were Peruvian firemen because we got to ride around in a firetruck to try to find a decent human that would take this woman in.  After being rejected by the Police station, we decided that there was nothing to do.

We put our sweaters on her, wrapped her in like three blankets, gave her a blessing, put her on a bench, and went back to bed. She is fine now.  She is still sleeping on the street but she says that a family member in Lima is going to pay to send her there for treatment.

I am so grateful for the fact that the USA has policemen, firefighters, and hospitals that have the ability to help people. And I am also grateful that I have a family that doesn't want to see me die.

I have more that I want to write but that story took it all. So tune in next week for tales of Julio Gonzalez, hashtags, and racism.

Love you all,
Elder George Gonzalez

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