Ok, first of all I would like to blame the story I’m about to tell you on one of my very good friends and brother, Dan. He is a bit hard of hearing because he didn’t use ear protection when shooting guns growing up…don’t try that at home kids, it’s a really dumb idea. When anyone is talking to him and he can’t hear what they are saying, he always turns his head to them (so that his ear is closer to the speaker) and says “come again..”. So that being said and understood, here goes my first (and I’m sure not the last) embarrassing moment while on the World Race….
So, our whole team and Anggelo (the guy who has been taking super good care of us and being our protector and guardian while in Peru) are in this gas station waiting for this guy to come pick us up and take us to serve at a wheel chair distribution (side note: super cool ministry….got to actually put the wheel chairs together ourselves and give them out to people in need and pray for them….and yes, I was praying for the poor person that ended up with my wheel chair that it would not collapse on them and give them further harm…to my knowledge everyone is still ok…). Since we were waiting, and I was feeling extra dehydrated that day, I was at the cash register buying a gatorade when the guy came in to get us. As I walk up to the rest of the group and stand next to this guy, he immediately turns his head to me, presenting his cheek. (Another side note: In most, if not all, South American countries, when two girls greet each other or when a male and female greet each other you lean forward and place your cheeks together and make a kissing noise. It’s called kissing each other on the cheek but in fact there is no kissing involved, just the noise…don’t worry guys, we like to keep it PG down here. I personally love this form of greeting and think it is so much fun and intimate and wish we did it back home…ok, now back to my story…stop interrupting, it’s very rude…) So this guy is presenting his cheek to me right? Well for some reason, I completely forget about the whole South American greeting thing and am thinking that he is pulling a Dan hearing trick and is trying to hear what I’m saying…only problem is, I’m not saying anything. So here we are, him standing in front of me with his cheek out and me awkwardly staring at him trying to figure out what the heck he is doing. We stand this way for much too long a time before the rest of my group subtlety tries to tell me that he’s waiting for me to kiss and greet him. Finally I understand what is going on and hastily proceed with the greeting as fast as I can. To make matters worse, after our awkward greeting is over, he asks me if I am Mormon, but because he said it in a strange accent and I was still flustered from making a complete fool of myself, I couldn’t understand what he was saying…so he asks again, “Are you Mormon?”. Once again I’m stuck just staring at him trying to figure out what is going on, until I finally realized what he asked and was able to tell him that no, I was not a mormon. He asked that because the Mormons don’t do the kiss greeting but are quick to stick out their hands instead. Needless to say, this whole exchange made it very hard for me to take anything he said seriously. I was so tickled that I could hardly look at him without laughing…all the while he has moved on and is telling us about his heart for caring for and sharing the Gospel with the people we would be giving wheelchairs to. Chalk it up to being just another silly American girl I guess….and my friend Dan classically conditioning me to his lack of hearing problems…either way, I got a quite a kick out of it.
