March 27, 2017

Hoollllllllla! 

So i talked a little about Manuel last week. Well his dad told him he needs permission to get baptized from his Catholic priest. hahaha  When i heard that, Ii honestly just started laughing a little. It's the dumbest thing. Why would his other church leader give him permission to be baptized in another church? haha But we will see how that goes.

Dominicans looooove soda. And i do NOT love soda. The carbonation tingles my ears and i just don't like it. haha But I'm forced to drink soda all the time here cause they love it and give it to us all the time. Dominicans are also extremely racist toward Haitians and we have a good amount of Haitians in our ward and we are teaching a few Haitians right now and our ward is just extremely rude toward them and its really dumb. Like you're all black, just different shades, so just love each other... But other than the racism in our ward, its good! We have lots of American families living here. They work for the American Embassy, so its nice to get to talk to Americans haha, And the ward is very friendly and nice.

As you can see from this letter, not too much happened this week since  I'm talking about soda and racism. haha We had toooooons of appointments fall through this week and lots of people say they would come to church, but they didn't. Sundays are soo stressful, as I'm sure everyone who has served a mission can agree. We went to Ikea today cause Ikea is just a good time, and I bought some gingerbread cookies so that was nice.... 

All right, well hopefully I will have something more meaningful for ya'll next week! I know for a fact this church is true! It brings so much peace and comfort in my life. Can't imagine living life without the gospel. Love you all! 

March 21, 2017 - Two Months Down

haha My pics aren't loading. I don't know how to work technology, so all I've got are pics from my comp and a couple from the mission conference from my mission president. And i look really bad in all of them, but it is what it is. 

This is at Zona Colonial. I'm sure it was a really good tour..... but it was in Spanish so i only picked up a little of what was going on haha. But Chris Columbus was a dope guy.

Mission conference choir

Mission Conference Choir

Crazy that I only have 16 months left on the mish. Time goes by fast for sure, but i love mission life. It's so wonderful. I love the simplicity of this life. Yes of course it's hard and stressful with investigators and the language and everything, but just knowing that this time is dedicated to God and my Savior is just so cool, and studying the scriptures and feeling the spirit more than ever! Ahh, life is good! 

So we have two baptismal dates on April 8th for Dania and Manuel. Dania is the 14 year old Haitian. She is so sweet and so ready and I'm just so happy and excited for her. Manuel is the other. He is also 14 and that kid is hilarious. So his story is his friend is a member and he went to an activity with him and at the end of the activity they had a testimony meeting and Manuel bore his testimony. He's Catholic but has come to church ever since that activity and now we are teaching him. Ohh man. This kid is such a flirt--with all the girls at church, with me and my comp. haha. He loves to dab and blow kisses and he always wears a bowtie to church with a gold chain on the outside of his collar. I'm just trying to put an image of this kid in your mind cause he's just so funny. The problem with him though is he is kinda immature. Sometimes he doesn't pay close attention to our lessons and doesn't see the importance of reading and praying yet. But I have high hopes for him. He's the best.

Oh yeah. I got to shake hands with Elder Anderson this week! We had a great devotional with him! He's amazing! 

The driving here is absolutely crazy. There are lane lines but does anyone follow them? No, and i swear everyone here thinks they are in Fast and Furious or something. They all go as fast as possible and swerve everywhere. haha It's crazy. We get around town in these little 5 passenger cars where we pile three in the front and four in the back and its 25 pesos so when we have somewhere far to go that's what we use and its always so hot and sweaty haha. We have had some nice rain storms lately. I love the rain. And it's nice to be wet with rain instead of youre own sweat haha. 

We have these new investigators from Venezuela and they made us sushi the other night and it was the greatest tender mercy ever hahaha! No joke. Like the day before this i was really wanting sushi, so Heavenly Father listens to your desires. Even if it's just sushi.

The mtc president's wife gave this really good anology the day i was leaving the mtc. "You are always on an escalator. but is your escalotor moving up or down? Are you doing the things that bring your closer to your Savior and moving up? or are you doing things that move you farther down from your Savior?" Anyways!! The church is so true! I love it so much! Pray for my espanol por favor! Love you all

March 13, 2017

6'10" elder at the MTC. Fun!

Made some lifelong friends with these people.

Dabbing my way out of the MTC.

MTC days

 Most of our area is the big fancy buildings,

 but then weve got little sections with crazy living situations like this

Roberto's baptism 

I just wanna take all the little kids and all the dogs home with me. this is Si. He's the best and loves sitting on my lap and playing with my name tag. 

Hellllllo! 

Everybody here thinks its hilarious that my last name is White and I'm literally as white as they come, haha. They always get a good laugh when I meet people. Also, speaking of meeting people. We do the whole hug/kiss the cheek thing here and I'm super bad at it. I always go the wrong way and then I almost kiss them, noooot on the cheek and its super bad. Hopefully with time I will get better at it, just like Spanish.

President asked me to be in a choir for a devotional with Elder Anderson so that will be fun. So the baptism this week went well. I guess there hasn't been a baptism in this area for a while, and so our mission leader said he would take care of everything. Anyways we went to the chapel an hour early to get everything set up. We walked in and all the halls and classrooms were flooded! Our mission leader never came back to turn off the font hose and so we had to mop and sweep all the water out in time for the baptism and we got all sweaty and it was muy loco, but it was fun. Made for a more memorable baptism! It was great to see how happy Roberto was! 

So it's my second week. Very bad at spanish. Very bad at knowing where I am in my area. BUT I had to take a sister from the mtc out on splits and get work done. I was kinda nervous but also excited. So pretty much we just went contacting for a good while and both of us are not good with Spanish but ya know, we just went for it. We buzzed into a building and said we were missioanries and instead of hearing some Spanish that I didnt know, we heard "us too" haha. Anyways, we were very confused but then a sneior missionary walked down and invited us into his apartment! and he and his wife were super nice and they gave us pie and yeah, our fist lesson of the day was teaching this cute senior couple how to take a selfie haha. Buuuuut... it was awesome that this senior couple let us into their apartment because then... we were in a building! So we went to the top and worked our way down. We got a lot of "come back another day" but the best thing was we taught a first lesson to someone. In our very bad Spanish we were able to teach and the spirit was very stong and I gave this lady my Book of Mormon cause i didn't bring any others with me, but it made me so happy cause i handed it to her and she just hugged it to her chest and yeah! it was awesome! We will be meeting with her again. We also got locked in a different building and were knocking on doors and trying to ask them to buzz us out, but they all just thought we were trying to share about the gospel and they closed their doors on  us. haha So we were locked in for a while but we fnally got out. 

I love the gospel. I love the work. It's nothin but a blast! love you all

March 6, 2017

From her mission president last week: 

Hola!

Your wonderful daughter, has arrived in the Santo Domingo West Mission in the beautiful Dominican Republic.  This is an incredible opportunity and we are delighted to experience it together.

She has arrived happy and healthy and ready to serve as a personal representative of the Lord, Jesus Christ.

Monday is P-Day so you should receive an email with more details at that time.

Thanks for sending us wonderful missionary,

President and Hermana Nuckols

This couple is #goals.  They invited us to their lunch party for their 50th anniversary and they were like the first family in the DR to become members and they are so happy and in love still. It was a blast... and free food.

Hello!! Wonderful people,

How's life? Life in the DR has been great. My MTC experience was great, but I'm so happy to be out in the field doing the Lord's work. There's not a better feeling.

My trainer is good. I actually went on splits with her while I was in the MTC. She's only been out three months but now she's a trainer, so we're kinda learning new things together. Her old companion and her didn't really like contacting very much, but I loooooove contacting! It's a blast just talking to people and seeing potential, so I have kind of worked on her a bit to go out contacting more and we had more new investigators this week than she has had in a while. I just get super pumped about doing this work! So yayayayayayay! haha

Our area is called Panitini. It's the richest area in our mission, and word in our mission is that it's the hardest area in the west. It's all these homes and apartment buildings with security guards and so we can't just go door knocking, and then like 70% of the people walking around don't live in our area so we can't do much for them as far as teaching. But I say whateer to all that about our area being the hardest. We've just gotta pray and be guided to the right people. We already have. We have found lots of new people to teach and it's been great!

I hear whistling and men yelling at me, calling me rubio all the time, which just means blonde, white girl. My companion has had to teach me that I can't just smile and wave at everyone cause I guess it's too flirty, haha. But yeah, I definitely get looked at more than I ever have in my life. haha

I asked my first baptismal invitation this week to this lil 8 year old. His dad was a member but is now inactive, but he has us come teach his son. So that was fun. 

My espanol is still very bad, but I just do what I can and I have faith that it will come eventually. The people here are great! I love it so much! I'm so happy to be here. I miss everyone so much but there's nothing I would rather be doing! We have a baptism this Saturday. Can't wait.

Love you all!