August 28, 2017

Saying goodbye to these little ladies was soooo hard! They were both just sobbing, then I started crying too. And it was so sad. They were such a blessing to me in Piantini.

Me and my new comp, Hermana Yep. She's from Chicago and her padres are Mexican.

Heavenly Father blessed me with some more lil Haitian babies to love though, so it's okay.

The DR is hoooooot. And even hotter when youre climbing baby moutains all day. Being here has opened my eyes to just how wonderful and what a blessing air conditioning is. That will be a cool day when that exists in my life again, but until then I will just keep using the restoration pamphlets as a fan. 

We found this really great woman. She's like 60 and we invited her to church and she actually came, and when she introduced herself in Relief Society she said ¨This is my first time in this church but I hope to be here forever.¨So yeah, that was a great miracle and now she's got a baptismal date coming up! But I always get a lil hesitant to mention cool miracles like that because the last time I wrote about someone who I thought was golden....well she turned out to not just be Claudia, but CRAZY CLAUDIA. So I'm hoping that's not the case for this lady. But I don't think it is. Marylin is great. God is definitely helping us lots here. The work is really progressing.

Something I've come to love is the books of the teachings of all the prophets. It's incredible that we have men guiding us who are literally led by God and I've come to have deeper appreciation for them by reading their life stories and their teachings. I'm currently reading about Ezra Taft Benson. He's dope, and while he was prophet he focused a lot on The Book of Mormon. He said that the whole church is under condemnation because we aren't reading and studying the words of this sacred book more, and that we need to repent for not putting as much heed to its teachings in our lives. Those words are pretty strong, and I definitely had some repenting to do after reading that. haha But the mission has strengthened my testimony so much of this book. I love the time every day that I get to study the words of these prophets. We are all so beyond blessed to have this knowledge. We can't take it for granted. I think of my convert, Leonel. Every time we stopped by to visit him he was listening to The Book of Mormon. It was so new to him and it was so nice to see someone with a brand new testimony of this amazing book and the heed he put in his life to be uplifted by its words. I need to do the same and make time to study The Book of Mormon. These aren't my words. They're the words of the prophet, SO DO IT! 

In true missionary form, I will be following up with ya'll next week. haha. Okay, bye.

August 21, 2017

Hola! 

Well there is a lot to say about my new area. I will give ya'll the run down. So Herrera has been pretty dead for the past several months. Not too much goin' on here. And well let's just say the numbers and statistics prove it. But wow. This ward is incredible. I don't even know how the work hasn't been killer here because the ward wants to help so much, and has tons of referrals for us. Slowly but surely this work is going to come alive here. It already is. God blessed us with toooons of miracles this week. We put some baptismal dates down this week, several new people came to church, and I can just feel it. Soon Herrera is going to get out of the slump it's been in for the past while and in no time it will be thriving. 

This area is all hills. For all my family out there reading this, my area is like walking the hill to grandma and grandpa's house all day errday. Good thing I don't have my mothers knees!

 A blessing or gift or talent or whatever ya wanna call it, that I have always had is that I can sleep. ln any circumstance I can fall asleep, and super quickly. But this talent has left me the past week. I don't know if it's the extreme heat, or the loud music playing until 2 in the morning, or the baby that lives next door crying, or maybe all of the above, but Heavenly Father is helping me to keep on keepin' on. There's a lot to be done here. 

Also there are tons of darling old people in this ward so I'm enjoying that. 

The other day we were knocking doors and a lady was cleaning her fridge so we offered to help, and she allowed us to help take out the fridge shelves, clean them, and put them back in. But while we were putting the shelves back in we all got really confused on how they fit in and I kept trying all sorts of ways it could go in, and I was at it for like a half hour and the lady just kept encouraging me with "Yeah, Mormon." haha Like so many times she said that. And then finally I got them to fit, and so we started the process of putting all the food back in and the lady found this cake that she had forgotten about. And it was very clear she had forgotten about it...SO OLD. But she got super pumped about it and wanted to reward us for our help and so she broke off a piece for each of us and got super happy when we took a bite. And ahhh it was so bad. So when she turned around I threw it in my bag and then my comp did the same. God will always give us a way to escape any hard situtation--any old rotten cake or any trial. ¨Remember that!

August 14, 2017

Dania and Rosmita

Ahhhh gonna miss these people. its been a good time with Hermana Chynoweth. 

Cleonse and his children

Doxy and Alphonse

My time in Piantini has come to an end. I will be headed about 25 min west to Herrera tomorrow morning. This is definitely a bittersweet situation...I am super pumped for something new. I am pretty sure I have contacted every inch of this area in these 6 months. So it will be nice to have a new start. But also I am super sad to leave the people here. I think the way I feel about my converts is the way mothers feel about their children haha. Like all the converts are just little newborn babies in this new life as a member of the church. And i just wanna be with them each step of the way of this process of growing in this Gospel.  I wanna make sure they are coming to church, reading the Book of Mormon, etc. etc. and I just wanna be here to help them. But I guess every mother needs to let their child grow up on their own...lol Pretty good analogy right? 

But anyyyyways ya, it has been some rough goodbyes the last couple days. God has blessed me with some pretty incredible people to teach and meet here in this area. I couldn't have asked for a better way to start my mission. I am so grateful to my Heavenly Father for this time in my life. Definitely some of the best and happiest moments of my life have come from these short 6 months and I'm looking forward to this next part of my mission in Herrera.  

August 7, 2017

 finding people to teach through intercoms....the classic

all this time Leonel has had a guitar!! ahhh 

Cleonce has cute children

So our English class that we teach is becoming quite a big deal, and people are taking it too seriously haha. Doxy says we should only be speaking English so everyone can learn better even though we have new people that can't speak any English.  Leonel wants to bring his projector to show videos about learning English "so we as the teachers don't have to do anything." A member, Wilson, wants to start the class off with a lil inspirational English speech. haha 

My comp and I are trying to get Leonel more involved with people in our ward, so the other week we suggested he go to the young single adult class for a week so he could get to know more people. His response was, "I'm not here to meet other people. I'm here for Jesus." haha Tell that to a singles ward in Utah, Leonel. We were teaching an investigator about the prophets and apostles today and we showed him a picture of President Monson and his counselors, and this investigator pointed to Elder Uchdorf and asked, "Trump is an apostle?" haha

Well the highlight of the week... My boy Jossue is Mormom woohoo. Before we met him he was going through a really hard time (I won't go into all the deets or then it will get too long and people probably won't read this letter ha) but he was accused of something he didn't do and it became this big thing in the neighborhood and everyone hated him for a little bit and it got to the point where this poor boy felt like he wanted to take his own life. But then his good neighbor who's a member invited him to church. We met him that Sunday, went to his house that week, and then a month later he became a member of this perfect church. This gospel saved him. He saw that he has a purpose in this life and he felt the atoning and perfect love of Christ. This kid is going to do great things. He's being an example to his family and friends. It's amazing to see what this gospel can do for people. I know with all my heart it's true and real. i knew it before the mish, but now, I dunno, words can't explain the feelings I have for this church. I have no doubts whatsoever that this is truly the church of Christ. #blessed