April 10, 2017

Hello people! 

What a good week. Went on transfers with Hermana Perez. Firey Latina who got in a big ole argument with some old ladies about the bible. And i was just sittin back wondering what the heck she was doing. And it was super awkward... I bought a jar of peaches this week and was super excited to eat them, and all week I have been trying to open the dang jar. And it wont open!! I even took it to our neighbor and he and his friend couldn't open it either. They were both trying at the same time and like grunting and using all their strength, but nope. Still can't eat my peaches. 

It's getting suuuper hot here. Even all the Dominicans are talking about how it's super hot. I've got a killer tan line where my watch is. 

This week Dania was baptized! I'm soo happy for her. The whole time getting her ready and stuff, she was holding my hand and my heart was just so full and I'm so happy for her. Our zone had all of our baptisms for this Saturday come together and so it ended up being this big baptismal event and it was awesome to see all these people enter the waters of baptisms. My comp and I and two other Elders threw a lil musical number together for the baptism and it was just a great evening! Life is great! The church is true! We are so lucky to know the truth. Remember Christ, especially this week. I'm jealous that you all can eat Cadbury eggs and Reese's eggs. Enjoy it. Love you all! 

April 3, 2017

Hola my dear people! 

Ahh man, watching conference made me very homesick, and seeing the little intro of the temple grounds and stuff made me miss Utah and the weather and all you people in Utah. Also, I miss being in the mountains so much. Holy moly. We walk on the busy streets all the time and all the cars just let out all this gross exhaust (is that even what it's called?) haha Anyways so ya, all I'm sayin is I miss the nice Utah mountain air.

But wasn't conference great?! It was all in Spanish for me, so I only picked up on some of it. But when Thomas S. Monson got up, I just had this wave of happiness come over me. and my eyes filled with tears and it was a very spiritual moment. Our church is so amazing! We have a prophet leading and guiding us! We have the priesthood. I love our prophet. Such a cute lil old man. And his words were so true. The Book of Mormon is sooooo important. We each need to gain our own testimony of it. We need to be reading it everyday. I certainly did not realize the importance of reading everyday before my mission, but now I do and ya, it's such an amazing gift and blessing and we need to not take it for granted! 

I had a major humbling experience this week. I've spoken a little of Manuel in my past letters. 14 year old boy who's hilarious. We have been struggling with him cause he never wants to read the scriptures. So went went into one of our lessons with him with a great lesson plan and discovered that he hadn't been reading, so we ditched the lesson we had and just read with him. We just read taking turns and when it came to his turn, the poor kid literally can't read. He has to sound out every word and it takes him a long time to get through a verse. Here I am like 2-ish months out on the mish and I'm always worried about MY language and I'm stressing about how I'm doing in Spanish, but here is Manuel. This kid who has grown up speaking Spanish but he can't even read his own language. And then I continued thinking about some of our other investigators, Dania and Rosmita, who are the two Haitian girls. (Dania is getting baptized this Saturday) but they spend their days taking care of little babies while their uncles/brothers go to work. They aren't going to school. They have almost nothing. And ya, the mission has just been an incredible humbling experience. We are all so lucky to live where we do and get an education. I have loved being able to not focus so much on myself, but on others. Service is so important and I love this 18 months that I have to help others. 

Life is good. The church is true! Watch the new Prince of Peace Easter video. It's super good! Love you all so much! 

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!

February 23, 2017

I will miss my district.

I will really miss the temple

Elder DeWitt. We taught him. He's a really nice guy.

This is my last p-day in the ccm. Muy loco! I've had many amazing experiences in this sacred place, but I am excited and ready to go out into the DR and teach the gospel to these wonderful people. 

What a week! Cons to the week, I had to give blood so I can stay here. It sucked. Needles scare me to death, and I didn't even have your hand to hold, mom. haha And then I had to pee in a cup for the doctor, but she wouldn't let me close the door and I felt so awkward because Elder Monson was literally right next to me. The only thing between us was a super thin wall and if he would have stood up and looked over, it would have been baaaaad news. haha  But the other con to the week was my comp got cursed from one of the Haitian sisters hahaha. Here we are at dinner just enjoying our cheeseburgers. (no idea what meat is in the burgers though, haha) but anyways, there was a spider on Hermana Prince, so she kinda freaked out and then I saw the spider on my arm so I of course freaked out and in trying to get the spider off my arm I threw my burger across the table. So already we have everyone's attention. All the elders and hermanas were watching us and then we saw the spider on the table, so Hermana Prince slapped the table and killed the spider. So all was well again.... we thought... but noooope. The Haitian sisters watched my comp murder the spider and they were so angry. Seriously the look in their eyes was scary. haha One of the Haitians started telling Hermana Prince that they are not friends anymore and she grabbed Hermana Prince's pinky and did a weird curse thing to her. Then she said she's wicked. So we were all kinda laughing really confused at what was happening, but then Hermana Prince started crying. Then the Haitians saw that she was crying so they came over and started wiping her face and kissing her cheeks. It was just the strangest five minutes of my life hahaha. It was so weird and funny. 

But there were many pros to the week. We went on splits. I went out with Hermana Sanchez. We went to visit these two young girls. One was 14 and one was 11. They are Haitians. One could speak Spanish and French, so she would translate for the one that could only speak French. They were really sweet girls who are ready for baptism, but they need permission from their uncle. i also got to hold an adorable Haitian little boy who was like two. He kept grabbing my skirt to have me pick him up, but I didn't know what to do because I thought it was a rule to not hold kids. But then Hermana Sanchez said it was fine, so I didn't ask anymore questions and just held this adorable little boy during the lesson. I couldn't do much. I prayed and testified. That's about it, but it was really fun. The living situations are crazy. It's these tiny alleys of rooms and that is literally their home. Just really poor and everyone just kinda lives together. It's really sad some of the things I saw. But then our second lesson was to this Haitian couple. Who would have thought my first time out teaching would involve hardly any Spanish and mostly French? But we had a member come with us to translate. They were a really sweet couple. They need to get married but the law here is hard for them to get married cause they are Haitians. I don't know all the details but i could just see so much potential in them. i hope it all works out. 

As far as sister training leader in the mtc goes, me and my comps are all three in that calling. We just are over the other Hermanas. We make sure everything is good with them. And as far as music goes, I pick the hymns. I get special musical numbers for meetings. It's fun. i've picked some great people to do musical numbers. i haven't done it though cause I feel like I'm being selfish if I pick myself and its my calling. haha. 

Yesterday Elder Martinez from the Seventy spoke to us. It was a really good devotional, but the thing that most stood out to me was when he said, Opposition means you're on the right track. If the adversary saw that you weren't on a good path, he would just move along to someone else cause he has nothing to worry about with you. But when he sees you're in good places choosing the right he knows he needs to work even harder on you." So just remember that when times are hard, when there's a trial you think you can't handle, don't let the adversary bring you down. Turn to God for help!! 

My teacher was telling us about how he proposed to his fiance and this teacher struggles the most with English. This is a direct quote from his story. "i was so nervous i started crying from my skin" as in he was so nervous he started sweating hahahah I lost it when he said that. i will really miss my teachers here. They have been so wonderful! 

In the temple today i realized that it was the last time for a while because we only get to go every 6 months in the field. I will miss it. i loooooove the temple. Attend as much as possible. It's so sacred and amazing! I love you all. The church is true! PRAY FOR ME!! I hope I get a patient and helpful companion. I'm very nervous but I'm ready to get out and work my hardest. 

Hermama White