Dear family:
Before I forget: HAPPY BIRTHDAY JAKER! 10 years old! Hurray! I hope your birthday is awesome, bud! I miss you a lot! Every time I see little boys here around your age it makes me think of you! I hope soccer is going well for you and that you're liking school!
Wow, I can't decide if I like p-days or not. Today was supposed to be a normal, relaxed one, but then plans changed last minute and we had to drive all the way here to Bayamon to the office. It takes about an hour to drive here, if the traffic is like it usually is (which is awful...). But we didn't get too lost this time. I'm just struggling keeping up with all these changes. It's crazy.
Yes, the backpack arrived. It's HUGE! But it's okay, I can definitely put it to good use and I'll use it as my emergency bag. We have to get a 96 hour emergency kit ready, since it's hurricane season coming up. WOO HOO! I think it'd be awesome to experience a hurricane. So we'll see. But thank you!
My foot is still a little bit swollen, but I can walk, so it's okay! It's not purple anymore, thank goodness. Everyone here would look at it and FREAK out at me and tell me I needed to go to the hospital, but Sister Visker, our mission nurse, gave me antibacterial pills and I took those faithfully until I ran out of them. Thank goodness for modern medicine :)
Driving here is seriously so so scary. And we get lost ALL the time. I don't enjoy driving, but it is a privilege, that's for sure. Everyone tells me that if I can learn to drive here, I can drive anywhere. And it's true. There are rules, but NO one follows them. It's insane. The lanes are very skinny, and there's always a lot of traffic.
And yes, I feel like we've been eating out SO much lately. I'm in the mission choir, I don't know if I told you about it. But almost every weekend we have a performance. But honestly I don't know for sure. But we've been eating out a lot lately. I bought myself a donut the other day just cuz I wanted to. It was really good. So far, I'm loving the food here. I feel like I'm going to get fat if I'm not careful. But no worries, I've been doing my exercise! :)
Sorry if this email is super random, I left my little note card that I filled with things I wanted to tell you back at home, so I'm just trying to go by memory.
We currently have 2 investigators with baptismal dates. We're teaching a family right now, and they're having family scripture study with the Book of Mormon. It reminds me of home. Thank you for doing that, Mom and Dad. It really was a wonderful way to strengthen our family relationship. I hope you guys still do it even though Rachel and I aren't there to make it as fun as usual. :)
Oh, and no worries about the CTR ring for my companion. I gave her mine.
I would love my scriptures, if you could send them along. Thank you so much. I miss my scriptures. It's hard here, only having my Spanish ones. My other ones have so many notes and helpful markings in them, and I can never find the scriptures I want to use during the lessons. So I'm hoping that if I have my English ones and copy all my markings from those into my Spanish ones, I'll be more successful. Could you also send some different colors of pens? Or highlighters of some sort? I only brought black. If not, it's fine. I can buy everything here :)
So we had an incredible experience this week with one of our investigators. We decided to stop by her house and visit her even though we hadn't originally planned to do so that afternoon. When we got there, she invited us in, and as soon as we sat down, she started bawling. She then went on to say that she's been planning on committing suicide but then we came along. It was really sad. She has had a really hard life. Her mom just died, and her husband is dead, and she lives with her brother who doesn't treat her very well. I don't know that much about her situation, but every time we go over there, she has another problem. She is planning to be baptized on the 27th of this month. It's crazy, though. I know the Lord sent us over to her house for a reason that afternoon.
We're teaching a young man named M.... He's 24 years old and has a baby daughter. He's addicted to smoking and drinking and is trying to quit. He's been reading the Book of Mormon and came to church yesterday. It was great! It's amazing to see how the Gospel changes people's lives. He's changing so much. He wants to be the best dad for his little girl, and it's so cool that he's making those changes.
Oh! So we spoke in Church yesterday. I dunno if I ever told you, but I live with 3 other sisters. My companion, Hermana Flores, and then two others: Hermana Tuitavake (from Tonga), and Hermana VanLeeuwen (from Utah – she comes home next week. She served a 3-month "mini-mission," and so her time is up. I didn't know "mini-missions" were possible, but apparently they are!!) But yeah, all four of us spoke in Church about the Doctrine of Christ. I spoke on the first principle: Faith. It went really well. I spoke in Spanish. I was really nervous, but everyone was really nice and said they understood it. So hopefully they weren't lying. :)
Our ward is struggling. We have about 25 ACTIVE members, and the rest are all inactive. We have almost 200 hundred "members" of our ward, but everyone here is inactive. Puerto Rico WOULD have a temple if their members would actually go to church, but since they don't, we don't have a temple and I don't expect we'll be getting one too soon. Our goal as Sister missionaries in Pontezuela is to strengthen our ward. It's amazing how much work we have to do. Our mission goal is to have 20 members present each week per companionship at our lessons with investigators. It's really difficult to find sufficient members to accompany us to our lessons because there are 2 companionships here and only 20 members who can actually accompany us. I feel bad because we use the same members over and over again, but we don't really have anyone else. But we're trying. :) I definitely took it for granted back at home, having such an incredible ward family.
Anyway, I'll try to reply to your email now. I'm glad to hear everyone got back home safely. I hope you had a blast in Hawaii! I am jealous! Joshy, I hope you're feeling better by now. The picture of everyone in the ties Rae sent home was fun. Everyone looks like they need haircuts. Hehe! Those ties are fun though. I'll try to find some cool stuff to send home to you guys as soon as I get the time on another p-day.
At the luncheon, Mom, you could talk about Preach My Gospel. It would be amazing if more people and not just missionaries could implement it. It's an incredible teaching tool for EVERYONE, and the members could be more prepared to do their own missionary work by studying it. That's my suggestion. Hope it's helpful.
And no, President Alvarado and I never got a photo together, and I doubt you'll be getting an email about my arrival on the island anytime soon. But just so you know, I am here in Puerto Rico, and I arrived safely. There :) As far as a picture goes, I don't have one with the President to send to you. So sorry about that. I really want to send pictures, but I left my USB cord at home. I didn't know we'd be doing emails here today; I have my camera, but there isn't a slot to put my memory card in. But in case you're wondering if I still look the same, I do. I'm sunburnt, but what's new? Can't say I'm black heritage status yet, but I'm working on it. I'm using sunscreen, too, but since it's so gosh darn hot here, I sweat it all off. Gross, I know, but true. :)
So like I said, I'm in the missionary choir. I LOVE IT! It is so much fun! This last week, we had a performance in Mayaguez ("Maya-wes" is how you pronounce it), and it was our very first one. The mission choir travels all over the island and apparently we go to some of the other islands around Christmastime to perform. It's going to be busy, but a lot of fun. But I had a really embarrassing moment. It was our first number, and I stand on the edge, and after our first number, we were supposed to wait until the curtains closed before going offstage, but I didn't know that. So the people applauded, and then I just walked offstage... And no one followed. I felt SO dumb! We all had a good laugh about it after, though. Everyone gives me a hard time since I'm the youngest missionary here right now. But not for long!
The new missionaries are coming next week! I still don't know if I'll be training for sure, but I'm just planning on it, since there will be so many new sister missionaries. I am very excited, but nervous, too. I don't know if I'm ready to train another sister about being a missionary when I feel like I still don't know how to be a proper one myself. But I know the Lord will help me to do what I'm asked to do here while on my mission. And every time I'm having a hard time, I think of all of you who have been on missions before and think to myself, "if they can do it, so can I."
Thank you for your examples. I am so lucky to have you as my family. I love you all so much. Thank you for all your support and love. Miss you!
Peace out.
-Hermana Erickson #2
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