Family!!
You all are the best. And I'm impressed with your tech-savyness--a FHE over video conference, you're like the Jetsons! Mom and dad, sounds like you're in a whirlwind of conferences. We are too. This week is conference to the max because we have mission training conferences (something like what you all are doing I'm assuming) Tuesday-Thursday from 9-3, then on Saturday and Sunday it's General Conference. Woot. We're working with our converts and all the members and less actives inviting them to write at least three doubts, concerns, or questions, praying about them this week, and then coming to conference to be able to find the answer. So that goes for you all too! *gloik!* nerdy missionary moment....
Ok ok ok so this week.....herm. It went by way fast. My compita and I are continuing with our tender mercy/miracle identifying activity every night and love being able to see the hand of the Lord in our lives. Saturday's miracle was that the members had a reference for us of a guy that burst into the english class on Wednesday night holding a Book of Mormon and looking for missionaries.
Ok ok so basically what we learned from that is to look people in the eyes and listen to the Spirit to be able to tell what kind of people they are and to help us know how to be safe. And also to be warey (sp?) of "golden investigators" as wolves in sheep's clothing. Because that's the second time something like that has happened here.
ANYWAYS. Besides all that life is good, we're still seeing legit miracles every day. Yesterday as we walked by we heard someone playing The Star Spangled Banner on the sax so we contacted him and found a young awesome family. I love David, there are so many families and people are less obsessed with working.
We have also perfected the art of cooking any sort of baked good over the stove in a frying pan because we don't have ovens. So we've now successfully made cake mix cookies and banana bread and our next project is Never-On-Sundays (Sister Clark's recipe) as soon as we can smuggle in some brown sugar from the Costa Rican border. Mmmmm....
I hope you're all doing well and that you have a great conference weekend! Eat lots of waffles, french dipped sandwiches, and candy and play lots of ulitmate frisbee for me!
Love love loves
Hermana Dance
Mosiah 2:22 It's so simple....keep the commandments and you'll prosper
Monday, September 27, 2010
Monday, September 20, 2010
It's Cassie's Birthday!
Hey all!
I'm doin sooooo good! (Teen Girl Squad voice) Dad, I know that's grammatically incorrect but just go with it, I've been speaking straight up Spanish for a year now. Haha.
But yeah, I'm happy. I love love my compy and yes, she does know the assistant. Small mormon world, wooot! This week we decided in our nightly planning to identify a miracle that we saw during the day. It really helps us to see the hand of the Lord in our lives every day and it's good because then writing in my journal doesn't seem so overwhelming if I only have to record that every night. We've had some awesome experiences this week.
I'm so humbled by some of the people we get to teach and associate with here. They have nothing but what they do have they give away. There are poor people in the city, but they seem prouder, angrier, and more aggressive. The poor people here are so nice and generous and teachable. One of the women we're teaching has had such a hard life with economic situations, abusive fathers and husbands, and crazy kids and she deserves to so happy. She's come to church with us the last two weeks and yesterday she brought us a papaya and yogurt to church and told us we're like her daughters.
We've been praying that God will pour his Spirit out on Bolivar (my area) to prepare the people to receive the gospel and have been seeing the results. The other day we were walking by the river and as we passed a house we heard a little girl shout "Mom, the hermanas are coming!" So obviously we took advantage of that and went over to meet her mom and found out she'd met a couple hermanas a few months ago and her 4 year daughter who is normally really quiet and shy invited us in and started talking to us a ton. Her mom was impressed and let us teach her and now we have an appointment to teach her and her husband on Wednesday. Miracle! heh.
Life is good, the gospel is awesome, and I'm happy. Love you all!!
Hermana Dance
Alma 8:10 (I think)
I'm doin sooooo good! (Teen Girl Squad voice) Dad, I know that's grammatically incorrect but just go with it, I've been speaking straight up Spanish for a year now. Haha.
But yeah, I'm happy. I love love my compy and yes, she does know the assistant. Small mormon world, wooot! This week we decided in our nightly planning to identify a miracle that we saw during the day. It really helps us to see the hand of the Lord in our lives every day and it's good because then writing in my journal doesn't seem so overwhelming if I only have to record that every night. We've had some awesome experiences this week.
I'm so humbled by some of the people we get to teach and associate with here. They have nothing but what they do have they give away. There are poor people in the city, but they seem prouder, angrier, and more aggressive. The poor people here are so nice and generous and teachable. One of the women we're teaching has had such a hard life with economic situations, abusive fathers and husbands, and crazy kids and she deserves to so happy. She's come to church with us the last two weeks and yesterday she brought us a papaya and yogurt to church and told us we're like her daughters.
We've been praying that God will pour his Spirit out on Bolivar (my area) to prepare the people to receive the gospel and have been seeing the results. The other day we were walking by the river and as we passed a house we heard a little girl shout "Mom, the hermanas are coming!" So obviously we took advantage of that and went over to meet her mom and found out she'd met a couple hermanas a few months ago and her 4 year daughter who is normally really quiet and shy invited us in and started talking to us a ton. Her mom was impressed and let us teach her and now we have an appointment to teach her and her husband on Wednesday. Miracle! heh.
Life is good, the gospel is awesome, and I'm happy. Love you all!!
Hermana Dance
Alma 8:10 (I think)
Friday, September 17, 2010
I'm back I'm back!!
Hey family!!
So I got transferred to David! Yayyyy!! It's close to Volcan (my first area) and it's rural but civilized all at once-the perfect combo. I feel like I'm home again....! We have zone conferences with my first zone and we'd come here for Pdays when we reached our goals so I feel very happy here. Plus my area is teeny (no short buses, no diablos rojos, no traffic, no elevated bridges to cross the street, no traveling for an hour in between appointments) I feel like I can be so much more efficient because everything is so close.
Everybody says hi back, we can get into anyone's house, the members know we exist, the sisters actually come to relief society and everyone comes to the activities. It's amazing! I'm in a branch but this branch is stronger than the ward I'd been working in for 7 1/2 months. We already got invited to someone's house for dinner! Haha sorry if I'm getting too excited, I just forgot how awesome it is being out of the city. *sigh of relief*
Oh, and my companion is amazing. She's Hermana Graham from Birley (sp?) Idaho (the motherland! ok well, for mom and dad anyways....) and she's so sweet. The best part: she loves running, eating turkey sandwiches, and doing active things outside. Finally finally finally I have a companion who will work out with me!! So we've been going out in the mornings to run for 45 minutes and it's helping me learn our area a lot faster. We have lots of plans for this transfer and I'm excited.
Herm, what else to talk about...I'm a little sad because now that I'm 8 hours aways from the city I won't be able to come to the baptisms of Geraldine or Amin and Jennifer :( But I'm definitely going to keep tabs on them to see how they're doing. I was also sad to leave some of the coolest members I've ever met buttttt I definitely needed a change of scenery. Ahh your poor missionaries who only speak the language of the country and only have like 4 areas they can go to their whole mission....! I don't know how they do it.
Welp I don't really have any updates on people we're teaching yet because I just got here, but I'm excited because it's so easy to find people here. We just found 3 families in these last 4 days....jes. Next week I'll send sweet spiritual experiences :)
:) Oh and now that I'm thinking of it, be prepared for packages and letters to arrive after 3ish months (probably 4 from mom and dad) because our inter-mission mail system is NOT very efficient. Arg. So don't worry if I haven't gotten stuff, it's just that the mission mail system is very slow. I don't think I've actually had any lost packages yet. Or maybe I just don't know...eek!
Ok welp love you all, thanks for everything!!
Love,
Hermana Dance
So I got transferred to David! Yayyyy!! It's close to Volcan (my first area) and it's rural but civilized all at once-the perfect combo. I feel like I'm home again....! We have zone conferences with my first zone and we'd come here for Pdays when we reached our goals so I feel very happy here. Plus my area is teeny (no short buses, no diablos rojos, no traffic, no elevated bridges to cross the street, no traveling for an hour in between appointments) I feel like I can be so much more efficient because everything is so close.
Everybody says hi back, we can get into anyone's house, the members know we exist, the sisters actually come to relief society and everyone comes to the activities. It's amazing! I'm in a branch but this branch is stronger than the ward I'd been working in for 7 1/2 months. We already got invited to someone's house for dinner! Haha sorry if I'm getting too excited, I just forgot how awesome it is being out of the city. *sigh of relief*
Oh, and my companion is amazing. She's Hermana Graham from Birley (sp?) Idaho (the motherland! ok well, for mom and dad anyways....) and she's so sweet. The best part: she loves running, eating turkey sandwiches, and doing active things outside. Finally finally finally I have a companion who will work out with me!! So we've been going out in the mornings to run for 45 minutes and it's helping me learn our area a lot faster. We have lots of plans for this transfer and I'm excited.
Herm, what else to talk about...I'm a little sad because now that I'm 8 hours aways from the city I won't be able to come to the baptisms of Geraldine or Amin and Jennifer :( But I'm definitely going to keep tabs on them to see how they're doing. I was also sad to leave some of the coolest members I've ever met buttttt I definitely needed a change of scenery. Ahh your poor missionaries who only speak the language of the country and only have like 4 areas they can go to their whole mission....! I don't know how they do it.
Welp I don't really have any updates on people we're teaching yet because I just got here, but I'm excited because it's so easy to find people here. We just found 3 families in these last 4 days....jes. Next week I'll send sweet spiritual experiences :)
:) Oh and now that I'm thinking of it, be prepared for packages and letters to arrive after 3ish months (probably 4 from mom and dad) because our inter-mission mail system is NOT very efficient. Arg. So don't worry if I haven't gotten stuff, it's just that the mission mail system is very slow. I don't think I've actually had any lost packages yet. Or maybe I just don't know...eek!
Ok welp love you all, thanks for everything!!
Love,
Hermana Dance
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
I have fire in my eyes. . . cough, cough
Hey family,
Thanks for all the birthday wishes! So far we've been invited to like 3 different going-away/birthday parties. The members were nice yesterday and some of them said that they'd miss me but usually it's the investigators and less active people that love us the most and invite us to things.
Wednesday was officially the best day ever :) We called the President and his wife to go out with us to visit some of our most positive investigators. We got there kind of late but we taught Geraldine (an awesome 19-year-old girl) the plan of salvation and she told us about how she'd received her answer that these things are true. We set a baptismal date for this saturday and she accepted and the president told me that if I'm close by next transfer I can go :). Then we went to visit our big famly, la famlia Martinez. The Spirit was really strong and they got all quiet when he talked-they all loved him because he's so sweet and happy. Hermana Ward didn't speak any Spanish when she came out here but now she can bear her testimony. It's awesome. It was so great to have them with us and fun to get to know them better. After he also bought us Blizzards from DQ and I felt like I was hanging out with my own parents.... :)
This week I realize that I'm finally starting to be able to be more confident in my abilities to recognize and follow the Spirit. A couple of nights ago we ended up in another unplanned lesson with recent convert and her 21 year old son who'll come to church on and off sometimes. I had no idea what to teach because what we had planned wasn't right for the situation so as we sang the opening song I just said a quick prayer to know what to say and BAM the perfect idea came to my head. The Spirit is awesome.
This guy is obsessed with his body and working out because he does field events (as in long jump, discus, etc). So I started by asking him what he does to take care of himself and stay in shape and he got all excited telling me about it (I think he got the wrong idea for a second, haha) and then I asked him how much time he spends doing all that and he said "pretty much all day" After that I said ok and asked him "So since you're spending that much time taking care of your body, what're you doing to take care of your spirit?" shazam. He didn't know what to say and got kind of bashful because he knows it's stuff he should be doing. We proceeded to teach a lesson about prayer, reading the scriptures, and going to church to take care of your spirit. So in summary I'm just really happy that the Spirit tells us what to do and say and I'm finally confident that we can end up in whatever random lesson and if I trust in the Lord, take it easy and don't freak out about what I'm going to say, the words will come. Being a missionary is the coolest.
Welp, love you guys a ton! Thanks so much for all the support.
Love,
Hermana Dance
Alma 26:21-22
Thanks for all the birthday wishes! So far we've been invited to like 3 different going-away/birthday parties. The members were nice yesterday and some of them said that they'd miss me but usually it's the investigators and less active people that love us the most and invite us to things.
Wednesday was officially the best day ever :) We called the President and his wife to go out with us to visit some of our most positive investigators. We got there kind of late but we taught Geraldine (an awesome 19-year-old girl) the plan of salvation and she told us about how she'd received her answer that these things are true. We set a baptismal date for this saturday and she accepted and the president told me that if I'm close by next transfer I can go :). Then we went to visit our big famly, la famlia Martinez. The Spirit was really strong and they got all quiet when he talked-they all loved him because he's so sweet and happy. Hermana Ward didn't speak any Spanish when she came out here but now she can bear her testimony. It's awesome. It was so great to have them with us and fun to get to know them better. After he also bought us Blizzards from DQ and I felt like I was hanging out with my own parents.... :)
This week I realize that I'm finally starting to be able to be more confident in my abilities to recognize and follow the Spirit. A couple of nights ago we ended up in another unplanned lesson with recent convert and her 21 year old son who'll come to church on and off sometimes. I had no idea what to teach because what we had planned wasn't right for the situation so as we sang the opening song I just said a quick prayer to know what to say and BAM the perfect idea came to my head. The Spirit is awesome.
This guy is obsessed with his body and working out because he does field events (as in long jump, discus, etc). So I started by asking him what he does to take care of himself and stay in shape and he got all excited telling me about it (I think he got the wrong idea for a second, haha) and then I asked him how much time he spends doing all that and he said "pretty much all day" After that I said ok and asked him "So since you're spending that much time taking care of your body, what're you doing to take care of your spirit?" shazam. He didn't know what to say and got kind of bashful because he knows it's stuff he should be doing. We proceeded to teach a lesson about prayer, reading the scriptures, and going to church to take care of your spirit. So in summary I'm just really happy that the Spirit tells us what to do and say and I'm finally confident that we can end up in whatever random lesson and if I trust in the Lord, take it easy and don't freak out about what I'm going to say, the words will come. Being a missionary is the coolest.
Welp, love you guys a ton! Thanks so much for all the support.
Love,
Hermana Dance
Alma 26:21-22
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