Thursday, January 16, 2014
I know spanish...not
Hola everyone in salt lake hows it going... things are better here in Mexico! Nothing too much exciting has happened this week so it might be short. Our water heater broke so we are back to bucket showers but its all good hopefully we will fix it soon. Its pretty hot here during the day and i can wear short sleeves and everything so be jealous haha but at night it gets chilly and i need my jacket. I'm freaking jealous to hear you got to go to the cabin and snowmobile!!!!!!!! Cabin weekends are the best! I went on another intercambio on Friday and yep im definitely in the more ghetto part of Ensenada because there was some prettyparts over there! The houses are nicer and apparently we are way close to the ocean so one day i think as a district we are going to go to some fountain thing. Sorry if i dont answer everyone today! The companion i had on the intercambio understood pretty much all English so it was a day of so much less confusion! Woo hoo!!! I loved it! Yesterday we had a big stake conference and it was a broadcast from some of the quorum of the twelve apostles to the people in Mexico so that was pretty sweet! It was all in Spanish but I got the gist of things haha! Sometimes they just shut off the water here and you don't get any just because there hasn't been rain and they're running short so we have had the water come off and on this week. It was off for almost two days at one point so i didn't get a shower one day so that was kind of unpleasant but such is the ghetto and i love it haha! Creepy story the other day we were in a lesson with this kid and i couldn't figure out what was going on so at the end my companion was like do you want to say the prayer. So whatever im saying the prayer and the kid is like talking but i cant tell what hes saying so i end and we leave and my companion was like i had you say the prayer because i was scared. He said he made a deal with the devil that he would never pray to god so during my prayer he was like talking to the devil so I was freaked out after that! Haha oh boy. The other day we were teaching this lady and we were like can we sing a hymn before we go and she bursts out laughing and going [no por favor no[ and we were so confused and she was laughing like a mad woman so then i started laughing like crazy and it was just some good stuff!! Singing hymns here is always quite the adventure! Lets just say that i haven't seen a lot of musical talent and that includes me and so when we sing to people in lessons its just bad. Love you all so much and hope you have an awesome week!!!!
1/6/14
Woo 2014!!! I hope everyone had an awesome new years! Things were pretty normal around here. We went back to the apartment at 8 after having a little dinner at a members house. Mexicans party ALL NIGHT on new years haha! There I went to bed at 10 30 until I woke up at 6 30! Its never quiet here it makes me laugh. Every night I can quietly drift into sleep to the sweet lullabys of dogs barking haha!
Oh I played with the noise makers Heather gave me too so tell her thanks for giving me a new years eve party! I hope Holly's house was awesome, I thought about everyone! Oh is marijuana legal in the United States now because I heard that somewhere. How has the weather been. Has it been really snowy. This week was a lot better!! Better every day!!
A lot of nights this week I got a little slap happy at about 7 and my companion called it the hour of Hermana Rockwood because all of a sudden everything she said would just make me laugh uncontrollably. But its good times, its been a lot better now that I've been laughing a lot. On Monday we were having our family home evening at an investigators house and we were playing I don't even know what it was but we will call it meow. But you have to try and make someone laugh by being a cat and just meowing at people. I could not stop laughing it was the funniest thing I have ever seen!! Imagine Mexicans crawling on the ground pretending to be cats and meowing at each other ranging from ages 6 to 55! Oh boy it killed me!! By the end their goal was to see if they could keep me from laughing for one minute because I was laughing so hard!
So I'm the only American serving in Ensenada and therefore the very first American girl to ever serve in Ensenada!! Woo hoo! People tell me I'm a really short American and they thought Americans were supposed to be tall haha!! Oh and apparently I've aged since being here. Usually people think I 18 or 19 but there was this one lady the other day who thought I was 26!! I was like Que en el mundo im not that old yet am I haha!!
Yesterday was testimony meeting and literally within two minutes of them opening it up for testimonies there was 20 people sitting up on the stand waiting and they just kept flowing up there. The people here are so awesome I love them. Their testimonies are always short, sweet, and to the point too so it was good stuff. We only had 3 investigators come to church of the 7 that have baptismal dates so we need to work on that but it was good that we at least got the 3. Not this Saturday but probably the next we will have a baptism for a 9 year old girl Carolina. She is the cutest I love her to death!! She is always so confused when she looks at me because she says I look exactly like one of her friends so she likes me. She and her mom are some of the best people ever. We have seen a huge change in them in just two weeks. The mom went from being inactive and now she reads her scriptures on her own, comes to church, and has already asked to be put on the schedule to be able to feed the missionaries when we go for lunch to eat with the members.
Once again mom don't worry I'm plenty warm. I got more blankets and am keeping toasty warm. Put your mind at ease haha! I can keep up with conversation a lot better now its just harder to answer but people have told me I'm better than they would have thought for being here for 3 weeks so that was encouraging. A lot of people are my size so I fit in that way but people get really confused when they see this random white girl walking around haha. I get a lot of weird looks and second glances but its all good hopefully I'll tan a little bit soon! I love you all so much and have printed your letters so I can read later!!! Your emails last week (so much for everything!! I'm ready to baptize the world here in Ensenada!!
Sorry I don't answer your specific questions from emails because they're in the letter I wrote. I love you so much!! I sleep in my Alex Smith jersey every night I love it so much! I'm feeling much better especially after talking to Hermana Muir and I can do this. We got to go downtown today and walk around and that was fun. W
e found some random American man that lives here now and is a member so that was way fun. Oh and I live in the Encinos so I don't know if that helps you figure out where I am.
Funny story, I forgot to include. on this one street there are these devil dogs that bark like crazy at us and the other day there was 3 of us around us and I bent down to pretend like a had a rock to throw at them and started shouting at them in English and they cleared out haha. I swear I'm trying with the pictures and I want to send some really bad. I will for sure talk to the American elders about it. mom I only met the president for like two seconds and other than that I haven't heard from him and talked to him so I don't really know how I like him. We have a conference on Jan 21 I believe and I think he's coming to Ensenada and I will have my first interview with him. We got to Ensenada by a bus. it was about an hour and a half drive down here. I don't remember all the questions but I wrote a lot in my letter and if you had more questions this week I will put them in the next letter. I'm much more encouraged this week and it keeps getting better and better and I know this is going to be the best thing I've ever done. its hard when I miss all of you but that's something every missionary has to go through. I hope everybody is doing well at home and tell everyone that I love them so much! my companion is usually a stickler for the rules but she is trying to catch up this week so I got some extra time! Love you all so much and your emails make me so happy love to hear about everything!! Cant wait to talk to you again next week
Oh I played with the noise makers Heather gave me too so tell her thanks for giving me a new years eve party! I hope Holly's house was awesome, I thought about everyone! Oh is marijuana legal in the United States now because I heard that somewhere. How has the weather been. Has it been really snowy. This week was a lot better!! Better every day!!
A lot of nights this week I got a little slap happy at about 7 and my companion called it the hour of Hermana Rockwood because all of a sudden everything she said would just make me laugh uncontrollably. But its good times, its been a lot better now that I've been laughing a lot. On Monday we were having our family home evening at an investigators house and we were playing I don't even know what it was but we will call it meow. But you have to try and make someone laugh by being a cat and just meowing at people. I could not stop laughing it was the funniest thing I have ever seen!! Imagine Mexicans crawling on the ground pretending to be cats and meowing at each other ranging from ages 6 to 55! Oh boy it killed me!! By the end their goal was to see if they could keep me from laughing for one minute because I was laughing so hard!
So I'm the only American serving in Ensenada and therefore the very first American girl to ever serve in Ensenada!! Woo hoo! People tell me I'm a really short American and they thought Americans were supposed to be tall haha!! Oh and apparently I've aged since being here. Usually people think I 18 or 19 but there was this one lady the other day who thought I was 26!! I was like Que en el mundo im not that old yet am I haha!!
Yesterday was testimony meeting and literally within two minutes of them opening it up for testimonies there was 20 people sitting up on the stand waiting and they just kept flowing up there. The people here are so awesome I love them. Their testimonies are always short, sweet, and to the point too so it was good stuff. We only had 3 investigators come to church of the 7 that have baptismal dates so we need to work on that but it was good that we at least got the 3. Not this Saturday but probably the next we will have a baptism for a 9 year old girl Carolina. She is the cutest I love her to death!! She is always so confused when she looks at me because she says I look exactly like one of her friends so she likes me. She and her mom are some of the best people ever. We have seen a huge change in them in just two weeks. The mom went from being inactive and now she reads her scriptures on her own, comes to church, and has already asked to be put on the schedule to be able to feed the missionaries when we go for lunch to eat with the members.
Once again mom don't worry I'm plenty warm. I got more blankets and am keeping toasty warm. Put your mind at ease haha! I can keep up with conversation a lot better now its just harder to answer but people have told me I'm better than they would have thought for being here for 3 weeks so that was encouraging. A lot of people are my size so I fit in that way but people get really confused when they see this random white girl walking around haha. I get a lot of weird looks and second glances but its all good hopefully I'll tan a little bit soon! I love you all so much and have printed your letters so I can read later!!! Your emails last week (so much for everything!! I'm ready to baptize the world here in Ensenada!!
Sorry I don't answer your specific questions from emails because they're in the letter I wrote. I love you so much!! I sleep in my Alex Smith jersey every night I love it so much! I'm feeling much better especially after talking to Hermana Muir and I can do this. We got to go downtown today and walk around and that was fun. W
e found some random American man that lives here now and is a member so that was way fun. Oh and I live in the Encinos so I don't know if that helps you figure out where I am.
Funny story, I forgot to include. on this one street there are these devil dogs that bark like crazy at us and the other day there was 3 of us around us and I bent down to pretend like a had a rock to throw at them and started shouting at them in English and they cleared out haha. I swear I'm trying with the pictures and I want to send some really bad. I will for sure talk to the American elders about it. mom I only met the president for like two seconds and other than that I haven't heard from him and talked to him so I don't really know how I like him. We have a conference on Jan 21 I believe and I think he's coming to Ensenada and I will have my first interview with him. We got to Ensenada by a bus. it was about an hour and a half drive down here. I don't remember all the questions but I wrote a lot in my letter and if you had more questions this week I will put them in the next letter. I'm much more encouraged this week and it keeps getting better and better and I know this is going to be the best thing I've ever done. its hard when I miss all of you but that's something every missionary has to go through. I hope everybody is doing well at home and tell everyone that I love them so much! my companion is usually a stickler for the rules but she is trying to catch up this week so I got some extra time! Love you all so much and your emails make me so happy love to hear about everything!! Cant wait to talk to you again next week
First Baptism!!! 12/30/13
Hola everyone how was your Christmas!!!!!!!!! I wished so bad I could be there but hey there was some good stuff I got to do out here! I cant tell you how much I loved skyping you even though it might not have looked like it!!! In case you couldnt tell I've been a little stressed haha!! Dont worry things have gotten much better! Christmas Eve and Christmas were very hard with homesickness but for some reason on Thursday I felt better than I have the whole time and it is getting better everyday!
The spanish comes very slowly day by day but its coming nonetheless. Sorry I was so scatter brained and crying I just wanted to tell you everything and be happy for you but my mind was overloaded. Its all good now dont worry. Mom dont worry Ive been keeping very warm at night and had no problems.
Well we had our first baptism this week!!!! Woo I cant really take much credit because she was pretty much ready for her baptism when I got here, but still!!! Woo!! It was awesome!! It made everything worth it to see that Im out here to help people and it can be done!!!
On Christmas we got to go to the chapel with all of the Elders in our district and watch Monsters University so that was way fun. Here in Mexico they party more on Christmas eve so we had a HUGE meal that night with turkey and there was tons of little kids on the streets just lighting off their little bomb fireworks haha! I havent found any corn on a stick so thats sad but there are plenty of moments that are prime for Nacho LIbre quotes but sadly nobody understands them here!
Ive eaten a lot of tacos and refried beans since coming here and its all generally pretty good. Sometimes they mix meat and fruit in their food here which is kind of nasty but its all good thats only happened a couple times. Pretty much the only bugs Ive seen are the flies on all the dog poop!
Haha I love my ghetto, this is totally a place that I wanted to come to! Its been hard because of the language but Im feeling a million times better than last week!! I love you all so much!!!!!!!!!!
Thank you everyone for your support I cant tell you how much it means!!
Have fun at Hollys on new years, Im jealous! They fixed our water heater...kind of. Its tempermental and warm for a couple minutes but still I took a 5 minute hot shower this morening and it was awesome!!! I went on an intercambio on friday with hermanas from the other district in ensenada so that was fun. I stayed at their apartment for the night and it was really fun to get to know other people and see them have so much fun. Again I didnt understand any of what they said becasue they speak zero english but it was fun. The houses in their district are significantly nicer than the houses I work in. they were bigger and nicer even though its only like a 15 minute difference. They only had 3 beds and 4 hermanas so they just stack them together so it was a tight squeeze but it was funny. I gave an invitation for baptism the first time on Christmas and he accepted it was AWESOME!!!! He didnt come to church though so weve got to work on him some more this week. Im getting better at participating in the lessons and I did the first vision the first time the other day and it was awesome!!! Im going to try and do pictures now so just know that I love you so much and Im doing a lot better and dont worry about me!!! Im going to be fine and soon ill love every second here!! Im printing off your emails so if I dont have time to answer Im sorry! Happy new year and I hope you had the best christmas ever I love you all like crazy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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