WEEK 10

(Her email subject line was "got transferred to Guatemala") Nah, still in puebla!!!!! Wow  I am SO happy . This past week at a training i got PHYSICAL MAIL!!!!! Two from my family and one from Amber! This mail was from late June and early July so now its safe to say that yes, probably email me if you want to get in touch with me haha. I also received wonderful emails this week from friends about their testimonies and am completely blown away by the caliber of people in my life and thank you so much for sending those to me! Yes, even missionaries need to be reboosted spiritually. 

This week was pretty intense. As we{re here more and are more involved in the peoples lives we also learn about their trials. A lot of our investigators and recent converts are facing some really tough challenges. These people all put on a brave face and you would never know it, but some of them opened up this week, and man, some of them just have the weight of the world on their shoulders. We are doing our best to listen to them, and to comfort them, but sometimes things are just out of our control. Our very very very special investigator family that i talked about last week are facing more difficulties. The daughter, Brenda, had a miscarriage. The last time we were there she was laying on the couch holding her stomach during the lesson and <i just cant believe that this happened. Her mom called us the day of to tell us what was going on because we were supposed to meet, so we hope to see them as soon as they are ready to meet again. they are the kindest people i have ever met, and have already gone through so much with the loss of their dad|husband, i hope they know how much  God loves them and will comfort them in their trials. 

I really like these scriptures from Corinthians:

3 Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort;

4 Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.

5 For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also aboundeth by Christ.

I am here on a mission because in my darkest hour I found peace in the scriptures and in the chapel. I felt that God truly answered my prayers and I wasn't simply sitting in silence when I said them. Once I found that comfort, I wanted others to have it. I hope we can take the time continually to look for those that need our help. Sometimes we think a person we know is "perfect" or we think "that family doesn't have problems" but the truth is, we all are facing adversity, and everyone cold use someone to talk to, or a smile, or an email just saying hey just wanted to see how you're doing!

One awesome thing that happened this week is we had a training for new missionaries which means I got to see my DISTRICT FROM THE MTC!!!! And even better, I somehow got lucky enough to spend the whole day with hermana dalrymple one of my BEST friends form the mission! holy cow we had this long bus ride and we were laughing AND crying the whole time. hermana dalrymple is a beautiful example to me of a positive attitude. it was really nice to speak english with someone i'm friends with haha. we had a hilariously mission-ish experience with street contacts. we approached this lady and she started asking us if we were sure about our message. ARE YOU SURE ARE YOU SURE YOU NEED TO HAVE MORE CONFIDENCE! I'm not sure what kind of confidence this woman was looking for- does she know how far I am from my house?! I'm pretty confident!!! she said she's a Christian and she teaches sunday school or something like that. Then she gathered us in for a prayer and wanted us to shout out what she said and we said politely oh no we don't like to repeat in prayers and she said well then, we aren't sure. it was so hilarious, she smiled, shook our hands, and kept walking.

Spending the day with Hermana Dalrymple!

I LOVE the mission. I'm so grateful every day to be here. Even when there's a huge cockroach by my head in the morning when I'm working out, even when our gas is out for a couple of days, even though of course its been hot since the one day I said "wow its getting kind of hot here now" The people, the gospel, and the experiences I'm having all make it worth it. I think about all of you often and know that the Lord is watching over you. 

I've attached pictures of me and my faaaaaaavorite girls here - fatima and evelyn. Don't want to leave them at all. 

Fatima and Evelyn

Me the day my hair got done and I covered it up because my roots were orange hahaha and me with a dog of a recent covert - "gorilla."

Fashionably covering up the orange hair

She always did love dogs...

Email when you can!

WEEK 9

I have lived in a foreign country for a month...and been on my mission a little over two months that is crazy!!! This week was EXTREMELY productive, my trainer and I are so excited about all the work in our area. We met and surpassed all of our goals for numbers- we wanted to contact five people in the street every day to arive at 35 for the week and we contacted 37! But next week....SEVENTY! I know we can do it. I finally started initiating these street contacts, I used to just say  éxcuse me would you like one of these cards?´and my trainer would say the rest. But I´ve found if I just force myself to say the next thing people are super open here, you rarely get rejected. It´s awesome!!!

Chosen caption: "Literally grabbed this Hermana's ear during a picture"

Also this week we met a very special family. Their dad died a couple of months ago- it´s a mom, her son who is about 14, and her daughter who has a little girl of her own that is the most beautiful girl in the world, but is also pregnant and having a difficult pregnancy.  This family is incredibly open to the gospel, nodding and smiling throughout the lesson as if we´re merely reviewing things they already knew. The second time we came by the mom got her Book of Mormon out and said she did her homework and read! And she said sometimes in this life it´s like we´re little kids and we need someone to take us by the hand, and shes so glad we found them and could tell them about these things. I was crying literally the entire time and as we left the house. The mom offered a prayer and in it she said please watch out for people in our circumstance or worse.´´ I just couldn´t believe the kindness of this woman, she had to move in with her pregnant daughter because the dad that died had supported the family, and they´re going through so much, and she was STILL thinking of others. I asked them to be baptized and they said yes. They came to church on sunday. It was so cool bringing them to church. I hope the talks in sacrament helped them. During sunday school the mom was quietly saying the answers to the questions the teacher was asking behind me it was so awesome and funny! and she kept saying ´mhm , celestial, si, mhm , mhm´, the  Plan of Salvation just completely rings true with her and she loves it. 

An interesting experience this past week was we had INTERCAMBIOS, or exchanges, divisions, splits, whatever your mission calls them. Most days here are super awesome but of course this was at the end of a rare frustrating day. We got a call 15 minutes before bedtime saying we were going to have intercambios. It felt so odd that all the people we had planned for, all the lessons, I wouldn´t be there for the next day. And that I´d be sleeping in someone else´s bed the next night, with an Hermana I didn´t know. I told myself it was for a reason it was at this time and tried not to let it stress me out too much. It ended up being good! I learned a lot about controlling the situation, aka, not wasting too much time, using the time in our lessons effectively, while also getting to know people. It´s a challenge here because people here open up very quickly and have cool stories and love to talk, but sometimes we need to focus in on our lesson so we can help them progress! The only thing I didn´t like about proselyting in this different area is a rooster woke me up at 4am. It´s safe to say I do not want to live anywhere near a rooster for the rest of my life. 

Hilarious and weird things happen daily, I try to write it all down. I guess to a couple of ward members they think I look like Britney Spears? and the impression one lady did of that was....beyond words. Oh I bought a mango because we had a mind blowingly good mango at a member´s house and while I bought it I said but what if it has a worm in it? LO AND BEHOLD, IT HAD A WORM IN IT. I asked my companion the whole morning if I was going to die, she assured me probably not. We got to our first appointment of the day and I told them and they laughed and said it was more protein if I ate part of the worm. Eesh. My stomach has expanded a lotttttttt. Yesterday I ate a cemita, or a sandwhich with the whole world in it, the size of a dinner plate, and wanted more, so they gave me more of another one. I say yes to seconds and thirds, and can eat green and chipotle chiles. 

I don´t have a lot of pictures because it was a super busy productive week yay! But we have me in front of an ad for fire extinguishers in the other area during exchanges. I´m so glad they drew each SPECIFIC fire extinguisher, down to the gauges.

Also, a bird house tree in the other area, and my view every morning.

Love you all and pray for you all the time!!! 

WEEK 8

Wow after this week I will have lived in mexico for a month... thats not real! This keyboar is AWFUL so you´ll just have to excuse any weird typos haha. My mission is really picking up speed. I think around week two I kind of started day dreaming of home because  I had gotten over the shock of being in a new culture. And when you do that the time is slow. So I decided to start really focusing here and man the days are FLYING by. Exact obedience brings real blessings.

View of the active volcano

A little sighseeing

Nice sign

This past week I asked two people to be baptized and they both said yes! One is a really timid girl that cleans the house of a member in our ward. I think this girl doesn´t realize how special she is and feels tha tshe is worthless. My trainer had the idea to show her the video the Touch of the Masters hand and she said later how much she related to that. That the old, scratched violin has so much worth when the maker plays it. The other woman I asked the first time we ever visited with her.  IT was so crazy because in my studies with my trainer we did a practice for this and it literally went exactly the way that practice did.She said wow that´s a little fast to be baptized next month. I assured her she could be ready in that amount of time and she said ok! Right after there ewas a huge clap of thunder and a downpour happened. When we left the house it was me, my trainer, and the member that had accompanied us running home to the members house in the rain and I was just so happy. just pure HAPPINESS in that moment. 

Not sure what this building is, but she looks happy :)

I read a really great talk during my studies by Elder Richar G. Scott called ´living a life of peace, joy, and purpose´. i encourage you to find it and read it it is so useful for people of all stages of life. in it it explains that ´character is the manifestation of what you are becoming. your character will be the yardstick God will use to determine how well you have used your mortal life.´i also found interesting that it said character isnt developed in moments of great challenge or temptation- THAT IS WHEN IT IS USED. 

I know there are some things about myself i dont like . and that through jesus christ i can work towards having great character. so can everyone else. but it´s poco a poco, we shouldn´t expect these grand changes over night.

Ive attached some pictures. A couple are from going into the city to do more things for my visa. my trainer is more of a small town girl but im always freaking out when we go ito the city ' look at that! look ta that! we live in mexico! WERE SO LUCKY!' she just laughs.

Hermana Best with her trainer

Anyway, my area is not where all the cool buildings and huge door are, but hopefully one day i will get to see it more.  can you guess which missionary gets really excited about dark clouds? haha. 

Dawning the raincoat

Heavy rain/flooding

Excited about the dark clouds!

I think that is her trainer, but I'm not positive

oh i tried cactus this week! not a huge fan but it wasnt awful. also had pasole with pigs foot....not super into that either. but still havent felt sick or anything like that. all the rainy pics are in my area. i love it here.

Probably cactus paddle...

Not positive what she is holding here... Looks delicious!

plz email me how you´re doing. love you all. 

Hermana Best's zone!

WEEK 7

Once again, it´s pretty hard to summarize a full week when yoúre new in a foreign country but I wrote some things down throughout the week so Ill try my best. 

Hermana Best with her companion

I´m understanding more Spanish and speaking a little bit more. There´s a  couple recent convert families that I feel %100 comfortable teaching as well as joking around with, but a couple of the investigators that are already pretty shy are more difficult to talk with. I mainly connect with people because I´m crying at their stories or through hugging them, or nodding, anything with body language. Everyone is pretty understanding that I´m going on my third week of being in Mexico. Although two people at the zone conference told me' you have a good accent' SO THATS GOOD! 

Hermana Best and Hermana Dalrymple at Zone Conference

I´ve attached some pictures of the new house- wow what a blessing. The old house´s bathroom I didn´t even take a picture of...but this one is great! No more walking 45 minutes to all the appointments, we´re by a ton of investigators and recent converts. And we´re by a security station so that´s nice too. 

New house exterior...

... and interior

A lot of people have asked about the heat. It´s rarely hot in PUEBLA! Today was the second day I was hot haha. I´ve attached pictures of the FLASH FLOOD. We were waiting for the elders to go to stake conference in the sun, and then those huge BLACK clouds swooped in. We were shivering in the rain behind a building when a ward mission leader and his wife pulled up in their car and said GET IN! Driving was crazy all the streets had turned into rivers! The car we were in even got stuck for a second, the water was up to the windows. My trainer said she´s been here 8 months and never experienced a flash flood like that. I wear my raincoat almost every day, and tights, its not how you picture Mexico!

Flash Flood!!!

"...the water was up to the windows."

"I wear my raincoat almost everyday..."

One weird change was going from the three meals every day at the MTC to having La Comida, or THE FOOD. Sometimes we say ' we need to call the food' which just means calling the member thats in charge of feeding us that day. It´s just one big meal at 2 in the afternoon and then we don´t really eat dinner. I´m not sure why this doesn´t make me super hungry, but it doesn´t. IF we do have dinner, or Cena, it´s something like arroz con leche (rice with milk, kind of like rice pudding but more milk? i REALLY like it and want to make it a holiday tradition when i get back to the states), or for instance the other night it was hotcakes (they say it in a spanish accent hooat caaykes) aka pancakes with nutella sprinkles and syrup- im not kidding! we only buy a few groceries. Im anxious to try more mexican treats. I´ve loved all the food so far but I cannot stand the drinks. ITs all called agua, but its water PLUs something. so papaya water, cantaloupe water (particularly dont like those two), guava water, tuna water (not the fish, a type of fruit). I try my best to be polite and drink it all but sometimes I can´t finish it. 

I finally saw the volcano!!! I forgot to speak Spanish when I saw it cuz I was so excited, we were with a member and her two daughters and I´m sure I looked crazy, jumping up and down and pointing at it!!! I can´t believe the people here get to live with a view of a SNOW CAPPED VOLCANO!!!! I am going to try to take a really good picture of it, but most days it is obscured by clouds because it´s very cloudy and rainy here. 

Storm clouds rollin' in

Happy as ever to be in Puebla

We contacted a reference of a woman named Judith. Her daugher was there and really wanted to join the church because she had an awesome experience going to EFY but the dad won´t let her be baptized. This made me so sad, I really take for granted how lucky I am that I was born in the church and have a supportive family. I look forward to talking more with this family. 

I´m constantly surprised how much a part of life the missionaries are here. I can think of maybe one time in America the missionaries came over for dinner. HEre everyone is concerned that we´re being fed and such. There´s even a food place we went to today where a member pays and the missionaries eat free on prep day. I´m so glad the elders told us about it! IT´s delicious and the women are so kind. I always eat every last bite. 

The people love when we visit and no one ever turns us down, it´s great. The only thing here is a lot of people are rooted in their catholic beliefs so they´ll say yes, we love the message, it´s beautiful, but you know, we´re catholic so that´s our tradition. 

We had our first real sunday, the first was stake conference. It was a lot of FAST spanish. Lots of friendly , warm people. Different than being stared at on the street, it was a nice change, everyone shaking our hands and saying HOLA HERMANAS! Oh I completely forgot to mention last week that everyone kisses on the cheek and it´s been so funny getting used to it. It just seems to intimate kissing on the cheek, but its just the norm here. 

We´re going to set a baptismal date for this one man , Mauricio. His wife Paty was baptized right before we got here and he is receiving the lessons super well, often times has tears in his eyes, but says he is still waiting for an answer. I know that it will bless Mauricio´s life to be a part of the church, and that he can feel the Spirit. Looking forward to setting a date this week. 

Thank you for all your love and support! miss everyone but every day I think how cool it is that I get to serve the Lord and live in Mexico. I hope this all made sense! I´ve attached some pics!! Love you! 

She asked this be entitled "Dogs Everywhere"

Buying a coke

I can tell she is loving this :)