8/26

Sister M,

Hola from Mexico!!

Familia: I sent you a letter but I forgot to date it so whenever you receive it just know I sent it on the 19th of August! Also you should tell Connor and Kenna that Parker from Chick fil A was down here so I got to see him before he left for the mission field!

This has been a bit of a hard week I´m not going to lie, we had an elder from our district decide to go home early and it kind of caught us all of guard. We knew something was going on because he kept having meetings with Presidente Pratt but I just remember Thurs. night he was talking, laughing, studying really hard with us and even helped set some goals for our district, then Fri. morning he went to Pres. Pratt and was gone by noon. That was hard for me, feeling like, from what I could see, that everything was going ok but then having him leave so suddenly. My companion and I found a quiet place to pray for him after we found out but it took accepting the fact that we don´t know all of his reasons and we don´t know what he´s going through for us to kind of pick up and get back to work which we did almost right away. Things like that happen but the work still goes on and we are a big part of that work. With that thought in mind I found a good way to describe the CCM, there are a lot of similarities to Boot camp. You have a rigorous and very precise schedule that includes being up and ready before the sun is, you have a specific purpose in mind and are pushed always to be better become better and improve, and if you don´t they make you run. We have class right after gym time and if we´re tired from said gym time and are not repeating the spanish lesson back loud enough or quick enough both of our teachers will make us run around the building. Hermano Lara will make you run around again if you aren´t running fast enough so if you run fast you usually only have to run one lap. Hermano Martinez will have us run two laps always but at least he runs with us. Keep in mind mi compañera and I are in skirts for this. It sounds mean but honestly our teachers are two of the sweetest, most caring teachers in this whole place and they just really want to motivate us to pay attention and learn. We realized just how lucky we are to have our teachers this week on another hard day: yesterday we were practicing teaching another district and told to pretend it was the first visit, teach along the lines of the first discussion, and keep things very basic. Unbeknownst to us the teacher of the other district decided to give his missionaries a problem for us to have to find out and deal with. They were supposed to be investigators who were living with a girlfriend who had just had an abortion. Not that I´m saying that isn´t a topic that needs to be taught and we definitely need to learn how to teach it but it was hard because my companion and I didn´t even know the words for Law of Chastity and we had just barely been counseled in Relief Society not to use our own words for issues like same-sex marriage and abortion but use the official stance of the church which we didn´t have and wouldn´t even know how to talk about. So my companion and I were feeling a little bit cornered, frustrated, and stressed out and the other teacher (who has a more "abrupt" teaching style) was just standing there asking why we didn´t know this and why we weren´t doing our job and teaching according to the investigators needs. Thankfully our teacher came and took over, pacified us a little bit, and then sat down and showed us how to do it, all the while encouraging and supporting us. It was definitely a learning experience and I gained back a bit of my confidence and was just testing it out for myself when the other teacher said I had missed my chance and I would have to try harder next time, (I´m not his biggest fan) but I feel better now having been shown by my teacher how to address something even if you feel like you don´t know it all the way yet. On to more positive things we had another torrential rainstorm and we ran back to our casa to get our rain jackets before realizing we didn´t have our keys and having to run all the way back to class and back in rain that is coming down so hard the street is one big puddle that came up to my ankles it was great! One of our elders was really great and ran through the rain to get our umbrellas for us so we could go get our jackets. I had a really cool testimony builder, my back has kind of been hurting for a couple weeks and it was more annoying than anything but one night during personal prayer I asked for the pain to go away and before I even finished the thought it did! And it hasn´t bothered me since. We got to have waffle fries at dinner the other night!!! They were so delicious I thought I might die. They tasted even better than I remember them. So we became good friends with some Latinas this week and have been sitting next to them during meals so we´ve been practicing a lot of Spanish and it´s a bit stressful because there´s an Hermana from Chile and we can´t understand what she´s saying most of the time!! It stresses me out but Brad (Elder Heywood) has been emailing me saying he´s getting it so if he can get it I can right? The Latinas are so great and sweet, they´ll give you a hug and a kiss on the cheek goodbye right after they meet you and are so excited to see us everyday. One Latina started trying to tell us that it´s really cold down in Chile but then we said we were from Utah and she said Oh no mucho calor! Meaning that it´s very hot down in Chile compared to Utah, we thought that was funny. Oh and apparently by now we are only supposed to be speaking spanish because teachers and workers will get after us if we don´t try to say something in Spanish first. We had to go tell Recepción about our shower (it wasn´t draining) and they wouldn´t hear us out unless we spoke spanish once they realized how long we´ve been here. It´s hard but at least it helps us learn. So I thought moths were bad in Utah but down here they hang out everywhere and are bigger than my hand it´s kind of freaky, we also found our first cockroach but luckily it was during our service project in the auditorium not in our casa. 

During a devotional David A. Bednar had a challenge that I wish I had enough time to do! He said to acquire a cheap blue covered Book of Mormon and read it cover to cover with just one specific question in mind, and highlight every part that answers that question and do this every time you have a question about the church, he said if you did that by the time you´re his age you should have a whole shelf of B.O.M.´s. Also something that I find really cool is the fact that within the four days that we went running for gym this week I ran 12 miles! Three miles every day! Especially since my companion said the elevation here is something like 7,000 ft. and Utah is like 4,000!! I am not a runner, never really have been yet somehow I´ve been running three miles every day? What is that? My companion said something that is very true, there are so many gospel principles, doctrines, and ideas that can be applied to running! Perservering to the end, never giving up, pushing yourself to be better, and surprising yourself with how much you are able to do. I´ve been thinking about running a lot concerning my mission, it´s really hard, it seems like the beginning is harder because your body is still getting used to it, the middle is hard because you have to focus on putting one foot in front of the other and not getting off track because then it´s even harder, and the end is hard because you want to continue running as hard as you have been but you know you´re almost done so it´s easy to lose your momentum. It´s really hard sometimes and then other times, just when you want to quit or give up, a breeze blows behind you, or you realize you can actually go a little farther. It´s a track that we´ve been running around and I think a big part of why I can run twelve laps without stopping is because I keep telling myself: you can do one more after this. After this lap, you can do one more. And I do. I know that if I keep picking myself up and saying One more, give me one more trial I can take it, I can do it I will be able to. The gospel´s true, the book is blue and moroni´s always on the ball. I know what I´m doing and what I will be teaching is true and I love you all so much!!

Hermana (Mandy) Boully

 

Sister N,

Hola!!

Its been a good and kinda crazy week. We got to go to the temple on Friday which was soo amazing one because its the temple but also it was cool beacuse i was just there at the ccm I cant believe two months have gone by since then. The whole weeek we were all looking forward to the temple thursday night we hardly slept because we where excited and we also had to get up super early to get there in time makes me very grateful for having temples at home where they are so close and we can go so often. The season was so cool it was my first time hearing it in spanish and I actually understood most of it which was soo cool it felt like the first time being so new and interesting because it was in spanish and i had to pay close attenion. 

Then we got to go to the mall and bowling. It was kinda weird going becuase it felt like home and its so different from my area but it was so much fun. 

This next week we get to have a conference by Elder Duncan which will be really cool!

Im learning how frustrating agency is sometimes. We have placed a couple of fechas for baptism but we are having a hard time holding on to them by getting people to go to church and trying to visit them during the week. This week we had three people who promised to come to church and we even looked for them sunday morning before church but they all had excuses its hard but we just got to work harder and be patient even though its hard to have patients. The cool part is that even thourgh we didnt have our fechas at church we still had a new family at church that a member had brought so we have new investidors which was our miracle for that day!

The members here are so amazing there are couple of return missionaries and missionaries that are preparing to go that are sooo amazing they are always willing to help like helping us pick up members or going up to our investigators in church and getting to know them. There is a member he is getting ready for a mission but he is already a missionary he is such a good teacher he has showed ways to teach simple so others understand and somtimes people need others from there cournty to understand what we are trying to say. 

Make sure to help the missionaries out in our ward offer to go out teaching or let them teach in our house it helps a ton! 

It really cool meeting new people and seeing how much they care for the gospel for other people it makes me wanna be better. Seeing their faith and how strong they are its amazing! There is times when I miss my friends and family but im soo happy to be here and i get excited when i have everything down when ill be a better missionary so that I can be a better tool for our healvenly father but it takes a step at a time!

I love you so much and I hope your all have a good day!

Love,

Hna Nicia Boully!

 

8/21/14

Sister N -

Hola!!

So this week we didnt have Pday on Monday because we are going to the temple tomorrow!! Im so excited! I didnt realize how much we needed Pdays til this week its been so hard this week monday was fine cuz we had alot of work and we had divisions but every day after that we were all so tired, but its worth it to go to the temple! 

Its been lots of fun being in a trio lots more fun but also its nice cuz there are more of cuz and the area im in is huge!!! There used to be two sets of missionaries here but now its just us so we have been doing divisons with memebers to cover more of our area and have needed it we needed some new investigators that are ready for the goseple!! The last two weeks we have had no one with dates to get baptised but at long last we had one this last week and it was such a cool lesson. We were visiting a recent convert and we invited her brother to join us My other comp. had tried to teach him before but he never wanted to but he did this time! It was the first time that a plan actauly worked because we had pacticed the morning before hoping to place a fecha and the lesson went just how we planed it was a first! You could really feel the spirt and i could tell he could feel it to he was so happy that we knew he could change and be ready to be baptised! It was a really cool lesson.

This week we had divisions and me and hna laufau recived another comp. who was also blonde blue eyed like me but the difference is she could talk spanish but she has 15 months so it gives me hope that i will be there to! Its so cool to learn how others teach and how others act she was a great at teaching the people and personalising the message to them to make them feel that she cared it was really cool! I learned this week or was reminded how if heavenly father wanted the salvation of everyone he would of sent his angels to share the goseple but he sent us missionaries he knew we could do it and Im reminded every day, but im so grateful to be here and that i have this oportunity I love being a missionary even though its hard i wont have these experinces anywhere else

Love you all!

Hermana Boully!

 No Caption.

our pila to wash cloths and dishes!‏

 

No caption

Sister M -

Hola familia!

So it´s crazy how fast time flies when I´m emailing you guys! So sorry if I´m only able to send a big email to all of you! An Hermana said once during lunch that you eventually start to feel like you were born in the CCM and you will die in the CCM and I´m starting to understand what she meant, it´s like I´ve started a whole new separate life here. Every week is an eventful week here at the CCM but this week we got a new class pet- a mouse! It ran around the room and then back under this cabinet and the elders have been feeding it galletas and water while simultaneously plotting various ways to kill it. I don´t understand boys. Our teacher had asked me and my companion to demonstrate teaching the First Vision in front of the class and we were just getting into the really spiritual part when the mouse came out and the elders went ballistic hopping over desks and throwing the trash can to eachother so they could catch it but the spirit is persistent here because after we took the mouse outside and gave it to a worker to take care of our teacher made us come back in and pick up right where we let off. We work hard here but we also have fun partly because we have two really amazing return latino missionaries as our teachers and you can tell they love us and really want us to succeed. We were in class learning gustar which means to like and Hermano Martinez asked everyone who likes chocolate to raise their hands and one elder didn´t put his hand up so this really short little Mexican teacher who is the nicest guy you´ll ever meet turns to him and says ¡¿Cual es su problema?! and we were all busting up laughing. Speaking of chocolate I´m afraid to say all of the icecream I´ve ever eaten in America is just a cheap ripoff of Mexican icecream. I don´t know why or what they put in it but Mexican helado (ice cream) is to die for!! My companion and I were eating some icecream the other day and we literally did the entire first lesson, in Spanish replacing the restored Gospel with Helado. There are many helados on the earth today but there is only one true helado, that is the helado de Mexico. We promise you if you accept and try our helado your life and your family´s lives will be better and so on and so forth for the ENTIRE first lesson! It was great practice. Then we got back to class and found out the elders were doing the same thing and comparing Nutella to the Book of Mormon and extending an invitation to eat and know for yourself to one of the elders who´s never tried Nutella. Us missionaries are a little crazy about sharing things with other people :P. Teaching is beginning to be a little easier apart from the fact that our teachers are being more difficult investigators but I´m learning to not worry so much about the language and not script myself by writing out every word I want to say but instead to listen to the spirit and as a result we had an absolutely amazing lesson with Avel one of our investigators and we were able to apply it to his life personally and we were both crying by the time it was over. Our only probelm is when we do that we tend to go over time and the elders get mad at us especially when our teacher has us reenact it so the Elders can see what we did which is never the same as the actual lesson. I hate it when our teachers tell the Elders to ask us for help because I´m still learning and I don´t feel qualified at all to give advice and I´m trying really hard to embrace more humility out here. I´m so grateful to be here in this beautiful place and with all these amazing people, the hermanas in our room are so nice and funny and we laugh about all the little things we do for instance the other day it took all four of us to figure out how to take the lid off of a pen before I finally popped it off, so now that´s a joke, how many hermanas does it take to work a pen. My district and zone are amazing too, the elders always let the hermanas go first in the lunch line and our district is obsessed with doing everything for us, carrying chairs, bags, picking stuff up that we drop they´re awesome. Plus our zone has epic sand volleyball matches that are one of the funnest parts of my day and on Mondays we have family home evenings so we´re all becoming really good friends before most of us leave and never see each other again. I can´t help but remember Pres. Hutchison´s promise during my setting apart that I would make life long friends during my mission because my companion and I are honestly so close already. The poor girl though has gotten just about every sickness in the book though. We joke that her body is rejecting Mexico and screaming for her to return to the states. I told her she´s getting it all over with right now so she won´t be sick for the rest of her mission, but then what does that say about me and the fact that I haven´t gotten sick yet? It´s also funny to see how the elders act around the mission president. I think you're doing something right as a mission presidency if your elders kind of fear you a little bit and our elders are terrified of this cute little grandpa. Us hermanas love Hermana Pratt, I´ve especially loved her ever since the moment she accidently said First Pregnancy instead of Presidency in Relief Society, except for the fact that she´s a stickler about slips and we have all decided that slips are of the devil. We've got a really cool presidency here President Pratt is descended from Parley P. Pratt, and his counselor President Tesorio has this incredible faith in the healing power of the priesthood and has all of these stories about his wife falling down the stairs or something, him giving her a blessing and going to work because he couldn´t take her to the hospital and then coming home and having her be fine. It´s really cool to hear all of his stories but if my husband ever did that to me I would beat his butt. Also fun fact, one of the Elders in our district is the grandson of Russell M. Nielson which is kind of cool and during one of the devotionals the other day Jeffrey R. Holland was talking about how we need to be converted before we can convert others and to demonstrate his point he said: there are two Russell's in the Quorum right now but if you needed heart surgery would you want M. Russell Ballard or Russell M. Nielson to perform it? Both are good, spiritual men and I'm sure M. Russell Ballard has a pocket knife he could use but which would you want? That devotional was so amazing!! Holland talks about the apostles after Jesus died and how they went back to fishing because they didn´t know what else to do and Jesus appeared unto them and asked Peter if he loved him three times and told him once again to abandon his nets and feed his sheep and Holland said once you accept the calling of the Lord You Cannot Go Back. I will return home and leave the mission field true but I will not return to my old life, that life is over. I have been called to be a disciple of the Lord and that calling does not end until it is finished and my life is over, whether or not I have a nametag on or not. So I wont be coming back from my mission by the way, at least not in that aspect. This week has felt like it had a theme of Joseph Smith and the first vision because that´s what we´re memorizing right now, we taught that lesson twice and we watched a Joseph Smith movie on Sunday. In it he said something to the affect that If a man comes to know that truthfulness of the gospel he cannot be content sharing this happiness with only his family. That´s how I felt watching the movie and that´s how I feel now. There are soo many people that need to know! It is amazing that I was born into the gospel and was given this blessing early in my life but so many weren´t and so many need the chance to accept it because I know how greatly it will bless there lives! Joseph smith said that one day the book and the word would reach to every corner of the world, I´ll be doing my best to do my part in Chile. I love you all so much and almost every morning I still look around with the utmost gratitude that I am here in this place doing what I´m doing, I feel so blessed and I know the Lord will bless all of you! Love you!!

Hermana Boully

 

My Companion

My Room

Our House

Missionary Selfie!

 

8/13

Sister Nicia

HOLA!!!!

This week I got another compa her name is Hna Laufau she is from Utah to! My other companion was worried to be in a threesome again but it turned out to be just what we needed for our companionship. Its been lots of fun being together we are always talking about random stuff we have been staying up late just talking bunches its lots of fun! Its also been cool we have been doing divisions in our threesome Hna Diaz would go with a member and Hna Laufau would go with me. Our area is soooooooooo huge it helps alot to divide and conqure.

We are trying to look for more families and new people because most the people we are working with have somthing holding them back from getting baptized. A main problem we have is people not being married and also having to get divorced before they can get married again. We are trying to help this family so we tried to figure out how they could get divorced and it turns out to be a ton of paper work and waiting goodness, but we have faith that somthing will work out. 

We have this family that has been enternal investgators for almost a year they have gone through several other sister missionarys before us its been so crazy teaching them because they dad is sooo smart and he loves reading everything and trying to discus other regilons and to ask some crazy questions. Its hard because he talks ton and he hasnt read the BOM and its like how can you not its soooo great goodness but we hope to touch their hearts they are both sooo great they work in shoes and they are always giving us shoes which is pretty great!! 

I know this is were i am supose to be and i know that satin sometimes is working really hard with others but we got the truth and we can do anything with the lord. I love you all!!

Hermana BOully!

 

Sister Mandy

(note that Sister N, does a generic email then a quick private one. This is the only one from Sister M so I hope it's not too personal. :)  )

 

Hola Padre!! So this has been another crazy week! So much happens here! First off we got our first acceptance to be baptized from our ¨investigator¨ Carlos which was pretty cool but then he became our next instructor so it was a little weird at first to have him teach us when we'd been teaching him for a whole week, he's cool though. 

So mi compañera and I have been trying our best to learn Spanish as fast as possible so this week we experimented with putting a sticky note on our nametags that says Solo Español so people can only speak spanish to us and we are only allowed to speak spanish while we have it on. We did pretty well for a couple days and made sure to sit by Latinas at lunch so that they can help us with our pronunciation etc. I am surprised at how welll we were able to talk to these Mexican women even though we don´t know near as much Spanish as they do. AND as a result of that experiment mi compañera y mi roomates told me that on two seperate nights they woke up because I was sleep talking in Spanish, does that mean I´m succeeding at learning this language? It was funny there´s an Idahoan farmboy Elder in our district who has zero experience in Español and who, when he heard I´d been sleep talking in it, got all mad at me and said it wasn´t fair because he couldn´t even speak it while he was awake. This is the same elder who, when we started studying adverbs in Español, said he didn´t even know what adverbs are in English, he´s a pretty funny guy. Also during our little Solo Español experiment we were talking to one of the workers and told him we were both from Utah and he said ´Ah la fabrica´ and then explained that that means factory and everyone down here refers to Utah as the ´Mormon factory´. 

So I´ve been working my butt off down here, both literally and physically because mi compañera was a cross country runner so we have been running at least a mile every single day down here and it is one of the many miracles that happen daily around here that I´ve been able to keep up with her. Yeah so she introduced me to running every day and I introduced her to Nutella, peanut butter, banana sandwhiches for breakfast, fair trade right? She went nuts for it though so now we have to run everyday to work it off. I´m so glad I got sent to the CCM in Mexico because this place is so cool! There are baseball and soccer fields, multiple tennis and volleyball courts, a huge gym with both basketball and exercise equipment and it's super pretty here. Noisy (there are always sirens or horns or trains on the other side of the wall) but super pretty and it rains a bunch, I've gotten used to falling asleep to thunder. I'm a bit worried about getting down to Chile and having to relearn Spanish but if there's anything I've learned its that whatever foundation you do have becomes super helpful when learning the language. 

So there's a lot of memorization that goes into our study so mi compañera and I got creative and set one of the things we have to memorize to the tune of Do You Want to Build a Snowman from Frozen and at first the elders in our district hated it but now we catch them singing it because it does actually help you memorize stuff.  Another common occurence down here are really amazing Devotionals that are really inspiring but also really humbling. We watched one from David A. Bednar where he talks about how selfless Christ was and how we need to Get over ourselves, get out of the way and let the spirit do it´s work. He said Who cares what you want? Your mission is not about you. It was a really great talk. 

I have learned that in the CCM you have to take a lot of things by faith such as teaching investigators, the food, the weather, everything. Our motto with the food is that quote from Tarzan  ´Are you sure this food is sanitary? It looks questionable to me.´ but then we eat it and it´s usually really good, and the other day we got Hamburgers and curly fries!! It was the best!! And then when it comes to teaching you would think they teach you the language and then have you teach investigators but it's the other way around, you teach and then they teach you how you should have phrased things but it works in it's own weird way. Miracles happen whenever we teach simply because we can understand what they're saying and actually answer. For example yesterday we taught Leon and we had prepared a lesson but he had so many questions about something else that we didn´t get to use it and basically had to go off the cuff and try and answer him to the best of our ability only, I had forgotten to put my hearing aids in after gym AND there were workers out in the hall drilling so it was super loud and I already couldn´t hear so I don´t know how I was able to hear and understand Leon but I did which was good because mi compañera couldn´t understand him so I kind of had to take the helm and do my best to answer all of his questions, and I didn´t do half bad I don´t think because he accepted the challenge to prepare for baptism at the end of the lesson. 

Speaking of miracles a virus spread around the CCM this week and over 60 people got sick including mi compañera but I didn´t! What was really cool though was that she decided to ask the elders to give her a blessing and I haven´t ever heard a blessing given by anyone but you or priesthood leaders but I had the same feeling I always have during their blessing as I have during any others I´ve heard, even if they fumbled a bit and had to use a cue card. It was such a spiritual, testimony building experience. She´s better now and we're back to work trying to get used to the idea that we're not the new missionaries on the block and we have to start actuallly knowing how to do stuff. Well I think that's about all that happened this crazy week I love and miss you all soooo much but every day I wake up so excited to be here doing what I'm doing and I wouldn´t have it any other way. My testimony is growing so much and I can feel the spirit stronger in my life and in my heart I know this church is true! 

Love you so much!

Hermana Mandy Boully

 

8/5/14

From Sister Nicia

HOLA

My first change is over! Oh my goodness its gone by fast but yet not and i still have so much to learn and I only have one more change in my training then I gotta train! I was so scared that my companion would go to another area and I would get a new companion it was nerve racking waiting if we would get a call and of course they call at 11 or so late at night but we arent changing but we are geting another companion so we are going to be a three some! My companion isnt to happy cuz she had change with a three some that wasnt so good but Im excited because I dont know what to expect but I hope who every she is I can learn from her and we can all work together well!

Last tuesday me and my district gave service has translators. There was a Organication of dentist that came from the US to give there time and money help the people here in guatemala there were from all over mostly canada and the east coast it was really cool to help and be part of but it was also kinda hard. They set up all there stuff and tools in this big gym and people would line up outside waiting for hours in the hot sun to be seen. It was hard to see there were kids getting 5 teeth pulled me and my companion worked with this one kid for about 20 min trying to get him to close his eyes so that the doctors could give him a shoot to numb his mouth. everytime he saw the needle he would cry and i dont blame him. Makes me soo thankful for the dental care I had and for parents that made me brush my teeth and I remind everyone brush your teeth!!!!!! Goodness while we where there they had two guys that went through hard surgeries two people fainted Im again so grateful for all that we have back at home.These doctors where amazing and it was cool to see and talk to these doctors and to talk about the church some had some crazy stories about the church and the people of course not all were true. It was cool to help even though i couldnt speak very well i was still able to help. It was cool to see everyone helping and giving service. I guess the LDS Hospital in salt lake provided the Xrays for the organisation just really cool!

I feel like life we are learning how to be better specially on my mission my dad gave me a quote "when you choose the lord you choose to be challenged" when i first read it I thought it said changed instead of challenged but i feel like they go together we are changed has we are challenged to be able to make thourgh our challenges. 

Im tring to learn how to fully rely on the spirt to know what to say and how to say it cuz thats my best friend to help me master this langauge! 

This last week we found two new families that we are working with we are hoping they all have fechas! Me and my companion have a few members that always go out with us yesterday we went out with this return missionary and he taught us so much and kinda reminded me of some things i was taught in the ccm but he showed me how they work. So back to the beginging we found this lady when we where contacting we taught her once after but just her. Sunday night we came to teach her and found her and her family so we got to teach the whole family and found out that the Husband was a member that he had been baptised by missionaries 20 years ago. We were able to remind him of why he joined and how it would strenghten his family for them all to join it was a really cool lesson. The Return missionary showed me about not being scared to invite everyone even if they are busy with other things like movies or games I know its ya duh everyone knows that but sometimes its hard when you dont want to interupt but the message we have is so important and if we would of not invited everyone we may have not found out about the husband or had a great lesson with all their family! I hope everything goes well but Im learning how i can chang to be better and face the challengeges i have been given so that I can be a better tool for the lord!! I love you all!

Hermana Boully

From Sister Mandy

Hola mi familia! This first week at the CCM has already been crazy! First let me say Mexico city is crazy, noisy but absolutely beautiful! There are palm trees everywhere and mountains all around us that are jam packed with houses that are all painted really bright colors!

My first compañera´s name is Hermana Vorwaller and she is amazing!! She´s one of the hermanas that flew out of SLC with me and we are already great friends! Partially because we immediately had a bonding moment when a bright sunny day turned into a torrential downpour of rain and we ended up taking off our shoes and running through the river that was our street to our Casa. The only bad thing is that she really likes to run and I forgot my gym shoes and can´t buy more til today at the Tienda (store). So we play soccer instead!! So the food here has two unique characteristics- nothing tastes like what it looks like, but everything tastes better than it looks. You´ll think something is spicy but it will be sweet and you wouldn´t believe it but Pineapple beef tacos are actually muy delicioso! Plus I didn´t think it was possible but they have Nutella down here!! The food is actually pretty familiar but you can tell you´re in Mexico because they serve rice and beans with every single meal. Also my new favorite flavor of yogurt is Guava. 

So I can see why people say you learn Español quicker down here because nobody speaks very much English!! On our first day we were trying to be good missionaries so we showed up to class fifteen minutes early and our teacher said something about it but it was in Español so we only half understood him so we sat down and realized that class started at 930 but we had showed up at 845 thinking it started at 9. We had to look up how to say early and tell our teacher and he was like Su hermanas es como se dice on the ball? and made the saluting sign. We have a new motto now- five minutes early is forty minutes late. We also have a motto that says the MTC is the place to make mistakes because on our second day we made a huge blunder. They don´t waste any time giving us practice and we were supposed to teach our first investigator named Carlos on the Second floor of the Thomas S. Monson building, so we went up one flight of stairs, found only one guy, he said his name was Carlos so we taught him our lesson. It went great! I understood pretty much everything he said and was actually able to converse in Español with him but then we went outside and it wasn´t our district waiting for us. Come to realize we had taught the wrong Carlos and our Carlos was another floor up and had waited for us for 25 minutes before the next elders got there to teach him. We couldn´t take up someone else´s time slot so we told the elders to apologize and went outside and lamented our mistake. It was cool because we were really down when all of a sudden this random quote fell out of my scriptures that said something to the affect of Do whatever you can and it will be enough even if you stumble etc. etc. We were just starting to feel better when our teacher came and got us and said we still needed to teach the other Carlos. So we had not prepared a lesson and were completely thrown but it still went really well! The next day we taught him again and taught him how to feel the spirit and about the Book of Mormon and it went so well and the spirit was SSOO strong I couldn´t think of anything else other than This is what I get to do for the next year and a half!! 

I´m surprised at how much Spanish I understand and how quickly it is coming! We are constantly studying, even at night when I try to go to sleep my head is so full of Spanish phrases and words it takes a little bit for it to power down and go to sleep. Sacrament meeting is entirely in Spanish and mi compañera and I were so proud of ourselves, we were able to bear our testimonios completely in Español without any cheat sheets! What they say is true! Sunday is like a spiritual boost plus we got to watch the Testaments, a movie that normally makes me cry but this time, something about being in a room full of misionarios made me bawl like a baby the whole way through. Oh and starting on the second day we are only allowed to pray in Español and our teacher made some rules and there are only a few times a day when we´re allowed to speak English otherwise we have to buy chokis (cookies) for our district. I was worried about some of the little things I forgot but the Tienda is amazing and has a lot of stuff you can buy, not that I forgot much. Our district is awesome by the way we are the only hermanas but all of the elders are so funny and nice. We were studying one time and the Mission Pres. walked in without any of us realizing it and he walked up to one of the elders and picked up a picture of his girlfriend he keeps in his journal and asked if it was his sister the elder was like uhhhh and the Pres. said I didn´t think so.

This may sound surprising but I actually really love the schedule down here! I´m still not used to waking up early but I like being up and about and doing something meaningful early every day. P Days are great so far, I have never been so excited to do laundry. It´s great because my compañera es very good at congugating verbs and I´m good at remembering them so we work really well together and pretty much all the time we just communicate in broken Spanish and are able to understand each other. Everyone down here is so nice and friendly and helpful I really do love it and it is overwhelming at first but it´s not as hard as I thought it would be, especially since I´m getting used to how things work down here. 

Give Dawson a big squeeze for me and tell him he´ll be a great missionary and that I love him! I love you guys so much and I miss you but I´m trying to stay busy so I don´t think about it too much! Dad you have taught me so much throughout my life which is coming in handy down here and I really do know that this church is true, that I´m in the right place doing the right thing and don´t worry because these next months will go by faster than you think! Now for practice- my testimony en Español.

Yo se que Jesucristo es mi Salvador, y mi Redentor. Yo se Dios es amoroso, y mi Padre Celestial. Yo se que La Iglesia de Jesucristo de los santos de los ultimos dias es verdadero, y es de iglesia de Padre Celestial. Yo se que Jose Smith es un profeta, y Thomas S. Monson es un profeta a hora. Yo se que Padre Celestial bedice mi familia, y esta familia es para siempre. En el nombre de Jesucristo. Amen.

I love you soo much!!

-Hermana Mandy Boully

2 Sisters!

We have two email for the first time! Going forward I will try and post on Teusdays until Sister Mandy is out of the MTC then she'll have Monday P-Day's like Sister Nicia.

Sister Mandy....
7/30/14
Hey dad can you pass this on I have literally five minutes to write. I am here safe, Mexico is crazy already and I feel like I have been thrown in the deep end but in a good way. My P Day is Tuesday!! I love you all like crazy and I am so glad I am here!!

Your Missionary's mailing addres is:

Hermana Amanda Boully

[09/09] [Branch 5 - District B ]

Carretera Tenayuca-Chalmita #828

Colonia Zona Escolar, Gustavo A. Madero

07230 Mexico, Distrito Federal

Mexico

The estimated departure date for your missionary is [09/09]. The use of the

above address on all correspondence will greatly faciliate delivery to your missionary

at the MTC. Please don't send packages.

-Hermana Amanda Boully!!

 

Sister Mandy had a parent of another Missionary go to the gate and take pictures. Linked here...

http://rogmo.com/gallery1/My-Mission---The-Journey-Begins

 

 

 

 

Sister Nicia

 

Hola!! 

Its been another week it feels like its gone by fast and every week Im learning and seeing new things its all an adventure!! This week my companion and me got to visit the President and his wife because its part of my training into the mission field! President Caffaro and his wife are from Utah and they are great it was so nice to get advice from them and the assitance to the president missionaries they are all so great and have such great testimonies makes me want to work harder. We are always looking for new people we got to do alot of service. We got to help some members wash their cloths, to do this they have to take there cloths to a well near thier house and wash their cloths on the rocks around it, me and my companion ended up helping a couple of ladies wash their families cloths. Makes me very grateful for the washing machine at home and also Im very grateful for running water at my companion and my house here. We had several days where they had to turn off our water so we had to store water in all the buckets we had I have become very good at bucket showering. This week seems like alot of the people we talked to didnt want to hear what we had to say but wanted to tell us what they believed some times its hard when people dont want to listen and some arent the nicest how they say things and sometimes its frustrating because your like we have the answers! But may not be there time to recieve the gossiple so we look for those ready for it. 

There are times that we all get down when things arent going the way you want or if you cant say the things you want to say but Im so grateful that my heavenly father is looking out for me that when i have times im down i get a reminder why im here and what is to come. Im so grateful fo my companion giving me incouragement and also my whole district even the times when kids come up to me and say what is this or whats this in english. I know why Im here this time is for the lord I just have to have patients and sometimes I get tired of hearing that but its true and give my whole heart to the lord even if i say things wrong or people laugh I am trying, because im going to be the best missionary i can be! love you all!

Hermana Boully

 

Pday hike with District