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
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