12/29

Hna Nicia

Hola!!

What a week it was so great to talk to you all and see your smiling faces!! It made the week go by fast sometimes Im sad to see christmas go because I love christmas the lights the love teaching about the Savior and how he is the gift for us all sometimes people are more willing to listen when we other to talk about Jesus and his birth! But Im at the same time happy the week is over its almost the new year to start a new week and a new year! The year I go home in! Not to be Baggy or anything! Ps its baggy here not trunky! No say its different! It was a good week a good Christmas in Gautemala! Here they celebrate more the day before christmas then christmas day! The day before Christmas they always make tamales we visit a ton of members and helped them make and wrap their tamales it was lots of fun by the end of the day we ended up with 10 Tamales in the frige because everyone wanted to feed us tamales and to give us 2 more! This whole week we have been eating tamales for breakfast and dinner! I love them they are good! Oh and they also make Ponchie a fuirt drink its really good! On Christmas eve in the night here they call it la Bueno Noche they do a ton of fireworks at 12 midnight we got to watch the fireworks form our roof of our house! Our house is 3 levels high so we got to see all around it was soo cool its more fireworks then the fourth of july it was almost 10 min straight of fireworks! After when we when back to our room we found we had locked our selfs out of our house oops! good thing we had our blankets and our cell phone to maybe sleep out side and to call our landlord to come let us in thankfuly they were still up! Here they stay up all night opening and giving presents and Christmas day they sleep and visit family! Oh and when our landlord came to let us in she brought us tamales how sweet she is! We had a little context of all the tamales we had whos was the best one sister won by a mile so we hope to learn her secrets!

I know That Heavenly father is always looking out for us missionaries! After we talked to our families we had to find a way back home cuz there were hardly any buses and the members who had brought us couldnt come back to give us a ride but thankfuly we were able to take one bus close to our area then a nother Evangelica Bus passed by and gave us a ride we were very thankful we didnt have to walk all night we considered this our gift from God for christmas!

On Christmas we also read the Christmas story in the Bible its really cool reading here in the mission I feel like I understand more and it made my whole day i hope that we always remember God and how he sent his son for us not  just this time of year. We can also learn from mary and her example about accepting with faith what to do and not to fear because when we trust in the lord we can do all!

I hope you all had a good week a good Christmas thanks for all the cards and the emails and the love! 

And i loved talking to you face to face! Cya next May!

Our Tree

Service!

First baptism that I contacted!

Jan's World Famous Pretzels!

So many tamales!

First worn out pair of shoes!

Hna Mandy

Hola Familia, Amigos, Wardies, y Otros!!!

Wow ok, I realized something this week, writing in English every week is one thing, and it's pretty easy, but after having two latina compañeras and speaking nothing but Spanish for five weeks speaking english was surprisingly difficult!! Also I didn't forget entirely what your voices sound like but after not hearing them for awhile it was weird and pretty darn cool to actually hear and see you guys. And the snow, everyone here was pretty psyched to see that. Plus I was so dang excited to see you people that I forgot to say a bunch of the things I was going to say. First off my trainer Mandi Hobbs advised me to spend a little here and there through out my mish to buy recuerdos and regalos para ustedes so I'm not rushing at the end to buy a bunch of stuff for everyone like a chicken with it's head cut off. It's a great idea with the exception that now I have some stuff packed away in my suitcases for all you guys and I don't want to wait 15 months so give them to you!! oh well, patience is a virtue. Speaking of regalos, thanks soo much for my packages and cards and letters from all those who contributed!!! It was greatly appreciated by me and my companions!! I introduced them to hi-chews, and our pretzel things and Andes mints and all that stuff. The members here are also super generous and loving and gave us some regalos and such, my favorite of which is this little candy storer thing that this cute abuelita in the ward made by hand for me with this little hand made doll with blonde hair it's so cute!! I forgot to write about our christmas devotional the other week, and the song we had to sing in front of EVERYONE. It went all right up until the point my vocal chords decided to stop working, yeah that wasn't so cool. We had the spiritual part and then after wards we changed to P-Day clothes and played a bunch of sports like kick ball, three legged soccer, hand ball etc. it was fun and we got to use our cool soccer jerseys. Speaking of activities we had an activity with all the kids in primary in the stake on saturday that was all about missionary work! We got to hand out this little placas for them and give them missionary calls with different countries and then we had set up little stands for each country that there are missionaries here from with stuff from our countries and demonstrations to get the kids excited to serve missions. We sang the national anthem, taught them how to play football americano, handed out jolley ranchers and kisses, and at the end there were kids swapping mission calls to get the U.S. it was great. So when I was talking with Dad he mentioned how Nicia has to go without hot water, wash clothes by hand, and go outside to wash the dishes and when he asked me about what was difficult about my mission the best I could come up with is that the people here peel their tomatoes before eating them. Bueno now that I think about it I am remarkably blessed to be in the mission I am with washing machines etc. but I will say this it is SUPER hot here but for some reason none of the houses have air conditioning or screens on the windows and doors so the best you can to is leave the windows open during the day but then cockroaches and spiders and flies come in, and at night no way because the ceiling will be black with bugs yeah it's fun. Oh also we have earthquakes and terramotos here (earthquakes that demolish cities). The other day while we were getting ready for church there was a temblor big enough that our house was shaking pretty good then all of a sudden it felt like our house went up over a hill and then it faded, it was crazy!! Bueno to end on a spiritual note, right after I talked to you guys I got to go meet a new investigator and extend a bautismal invitation and the lesson was so spiritual and felt so awesome it was like a mini Christmas present telling me I really am in the right place doing the right thing, the best, most fulfilling thing I've ever done in my life. Love you all so much!!

Hermana (Mandy) Boully