Dec 12, 2012
To answer your questions: my companions' names are Hermanas Carpenter and Hansen. Hma Carpenter is from Wyoming. She loves loves loves running and is super funny. they're both super nice, so that's awesome. Hma Hansen is from Idaho. She was adopted at birth from Guatemala and has lived in Rupert Idaho ever since. I have Elders Cooley, Pedro, Welker, Olson, Reid, Johnson, Doyle, and Mccloy in my district. They're all very nice but VERY squirrely. They have a hard time staying on track and focusing, but they have good hearts and great intentions. I feel like I've come into having 8 little brothers. haha. We're the only sisters in our district, but there are more hermanas in our zone and we really like them/get along with them well. Sister Carpenter is going to my exact mission, and sister Hansen is going to Nicaragua.Today was p day, which meant we got to go to the temple today. It was such a good session! It's amazing  being in the room and hearing all those people pray for missionaries... and then you remember that there are hundreds of temples that put on hundreds of sessions a day. We've decided that that means we're getting at least 2,000 prayers a day on our behalf. That's pretty amazing. Sitting there, I could feel the power of their prayer wash over me, and it was incredible.

 

On our way out of the temple, we saw a girl kneeling and crying on the lawn, so we decided to go talk to her (cause, you k now, we're missionaries and all). We saw that she was praying and decided to wait until she was done to talk to her. She finished her prayer, and right as we were about to head over to talk to her, she reached into her bag and pulled out a large white envelope. You guessed it. A mission call. We hung off to the side to let her open her call and enjoy the moment by herself, but when the moment seemed right, we walked over and gave her big 'ol hugs and told her how excited we are for her. She's going to Warsaw, Poland, which in case you didn't remember, is the Nielsen's mission. I told her that I knew her mission President, and that she would be in the best of hands. She told us she was so excited that we had stopped to talk to her, because she had no one to tell her news to, and she was relieved to know that the Nielsens are kind. The Lord works in mysterious ways.

 

On another note, I am no longer going to Guatemala. It's almost official. Because of the influx of missionaries (thanks a bundle, you 18 and 19 year-olds! haha) the Guatemala MTC is completely full (and then some). So even though I'm excited for all the new missionaries, I'm slightly bummed I don't get to go to Guatemala. All the same, I'll go and be wherever the Lord needs me, and if that's Provo, that's where I'll be, and I'll be legitimately happy about it.

 

Spanish comes to me very well when my companionship is very obedient, but the days we're running late, it's a definite struggle. I've already learned so much Spanish, but I feel like I could be doing so much better if we could just be exactly obedient to EVERYTHING as a companionship. I do pretty well on my own, but it's hard getting 3 girls going, so we've struggled with that as a companionship. We're working on it a little every day, and hopefully soon we'll be able to claim perfect obedience. I feel like that will really jump the barrier I've been brushing up against these last 2 days. Other than that, Spanish is awesome and I love it! We're being trained on the schedule for new missionaries (but we're still here til february), so we're hitting things a lot faster than missionaries normally do. We're the guinea pigs for when the new younger lot comes along. We're teaching an investigator here in the mtc. He's hired on by the MTC, but he never breaks character, so it's almost like a true investigator. However, we're expected to teach him only in Spanish, which has been a challenge. He "only speaks Spanish," so we've had lots of interesting lessons. We're giving our 4th tonight, and we're not entirely sure how it will go, but we have hope and faith that it will work out. Our first lesson, we forgot how to ask if we could come inside, so we gave the entire lesson standing at the door, prayer and all. The funniest part is, he didn't open the door all the way, he just peeked his head out, and we gave the lesson in that way. jajajajaja (that's how we laugh in spanish jajaja).