August 25, 2014 The Hernandez family

Ok, Hi!! How are you all doing? I hope you are all doing well :)

Ok so we went on exchanges, or intercambios, and so I was with a different Hermana for 24 and it was fun so yeah that was an adventure. We also had our like three ward party where three different wards got together for an activity about how the church got started here in Mexico. It was like a play put on by the youth and it was really good. We had quite a few of our investigators come so that was awesome! Um...yeah and my mind is like rushing a hundred miles an hour so I can't really think of many other things to tell you haha, yeah kind of sad I know. But I figured out where the apostrophe is on this crazy keyboard so that is another great thing. Um, Oh yeah. So we have been teaching the familia Hernandez and they are super awesome! They ask great questions and our lessons with them are always filled with the Spirit. It is kind of bad though because our lessons are super long but it's because they ask like super great questions and they are really good at telling us when they don't understand so we teach them pretty thoroughly and we bring the second counselor of el barrio and his esposa comes too and he just knows so much! He totally helps us with our lessons so it's awesome. So anyway, they are being baptized this saturday if all goes well and so we have a lot of time set aside throughout the week so that we can teach them the lessons we haven't taught yet and review the other lessons and just make sure that they are all preped for their baptism. There are three of them in this family, the mom and her two kids, and so yeah, we have three baptisms coming up pretty soon! :)

We also have two other investigators with baptismal dates but they aren't for a few more weeks so I can talk more about them later. 

I really love Mexican food so yeah, it's all good! And I am learning to eat spicy food now because I just man up and eat it even though it makes my nose sweat. It is super super delicious even though it makes my mouth feel like it's on fire sometimes. I want to ask a bunch of the awesome ladies who feed us how they make their food so I can make it at home for y'all cuz it is super tasty and you would love it I'm sure :) yeah you are all super awesome and I love you a lot. I show people one of our family pictures when we teach about families and I bare my testimony and they all say that you are all muy bonito so that's good :) I think you are all bonito and super padre (which here that means like awesome and cool and stuff like that although I don't understand the phrase because padre is dad but yeah whatever, that's just what they say around here and I love it!)

My spanish is coming along and people tell me that my accent is good so that is super great because that means I don't sound like a gringo! And they say I read well so that is also a good thing. And when I help teach or when I bare my testimony they can understand what I am saying even though I don't know how to say things correctly but I will get it down. And I definitely believe in the gift of tongues because there is no way that I can be doing this all on my own. No way. 

But anyway, this mission is super awesome and I learn new things every single day about the Gospel and about myself and about Our Heavenly Father. This life and this Gospel are so amazing and we really are so blessed! I hope that you are all trying to be better missionaries at home because that is basically what your calling is here on earth. We all need to invite others to come unto Christ because He is their salvation and if we have the opportunity to save a soul, why wouldn't we take it? I love you all so much and I am so grateful to have you in my life and to have the knowledge that we can be together forever. It is super beautiful Have a great week alright?

Love,

Hermana Walker

 

August 18, 2014 1st Area - Cholula

Ok, Oh my gosh...today was even more crazy than last week and so guess what!? I have thirty minutes to write an email and read all the other ones I have...my inbox was super super full this week and so I will just print them off again hopefully and then I am praying that we can do way better with our time and then I can actually have the full time to email so yeah, I am super super super sorry about this! This week the email is going to be kind of lame but I am still going to try and make it worth your time.

Alright so we have been teaching a cute little old man named Gabriel and he is interested in our message and he is pretty good with keeping the commitments that we extend to him so that is awesome. He had a baptismal date but he hasn{t been coming to church because of his job and so we have to push it back and push it back but we are focusing on him and I think he feels our love for him and he knows that we care about him so hopefully he will be able to have a little miracle and just make it to church two more times at least so that he can be baptized and then hopefully he will continue to come so that he can gain a stronger testimony with each week and renew his covenants through the santa cena. 

We also went and taught this man named Hilirao and I didnt really know what was going on so i kind of just stood around for a lot of it and after a while it was hard to stay focused on what was going on because i could only pick out a few words here and there and try to make it into a coherent sentance but it wasnt working out and we talked with him for way way too long and it started raining on us but apparently he got really offended that we couldnt go into his house (he doesnt have another mujer in the home so we cant go in...its against the rules) and so he got offended and now he doesnt want us to teach him anymore so that is super super sad...we are going to go back some day in the near future and try again though. 

We picked up a new investigator named Victor and he is really nice. He lost his leg, like it is amputated at the knee, and I dont know what happened because I couldnt understand the spanish but I will ask my companion what happened, I only know that it happened recently haha. We invited him to our ward activity this friday and I hope that he can come. His niece or daughter is also invited to come and we are also hoping that she will be able to attend as well. We kind of counted her as an investigator too because she was sitting in and listening to the first lesson we had with Victor. She is also the lady who teaches the yoga classes that we take on our Pday. But today she was at the dentist and so her mom, this old super duper cute lady, let us in and she was all, Oh I know yoga! And she totally taught us and did yoga with us. She is so so funny and super cute! We invited her to the activity too. But she also teaches zumba and tichee and all these other things and she is just so funny and full of energy! She actually kind of reminds me of grandma lee...like I feel like they could be really good friends if they spoke the same language :) 

Mariana is a less active member that we visit a lot. We do service for her and we teach her lessons and she is super cute and her daughter is like the cutest little girl I have ever seen in my life! We are working to reactivate her and to teach her husband because he isnt a member and Mariana has a goal to someday go to the Temple and be sealed so we are trying to help her family achieve that goal. 

Ah! Ok I dont have time to tell you more about the people that I am already beginning to love but hopefully I can do more of that next weeek and also I don{t have my camera with me so pictures have to wait for one more week but I ate one of those nacho libre corns and my companion and I took some pics with it so those are something to look forward to ;) Um, also we had a ton of miracles this passed week! We got some free bread and a bus driver just let us have our ride for free that same day so that was pretty awesome and then my companion felt that we should go knock on this one door so we did and we invited this young woman to the activity on friday and she accepted so that was a miracle and then I had a super awesome and yet at the same time kind of hard/bad experience with the Spirit and reading this awesome talk and some verses in D&C so that was something that was cool and I think of it as a tender mercy of the Lord. My testimony has been growing so much already and was strengthened a lot this week. 

I will explain more of this later but I really have to go now! I love you all and I am so happy to be here and to be serving in this area even though it is really hard and I am realizing everyday how much I still lack but it is ok because I have the Savior on my side and a Heavenly Father who loves me and I have this glorious gospel in my life and that all makes me so happy! I will write back next week! Love you a lot!! 

Love always,

Hermana Walker

 

Aug 11th, 2014 I'm in Mexico!

Haha ok so, first of al, ¡hola! How are you all doing?

I am doing great! Except that this is my first P-day and it has been super crazy because nothing stayed on schedule and so...that means I have like no time to write this week! But that is ok because I will be a lot better next week. But anyway, I don´t know what questions you all asked or anything since I have 22 new emails this week for some reason (I´m like really popular for once in my life ;) ) and so yeah I will just print them all off and read them in my spare time (haha, spare time. What?) yeah I actually don´t have a lot of that but esta bien because I will find time since I love all of you and want to read what you wrote to me!

But yeah anyway, So i really really love my companion! She is super super awesome and way cute and we get along really well. She is from Farmington so when we get home we are totally hanging out. We already discussed it. And we are attending each other´s weddings :) haha yeah she is just so great! She has been en el campo (in the field) for six months now. That´s so crazy because I have only been here for uno semana (one week!) I still sometimes can´t believe that I am like, actually walking the streets of Mexico sometimes.

But anyway, So it is crazy here because everyone speaks Spanish. It´s like they´re Mexican or something ,) They speak really fast and some are fairly easy to understand while others I´m just like, um...what did you just say...?? and some speak like in the back of their throats and so that is super hard to understand as well but its ok because I know that I will get it down and the Lord will help me as long as I try since He called me here for a reason and I know that the Lord doesn´t ask us to do anything that He knows we can´t handle. 

Ok so the flight here was cool like the one to Dallas felt kind of long and then the whle calling my family thing didn´t work out like I wanted so that was kind of bad and there were tears but I am really grateful Hermana Peterson let me use her cell phone thing to call and that the phones were eventually able to get service so that I could talk to you guys because I didn´t realize how much talking to you would mean to me before. So yeah but the flight to Puebla seriously flew by! (no pun intended but hey, you can have one anyway) :) I honestly felt like we were only on the plane for thirty minutes and then all of a sudden we´re flying over the city and it is super gorgeous and I am freaking out just a little bit. But yeah, ah, crazy stuff! S the first night we stayed in the mission home and met the APs and the mission President and his wife. I really like them. Presidente Stellmon is a little bit more strict but he is stil really nice and he is all about getting the work done and working hard and forgetting ourselves and getting to work and al that so that is awesome. But Hermana Stellmon is so cute! She is really bubbly and fun and I like her a lot. The mission home is really pretty! Just so you know. 

The second day, or I guess technically the first ful day in Mexico, was crazy. I met my companion at the changes meeting and then I aso found out my area and I had to move all my suitcases into the back of a truck and a member drve us to our area. 

Our area is super awesome! we are in Cholula and we live in San Gabriel. It is like a pueblito or pueblo which is like a tiny town and the houses in this area are all apparently pretty big but I wouldn´t really know since I have nothing to compare it with except houses in america and that isn´t really a fair comparison haha. But yeah some of the houses here are actually like, pretty big and nice. and mostly everyone is a farmer and there are chickens and turkeys and pigs and horses and all that. um, que mas...? Oh yeah. The food. Oh my gosh. I eat so much food! They just feed us and feed us and feed us! And the food is like super rico, or super delicious. They like always start us out with a soup of some sort and then they give us the main meal with tortillas always and then sometimes we even get dessert and we aways get fruit. I ate a mango for the first time in my life and holy cow it is like the best thing ever! Me gusto mucho! I aso ate a fruit called tuna which is apparently a fruta de cactus. It is really yummy as well. We definitely need to come here and visit when I am no longer a missionary. And it wil be better then anyway because then I will actually be able to speak and understand haha. 

Um, yeah so I am running out of time....oh but speaking of which, I ost my watch....like, I lost it somewhere between the MTC and the Airport...haha I know I know, how dumb right? Well it´s ok because Hermana Kraczek and I just bought some watches today! They are actualy pretty gigante but we think they are cute and so yeah, we bought them. we both needed watches super bad. Um, ok going back to the food. Y´all better still love me when I am fat because...yeah it´s going to happen. But don´t worry, I will work really hard when I get home and then I can be skinny and it won´t be as bad haha. 

I have born my testimony a lot here since that is basically all I can do, wel and I can kind of pray but a lot of the time I say the same things...so I am working on getting better with that so that my spanish prayers can be just as meaningful as my english ones :)

One realy spiritual moment for me here was when I was bearing my testimony at a member´s house after la comida and I was bearing it about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. The Spirit just overcame me and I was all choked up (but I didn´t quite cry) and I just knew without a doubt that the Book of Mormon is true and that Jospeh smith was and still is a true prophet of God. The Spirit was really strong in that moment and I am so thakful to Heavenly Father for giving me that experience to make me stronger and to increase my faith and strengthen my roots of testimony. 

I am really sorry for all the typos because this keyboard is a little weird and I don´t have a lot of time so I am rushing but I need to go now. I love you all so much and I just want you to know that I know this Gospel is true and that I love being a missionary and I am really grateful for this opportunity and to be here. This work is truly amazing and although it is really hard and I am slowly becoming less attractive physically, I know that the Lord will help me make up for that spiritually and that I will be able to come closer to Him through this amazing opportunity to bring his children unto the Savior Jesus Christ. I will talk to you more next week! I love you a lot!

Love always,
Hermana Walker