" Guess what.. I got transferred."

Monday, September 15, 2014

Arizona and other parts of the world,

 So funny story, this is actually kinda awkward after what everyone sent me this week in their emails, but guess what.. I got transferred.

 Yeahhh president did tell us a week ago that we were going to stay in Izamal one more change and we were so pumped and planning all this cool stuff all week, and then Sunday night comes. And Elder Fonseca calls (very late might I add. like at 10:00) and tells us that we have changes and I'm going to this area in Merida as sister training leader, and HP is staying in Izamal with this Latina Hermana who doesn't speak any English. And of course I don't believe him 'cause they always lie to you before telling you the truth. But then it's getting late and he's still serious and I realize he's not joking... And he's like YES hermana smith you have to be in Merida tomorrow at 8 with all your bags and everything. You're going to Chichen-itza and you and your companion are going to be sister training leaders. SISTER TRAINING LEADERS. What the heck?? I just got here?? President made a mistake. but noooo Elder Fonseca was dead serious and so I stay up all night packing cause there's no point in going to bed when it takes like an hour to pack  up and we have to wake up at like 3.30 anyway to get to Merida on time, and we go to Merida this morning. And I didn't get to say goodbye to anyone:( Actually I did call one family that I love a ton to tell them I was leaving and they brought us pancakes and french fries to say goodbye.)  So yeah.

 Now I'm in Merida again in a place called Chichen-itza and my companions name is Hermana Nuñez and we are the sister training leaders of our zone. And I'm fine cause HN is super cool and has been STL [sister training leader] before and knows how to do all the stuff, but I miss Izamal!!! I was so ready to stay there another six weeks!!! But actually I didn't take it as hard as HP. She was super super upset... I feel bad cause she is like super stressed out now cause her comp doesn't know the area and doesn't know English and yeah... but it's for the best! At least now she'll be forced to learn Spanish. 

So I'll try to send a pic of HN and I next week. She's super cool. And she speaks English perfectly. What's up with me having all these English speakers as companions? I don't know.. 

So sorry, I feel bad for letting you all down cause I actually am NOT  in Izamal anymore.. but this week went well! We had a talent show with the ward and we tried to get our bishop to rap but he wouldn't.  HP and I sang primary hymns in English  with this cool different rhythm and I did that cup thing from Pitch Perfect. Also Lucy went to church!! With her daughters!! And then we went to her house and helped her with her English homework. And I got a letter from my convert Fredy and it literally made me cry.

Ok I'll let you all know how this new area is next week but I love you all lots bye!

HS

"...hope you all know that the church is true and the book is blue and I love you all!"

Monday September 8, 2014

Dear Mom, and other people too,

To answer your question, yes, to wash our clothes we just beat them with a rock. Its actually a super special clothes beating rock and all you do is hit your dirty clothes with it a couple times and your clothes are magically cleaned!

That was a joke. 

No usually we take our clothes to the laundry place and just pick them up like a couple days later, but then we discovered that this family in our ward (Los F, who happen to be the family of the Relief Society president, the bishop, and our ward mission leader all in one) actually have a washing machine that we can use cause they're like super rich. And they have a computer too that they let us use to write!! Ok well actually its the "church's" computer but seeing as the church is destroyed right now it's living in the house of the F family. 

ALSO, yeah I know what talk that is [note from Camille, I asked her about a talk called "His Grace is Sufficient" here is the  link,] I've read it! Ok well I haven't read it but my companion has which is kinda the same thing cause she pretty much like read and annotated the whole thing to me over the course of  two weeks. She was obsessed with it for a while. So yeah I guess I should re-read it and compare notes with HP. Just to see who has better notes ya know. just kidding, we're not competitive like that. Yeah it really helped us understand the atonement better and what's possible for us because of Christ and everything,  It's actually way good!

 Her district

 "the girls from our zone: Arriaga, Carrastro, me, HP, Manning, Montgomery, Martinez, and Hobbs." 

"so... this is a house. supposedly. But I don't know who would live there. Maybe a monkey"

"Amen"

Right now its raining. Like pretty much every day. I love it! And I would dance and play in it all the time too but I'm afraid someone would see me and be like "ugh those Mormons are so weird" and never want to listen to us. 

My gosh guess what!!!! Lupita went to church on Sunday and so we officially have a progressing investigator!!! The SECOND progressing investigator we've had in 2 transfers. And guess what else, President called me last night to talk about the area cause we've had really really low numbers in Izamal for like a year now and he was thinking about closing the area, but wanted to get my opinion. And HP and I had actually JUST been talking about that like 5 minutes before he called and we were commenting about how we really wanted to see a baptism here, to show everyone that Izamal COULD baptize! So I don't know why or how it came out but I ended up telling him that I would like to stay here with my companion one more transfer to try to see through our plans that we had made....... What the heck Hermana Smith why'd you tell him that, right? I don't know... but so he was like "OK Hermana Smith I trust you."

 I also asked him to divide the area 'cause its way too huge and I told him we need bikes... but we'll see what he does about that.  So he's not going to close the area and we already know that when transfers come next week we'll already know that we're staying here 6 more weeks. But its OK 'cause I'm SO DETERMINED to baptize our investigators!!! I don't know if you guys were praying for Lupita but if you were [another note from Camille- we were!!] THANK YOU cause she came to church and I think she liked it.. it was hard to tell though. we just need to work on making our investigators keep going to church and not just stop everything after one time! So keep praying for her!

 We also found this guy this week named Felipe and he seems like he has potential and says he really wants to listen to us and read our book! His story is super cool so listen to this. Last week was like the worst week ever right? So we go to district meeting and our district leader Elder Fonseca gets us all pumped up again and gives us all these ideas on how to have success! And he talked about having specific prayers, like SPECIFICALLY asking for what you want and how that helps us. SO we decided to try that on Tuesday, and we both decided we wanted to find 3 new investigators, 2 men and 1 woman, and we wanted to be able to teach a complete lesson with all three of them.  We knew that was a little ambitious, but we really wanted to redeem ourselves from last week. So we are walking down the street and this guy calls out to us just like asking us where we're from and then we start talking and he's like, "hey do you guys want to come into my house for a minute, I want you to meet my family." So we're like OK! And we go in and teach him and his wife and his two sons, one of which is 10 years old, so officially old enough to be counted as an investigator. 2 guys and one girl, all with complete lessons!  Woahhh... THEN later as we were leaving, HP tells me that this morning she was actually thinking about the goal we put, and she thought it was a little crazy, so she actually prayed so that they would all be put into a family, and that's exactly what we got!! Hahe hey prayer works! Who knew? Just kidding I already knew that. But anyway so pray for him!

 Lucy hasn't come back to church:( not because she doesn't want to but because she started school and doesn't have time anymore... but we're still going with her too. In other scandalous news, one of our investigators who is the "wife" of a recent convert from Merida came to church too and she's super awesome and willing to be baptized! The only problem is we had suspicions which were confirmed this week that she is not actually married to her "husband". The most frustrating thing though, is that they WERE married but got divorced cause he was always drinking, but they still love each other and sometimes live together. AND we didn't know this until just barely but her "husband" just got baptized not too long ago and we're not sure if he was worthy... ohhh drama. It's rough. 

Ok well that is a super long letter, and now I have to send pictures. So hope you all know that the church is true and the book is blue and I love you all!

HS

"I can give the natural man a slap in the face and a run for his money by not giving up and realizing that it's gonna be ok in the end."

Monday September 1, 2014

Ugh I have literally NO time today because it is officially 9:00 right now... apologies.

For your questions, Izamal is getting worse, but I'll explain more in a second.

Nobody is coming to church, pray for Lucy, Manuel, Lupita, and Hilda.

Tell the Marchants I say hi and I miss Chris too!

It never cools off here. But it is rainy season and they say that we might get a hurricane here soon. But I don't think it's very likely. What a shame, I would like to experience a hurricane... But yeah it's been raining for the past 2 days.. 

Glad to know that family is good! I can just imagine you guys having a dance party there in the family room, haha sounds fun! My comp has a really good voice but she doesn't sing much, she doesn't think she can sing well. She likes to dance but I've never seen her. She's a super awesome church youth member, like way involved in her wards youth program in Indiana, and always did stuff like that. She just worked a lot before her mission so she's a really hard worker. Yeah she knows I'm musical. I sing a lot. 

Ok this week I feel like Nephi in 2 Nephi 4. In his words (sorry I don't have my English scriptures here with me now so it's in Spanish) :"Mi corazon se entristece a cause de mi carne. Mi alma se aflige a causa de mis iniquidades. Me veo circundado a cause de los tentaciones y pecados que tan fácilmente me asedian..." [translation : "Yea, my heart sorroweth because of my flesh; my soul grieveth because of mine iniquities.  I am encompassed about, because of the temptations and the sins which do so easily beset me.  And when I desire to rejoice my heart groaneth because of my sins; nevertheless I know in whom I have trusted..." ] Sometimes I just feel so weak. Like I don't know what I'm doing here and I get so frustrated and discouraged at the littlest things and none of our investigators are coming to church and literally NOBODY wanted to talk to us for like 3 days straight and we've been walking like 6 or 7 hours every day trying to teach people and it feels all so useless. 

 I'm so glad that President made us study a lot about the atonement cause then I can give the natural man a slap in the face and a run for his money by not giving up and realizing that it's gonna be ok in the end. In that same verse Nephi goes on to say: "No obstante, se en quien he confiado." Its been rough but I guess I already know that what's happening is no excuse to be the pathetic complaining missionary that Satan wants us to be, if I know in whom I have put my trust, it'll all be ok. Now what that means exactly, well who knows. Could mean that everything will turn around and we'll start baptizing in this area, or it could mean that this area will still continue being the most rotten area in the mission, but we'll have made some difference that only we could make here, however small. And I guess I'll be ok with that.

HS

"... And we still don't know where the scorpion went, but HP is convinced that it's in her suitcase."

August 25, 2014

Soooo this week didn't go so well either, but we worked so crazy hard to get our investigators to church and have members with us in lessons. And the members are awesome and almost every single lesson we had this week, a member came with us so that was cool.

 But we had ZERO investigators in church! AGAIN. This is literally the hardest thing to get people to do here! And I guess I should have expected it cause this week was stake conference [a stake is made up of several wards in the area and conference is a few times every year] so everyone had to travel to Merida for church and we can't make people pay money to take the bus to Merida for church, but we were actually expecting 2 investigators there who didn't come... And yesterday we went by Lucy's house to see why she didn't come and turns out she really wanted to but couldn't because of another commitment she had and was trying to get out of it, but she was upset that she couldn't come. The good news is the stake conference was beautiful and awesome and we got to stay the night with some Hermanas in Merida who are super fun. But the speakers were  talking about how the members have to help the missionaries and their responsibilities and everything and it was JUST what the ward needed to hear, and that night we got to have ward council finally! So that was so good! And now the ward is excited to help out and organize activities and stuff so yay!

 Pretty sunset in Izamal

Rain in Izamal

Hermana Smith Singin' in the Rain

Fun story, Friday night we're driving home in a taxi and Elder F (the District Leader ) calls and says "Hermana Smith I have some news for you.. you have SPECIAL CHANGES and you are going to Mulsay with Hermana de Leon and you have to be in Merida tomorrow at 8.... AND by now I've learned to never trust your district leader so I was like OK Elder whatever really what do you need? And he wouldn't let it drop! He was so serious so I was like, "What the heck?"  We had to pay the taxi driver so I said  "OK I'll call you back in 5 minutes." So I told HP what EF said, and I don't know if he's joking or not, and she starts freaking out cause she thinks she'll die if I leave and she's left here with a different companion.

 Then we get in the house and I was in the bathroom and I hear HP scream. And she's like Hermana come here!!!!! So I come out and she shows me this huge black scorpion on our table. And I'm not super freaked out 'cause I've seen scorpions before, but HP hasn't and she starts hyperventilating. And I'm not gonna lie, this thing is nasty looking. But we don't know how to kill it or get rid of it cause neither one of us wants to get near it, and it's crawled on the leg of the table making it hard to get at. So I said OK I'm calling EF 'cause we have to call back anyway. So I call him (meanwhile looking up the Spanish word for scorpion) and tell him that there's one in our house. And all this time HP is crawled up in her hammock and almost crying and wants to pray so that the scorpion will die and keeps running from our room to the other room where I'm talking to EF. And then EF is like well I don't know what to do about that, but by the way I was just kidding about your special changes.. so then I give him a mouthful and HP comes running in to see what happened, and I tell her it was a joke and she gets all super mad at EF for freaking us out for nothing. Then she goes back into the room to find that the scorpion disappeared, and comes back in freaking out and standing on her chair. And so that was our stressful night. And we still don't know where the scorpion went, but HP is convinced that it's in her suitcase.

This is Norma Ricalde. We LOVE this family, they're members. She doesn't speak English but she has this bag and I thought it was so funny!

OK well I guess that's all for today. Hope next week I have better news for ya'll!

HS

"...I vote that Moroni should be president of the United States."

August 18, 2014

Dear people.

Bad news, Izamal is officially the worst area in the mission. We are the area that has gone the longest without baptizing, and we're the ONLY area who has not baptized at all this year.... The assistants told me that yesterday... They had to drive down to Izamal to come to our church service, hold an emergency ward council (which by the way, we  NEVER have.) and he planched [there's that word again] the council. Oh they planched them good. They said : "we don't want to have to take away the missionaries from this area, they are a priviledge!" Then the Bishop got all upset and said, "...um Elders I am in charge of my ward council, not you guys, so I'll tell therm what to do, and also could you give the [mission] president a little message for me, the reason nothing is happening here is because our goals aren't in sync..." and a bunch of other stuff. And of course it was a little more polite, but the interesting juicy dramatic version in my head went something like that. And it was pretty tense. 

And we're STILL left without a ward council, and this is like week 4 now that we haven't had one. It's bad.  And our one progressing investigator stopped progressing because he didn't come to church.  Ugh. Everyone in the ward blames it on the fact that the people in Izamal are just by nature hard-hearted and won't accept the gospel. but I KNOW there are people here who are prepared for the gospel!  It's just been rough trying to find them,. And this week we did pretty well in having members go with us to lessons, but the people just don't want to come to church! ugh. Ok that's a little bit of my missionary anxiety for you, but hey... Igbok. [favorite Samantha saying -  "It's gonna be OK"]

In other news I'm reading right now in Alma 48ish, and I vote that Moroni should be president of the United States. He'd do way better of a job...

There's this girl we're teaching named Lucy and HP and I LOVE her! She might be our best investigator right now. Maybe...

I have pictures! But I'm way out of time so I'll have to send them next week.

Ok love you all bye!

HS

WE POR FREAKING FIN HAVE A PROGRESSING INVESTIGATOR THIS WEEK!!!

SO I heard from three different people now of the fiasco with the horses [while at a family reunion in Zion's horseback riding some people were hurt ] on Wednesday! Sounds crazy but glad everyone is fine! I got your package! Came sooner than I had expected, after like 3 weeks or something. I LOVED the pictures!!!!! Miranda is a freakin babe!!! (woah sorry thats totally something HP would say, she's rubbing off on me) And Also, HP fell in love with that dress you sent, she's wearing it right now haha along with my earrings and my belt. She got tired of her clothes really fast.

 Ok ya'll ready for  big news? WE POR FREAKING FIN HAVE A PROGRESSING INVESTIGATOR THIS WEEK!!! its the first one since being in Izamal... And its not who you'd expect, but we had a really cool experience with him this week.

  "Just our neighbor herding a bunch of goats into his house. It's a regular Thursday occurrence."

 SO on Friday we went to Merida (ugh we ALWAYS have to go to Merida..) for zone conference and the zone leaders planched [ as far as I can tell planchar means to scold, set straight or something close to that] us about crying repentance unto the people, and how we need to invite everyone to repent. Anyway so we got back late that same day, and we decided to go with this one guy that we had visited once like forever ago but he didn't seem to have retained anything that we said the first time, he might have been a little drunk. But we went to visit him and couldn't go into his house 'cause he was alone but we just stood outside and talked about repentance, like we had just been taught. And even though we were just standing by his gate and it was starting to rain, it was a really powerful lesson, and he told us that he really does want to change. So he promised to come to church, and then on Saturday night we texted that guy A (I think I've already talked about him, he ROCKS and is super into helping us) and asked if he could pick up the guy before church and when we got there he was THERE! and he had accepted a fecha [date] so he's officially progressing! We just have to keep up with this one.

Thanks for my package again!

HS

"I'm praying so hard to have progressing investigators..."

Aug 4, 2014

Hi Mom!

Sorry this is gonna be a short letter today cause I'm way short on time but I sent a ton of pictures and they say a picture is worth a thousand words!

 P-day Mexican pizza party

 "I wonder how long this car has been here... But this is like the norm. This ivy stuff grows all over EVERYTHING"

I call this one: "Christopher Colombus searching for a new world. On top of a mayan pyramid."

"HP and I got some flowers from these adorable little twin daughters of one of our investigators. We went to Tahmek this week to see a baptism and she wanted to come with us! And she brought her daughters."

"This is the Ku Velazquez family and they rock. We eat lunch with them every single Saturday and they have the single most delicious food I've had since being here. The little kid Fernando is adorable and the oldest son rocks cause he always goes on visits with us. And he looks like Mexican Edward Cullen." 

Nope- package hasn't come yet, and I really don't think he [her mission president] even knows what day I'm coming home yet so I don't think I can ask. I just know it's in April. Its always ridiculously hot here, but like June and July are rainy seasons, so it depends if you mind getting wet or not. Branson sounds way fun, wish I could have gone!

This transfer just ended yesterday and HP and I are staying here in Izamal. (surprise surprise) I'm praying so hard to have progressing investigators cause since we've been here we've had ZERO... which is horrible. but I think things might be looking up soon.. I do love it here. Ok I'll write more next week, love you all bye!

HS