"4 people came to church!!!!!!"

February 2, 2015

AH Mom today is literally the craziest day ever and I have like 5 minutes to write I'm so sorry! But real fast,

My new room sounds fantastic! YES I will bring my hammock, you won't be able to find one anywhere else, you just need to get the hooks up. 

Good thing you didn't send the camera! Hahaha yeah maybe you can stop sending me packages soon 'cause they sometimes take a long time to get here and I'm afraid that you will be sending stuff and it will arrive after I'm already home... HW has been waiting on a package for like 3 months now...

Can somebody please triple check that my BYU application is in? 

Stuff this week:

OK yesterday the assistants called us with special changes, Hermana Cruz is gone. Went to a little town called Baca.

Today: another call, you guys get another companion, Hermana Carrasco!

Apparently Presidente only trusts us with the hermanas left without companions, if there is an emergency he just sends the girls to us. SO we are in a trio again. After a couple of hours of just being us two..

4 people came to church!!!!!!

Fatima. Is amazing, progressing like crazy, wants to get married, wants to get baptized and put her life in order. She has changed so much that the people at her work have started calling her "Sister Fatima" cause she like reads the scriptures now! Brigette is her 8 year old daughter who comes to church with her too.

Jenifer. 13 year old girl but you'd think she's 20, has awesome questions and really likes listening.

Rosi. Not the one you're thinking, this is another one. But she's way awesome and even though she has a ton of family and economic problems, she knows that this is what will help her have more peace in her life.

"Here's a picture of me and Hermana Velasquez making tamales!"

We went to the temple on Tuesday.  Manuel and Emmanuel woke up with us at like 3:30AM to go do baptisms for the dead and it was way special to see them all in white saving their ancestors!

Ok sorry I have to go now 'cause I have to do a millions things before 6:00 so I have to go now but I love you all dearly!

Bye!
HS

"Well this week a miracle happened."

January 26, 2015

SO glad to hear the fam is doing well. So is the mish:)

Well this week a miracle happened. And it's called someone returned my backpack that I had lost that had all my stuff and my camera in it!!!!!!!! So in your face all of you Debby downers who said it was pointless hoping that someone would have a heart and return it! There are good people in the world!!!!!!! Well either that or I just accidentally left it in the church without realizing it...but so the good news is that I have my camera again and when the girls called to tell me they had it I almost died! 

Sam and Hma Williams

Tomorrow we are hoping to go to the temple because the missionaries are allowed to bring recent converts to do baptisms for their ancestors. So we are kind of last minute rushing to get Manuel and Emmanuel and Miguel all ready with their family history work and everything. (Jasmin can't go:( she got a new job and we hardly ever see her anymore so we're really worried about that actually...)

But I'll let you know how that goes down. 

The trio!! Us with Hermana Cruz! She's great. And she's Mexican so she can help us out with stuff like people not ripping us off 'cause we're gringas.

Family history is the big thing now! All the missionaries now have to do all their family history work up until the great grandparents and show it to all the investogators and recent converts and members and everyone! And it's actually working way well. Go espiritu de Elias!! 

Bunk bed hammocks!

Mom! Can you remind me how to do yoga? Like pictures or videos or something? I can't remember and we want to do yoga for exercise in the mornings.. that would be awesome:) 

Ok sorry I have to go now! I am out of time! but don't do anything rash like send me a camera, 'cause I have one:) love you all dearly!

HS

"..we have a third companion. and I am in a trio, yet again. I need my crown."

January 19, 2015

OK I'm so sorry today its going to be really short cause we're way short on time. 

News:

Changes happened, after begging president to keep us together, HW and I have another transfer together in Chichen!!!!!!!!!!

Also, we have a third companion. and I am in a trio, yet again. I need my crown. This is my SIXTH time in a trio on my mission!! But we're excited. our new comp is Hermana Cruz and she's Mexican, So I guess that'll force HW and I to speak Spanish more. So that's good..

M didn't get baptized. turns out there were A LOT of things she failed to tell us about and she totally didn't pass her interview. Soooo maybe some other day when she's ready she will get baptized. 

Another thing, the assistents called us last night to tell us this surprise part of our changes. Sooo turns out, president had to take away a ton of sister training leaders to have them train because  11 new missionaries came in this transfer!  Now in Merida there are only 8 of us, and 2 in Ticul.. ANDDD HW and I are called to be the senior head chief captain-I-don't-even-know-how-you-would-call-it-in- English sister training leaders. So that's kinda fun. 

 Moises (the stake missionary leader who is SUPER cool), invited all us missionaries of the stake to his house on Saturday for food! He made us tacos and they were so good

I don't really ever wear my own clothes anymore, I just wear Hma William's clothes. and my cute new clothes that my sweet family sent me:) [note from Camille- I have totally noticed that!]

Me and HW, we thought we might leave so we were taking Sunday pics.

Today in a comvi we sang I am a child of God and this guy told me that we were a false church and that the restoration is a big lie because the church was never lost and all this junk and he was like intensely trying to argue with us in front of a bunch of people there on the comvi.

Me with the grandkids of Manuel. they have been coming to church with us for the past 3 weeks!!!! Their names are Kenneth and Brigette and they're way cute. 

Rosi is trying really hard to get baptized but she needs a new job because her job makes her cranky and also she can't go to church sometimes because of it. We took her to the center of autosuficiencia (not sure how to say that in English) and are in the process of finding her a new job. 

I am out of time now sorry, but I love you all! Bye!

HS

"...I guess I won't find my backpack ever again but at least some thief somewhere is reading my Book of Mormon and getting converted."

January 12, 2015

Dearest family,

Well this week went great, and so much has happened once again and I don't know where to begin!

So this Tuesday we had leadership conference again and the assistants called us the night before to give us a special assignment (funny story, HW and I just spent a good minute trying to remember if asignation was a word in English... it's not, right?) because president wanted us to share a success story with all the leadership counsel. So that was pretty fun and we learned a lot in the meeting, particularly about family history and now the whole misión is totally using family history as like the coolest missionary tool ever! We have these "my family" pamphlets and have been inviting people to listen to us by introducing them to the whole family history program and it's way successful!

So for the success story HW and I decided to take a short video of Manuel and have him talk a little bit about his conversion to us and it is a really sweet video! Manuel's family went from just saying hi and hiding inside the house when we taught him to slowly listening and now coming to church every week. It has been such an amazing change. Fatima and Luis (Manuel's daughter and son in law) still need to get married before they can get baptized but we are working on it. On Thursday we had family home evening with Manuel and his family. Oh and I don't remember if I have already said this or not but they are our neighbors. Anyways we taught them the restoration and the spirit was so strong. While we were explaining the first vision to them HW and I had everyone close their eyes and we sang Joseph Smith's first prayer while they imagined what was happening. Afterwards we asked them what they imagined and Fatima described the vision perfectly and when we showed her a picture she gasped. It was so cool!!!!

"This is a Little monument thing close by our house"

Our investigator Rosi was supposed to get baptized this Saturday but she didn't come to church so I don't think that's happening...:( but we're going to keep praying for her. She's going through some hard times right now 'cause Satan's trying to do everything possible so that she doesn't get baptized...

On Friday we had zone conference and it went well in our zone, but HW had to go to our other zone that we have girls in and give the spiel there. She said it was super awkward because the zone leaders there are both new and neither one knows what he's doing... But our zone rocks:) Afterwards we did divisions with Motul (this cute little pueblito) and I got to be with Hermana Nuñez! (the Hma Nuñez who was my second companion Hma Nuñez, the tall one from DF.) and that was fun, but in the process of getting on the bus, I somehow left my backpack on the sidewalk and had to do divisions without any of my stuff!! And I lost my backpack that had my CAMERA in it!!!!!!!!!!!! SO that's the sad news of the week, I lost my camera....:( And I also lost that happy shirt that mom sent for Christmas and I LOVED that shirt:( and my tennis shoes so I'm going to have to buy some new tennis shoes.  And like some clothes and notebooks and a Book of Mormon that I guess I can live without but it's still sad.

Good thing I had Hma Nuñez sympathizing for me. Do you know what she said in her prayer that night after I lost my backpack? She says, "please bless that the people who find Hma Smith's backpack can make good use of all the things inside, and that they can be used for the better." ..... hahaha so I guess I won't find my backpack ever again but at least some thief somewhere is reading my Book of Mormon and getting converted. That's the important thing.

IMPORTANT NEWS UPDATE!! IZAMAL IS BEING DIVIDED!! Hma Perryman is STILL there after like a million transfers and she just emailed me and told me that the area is actually doing really well now and they're planning on baptizing more people that we started teaching when we were there together, and the ward is growing so much that they're dividing it and sending more missionaries there! I am SO happy for them!!!

"All the girls in the zone (except for Brisas ) with muffins the zone leaders got us!! We are all gringas.."

So cool story, remember that little girl M we were teaching? The sarcastic little punk one? So she has gone to church like a thousand times and really likes it, but she's just very immature and doesn't really take things as seriously as she should sometimes, so we kinda dropped her for a while and stopped focusing on her, but every time she sees us she's like "Hermanas I want to go to church on Sunday!!!" And we're like ok. go then.

But she's only 15 and can't go alone so she asked us if we could pick her up to go together, so we were like ok fine. So we go to pick her up Sunday morning and the bishop's wife is giving us a ride and she- making small talk- says "so M, when are you getting baptized?" and we had not really planned on baptizing her anytime soon, because we hadn't really thought about her much in a while. But so then M says "well I don't know, I want to get baptized but I don't know what I need to do and the Hermanas haven't told me anything!" and so we just sit there for a second and then I'm like "well do you want to get baptized on Saturday?" and she was all for that idea so we told the bishop to announce it in sacrament meeting and invite everyone so he did and now it's kinda set in stone. It was actually an answer to a prayer because we were really excited about baptizing Rosi on Saturday and had been planning on that, but then when she couldn't get baptized (work problems and so she couldn't go to church) God sorta slapped us in the face with M. Soooo we'll see how this goes. Pray for M please! and Rosi! and we're hoping the week after to baptize Charlie! and then Andrea! SO please pray for them all!

Also, Rosi has a granddaughter that has been coming to church to and she's so cute!! She's like 13 and reminds me a lot of Miranda, her name is Monserrat Adamari. We're hoping to baptize her soon too.

Well that's all for today! Thanks for being so awesome everyone!

HS

"So we ate way delicious food on New Years day and a TON of it too!"

January 5, 2015

Hola!

Hey thanks for updating the blog!! And for doing all this BYU stuff! I really appreciate it!

OK so this week was great. Kind of. Well so New Years we didn't really sleep at all because our neighbors are party animals and were blasting loud music all night and they were burning this viejo [old man] which is like a tradition that they do here where they make this life-size stuffed old man and fill it with fireworks and sit him on a chair, and then at midnight, they burn him. And its SOO LOUD!  I'll send a pic of it. We took a video too but I don't know if it will go through. It represents like the past year dying or something, but I think it's just a fun thing they invented to keep the missionaries from sleeping...haha

So then we ate way delicious food on New Years day and a TON of it too! Mexicans are so generous and just give us so much food. Our fridge has never been so full. But the best part of the week was not until the end. In fact, we really had like a horrible week in the way of numbers. or so we thought! It seemed like every day we were just walking and walking and not teaching anyone! But on Saturday I think it was, we both got back from divisions and just decided to really focus and stop speaking English, because we had a real problem with that 'cause we always just spoke in English and joked around and stuff, but we decided to just cut it out and speak only Spanish. So we were doing that, and we started fasting on Saturday for the Lord to bless us with at least the investigators who we are teaching at church, because that's been a real problem too. But guess how many investigators showed up at church... 10.

 I have never had TEN investigators in church in one day before, That's insane!!!!!!! And they were all like families!!!!! Manuel (our recent convert) brought his daughter and his son in law and the grandkids who have never let us teach them before and were never interested but they just decided to come to church one day to check it out and they loved it!!!!!!!!! Also this random couple who we met literally the day before came with one of their neighbors! Literally, we saw them in the street and we were like "hey wanna come to church tomorrow?" and they were like "yeah!" and we picked them up and they totally came! And I'm not 100% sure that they were not drinking a very short time before, but they said they loved church and they even told us that they want to get married there and get baptized and everything!!! So that was way cool. Also, our coolest investigator right now is Rosi, and she's the mom of a recent convert of the elders, named Roger. And she's WAY COOL!! The first time we met her she was like "my son has changed so much, before he was so rude and he drank and had problems with his wife but then they met the elders and got married and baptized and now he knows God and I want to do all that too so I can set an example for my other kids!" And we asked her to get baptized and she was like "I will do absolutely whatever I need to to feel clean before God!"  We're hoping for her baptism the 17th of January.. Pray for her!!! Also, pray for her grandkids (Monserrat and Antonio) and Charlie Chan, and Manuel's family (Luis, Fatima, Briget, and Kenneth) and Wendy and Manuel (yes another one..) and Carla. thank you:)

Well I have to go now but I love you all dearly and hope you are all well!!

HS

"I just want to be a missionary forever!"

December 29, 2014

Sorry I think today is going to be a short boring email  'cause I had to do a bunch of BYU stuff but I'll send pictures!

I don't know who gave us that gingerbread house, but that was the cutest gift idea ever!!!!!!!!!!! We made it with the bishops kids and some other kids in the ward. This is Christmas eve when we ate with the bishop and our missionary leader and their families and some other people. But it was soo fun making the gingerbread houses with the kids!!!!!

Cool that I'm a missionary and I totally was online for almost an hour today thinking about college stuff... Ugh I hate it! I just want to be a missionary forever! But I guess I do kinda need to go to college and have a life so whatever. 

Haha anyways to answer your questions and everything, after we finished Skyping, I called Grandpa and I could see and hear them and they could see me but they couldn't hear me! So we fiddled with that for a while and Emmanuel got super cool and was communicating with Grandpa and telling him what to do to get the speakers to work but writing notes and holding them up to the camera. His English was a lot better than I thought! Anyways in the end Darby and I ended up signing to each other to communicate (I didn't know she was learning sign language!) and I forgot almost everything that I knew, but we got the message through. And then we gave up and I just told them to talk to me and I would listen. But then it was really late and we had to go home, and that was our whole day! 

We ate WAY good for Christmas and Christmas eve. There's this thing called fruit cocktail that everyone makes here for Christmas (tradition) and it's really good. Our stake mission leader Moises (the one who I was telling you about who wants the beef jerky) actually invited us to his house for dinner even though he's not even in our ward... but he totally loves us so it's cool!

 I found these cute Missionary stockings at Deseret Industry [Camille speaking here]

Fun stockings!!!!!!! We absolutely LOVED them!

Opening presents!!

Wow Christmas sounds way fun!!!!!!!! I'm so happy you guys had a good time! I love looking at pictures of everyone! Miranda is so pretty and Em is soo cute! 

Color of my room.. hmm i don't know. surprise me. Something cute and creative. I trust Mimi. Haha I was kinda half kidding about the Mexican thing but if you can make it look bedroom appropriate that'd be cool! There's some cute Mexican looking fabrics and patterns and stuff so I trust that Mimi can do really great things with that! But honestly I'm not going to be there for that long before going to college right? So don't break your backs doing some great extravagant thing, I don't want you guys to spend a ton of money or anything. but the only thing I do seriously request is if there is a way to get the hooks on the wall so I can hang up my hammock, that would be awesome!!!!!!! 

Wow that would be so exciting to see Hailey in April! I miss her a ton!

Another thing, I'm inviting HW to come visit us in Arizona sometime for fall break or something next year. Hope that's cool.. 

Also, are you guys coming here to pick me up in April? When are we having family vacation here in Merida? I want you guys to meet all my friends here!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm working on the application thing. let me know if there's something I need to do!!!! Also, could somebody look into how I could maybe get a job in the MTC as a teacher or something?

I love you all, Christmas went great, and the church is true!!!!!

HS

"I think I have sung every single Christmas song in the Spanish hymnbook close to 10 times so far."

December 23, 2014

SO MUCH HAPPENED THIS WEEK I CAN'T BELIEVE IT!!!!!

I think I have sung every single Christmas song in the Spanish hymnbook close to 10 times so far.

We did an activity like 4 times where we go to these things called tianguis which are outdoor vendors and it's just people who sell random stuff and they have them a couple times every week. SO we went and sang and showed videos and contacted people. first we did it in the Elders area, and then our area, and then the other Elders area, and we got a ton of references! It was so cool to be sharing the Christmas spirit to the Mexican people trying to sell clothes and watches and toys and food to people on the street.

Christmas caroling activity! We did this 4 times this week and it was so fun! We're wearing hats not cause it's cold but because the ward made us hats. They're so cool!!

ALSO we had a baptism! We were so excited! E is wayy cool and it was kinda sad 'cause nobody in his family came to see him get baptized and his ex girlfriend kept calling him and bugging him, telling him not to get baptized, up until the very last minute, but he stayed strong and was like "I don't care I know this is true and I'm doing the right thing!" And the ward totally took him in and made him feel good:) I think we're going to try to skype at his house on Thursday so maybe you guys can meet him! He seems all serious and tranquil at first but he's really so sassy and sarcastic and hilarious!

Emmanuel!!!!!!! Got baptized! He's sooo cool!!! But I don't know why he doesn't smile in pictures... Mexicans never smile..

Also we're losing our investigators...  nobody came to church and we're worried but whatever. It's been a crazy week and it'll get all better next week. We didn't even have time to do divisions at all this week!

 Talent show! The sister training leaders and zone leaders of zone brisas sang and it was fabulous. and kind of lame but way fun!

 Mission party lunch!  The whole mission gets together once a year for Christmas and it's a whole day thing and it's so fun!!!!!!!!

Pictures with the hats that the ward made us! Nightlife in the mish

AH Ok I have to go but we'll talk on Thursday! Remind me to tell you about Torta Dan and our game that HW and I invented and "PERDON!" and a bunch of funny stuff I have to tell you!

Ok bye talk to you Thursday!

Thanks so much love you all!

HS