Hola familia!
How is everything
going today? Thank you for all the emails and love!! I just love you guys so
much!! I literally have a thousand emails from you guys!! Poor people sitting
next to me get like two. Awkward!! Oh did you look up that fruit I told you to?
You just have to!
So how was
Halloween? Who won the contest at the Bitners?
How did Ellie and Grace look? I am hoping there are pictures on here!!
And I want to hear all about your costume mom!! And you Amee!!
So last P day was
kinda crazy! We got lost in Lima and took three buses to get back to the CCM!
But the temple was beautiful! It is so small, they don´t have a chapel and the
room holds 25. The sealing room which is part of the celestial room holds about
ten. Also today I saw the old old old
movie. It was quite interesting. I think it would have been better in English. After the temple we got Spanish scriptures
and the cutest cases ever. The temple
store is awesome here. I bought a soccer
jersey at Garajes. A Peru one! Sophie the jerseys are like 8 dollars here, so
tell me which country you want. The
Messi ones are so cool!! They have a
shopping place called Totus here, I bought sticky tac and hung up pictures of
everyone on my wall next to my bed. Each
night I fall asleep looking at all you lovely people and it makes me so
happy. I read dad´s last paragraph to me
each night. Thank you for that letter
dad. It gives me so much peace and
happiness!
We taught our first
investigator last week. It went really
rough and I have to say I was pretty frustrated. It’s hard to teach a lesson in a different
language. It’s also hard to be at a loss
for words. You can prepare a lesson all
you want, but sometimes you don´t know what they are going to ask you and you
know the answer in English but it’s not there in Spanish. That is very frustrating. But we taught a lot this week and each time
it gets better and better for me. I can
now say kinda what I´m feeling in broken Spanish. One lesson we sang for our
investigator. We weren´t planning on it
but we did it anyway. It actually turned
out well and brought the spirit.
Although Sophie if you were there you probably would have laughed at
me. The Spanish hymns are
beautiful. You guys should try singing
some!!
Okay for the first
time in my live I kinda rolled my R´s!! It was awesome. It’s not very smooth and I don´t do it when I´m
speaking yet, but I´m practicing every day.
I´m pretty sure I sound like a star wars character.
We went to
migration this week for visa stuff. It
took six hours in the most sketchy
building you have ever seen! I was so tired by the time we were
done. We waited in line the whole time
and then handed a stack of papers to a person.
It felt like a DMV of Peru!! Also
the traffic here is insane. Like the roundabouts
don´t have any lanes and I’ts just a free for all.
Our teacher Hermano
Davalos, finally spoke English to us!! We knew he could do it and it’s really
good. While he was talking, Hna Cooper
said wow your Spanish is really good...
and he was like thanks I have
been practicing for 25 years. She totally meant to say that his English was
good. Hna Cooper is hilarious!!
One night we
practiced door contacting with our district. I was the missionary first so I had to knock
on a door and some from my district was behind it. Well I knocked and Elder Ludlow jumped out in
the window of the door. It scared me so
bad and I totally lost my train of thought.
He said he was an athiest and he would not let me in... It was the worst!
haha I´m pretty sure that I didn´t say anything comprehendable to him. Oh fun fact.
As my Spanish gets better my English gets worse. I can never speak right at all.
Fast Sunday is
awesome here. We don´t have dinner the
night before or breakfast on Sunday. But
we have a huge feast for lunch! They gave us CHURRos filled with dulce de leche. They are the best thing you have ever eaten
in your life. The food is still good but
I can´t eat any more rice. I keep asking
for menos por favor and I can never finish it. CCM rule finish everything on
your plate. So no more rice for me. Also
we watch old mtc devotionals which are hilarious and sometimes old BYU
basketball players say the prayers
We got new hermanas
this week on Wednesday so I am no longer in the beginner class. We are the
intermediates. I can´t beleive I have
been here for so short of time but it feels like so long. The days feel like weeks and the weeks feel
like days.
We went to interpol
this week for more visa stuff. They had
to get all our fingerprints and then check our teeth. Again super sketchy place, but we passed time
by playing games like am I a witch and the camping game. They are so funny and I can´t wait to play
with you guys. Don’t look up the game or
it will spoil it. We have an elder from
England here. Elder Quenes, he was playing the witch game and all the Peruvians
were just staring at him like he was a crazy person. It was super funny. Part of the game is standing up and doing
random movements and asking if you are a witch or not.
So I learned a lot
this week. It was a rough week, but I
still love it here. Sometimes I cry in
class just thinking of you guys getting along without me. I don´t know how you are doing it!
But I´m just enjoying everything about this place. The hermanas are awesome the teachers are so
great!! Everything!! My favorite thing my Hermana Villanueva said this week was
Tengo Cupcake! Cause we got cupcakes on Halloween, which was the only way I
knew it was Halloween.
Okay the spiritual side of things.
An elder bore his testimony in church, he just left on Tuesday,
but he said What a fool he was for not taking time to study his scriptures or
talk to God. I feel the same way. I should have studied more and prayed
harder!! WE have to fight for time to
read our scriptures here. We are given
no time to just enjoy them and I really miss it. I wish I would have taken advantage of that
time while I was growing up. so girls!!
don´t waste your time doing things that are less important than scripture
study!!
Also a story was
shared about an investigator and basically the gist was that each time God
introduces his Son he always says, This is my Beloved Son Hear him. and the question for us is how do you want
God to introduce you! And what are you going to do to make that happen. I have been focusing all week on developing
my faith in Jesus Christ, and studying his words and the words of His prophets. I want God to introduce me as a faithful
servant who never stopped having faith or never lost sight of what was really
important in live. Someone who gave
their all every chance they got. I hope
you can all think about how you want God to introduce you and figure out a way
to make that possible. Because one day
we will be glad we did just that.
A quick more
thing. I learned a valuable lesson this
week when a surprise investigator that
we didn´t know we were teaching till ten minutes before, stopped us in a middle
of the lesson and taught us about how you teach people not lessons. It was tender mercy for me because I have
been feeling like a Spanish robot as I have taught, and that’s not how I want
to be. It’s a challenge to show your
personality, but these are real people who need to be taught in a way that is
desirable to them. After the lesson he
took our notes away, our scriptures, everything, and made us teach him for five
minutes, I have never felt the spirit that strong in a lesson before. We made the message desirable to him and then
he was all ears. We were both able to
add our testimonies and my Spanglish wasn´t too bad. It was awesome.
Well I love you all!!
Thanks for all the love and support!!
Hermana Russell
P.S. SOPHIE I LITERALLY FOUND THOSE JALEPEÑO PRETZALS WE
DROVE ALL OVER FOR ONE NIGHT, I FOUND THEM, I FOUND THEM IN PERU. AND I WISH YOU COULD TRY SOME.
P.S.S hannah i hope
your car is okay.
No comments:
Post a Comment