Let Your Light So Shine

Hola Familia!

My companion's name is Ambree Gawrych and she is from Sandy. She did swim team in High school and she helps motivate me to work out in the morning. She is so sweet and we have a lot in common. She has been out for a year this October and I am her first baby.

My birthday was so wonderful. Thank you to everyone! Oh and please thank the Chapman's for me. They sent me the most beautiful cards for me to share. Thank you so much for the presents and especially for all the cards! I have the cutest outfits now! Everyone thinks that my favorite color is blue because all of my skirts but two are blue, haha, I didn't realize that until I got here.

 

Last P-day we went to a place called Alfarro. It is a light house and I will try to send pictures. We also had ward council on my birthday and that was a lot of fun but I didn't really know exactly what was going on. I did however understand when they asked how old I was and I said twenty (then the elders told everyone that it was my birthday) and I did understand them saying that I looked like I was 14. haha.
 

 

 

 

So there are 3 elders and 4 sisters total in my district. We are an all gringo district which is really unusual. OH! So we have 2 Elder Borens and one of them is Christy Cunningham's nephew, he went to East. Small world right? So where we are covers 2 wards: Cabo Rojo 1 and 2. I am in the first one, the other sisters are in 2, and the Elders are covering both. We are part of the Mayaguez Stake. There are 5-6 stakes in Puerto Rico. I don't know how many we have in our zone.

My new address is:

Calle Maximo Gomez 36A
Cabo Rojo PR 00623
Puerto Rico

Church services are wonderful. I don't really understand too much but I get the gist of the lessons. This week I played piano for Primary Singing time and I played in Sacrament meeting as well. I sight read about every song I played and it went pretty well.

 

Well the people we are teaching. We visit a lot of menos activos. It's really hard to get everyone to church because no one has a car. We met a new family this week and the wife just had her baby a month and a half ago! We taught her the first lesson and it went very well and we are going to return this week when her husband is home so we can teach him too. We are feeling optimistic for them.

 

The thing about Puerto Rico is that people do not like to make appointments for visiting with them and that makes it really hard to have lessons sometimes.

 

Also, they talk a lot. I know we need to listen to them to show our love and get to know them but it's hard to teach lessons because they don't really let up sometimes. That's been hard for me.

 

We have a recent convert named Olga who is 79 years old. She is great and so excited about church. Last night she took us to one of her friends to teach and she totally forgot where the apartment was so that was a bit fun. We found it eventually :)

Saturday we were looking for a contact's house when a car drove by and a man shouted out the window "Hey, are you Mormons??'" Wee said yes and then he invited us to his daughter's birthday party down the road. It was on the long walk from our pueblo to Monte Grande and we thought we'd stop by just to pass out some cards and say hi.

 

They were all so excited that we actually showed up and the little girl turned 5 and she was so cute and sassy. Her dad had a lot of questions about the church and fortunately it was all in English because he is one of those philosophical types that over thinks things a bit. We spoke to him a lot and in the end he said that this was the first time he had actually learned anything from missionaries.

 

Hopefully we can teach him again. It turns out his dad was baptized years ago and we met him too and he was great to talk to cause he loves missionaries. All of the older people at this party were veterans from the Marines so they only spoke English to us because they were most comfortable speaking English.

Good news! Our fridge is fixed! our landlord sent some workers to fix it so now our milk will not go bad :) our showers are hot.

 

A great story: After one bad storm the power went out while we were out and about at night. We could see just fine for the most part but then I felt an impression that I should use my flashlight. I started using it then a woman called us from off the street because she was sitting in the dark and she could see my light. We were able to make an appointment to visit her again. It was great because she contacted us!! Because I had my light on.

 

Lexie and Geoff! I will look out for your package :) I will probably get it at our next zone meeting! I can't wait to receive Jonny's snapchat:) your card was really cool too Jonny. Those were the right shorts! Here all women great each other by kissing on the cheek. As missionaries we only shake hands with the men of course. It is always buenos dias or tardes or buenas noches.

 

Way to hike Mt. Olympus! That is amazing. The thing about Puerto Rico is that it is perpetual summer here. The leaves don't change colors at all. I can't believe it's the end of September because it is still so hot.

That's cool about Rob teaching you all how to invest. I might need to work for a couple months when I get back so I can have money to invest haha :)

I will try to speak Spanish more and more! My companion makes me practice but sometimes we forget because I am her first English speaking companion.

WE TOTALLY had an investigator come to church with her kids. She enjoyed it and said that she is going to come back! Her husband told us that he won't go because he worships in his own way... yeah, we'll work on him. They are the type of people who think all churches are good for the most part so we need to teach him that there is only one church that is true.

For p-day today we helped clean the house of a woman in Cabo Rojo 2 who has been in the hospital. It was great!

I am so excited for you Hannah! I know that you can totally have a 4.0, do your best and I know you will totally do it because you are so smart :)

I love you family! Stay safe and have fun! Please enjoy autumn. It is my favorite time of here and I am sad that I will not get to see the leaves change colors. Also, the smells :) Stay safe and rock school and remember that you guys are my favorite. Mom, I really hope you edit my emails haha, it's hard to tell because this computer puts red lines on all the English words.

xoxo
 

Hermana Hardy