When It Rains... It Pours!!!

Hello Family!

My email will be relatively short because I took more time on sending lots of photos! I hope you like them!

So Hna. Palacios will be finishing her mission on December 15 and I will have a new companion for Christmas. I'm not sure who it will be!

But our lessons this week although they were few were pretty good! I love teaching with Hna. Palacios. This week was super busy during the first part and in the second part we spent contacting contacting contacting. Not too many people who wanted to listen to us though. That's okay!

Funny Story... I am trying to think. Well it rained a WHOLE lot this week. We had a lesson in a really far away place and when we came back to the house it was pouring rain and we wanted to change into our plastic flats and everything. But I had left the keys inside and we were locked out!! 

At that moment the rain got 100x worse and we were getting soaked so we ran to our car and waited inside, studying, until the rain let up enough for us to start walking. so we went to work like normal and our feet and shoes were soaked the rest of the day. that was crazy. It rained a bunch yesterday too! All week really. It's good though- PR needs the water right now.

Another funny story is how I contacted a house. literally. I thought someone had called out to us from the window so I started introducing our names and who we represent.... it turns out that the person had gone back inside the house and was avoiding us and I was talking to a house. Hna. Palacios died laughing!

So our Mission Conference with Elder Cornish and Elder Christensen was awesome! Very spiritual and uplifting. I loved it. Elder Christensen spoke mainly about recognizing and following the Spirit and that helped me a lot. We also had a special MLC with them before the conference and they just asked us about the mission and what we as leaders think we need to improve on and what the missionaries needed to hear in the conference. That was really neat. 

I really like your theme for RS mom!! It's awesome!

Good luck Hannah with Dance!! Send me pictures of Molly Mouse?

This past week was crazy crazy crazy. Remember how last week you wrote and said that you felt that I needed hugs and felt like I had had a rough week? Well it turns out my week before you wrote wasn't that rough but this past week was and I really appreciated all of your words and thoughts and dream hugs! You truly did receive revelation and knew that my week would be difficult before it even happened. All of your love helped me through and now all is well! I love you all!

Hope you all have a great week! Love you!!

xoxo Hermana Hardy

A New Compañera!

Hello my beautiful family!!

I don't have much time this week, please excuse me!

But first off: BIG NEWS!!!!

Well as you all know Hna. Gallardo will be returning home this week and we got transfer calls last night. 

You will never believe who my new companion is!

Hermana Palacios!!!!

I am so excited and I'm sure she is too!

So tomorrow we have transfers and we have lots of changes again with the sisters in our zone. We will have Hna. Palacios. Then Wednesday we drop Hna. Gallardo off in the office.

Are you sure that the girl in aunt Debbie's ward leaves in November?? does she already know Spanish? the transfers are this week and then in the middle of December... So she probably already know Spanish and will only be in the MTC 2 weeks to arrive in the PR December 15.

Anyways. My advice would be for her to bring everything the call packet says. Ha.

But really, and then if there are things she doesn't want she can leave them behind or send to the office. Bring more clothes than it suggests. If there is anything she didn't bring it's usually easy to find things here.

My release date is January 28 (that's the day I'll be flying home). Sister Lee from the office already asked me for your email address so she'll be sending the information about my flight in a few weeks.

I've been helping my companion pack. Not to be prideful but I think I have a talent! 

I don't have a lot of time. Saturday we had a mission conference with elder Cornish and Elder Christensen! It was wonderful, super powerful- remind me to tell you what it was about next time.

I love you all!! Sorry for the short email. Lots to do today. Today Hna. Gallardo took her english test and we just got back from the office.... crazy day.

love you!

xoxo Hermana Hardy

Happy Halloween!!

Hello everyone!!!

Thanks so much for the packages! Everything was perfect and we're all excited for the Halloween candy!!

My Spanish is doing well. I wish I could say I have the accent down but even though it's not a horrible accent you can still tell that I'm a gringa. The only thing I can't do for the life of me is trill the r's. It's rough. I can do it with my throat but you're supposed to do it with your tongue. But no one minds. I do speak Boricua though. PR has its own Spanish. When I get home and speak to other people in Spanish they aren't going to understand most of the words I'll use.

A spiritual experience from last week. Well the owner of our apartment came by to fix the fridge and he was asking us questions about death and everything. He's read the Plan of Salvation pamphlet and everything but still has a problem with it. I told him that if he wants to understand death he has to understand why we're here on earth. So the spiritual moment was when I asked him if he's prayed and asked Heavenly Father about it and that took him off guard and he said no, he's never thought about that. So I invited him to pray. We'll see how that goes.

Also we ended up teaching a member's non member husband because we went for a dinner appointment and somehow we got on the topic of the Gospel and the wife basically taught all of L1 to her husband and that was awesome. The only thing with him is that it just goes around in circles. He knows everything is true but is waiting to decide for himself to be baptized and leave his worldly side behind. 

We spoke about having his wife forever and he said that when he dies he'll find her in the next life. I then told him that if he isn't baptized here on earth when he has the chance, he won't make the decision in the next life and then if he doesn't get baptized he won't be able to find his wife because she'll be in a place where he can't go. That made him think and he said that means he has to be baptized on earth.

Looks like I've been pretty mouthy this week right?? haha, but it sure made them think. I promise that I said it all in a loving manner.

I am still playing for the ward. De hecho, yesterday the missionaries did a musical number and I played the piano while the three other sisters sang "If the Savior Stood Beside Me" in Spanish. It was pretty good.

Hna. Martita (RS Pres.) has a piano in her house and when we go to eat every Thursday she loves it when we play the piano for her. It makes me happy to see her so happy!!

Dia de los Muertos is mostly part of the Mexican culture, they don't do anything like that here. No one observes Halloween except for teenagers who dress up and go to parties and besides that Halloween is a REALLY bad time to be outside and it's apparently really dangerous because of the people doing maldades. We have to be inside by 7:00. 

Before that we have a Mission Conference with some General Authorities so most of Saturday we won't be proselyting. The ward isn't celebrating Halloween. Halloween here definitely isn't the same as it is in Utah...

When is Baby due???

It sounds like you all had an awesome week! Good job Hannah with your lesson! That's awesome.

On Saturday the ward had an Indexing Marathon. It was pretty cool! We went to go help set up!

Well that's about it! This week was a bit crazy, I've been a little sick but I'm feeling a bit better. My companion made chicken soup for me! It's a bit different from our chicken noodle soup because they actually make the chicken soup with water, chicken, potato, onion, carrots, etc. and then they serve it in a bowl with white rice! I really like it. It tasted so good and it felt good on my throat!

Today we have a zone activity and we are going bowling! It should be fun. I have lots of pictures to send you but they'll have to wait for next week. This is Sister Gallardo's last week! Crazy!!!

I hope you have a wonderful week! 

xoxo Hermana Hardy

Beans & Rice

Hello Family!!

Let me tell you about the Hurricanes Danny and Erika.

It was a storm alright... OF SUN!!! It was SOO hot!! It hardly rained where we are. It's a bit of a controversy because they said it was going to be a huge deal. But it wasn't for our part of the island. I do feel bad for the DR, they were hit really hard.

One night, I can't remember which, it started to rain a bit and the zone leaders called everyone to tell them to go inside. We had to go home 2 hours earlier than usual and it was hardly raining and I just about went crazy sitting inside. 

The next day was the best!! It was super cloudy but it didn't rain at all and we were thankfully able to work all day. I was happy because it wasn't hot.

This week for Pday!! Well we just went shopping. We live RIGHT next to the mall. We went to eat in the food court and when I started to eat my food I looked down and realized that I bought rice, beans, meat, chips, guacamole, and sour cream.

I don't know why I bought rice and beans on Pday!! I am going insane haha. But it was really good. Better than Burger King I say! that was the only other option.

We also saw a whole bunch of members today in the food court and they teased me because of the food I had and because it looked like a big plate. Which I thought was funny because what I had on my plate wasn't even half of what they give me to eat in their houses hahahahaha!!!! I love them so much. Really, the members here make Guayama Zion! They are our family.

We go on splits every week because we have five sets of sisters that we work with in a 6 week transfer. We don't do them the first week of transfer so that leaves us with one a week. 

Somthing humorous... I met three nuns this week! I guess it wasn't humorous but it was a fun experience!! Hna. Gallardo wanted to talk to them and we wanted to ask them questions about what they do but we were both too shy to talk to them but while we walked past we thought of a dumb question about the street name or whatever and then we started talking. They were really nice!! It turns out that these nuns are in social work with families. We helped them carry some boxes into the big catholic church. It was fun! They were really cool to talk to. One of them ran away from home to the convent at 17 and has been in the ministry for over 50 years.

My favorite teaching experience this week:

We had a miracle where we went to visit a 10 year old recent convert who knows more about the Gospel than I did before I came haha. She is doing alright, just some infection in her leg from a mosquito and they are operating today. 

But her cousin (thirty years old) was there to look after her while her mom was out. We read in the Bom with the little girl and she rocked it and understood and analyzed everything really well. The cousin is not a member but shared with us and in the end she told us that she feels that the Book of Mormon is true. 

We started explaining a bit of L1 and the little girl explained the first vision like I don't know what haha. Perfect future missionary. Anyways, we have a return appointment tomorrow and I am so excited to teach her! She's already accepted that the Book of Mormon is true and is willing to study it. YAY!!! 

She also shared with us a neat experience of how she is a cancer survivor. She had to have a bone transplant in her arm and she was number 1200 to receive one. The Holy Ghost came to her in a dream and touched her left hip and told her that is where they needed to take the bone for her transplant. The doctor didn't believe her when she told him but he did the analysis for that hip and found the bone matter that was compatible for her arm. Miracle! She is really prepared to accept the Gospel and has a lot of faith.

Something also funny: while we were in the middle of finishing 1 Nefi 7 and before starting chapter 8 two catholic missionary type people came in. They were going around visiting people and inviting them to believe and have faith in God. 

It was really funny because we accepted them with a lot of warmth and they were both staring at my name tag, really confused, and saw that all of us had a book of Mormon in our hands. Very nice people as well. But I'm telling you this 11 year old has more faith and knowledge than they realized. She is going to be fine.

Another hard but uplifting experience was with our other RC who is in the hospital. But she is 83 years old and has been there about a month. The thing is she doesn't like the food and refuses to eat so Hna. Gallardo and I went and figured out how to convince her to eat her dinner. She ate more than half of it in the end!! 

I had to promise her raisins in every bite with the potatoes carrots and meat. The prize was the apple juice! She can't eat salt because of her kidneys and dialysis, but she refuses to eat food without salt. But she likes sweet things like raisins and she is always thirsty but can only take some liquids. She really enjoyed the apple juice. But there were a whole bunch of us there cheering her on as Hna. Gallardo fed her. 

Yesterday almost all our RCs were in the hospital! One little girl (with her family there with her), the older woman, and then a family of RC were there to visit all of them!! It was a party in the hospital. I thought it was really neat that the family of RC came to visit all of the others. This ward is amazing.

I am glad Hannah enjoyed her Birthday!!! I can't believe she is already in Company at 14! Way to go Hannah!! I always said that she would be better than me haha:) She truly is our little rockstar! Get ready broadway!

I have my very first MLC this week. I am excited to see what it is like! (Mission Leader Council). From what I heard it is a very strong, spiritual meeting.

Well family, I love you so much!!

I hope you all have a WONDERFUL week! Take care!

xoxo Hermana Hardy