The Gospel and Pancakes!

I get to play tennis next P-day!!! I´m so excited! My district leader plays and he found us some raquets! Kristen: why have a garden when people walk past your house yelling what tropical fruits they have on their cart to sell you? It´s almost as good as falling from the sky, right? :) I´m sick, along with half the zone after a zone conference. Suspicious, yes. But not sick enough to stay home. So I´m glad Sunday was fabulous for you guys, a little less so out here. Especially after I had to cry a little bit, because why don´t people want to come to church? I don´t get it! So my computer crashed, so I can´t write very much this week. But I learned some important lessons. One of my pet peeves, thanks to Dad, is people squishing pancakes with the spatula. Most of my house does it. Hna Brockman and I finally had to approach the issue. I always figured that people squished pancakes because they didn´t know any better. They didn´t know that if they just practiced a little self control, they could have gorgeous fluffy pancakes. So we set about letting them in on the secret to a beautiful breakfast. What we didn´t realize, and what incited a bit of a caliente disagreement, was that some people knowingly and deliberately squish pancakes. Knowing they will become hard and nasty. And they still like to. This week I also realized that some people are the exact same with the gospel. I thought that as soon as you taught someone how they can be happy, they would change. But there are oh-so-many people that have a complete understanding of their baptismal covenants, or the joy that the gospel will bring, or the importance of church, but they still just want flat pancakes, so they choose not to do it. How frustrating. We started teaching Stephanie´s husband. Exciting, but we´ll see how it goes. Love you lots, better go, Love the Hermana Peck

Important Discoveries!

I somehow thought that you could have a whole bunch of 19-22 year old girls in a mission and not have drama. Haha, silly, I know. I also have been quite devastated to realize that after training, they don´t hand you a ´´perfect missionary´´ badge. I used to think it happened as soon as you entered the MTC...then I figured it must be in the field...or maybe after training... Now I´m starting to have the sneaking suspicion that it never will actually come. How disheartening to realize I will never be perfect. How strange to have to tell myself that that means that there may not be such a thing as a perfect missionary. Funny how before, I always thought they all were. Came with the proselyting card or something... Instead, I guess I´ll just have to be Hermana Peck. And try to love, work and obey a little bit more like Christ every day. As you can tell, I´m beginning to learn some rather important life lessons. :) Well, I´m sure you were probably worried about my emotional state since that skype date ended with me crying. I was worried about my emotional state and worried I might have to break out an apple cider packet. But your fears can be allayed. After walking out of the somewhat sketchy internet cafe, I was just happy. So happy to have gotten the chance to talk to you all, and happy to skip along to visit the menos activo that we had scheduled that night. And it was a wonderful lesson, may I add. I stared awkwardly at Hna Safeer for long enough that she realized I was going to sit there until she bore her testimony, and I wasn't going to bail her out. (I love being the mean trainer!) And she did great! (Doing great has nothing to do with Spanish grammar, and everything to do with the power that comes when you testify with heart.) After the lesson, she turned to me and said, ´´Do you feel like that was just really good?´´ Yep. It was. I am starting to really really love Hermana Safeer. She is so wonderful. She is so different than me, and it is so good for me. They say that training is when you get to be your own missionary, you figure out who you are as a missionary. That´s kind of scary, because I only really knew Hna Frye, and I think she´s an almost perfect missionary, but I can´t be exactly like her. So I´m figuring out Hna Peck. And Hna Peck LOVES lessons. I make people have lessons. I make sure we´re teaching all the time. But I´m realizing that I also need to get to know members, work with menos activos, and.......CONTACT! Contacting scares me because we never really did it much last transfer. (tracting). But the other day, everyone fired us early, so I was furiously staring at my planner trying to figure out who we could go force a lesson with, when Hna Safeer says, ´´Hey! let´s go contact!´´ I groan inside with a groan of despair and horror. Oh Hna Safeer, why would you say that??? But I swallow the groan (blech), and say, ´´um......................yeah. Sure. Great idea.´´ And we go contact. At first, I start just inviting people to church. (Keep in mind, Hna Safeer can introduce us as missionaries, and that´s about the extent of on-the-fly conversational Spanish. She´s learning lots fast, but I´ve got the brunt of the contact). She tells me, we need to get a cita. You should change your approach and try to get in. I swallow another groan. It keeps going like this, with Hna Safeer being the pump-up motivator cheerleader, giving suggestions, and I try to implement them. And it turned out so fun. I started to actually get really invested in each contact I was making, and she reignited my greenie fire optimism that each new person could be a baptism. It was the best couple hours ever. She´s teaching me lots. I love you all lots and lots, and I love my mission! How is this so fun?! It doesn´t make sense, Love, Hna Sarah Peck

Skype-ing With Sarah!

Sarah waited until Monday for her Mother's Day call home so she could Skype. She looks great and says how hard it has been this week making the transition from "trainee" to "trainer." Her Spanish is coming quickly now because "it has to," she says. Her new companion is Hermana Safeer. She is living in one of only two houses in her mission with hot water. Six sisters share this house. Sarah's funny confession: "I'm falling in love with bananas!" Hermana Peck and Hermana Frye Hermana Peck and Hermana Safeer

Haha! 12 Week Training Program. . .yeah right. . .

I´m having the hardest time trying to send photos. So, the really exciting thing this week was that I survived my first transfer calls last night. But luckily, there were no surprises. Heavenly Father let me know a few weeks ago that I needed to step it up because I was going to be training after 1 transfer. So I started actually answering the phone, starting lessons, and trying to find all of our investigator´s houses without help from Hna Frye. It was just something I knew was coming. I started praying for my trainee specifically about a week and a half ago. So, last night, the district leaders were way more surprised about it than we were. We both just new. We knew that Hna Frye would be training at the same time as opening a new area for Hermanas, and that I would stay in Quisqueya. She´ll be opening Piantini(sp?). Which luckily for me, is a neighbor area to mine. It´ll just feel good to have her close. On Friday morning, I was having a really hard time. I was looking at my 12 weeks manual, knowing that I was only going to make it halfway. What knowledge on how to be the perfect missionary was I going to miss? I was sure that all the secrets on how to actually be good would be found in the last half of the manual. And then we had to watch clips from the District during training time, and normallly I LOVE the District, but that day it just made me feel worse than ever. They´re so perfect, and I will never be that perfect. I will never be able to actually use the right teaching patterns when I´m just happy to understand them and convey the topic we´re trying to cover. I was so discouraged, that I almost started crying as we were reading PMG together. And then we got a phone call from the District leaders saying that we were going to each take out an Hermana from the CCM for the day on an intercambio. And then I did start crying. I was going to have to go out without Hna Frye. Grandma Swan, you are an angel. I got your Courage card the night before from the office Elders, but didn´t open it until right at this moment. It was such an answer to prayers. Hna Frye helped me pull myself back together and get me excited. We split up our appointments for the day and planned what was going to happen so that I didn't have to stress. And Heavenly Father totally knew what He was doing. He sent me the perfect Hermana. She was just a little bit older than me, but she was really good at making me feel awesome. I found that I could communicate and understand what i needed to. And I discovered that I´m a little Hna Frye replicate as soon as I have a little Hna Peck replicate. I did everything exactly like Hna Frye would, down to the exact wording. But at the same time, I also finally found myself on Friday. I haven´t had my own personality for so long, but after actually doing it on my own, Sarah came back!! Hna Frye was so excited. She was like, "I feel like I´m finally meeting you!" So we had the greatest last weekend together, because I´m finally me and we finally understand each other. And mostly we´re finally equal. Because like she said, I grew up on Friday. She´s mostly just pumping me up for tomorrow now, telling me stuff like I was the perfect kid, but she doesn´t know what else she would teach me. I´m so excited to meet Hna Safree (i think??) but I´m so nervous! I want her to like me. I don´t want her to be scared or upset because I´m so new. What if she´s a tigre? I don´t know what I would do! (tigre means someone who´s disobedient, just so you know). I just don´t know! It´s so crazy! But I know Heavenly Father´s been preparing me. I just need to trust Him. Also, with my intercambio on Friday, I felt prompted that I should take Stefani´s lesson. I was so scared too, because she´s hard to understand, but I needed to, so I did, and it was the most spiritual lesson I´ve ever had with her. We´ve started reading together from the Book of Mormon. It´s SO hard, because she doesn´t read without us, she has a really hard time understanding, and there´s so many distractions from neighbors and her kids. She used to yell at her son a lot and hit him, and the Spirit would be so hard to get back. But she´s gotten so much better. I´ll have to tell you more later, Love you lots! Hna Peck