With a Bigger House Comes Bigger Pests!

Forget frogs, spiders and lizards, now we're battling mice. And a rat got into our trash on the front porch. Luckily not into the house or my bed. (Referring to stories from Loren's mission.)

This week was CRAZY. It was really fast, and slow. Great, and hard. We were super busy because we moved houses. But the house wasn't quite ready (it's been drama between the house owner and the mission office for the last whole transfer) but we opted to move in anyway to save us the fifteen minute unlit walk home every night. But we had to paint some of the rooms today so we haven't been able to unpack. We've been living in a state of disorganization, which is always stressful. So all I've done so far this morning is paint rooms for four plus hours, pull on a skirt, and come to internet. It will be nice to actually put things away today.

 

And to add to the level of craziness, Two 14 year old boys that we love oh-so-much had a baptism scheduled on Saturday. Because of everything going on we were behind schedule on teaching them everything, and I'll admit it, they were baptized without the lesson on obedecer y honrar las leyes del pais. I hope it won't affect their eternal salvation if we have to teach it this week. 

Christopher & Angel 

The day of their baptism was crazy and really emotionally hard (opposition because they're such great boys and going to be incredible missionaries). But they got baptized and we made them cake, so all ended well. The real joy actually came Sunday as they showed up in polo shirts and borrowed ties :) for the confirmation. Angel's mom came to both things. The confirmation blessings were so powerful. I felt the spirit strongly as it came to rest with Christopher, then Angel. When Christopher was promised that he would touch many lives during his time as a missionary, Hna Erickson and I both jumped a little. It was so powerful. They're still crazy immature 14 year old boys, but they're members now, and they are so special to us. I cannot wait to watch them pass the sacrament. Oh I just love them lots. 

We moved up Elvis's fecha! He will now be baptized either Nov 9th or 16th. Probably the 9th. Words cannot express how incredible he is, and how miraculous it was to find him. He's never missed a Sunday since we found him 5 weeks ago. On Friday he was in 1 Nephi 7. THat was 3 days after starting from the beginning. 

Antonio and Iris are still good. 

Gloria.....oh Gloria. She hasn't been to church since her fecha fell. She'll be good, we just need to reanimarle a little bit. 

We experienced the long awaited arrival of what we have lovingly termed since it's conception: my boil package. And it was pretty great. I always love my mint oreos.

(Sarah's knee from a month ago.  Her "care package" included antiseptic, antibiotic ointment, band-aids, and mint oreos!)

I made yuca con huevos this week, and it was pretty delicious if I do say so myself. I'm a little bit proud, considering I couldn't make anything before my mission. And I'm not going to even tell you how easy it is to make so that you can all be impressed too.

What else??? Just good stuff going on here. Loving life. 

Thanks for everything! 

Love, Hermana Sarah Peck

ps. I'm homesick for Fall. The palm trees refuse to complacer me and turn orange and fall off. Although that would be dangerous...

All Good Things Must Come to an End. . .

Blazer day! Aka Blazing hot day!

  BUT NOT TODAY!!!!!  Not for another 6 weeks! Heavenly Father answers fervent, desperate prayers, and so although we were getting really nervous (why are 2 experienced missionaries who already speak Spanish together in the admittedly best rama (branch) in the mission?) We are together for another transfer here in Paradise, for Angel and Christopher's baptism this Saturday, and Elvis's hopefully mid-November. Maybe even Antonio and Iris! Maybe Gloria's dad will soften too! There's so many miracles yet to see! And odds are good I'll be here for Christmas. That would be a dream come true. 

Our rama took all the recent converts to do baptisms. They do it like every other week-ish because they're awesome. So Yolanda got to go the week after her baptism! So great!

Quick miracles:

Antonio and Iris stopped drinking coffee!

Antonio walked 40 minutes alone to stake conference!

I found five pesos just sitting on the road. Twice!

Christopher and Angel showed up to stake conference in white shirts with Joel (if they didn't make it, they couldn't get baptized this Saturday).

I accidentally said the Creole word for gulf (gouf) and again (anko) instead of the Spanish ones! That means I'm learning something! (I'm reading the Book of Mormon this time in Creole. I can read it, but not speak it. Which is semi-useless considering how often you find Creole written, but baby steps)

Long miracle:

The other day, Hna Erickson was reading the Book of Mormon edition Liahona from a while ago. I decided to too. So we were talking about it for a couple days. I was reading about all the people that got the Book and read it in a week, or a few days, or couldn't put it down. Now I'm going to make a generalization, but it's true of all the investigators I've had: Dominicans don't really do that. They like to read a paso. Understanding it and such. They just don't read through things really fast. So I was kind of like, "Ah, well, I probably won't ever see miracles like that. Dang." Which is true if you think that a miracle like that is the only cool kind. Well, we went to Elvis's, and were going to teach him Diezmo--tithing--but he started talking about what he learned from reading the intro, testimony of the 3 and 8 witnesses, and testimony of Joseph Smith. He was already sure the Book of Mormon was true. It just made so much sense to him. And he had read Alma 40, 41, 42 while we were talking about the Plan of Salvation. We felt impressed to start 1 Nephi 1 with him (especially because he just wanted to read all that stuff again because he liked it. That's what they do. They read the same chapter over and over and that's another reason they don't plow through it super fast). It was incredible. We started reading and the spirit was so strong. He stopped us when Lehi had a dream to tell us about a dream of heaven that he had (and they like to stop an analyze, another reason the one week thing doesn't fly). As we read on, it turns out Lehi's dream had crazy similarities to the one he had. He just stopped and looked at us. It was incredible. After we finished, we invited him to pray specifically to know if the Book of Mormon was true. He said, "Yeah. I was praying about it earlier today as I was reading, and I already know  that it is for sure, but ok. I'll pray again." It was incredible. He talked for a few minutes, giving us all the reasons that this Book was true, and how everyone that had the chance to read it and rejected it will probably be judged from it during final judgement. I was thinking, "There's a reference for that." And then he was talking about great things coming from small and simple things. "Another reference" and a whole bunch of other truths. I can't wait for him to read them in the Book of Mormon. 

Book of Mormon miracles happen even in the DR even when they don't read it super fast!! That's what I learned this week. And it was so much cooler in real life. I promise. 

Last minute, the stake president called for us (all the missionaries) to go to stake conference. Because the stake was called by higher authority right before and said they had to change the whole agenda to be "hastening the work". So we went and they had us stand and did all this stuff about member missionary work and it was crazy. I think it's finally starting to sink in that this wasn't just a missionary work kick. Not just a phase. They mean business. They are calling for lifestyle changes in every member to be a part of this work. It's great to be a missionary because I don't have to feel guilty. :) I'm doing my part! Everybody else, get on yours. One person before Christmas!

Love you all, Love the gospel, Love missionary work,

Love, Sarah

It's Christmas in the DR!!!!!!!!!!!!

Christmas music was playing in the grocery store today. We're in Heaven!

Baptisms?

We had a  baptism this Saturday with Yolanda. She's super great and we're really happy for her. 

Gloria....................nope. Gloria's dad, after her mom said it was ok, told her that she wouldn't be getting baptized. We were quite quite sad. Really sad. Really really sad. But after the initial sting has started to wear off, we're now joking about setting a baptismal date for the weekend after her 18th birthday in a year and a half-ish. 

Elvis is still doing so so so so so so great. He came to church again this week, read all about the spirit world in Alma 40, and is just overall incredibly awesome. We love him more than keyboards can convey. The last cita happened to also be fast Saturday, and he sent us off with two luscious looking popsicles (kind of like otter pops). We couldn't eat them and didn't want to waste them, so we carried them around dripping for a good ten minutes before we found security guards to give them to.

Christopher (14) and Angel (13) are also awesome. And their member friend Joel (14). They are so hysterical, and we always have such a blast together. You may not have thought that Hna Erickson is so good at relating to 14 year old boys, but she does have that talent. We had to set rules about no laughing between the opening and closing prayer, or else it's just a constant riot. They have fechas (baptismal dates) for the 26th. We'll see if Christopher gets baptized that day, he's just often out of town on Sunday so he misses church. 

We had interviews this week that were really good. 

I got letters every day for three days in a row. Everyone pat yourselves on the back for being a part of that wonderful week. If you were. If not, it's never too late to get on the bandwagon. Ok, they were mostly from mom, but still. 

Yolanda's baptism went well. We were afraid no one was going to come, because everyone we talked to couldn't. But they ended up filling the Relief Society room nicely. The only problem is the Young Women don't like her, and they're rather catty and cliquey. :(

We've had a great week!

Love you all oh so very much.

Love, Sister Sarah (that's what Grandpa Peck always used to call me)

Kevin and Kamilla. Yolanda's cousins that she lives with that have often made lessons very loud and difficult. They're so adorable.

No Fall Leaves Here!

Another one. We spent 3 hours this morning deep cleaning the house and spraying it. I've eaten more spiders and ants here than I like to think about. It doesn't bother me so very much any more to see an ant swimming with my cereal.We decorated Hna Francisca's house for her birthday, and she didn't even know it was us!! 

Snow! Maybe it can be Christmas after all!

Las Caobas Zone

Yo (Less than sign) 3 Mi Rama

"Sometimes I feel like I'm on a tropical island.  And sometimes not."Poster announcing the General Conference Broadcast at the church building.

                    Zone Activity Last Week

Yolanda (in yellow) with her family and some of the ward Young Women.

Yo (Less than Sign) 3 Mi Rama  -- La Venta
 This was a sign that was hanging on a bulletin board in the church, and I definitely agreed. We had about 15 investigators between all the sessions of conference. And with a sign like this, it's not surprising! Our rama (Branch) also has a Liahona class every Tuesday night where they have a lesson on a conference talk, and every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday they do Zumba upstairs in the church from 9-10. They're so incredibly awesome. There's always something going on at the church. 

This week has been so many miracles. Thursday evening found me on top of my chair shouting for joy after a phone call saying that Gloria's parents had agreed. We still don't have the actual signature, we're still praying a lot, but like Gloria said, "for the first time, there's a way that this is actually going to happen on the 12th" (She speaks English surprisingly well for a sixteen year old.) She desperately wants to be baptized on the 12th before Elder Godfrey goes home. He just got moved to the area next door from here. We're so incredibly excited!!! Gloria is one of our best friends.

Yolanda is doing so great. She's so excited and nervous and everything. We reviewed the baptismal questions with her last night and she had a heart attack because we haven't taught her diezmo (tithing) yet and she's nervous for the interview. She is so ready. She shared her testimony with us the other night and how much she's changed and how she acts differently after knowing the church. She's kind of a blonde, so sometimes we wondered if she was really internalizing what we taught, but after hearing her last night in the mock interview, she's so ready. She's amazing and there are no foreseeable problems. She lives with her aunt and uncle who are recent converts and super strong. 

ELVIS!!!! I grin every time I think about him. Hna Erickson and I both are not the biggest fans of contacting, and so we generally avoid it in favor of teaching lessons. But we had a member just barely move into a residential area that has basically not ever had missionaries in it, so we knew we needed to at least get some doors knocked there and start building a teaching pool there. We went to the farthest building in the back to start. Before we buzzed the first intercom, we asked each other if we were going to try to get in or just invite to church, we had a bit of time, so we decided to try to get in. First contact was Elvis. He came down immediately and we had an amazing intro lesson. We came back, put a baptism date for Dec 14-- (We have to wait that long because he's a single male contact, otherwise he'd be ready so fast) --he accepted. He came to church last week and loved it. And conference this week. He's just escogido. There's no other way to describe it. He's about 45. He has a super great understanding of everything we teach. I feel like we're just reminding him of what he already knows. It's way too easy. He's so incredible, and it was incredible how we were placed to find him. 

Conference was so so great. I loved it, and I understood it!! Incredible progress from 6 months ago. I understood it so much that I even caught the translation errors. (hombre instead of hombro, and estamos agradecemos). I read all of last conference in the week leading up, and I just have such a greater appreciation for being able to listen to our prophets.

We celebrated Hna Erickson's birthday on Saturday. One recent convert, Liu, bought her  a cake and had a surprise party! I made her a cake too. Funfetti with purple frosting :) I did think of you Lindsay!

I'll need to tell you all about Meshack...

He's a Haitian that lived in New York almost his entire life. He got "caught up in the street life" and was deported to Haiti, where he hadn't lived since he was maybe 3. He knew no French, Creole, or Spanish. He came over here looking for a job, but had a tricky time seeing as he knew no Spanish. We would talk to him, and it was the most he got to talk to anyone. We talked about how God still cared about him and he eventually started praying. We gave him a Book of Mormon in English and he started reading it. The greatest part of the whole thing though, is I wish you could have heard the conversations. They were all New York accent ghetto. It was so great to talk about God and the scriptures and Nephi (said Ne-fee) in his street English. We loved seeing him every day. But he left back for Haiti. :( I told him to find the Mormon church and keep reading. I have high hopes for him. 

Welp, another week here in Paradise. Running around getting a font filled! And getting the firma (signature) in black ink. We'll get there. Miracles happen.

Love you all!

Hermana Peck