The Only Cold for Christmas. . .

. . .was the one that left me sniffling and coughing for a week. Including Christmas. And caroling to every single member. And contacting/caroling/inviting all of Tierra Llana to a Christmas concert. And singing at it. All with cold voice. 

Nose warmers sent by a good family friend.  We went caroling to Elvis in these.

We also got to play our duet at the concert, and it turned out pretty well I think. Everyone was impressed at least. 

The set up for the Tierra Llana concert. The Stake President and Mission President came, but the turnout wasn't what we wanted. But we prayed for a miracle, and a golden family of five came up to us and asked us to come visit them. So we're praying for Arturo and his family. First cita (lesson) on Wednesday.

Christmas turned out really well, because we planned a lot in advance and worked hard to make it good. Everything from buying eggnog to have on Christmas Eve, decorations all over the place, wrapping everything possible,(in Liahona or IKEA magazines), wiring extension cords to be able to plug in the lights, making Norskies on Christmas morning, and potatoes, chicken, and rolls and pudding pie for lunch. We listened to Christmas music (peaceful harp and Mormon Tab with Sissel [which is sad because my comp doesn'

t like Sissel] )-- nonstop. It was all lovely. And I got my package Christmas Eve.

One of the best Christmas presents was a new sobrina (niece) in July! Woot woot Chris and Kristen!

And getting to see Lydia. (3 month old niece)

Baptism of Brayan

So as I mentioned on Skype, if I start thinking about what's normal in the US, I start to realized that there's a bunch of "funny stories" that happen every day. 

Like the drunk guy that wandered into our baptism on Saturday and kept interjecting during President's talk with "amens" and answers to all his rhetorical questions. No one knew who he was. 

We ran into Carlos Miguel (almost 12) on Saturday with his basketball instead of being ready to go to the baptism like he said. Here's how the conversation went:

Us: So, you're not going to sing with us at the baptism anymore?

Him: Umm, I can't. Ummm, they wouldn't let me (his grandparents)

Us: Well, have you read in the Book of Mormon?

Him: Yes, a lot.

U:Where are you now?

H:Jacob 8. (we left him last in Jacob 4)

U:Oh really? what was it about?

H: I don't remember, I have a problem where I can't remember things.

U: Did you like Jacob 5?

H: Yeah.

U: Was it long?

H: Not especially.

U:. Carlos, Jacob 5 has over 70 verses, and there's no such thing as Jacob 8. 

His face: Whoops.

Him: So am I still getting baptized next Saturday?

U: No, Carlos, no. 

Matching outfits for the Ward Christmas Party--which we had to leave almost as soon as it started in order to get home in time.

I thought it was interesting that you guys sent a butterfly necklace and earrings, because 3 butterflies is significant here. I don't know if I already talked about this, but it's because of the 3 mariposa (butterfly) sisters that opposed Trujillo's dictatorship. Look up the story.

So I love them.

There's lots and lots of things to survive here. Like the fact that we didn't receive water this week, and none of our outlets are working. Oh well! Lessons in survival, that's what the mission is!

What else was I going to write about?? Well, Dominicans say that if you forget what you were going to say, it was either a lie or something stupid. So I guess I'll just end there. 

Merry Late Christmas to all, and Prospero Ano Nuevo. 

Lots of love,

Hermana Sarah 

I only send you pictures when we're cute, baptisms, conferences, or stuff like that, so this is a picture of a normal not so cute day. 

Note the Dominican butterfly earrings.

 

 A Christmas present from the Ward Young Men and Young Women from home.  Thank them for me. I loved it!

What on Earth Has Happened This Week?

Angelita's tree

Gingerbread Houses 

Not like home. The icing wasn't sticky enough and the gingerbread was more like fluffy cookies, but we got creative. Ours was the Sydney Opera House with a play of the Nativity featuring. 

 Umm, dress up day? 

 Caught in the rain on intercambios (exchanges) with Hna Becar.

Just a normal week. Slow-ish. Definitely counting down to Christmas over here too.
We got permission to eat at a member's house, so that will be fun.

We swore off snowflake making after Iris's baptism, but this week our Branch President's wife asked us to make a bunch (like 12 million) for the ward dinner party. So every night we get home, plan, then turn on a church movie in Spanish and make snowflakes until bedtime. I'm so sick of them.

We filmed our piano duet, "Still, Still, Still" and are now halfway done with figuring out the duet, "Angels We Have Heard on High." We're going to play one of them in church on Sunday. I've been working on lots of musical talents this week--piano duets, and Hna Erickson has been teaching me to sing alto. I have "Joy to the World" and "Angels We Have Heard on High" almost pegged.
But this is probably boring stuff....

We saw the huge rat again. It chased me out of the kitchen on Thursday night. I ran into the bedroom and breathed a sigh of relief thinking I was safe, until everyone else also ran into the room chasing it. Apparently it had been on my heels the whole time and followed me into the room. I didn't see it, and we couldn't find it the rest of the night. Made it a bit hard to fall asleep.

I hit 10 months this week.

I'm so glad you guys could go to the temple this week. When we went with Yolanda, everything went wrong. We didn't think it was going to work out, but last minute, it did!.

I'm so sad to hear about the BYU game. :(

I am so sorry this week's letter is so boring. I guess I'll just save up all the good stuff for when we SKYPE!!!! So excited.

See ya (literally) soon!
Love, Sarah

The Week In Review!

Hm.... what happened...
This week we were so busy, but it felt like none of it was missionary work. Getting activities ready, the Christmas Conference, Zone Meeting, etc.

We had a musical, written by yours truly, Hna Erickson, and Elder Forsyth to Disney songs, telling the story of Samuel the Lamanite, modern-day missionaries (Hna E. and I were a companionship duet)-- all illustrating the line from the commission: He sido seleccionado como representante personal del Senor Jesucristo (um, I've been selected as a personal representative of the Lord Jesus Christ).  (You probably could have googled that).
It was incredible, I wish I could send the video, but you wouldn't understand it anyway. We had a blast.

Elder Gatherum and me having our "Logan resident reunion" at the Christmas conference.

Our gifts from Pres and Hermana Rodriguez. They had temple recommend holders in them.

We also are so busy with our recent converts that finding new investigators has suffered a little bit. You have to kind of wean them off having the missionaries over when they used to have them every day. And there's still stuff to teach them. Yolanda is feeling quite abandoned because we only visited her once the last two weeks. Gotta teach them to start being independent. And it sure makes the numbers look bad when you had a bunch of lessons and then as soon as you baptize them, they stop counting. But that's where we're at right now. A couple others here and there. But it's a good problem to have: baptizing your whole teaching pool. So busy, but we need to get busy finding some families. We're getting super excited for Christmas!

On Friday night we got to take Iris and her kids to a devotional at President's house (Antonio had to work last minute).  It only took us a public car, a big gua-gua and then a little gua gua to get there, and then walking, but we made it. It was incredible. As a generalization that should be taken in the best possible way, singing is not a national strong point of the Dominican Republic. Baseball:yes, choirs: no. But they had a 10 person multi-stake acappella choir that was incredible. It was so much fun. You could only go if you brought an investigator family or a recent convert family, and we were the only Hermanas there. We ended up gettting home at 10:30 p.m., which was not the funnest. But we loved the choir.

Elvis met Pres Rodriguez who came to visit the rama (branch), and Pres. Rodriguez almost cried when he saw how far Elvis walks to church. Elvis and Antonio are both ward missionaries and on fire. They're incredible.

I died laughing reading Hailey's letter about Elders getting skinnier and Hermanas getting fatter. It is the truth no matter where you are. It doesn't make sense when you're in a walking mission where you cook for yourself and don't have a dinner hour and sweat out everything, but it happens just exactly like that. This is us lamenting the extra.

I wake up cold now.  I love hot chocolate every morning.  But by 10 a.m. it's really hot again.

This is Rachel's Bday, Pearl Harbor day, and "wear a scarf as a vest" day:

My trainer is heading home!

Love you all, thanks for the love in the form of packages and prayers, the only love languages that matter out here!
Love, Hna Peck

P.S. Next monday we're making gingerbread houses as a district, so that should be fun!

How to Wear a Dominican Tubi

Sarah sent Rachel a Dominican Tubi for her birthday.  Sarah also sent her a picture tutorial on how to put it on using Hermana Erickson as the model.   Here's Rachel's first attempt.

Part the hair down the midldle all the way back.

Start to wrap it around, pinning as you go. Pin both facing up and down.

Just keep wrapping it around and pinning it.

Tuck in all the hair. 

 Then twist it. The flower starts on one side, and twist it all the way around til its there again.

Then put on your stretchy pants and you're ready to hit the Dominican streets. And your hair stays straight for the next week.  

  

Transfers?

HAHAHA No!!!! :) :) None of us. At least that's what they said last night. We're still a bit worried that they'll call tonight and change it. Kind of like how they weren't telling people where they were going on Sunday. But hopefully it's true. We certainly were not expecting to stay at all. We didn't know who, but we were sure someone was leaving. But the whole ward was praying, and Joseph and our Branch President talked to our Mission President and requested that we stay. Being here has been a good thing. I'm excited to keep it going. 

 We decided to celebrate Thanksgiving with the American Elders in the zone at the local Pica Pollo- (little Chinese /Dominican chicken/ whatever else food place. [Think Cracker Barrel variety, but Dominican]). So the fried chicken was taken care of, but we needed the works, so we decided to bring our own.

Dad would have been proud of the mashed potatoes and gravy that I whipped up under difficult conditions--especially considering that we had spent the morning catching and killing mice in the kitchen and then bleaching everything. But after finally getting the gravy to an acceptable texture, I realized too late there was no way to season it. I desperately looked in all our cupboards to no avail. At the point of despair, Hna Erickson offered her teriyaki beef jerky to save the day. We blended it up and mixed it in, and it turned out great! We ended up carrying to Pica Pollo mashed potatoes, green beans, rolls, juice in our water bottles, and, of course, the gravy. Afterwards, there was not a single pie to be found, so Tres Leche cake had to do. 

Enchiladas on the stove because our oven broke.  That's how we do it here.

Filling Up Gas:

What?! Can you say dangerous!? It's just a tank that sits in their trunk like this and they fill it up with a hose.  Moments like this I remember I'm in a 3rd world country. 

At the Temple to do baptisms. No, as sister missionaries we are not allowed to do baptisms, but we got to go to the temple with Iris and Yolanda. (Antonio and Elvis couldn't go in because they received the priesthood Sunday and we went to the temple on Saturday). 

Yolanda did the work for her great grandma, and her uncle Humberto did it for her great grandpa. It was super exciting. And they had her do at least 25 other names--she got a little tired.

Practicing a Christmas duet, "Still, Still, Still."  Yeah! We are determined to get it down. And now that we have until Christmas to do it, even better!

This week I'm very discouraged about my Spanish. I still am really bad at understanding. And a lady this week had blonde-block and decided she couldn't understand me. It was so humiliating and so frustrating. I just don't know how to get rid of the gringa accent!

I can read Haitian Creole. But not speak it. I don't know how to pronounce it very well. And as Kim (Sarah's aunt who served a mission to Haiti) of all people probably knows, reading Creole is probably the most useless skill, because anything written would be in French. Creole is rarely written. But it's fun.  Everything official or written is in French.  Creole is the language of the streets. Which is super good to have especially when they're not that educated, because it can be easier for them to understand -- at least here.

We made Norskies (Norwegian crepes) this week, and I made Mango syrup to go on them! It brought back a lot of memories. But of course they didn't quite taste like home. Anything with butter in it turns out really weird here-- (because it's margarine stuff made out of corn. It evaporates before it melts. Real butter is "too 'spensive.")

I might be finally getting into the swing of things. From what I've seen, halfway is a good place to be. Far enough in to be normal, but not close enough to the end to think about it.

 I better skedaddle. Hope I don't email you in tears next week to say the transfer calls was all a hoax. :)

Have a great one!

Love, Sarah