Wow! What a Week!

Farewell Hermana Alcantara

I am now living with the only two Hermanas older than me in the mission. And they have 3 weeks left. One is my new comp, Hermana Brockman. We lived together when I first came into the mission. And, despite some anxiety Monday night......it´s been super great. You should all probably take a picture of this email because it´s so rare that I say this, but here it goes: I love being a missionary. I am so happy to be here. I love doing what I´m doing. This is just the greatest thing. But it´s sad because we are doing so great together but it can only last until June 18th when the plane comes to take her and Hna Erickson away. I don´t think this is healthy for me to be living with them, but they´re both doing a good job trying not to talk about going home. Hermana Brockman has such great ideas that I´ve never tried and ways to help the branch. She worked before in a branch that needed a lot of help.

But......our investigators have fallen off the face of the earth as they tend to do every transfer. Nothing about Nelson except one of the ward members told us he didn´t want to get baptized. We had another lady that we had hope for, and then the relief society president told us she had investigated for like 2 years before, but never came to church. She didn´t even tell us when we asked if she´d had the missionaries before. Grr. It´s so frustrating. We want so badly to find adults and families, but the only ones that will listen to us and go to church are the youth.

Speaking of them, Yohanna is doing great. She came to church with her little brothers. Also, Rusbert her brother told us something interesting. We were talking about how great the Book of Mormon is (he went through a phase when he didn´t want to read it again because he already knew everything that was going to happen), and he said that he knew of at least one miracle from the Book of Mormon. He shared that he´d tried a million times to teach Yohanna to read, but she always forgot the minute he taught her. She´d get really frustrated and cry. We didn´t know any of this. We gave her a Book of Mormon. We realized she was a slow reader but she could read it, and she gets faster every time. He says it´s a miracle because she´d never been able to read anything before.

Arturo also came to church with Wander.

Rosanny got confirmed. She is just super great.

For the Relief Society mother´s day activity we made the biggest pot of San Cocho, a traditional Dominican soup thing. It has plantains, carrots, potatoes, sweet potatoes, yucca, sweet potatoes, green bananas, squash, and every part of meat (gross. you have to fish around for something that doesn´t have organs. or the entire rib cage). And we did all the decorations. It was exciting.  The relief society sisters did tell us that if we ever hoped to have Dominican boyfriends (not really, thanks anyway) we would have to learn to peel plantains a lot better. I cut myself.

We now have our new president, but we´ll meet him on Thursday.

That´s all the mission news that most of you will skim over, but my mom will study in-depth. love ya mom ;)

Love you all,
Hermana Peck

Rosanny's Baptism!!!!

One of the most beautiful things I have ever seen was the hug her older brother Leonardo gave her right after he baptized her. He´d been practicing the baptism prayer for days. On the way to her interview she was telling me all about how Adam was the first to be baptized, and then throughout the centuries of apostasy, sometimes people wanted to get baptized, but they couldn´t by the proper authority until the power to baptize was restored to Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery. That´s my girl!

Hna Alcantara is getting transferred tomorrow.

What else has happened??

Nelson didn´t come to church. Something happened and we couldn´t meet with him this week and he didn´t come.

OH!!! the past couple weeks, I wrote a musical skit (with the help of hna erickson of course) for a stake activity. Elder Forsyth wanted to have a skit night. I rewrote a bunch of popular Dominican songs and some Dominican Christian songs. I was a narrator with Elder Estepan. Hermana Erickson and Elder Koyle were a family that got converted, Hna Alcantara and Hna Caguimbal were the anti-mormon neighbors, and Elder Nelson and Elder Valenzuela were the  missionaries.   They all made me proud. And Elder Forsyth wanted to do our Christmas skit again (which I also wrote a lot of) (I didn´t know I had that talent until the mission) so we did that one again. Everybody seemed to get a kick out of it.

Rusbert came to church after I gave him a bit of a boche on saturday. He´s Yohanna´s older brother. he´s lukewarm active. It´ll be hard to get Yohanna baptized unless he´s coming every week. But apparently  he doesn´t getalong well with the other young men. As he explained it to me; he´s Hatiain, and left it at that. It´s kinda rough. But he came! Even though Yohanna didn´t. Hm, one victory at a time. He´s also my Creole tutor.

Um, I think that´s all. Love you all!
Love Sarah

The "Day After Mother's Day" Call

We were able to Skype with Sarah on Monday afternoon due to the fact that she did not have internet access until Monday-- (all the internet cafe's were closed on Sunday)-- and Sarah wanted to Skype rather than just talk on the phone.  

Sarah looks great and was very excited about the work in Sabana Yegua.  The best news was that all 5 of their investigators came to church on Sunday!  Rosa continues to go to seminary and Nilson is still reading, studying, and asking thoughtful questions.  

We asked Sarah for a funny story.  She thought and thought and said, "I saw a motorcycle crash a few days ago!  Oh wait, that's NOT funny!"  She did say that everyone involved in the accident was alright. She did say that she has broken three umbrellas recently.  She uses umbrellas in the rain, of course, but also to block the sun and a swift breeze will turn those umbrellas inside out and break them.

We asked about the area she is in and she explained that Azua and Sabana Yegua (I practiced, but still can't say them correctly) are small and isolated and there are no tourists because there are few restaurants, motels, or anything like that to support a tourist industry.  Most people there live hand to mouth and those who are serious about getting an education head to Santo Domingo to the university there. Also there are better work opportunities there.

Sarah is loving being a missionary and feels very blessed to be able to testify daily of Christ and the great Plan of Happiness.  She loves seeing the lives of people change and knows that she is where she is supposed to be right now. 

Sarah will be released from her mission on August 13, 2014.

Vanity and Vexation!

Dear everyone,
I hate acknowledging my faults like this, but all this time on the mission, and I'm still one of the least patient people on the planet. Today, everything has gotten in the way of letting me have my email time. And I was dying of dehydration and a bunch of ladies all butted me in the colmado (store), and I almost screamed at them all ¨let a girl buy a water please!!!!¨ But the blessing is that when I get really mad or worked up, I literally can't speak Spanish. So that's the only way I keep my temper sometimes.

Anyway....
I wanted to share a couple of quotes from a meeting we had in the branch this week. I'll leave them anonymous.
¨I testify that refreshments move mountains just like faith.¨
¨Come and count the flies in your room and give a report on them, but hold your weekly meetings, and I promise you that things in the branch will get better.¨
¨Get your spouses to church.¨

The tragedy of the week (to get it out of the way) is that for some unknown reason, Rosa didn't come to church this week. She was supposed to get baptized this Saturday the 10th, but now it will have to be the next week. We had everything ready. We even talked her recent convert half brother into baptizing her. He was reluctant at first, but it came out it was because he didn't know the baptism prayer and he thought it was long and hard. But we showed him how short and easy it is, and he was practicing it, all excited. So, we'll just have to wait a bit and she'll be baptized. She's so perfect that it will definitely happen.

Nilson came to church!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And although he was skeptical about accepting a baptismal date. He's reading lots, praying always, and in our class on Sunday we talked about the priesthood and that was intriguing to him. He asked what the next steps after baptism was or if it was just a one-time experience. We explained that we're always learning more, converting ourselves more, and moving up to the next level. Aaronic priesthood, Melchizedek priesthood, temple, etc.  Only one of the ways the church is so great. I have very high hopes that he will get baptized. The truth is that if someone comes to church, reads the Book of Mormon, and prays, it's pretty inevitable that they'll get converted. Never fails. Funny that that's also the formula for staying active in the church. And continuing to reach a higher level of conversion. If anyone has problems , it's because one or more of those three things started slipping. Ay ay ay, I sound like a missionary email now, waxing philosphical and what-not.

On to vanity and vexation then! (haha, I crack myself up, even there I just made a reference to Ecclesiastes if you didn't catch that).

I finally arrived at the high bun. With 14 months of growing and a lot of bobby pins. Cheering ensues. (Make sure to note the difference between the high bun with the bow, and the 3 buns, which is a lot easier and more secure, but less, um....professional.)

Today we hiked to a river in Padre Las Casas and crab hunted. And made s'mores over a fire. I didn't actually catch a crab, but that's ok, because the Elder that did catch it ended up bleeding, so I was ok to pass.

Love you all and the gospel of Jesus Christ is great and wonderful.
Bye,
Sarah Hermana Peck