August 13th

This week has been good. This computer shift button is handicapped though, so forgive the poor punctuation. Okay so I don´t have a ton of cool stuff to report as far as teaching goes. One cool story though, so we´re teaching a mother and her daughter in law, who are both catholic but interested in learning more about the gospel. Hermana Colton asked if they would like to know if the Book of Mormon is the word of God and the daughter in law paused for a moment and said yes. Then we turned to the mother and she paused too, and I was thinking she was going to give a hestitant yes just like the first woman, but then she said, "I know that it is true." Whoaaaa like where did that come from!? She had watched the restoration video with us before and she says she knows that there's no way Joseph Smith could've done all that stuff without God. Amazing!

Funny story of the week: so we´re having a lesson with Marcos. He has a little sister named Hilary who is four or five and she´s really cute but also pretty crazy. She likes to sit with us during the lessons but sometimes she is a tad mischievous. Soooo a few days ago during the lesson she ran upstairs and then returned, cupping her hands and sat next to me on the couch. She secretly showed me the small white slivers in her hands, which to me looked like pieces of a bar of soap. Hermana Colton is teaching something to Marcos all this time. and so I put my attention back on the lesson and then suddenly Hilary´s hands are DOWN MY SHIRT and then her hands are IN MY ARMPITS and I was trying to free myself without disrupting the lesson too much and without shrieking in surprise. For some reason, she looked stunned that I didn´t want her little hands in my armpit. Imagine that! And she said "what? we can share!" and proceeded to rub the white stuff (deodorant, not soap) on her own armpits. So now you know the story of how a little Dominican tried to apply deodorant to my armpits during a lesson.

To respond to all the chikanguya questions: yes, I got it. yes, it was really lame. no, I don´t still have it. Basically a lot of people here have gotten it because they don´t believe in science (nacho libre quote anyone, anyone???) but anyway, they´re superstitious rather than factual. As in, they would rather believe that air is contaminated with the disease than that a mosquito transfers the virus from one person´s bloodstream to another´s as it bites you. I´m pretty sure all Americans would see reason in the second one, but Dominicans just don´t. They think the air is contaminated somehow. Scientifically, that just doesn´t make sense!  It´s so frustrating because if they would believe you about the mosquitos, then they would put on repellent and then they wouldn´t get sick and less sick people means less mosquitos transferring the illness which means it would go away! But anyway, a lot of the adults here get it really bad for some reason. Like, it lasts longer and then for weeks their joints ache. I am fortunate in that I had the fever and stuff for about 2 and half days and then I was basically as good as new, but every now and then the joints of my fingers and wrists feel sore, but it´s nothing. 

Let´s play a game. Try to think of something that you couldn´t fit or transport on a moped. Did you think of one? Okay good. Now I´m going to tell you that you are probably right. You couldn´t drive a moped with a propane tank (or three) or with a queen sized mattress flapping off the back, or with 20 feet worth of bamboo stalk trailing behind or with 5 people squished on the seat. But Dominicans can and they DO. Nobody has cars here, so they´ve learned how to transport EVERYTHING via moped. It´s quite impressive really.

Here are pictures from this week

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0ByRUZeow-VaVNHJQTDNxM3dhUDQ&usp=sharing

enjoy!

August 7th

This week has been great!

There was, however, one rather unfortunate part. It all started Friday morning. Nicaurys and her two children were to be baptized the next day and we were there with the elders doing interviews. I´m sitting on the couch and feeling pretty lousy and I said, "I don´t know why, but my body hurts." Hermana Colton immediately groaned and said, "oh nooooo." I said, "It´s mostly just my back....but that´s probably from carrying my backpack. And I mean, my arms hurt too, but that could be from carrying groceries home a couple days ago. And my right ankle is sore, but maybe I slept on it
wrong." Elder Walker had started laughing a little and Hermana Colton had put a hand over her eyes. "Do you have the rash?" she asked. "No," I said reflexively, then looking down I amended, "well, I´m pretty sure those are ant bites. And that one there is probably from a mosquito." More laughing from Elder Walker. "Do you have the fever?" As I started to say I didn´t, Hermana Colton stood up and felt my head and groaned again. "It´s just because it´s hot!" I told her. Elder Walker was STILL laughing. "What´s so funny!?" I finally asked him. "You are in denial!" he told me. "You have chikangunya!" And in the moment he said it, I realized that it was true. So here´s the progression of the dread plague chikangunya (http://www.cdc.gov/chikungunya/): 1) you feel sore 2) you deny that you feel sore 3) you feel more sore 4) your fever rages for a while 5) your joints take turns aching so that you feel as if you´re 19 going on 90 6) a rash will crop up at some point and yeah basically you just feel OLD. I was walking like a cripple for a bit this week. The sad thing was that I had it during the baptisms and the relief society activity so it was hard to feel so happy when all I felt like was sleeping haha. But I was still able to go, thanks to the blessing of the Lord, and what a wonderful experience it was!

 

 

Marcos was baptized and his parents came and they were so happy and supportive! I did not expect that from them, and I have never been so happy to be wrong. His has even asked for his own copy of the Book of Mormon! 

Other funny thing. That night our district leaders called for some business and they asked how I was doing and I asked Elder Hardy to bring some medicine for me the next morning and I was going to say "because I have a really hot head" but "hot head" sounded like someone who brags a lot, so I quickly amended and said instead, "because I have a hot body" which was definitely not any better to say, hahaha. It was super embarrassing and he made sure to tell everybody during the zone meeting yesterday haha. 

Other funny thing. We play "never have I ever" for a game a lot and one evening Hermana Colton and I were playing it with some members. One girl who was 12 said "never have I ever danced on a table" and the relief society president, a very sweet and mild woman, put down one finger, indicating that she had danced on a table before! She told us she used to be pretty crazy when she was younger, haha. Who would´ve known!?

On P Day we went to a waterfall and it was awesome! The entire hike felt like we were really in a rain forest because we were surrounded by green. Green leaves and moss everywhere. Green canopy of leaves above and brown carpet of leaves below. And it was raining, so it truly was a rainforest! It was beautiful. And there were all sorts of dubious bridge-stairs to cross so it was like a jungle adventure. And we got to wade in the waterfall water which was clear and blue and gorgeous and it was SO refreshing. It was just lovely.

Enjoy the pictures here:

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0ByRUZeow-VaVM3paT214cGdrMGs&usp=sharing

July 30th

Funny Story:  I wore my nightgown all day. Yepppp. Check out the pictures for evidence. It was genius because all I had to do was put a skirt on over it, and it looked almost like a normal outfit! The very best part was that when I got home, I was already ready for bed! I highly recommend this technique to all.

Miracle: For those who don´t know, it was a bit hectic to arrange my MTC experience. A lot of changes occurred and finally my mission president intervened and had the last word about me arriving mid-transfer. Not only was this compatible with my strong sentiments that June 18^th  was the perfect date for me to leave on my mission and that the 2 week Spanish training at the MTC was the right choice, but it has also proven to be a divine intervention in the mission-field. 4 of the 6 other people in my district (who I work with almost every single day) were transferred this week, 3 of them are transferring OUT of the mission, as in they´re going home. I feel that the hand of God was definitely present in getting me here to Bonao those 4 weeks early so that I could get to know those 4 missionaries and learn from them. I also wouldn´t have had the trainer that I have now and I know that the Lord has put us together for a reason. It has been a long-term miracle that the Lord worked out my arrival here in Bonao. 

Amazing thing: Marcos is getting baptized THIS Saturday! Huzzah! I am so proud of him and I know he will be such a strong influence for the church here in Bonao.

Massive plate of food and a nightgown

Sometimes in the DR people offer you refreshments. Some days you get no food. Some days people provide you with FEASTS ALL DAY AND THEN YOU WANT TO EXPLODE. Such was the case earlier this week.   A member surprised us with lunch by ordering us huge empanadas (fried dough stuffed with cheese and occasionally other delicious and fattening things) and strawberry milkshakes and an ENTIRE cheesecake.
 After the empanadas we couldn´t even take one bite of cheesecake, it was THAT filling. Like do you understand how badly I wanted to eat the cheesecake? And I couldn´t because I was soooo full. Then we went to a wedding and they fed us spaghetti and plantains and rice and chicken and as we´re eating the elders are like, "we gotta go" so everyone shoveled as much food as possible into their mouths. Then we went to the branch president´s house and he had the table set for dinner! And I had to eat ANOTHER meal of chicken and rice and fritos and delicious fresh juice and ohmygoodness it was just so much food that day. Delicious, but overwhelming haha.
In other news, the moquitos here don´t like me very much, but the Maya do. And they are the WORST. They look like gnats, so it doesn´t seem so bad and then OHMYGOODNESS DO THEY ITCH OR WHAT!? They get HUGE and my legs are constantly begging and pleading with me to scratch them and  I have to keep saying "no Little leggies, nooooo because then I won´t be able to stop" and it´s just not very fun at all.

Highlight of the week (carnal): definitely drinking freshly made cherry juice. Oh my heavens I cannot even describe.

Highlight of the week (spiritual): during our zone meeting we had an awesome testimony meeting because a lot of the elders were going home and it was just lovely.

Enjoy the pictures!

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0ByRUZeow-VaVZ0phUDR4a0duOVE&usp=sharing

July 23rd

THEY HAVE MY FAVORITE CEREAL!!
 

This week I saw how Satan tries really hard to stop the work of the Lord. He almost stopped Marcos from being baptized! Marcos' dad has been super cool with Marcos taking the missionary lessons and being baptized. All of a sudden, he told Marcos on Sunday that he couldn´t be baptized in the Mormon church. We were mad and frustrated and defeated. He was sooooo close! We prayed and prayed and continued to teach and visit Marcos this week. As of now, Marcos is still Scheduled to be baptized this Saturday. But please pray that everything will work out!

 

Sisters Colton, Anderson & Parker

Another thing that is slowing down the work is that darn Chikangunya! That cursed plague! It really is an awful illness. When you get it you get a rash that makes your skin look like pinkish reddish cottage cheese, a fever, chills, and worst of all this TERRIBLE ache in all of your bones. You´re bed-ridden for sure. Some people don´t get all of the symptoms and some people have it for a few days and others for a few weeks. But so many of our appointments are falling through because people are so ill. The worst part is that they´re all uninformed. We know that it comes from mosquitos because we have fliers from doctors and from the mission president and everything. But the Word on the street in Bonao is that it is really a contamination in the air (wrong wrong wrong) and they don´t believe us when we say it´s mosquitos. So they don´t wear repellent. So of course they´re getting sick! So far, the three of us have been spared from the wretched disease, and hopefully we will continue to be blessed with this unlikely immunity.

 

Funny story: We have been teaching a Jehovah's witness which is odd because usually they hate Mormons. But he seemed to really like us and our message. Well…we have now discovered that really he only likes us…or more specifically Hermana Colton. He calls often to see when we´re visiting next occasionally says sort of weird things. But we tried to look past it because we were hoping that he was really interested in our message. Well one evening he called and it was Hermana Parker´s day to answer the phone. She talked to him and he was asking about us and our weekend and chatting and so she was polite, but shortly ended the call. A few minutes later he calls and she answers again and he asks who he´s speaking to and she´s like "it's still Hermana Parker...." and he asks for Hermana Colton and so she passes the phone over and next thing we hear is Hermana Colton saying "What!? Sorry! It´s too loud in here! I can´t hear you! Bye!" Apparently he was telling her how nice it was to hear her voice and how that was all he needed....ha! So yeah, we will no longer be teaching him.

 

Other funny thing. Before I got to the DR, people in the MTC told me how in the DR they have a different word for bus: guagua. I figured it was just one of those things that happens with languages in different areas. So when I heard we were taking a guagua somewhere, I was imagining like a school bus kind of thing. Guess what pulls up? A small tiny VAN. Oh but don´t worry, they still cram in enough people to fill a small bus. hahaha. They don´t call it a bus because ITS NOT A BUS haha. 

Miracle story: so we met a guy in the street named Lucas a few weeks ago. We stopped at his colmado several times the last two weeks to try to make an appointment to teach him but he was NEVER there. I was getting pretty mad at Satan for always making things so hard for us. I´d felt really good about Lucas and had basically given up the hope of teaching him. So last night something strange happened, we actually finished all of our scheduled stuff BEFORE 9 pm! that has never happened the whole time I´ve been here! So we´re walking around like "hmmmm what can we do????" and we are rattling off ideas and Hermana Colton suggests a woman we can visit and immediately I was like "that sounds great! lets go!" and so we walk toward her house. Right in front of her house is Lucas!!!! We didn´t even see him at first but he called out to us and WOW! Miracle! So then we start talking to him and he read the pamphlet we left him and said he had lots of questions and we made an appointment. And then he starts telling us a little bit about himself. He lived in New York for 20 years. 18 and a half of those years were spent in prison. Yep. He told us that before, he was all about trying to get money, money, money. But do you  know what he did in prison? He read the Bible. 8 hours a day. Yep! For 18 years and 7 months! He said that when he left a lot of people were like "how are you so different and how can you be so happy and positive about life?" and he told them that it was because he read the Bible. Now he doesn´t drink or do drugs like he used to and he said "I just follow Jesus Christ". Wow. He is really interested in hearing about Joseph Smith and I just have a great feeling about him! He is such a great example of how God really does change your life. And what a miracle it was that we found him again! God looks out for all of us and you never know when he is going to put you in the path of someone who needs you!

This week's pictures: 
https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0ByRUZeow-VaVOXRxVjA2TmxnRWc&usp=sharing

July 16th

Great things are happening in Bonao!

First a funny story: Sometimes when it rains here, it is like a flash flood. The have a terrible drainage system (and by terrible, I really mean that it doesn´t exist) and so the streets fill up with rainwater really fast. But it´s not really rainwater. I will refer to it as the mystery murk. The streets are full of garbage and refuse all the time, so when it rains and the street fills up with this murky brown liquid, it´s a mystery what you´ll find as you wade through. Hence, mystery murk. Well a few days ago it started to pour as we walked. We were drenched, despite our umbrellas and jackets. I had my raincoat on over my backpack to keep the contents dry and I had my hood up. It would be pretty safe to say that I looked like a homeless, dripping oaf. We came to a small lagoon of mystery murk and I paused for a second, looked around for an escape route (it was kind of like that story where they say “we can´t go over it, we can´t go under it, we can´t go around it…we´ll have to go through it”) and seeing no other option, I did a little hunched squat to grab my skirt, hiked it up to my knees, and plunged into the mystery murk. My companions cracked up because apparently it was quite comical to see a little hunchbacked woman do a little squat and wobble her way into that filthiness. The worst part aside from mystery objects touching you is that the murk is WARM haha. The pavement is so hot that it heats the mystery murk right up!

I´ve tried lots of fruits this week! I had guanabana, carambola, guava, and chinola juice! And of course mangos and bananas. Fruit is just so tasty here!

Mom asked about washing clothes, so here goes: We have a washing machine. It is one big plastic box with two compartments—one for washing and one for “drying”. We fill up about 6 buckets of water and pour them into the washing compartment, add some detergent, throw in the clothes, and then set it to “swirl” mode for a good 15 minutes. After the clothes are sufficiently swirled in the soapy water, we put them into a homemade solution of fabric softener and water so that they smell reeeeeal nice. Then we wring them out and put a portion of them in the drying section (too small to do all the clothes at once). We close the lid and set the dryer to the “shake” cycle. You have to be prepared though! All the water that´s being shaken? Shooked? Shakooked? Whatever. All the water comes out of a  hose on the side, so you have to have a bucket ready to catch the water. Then you hang those clothes up ti actually get all the way dry and put some more clothes for the shake cycle. Then you mop, because invariably you´ve gotten a large quantity of water on the tile floor. And that´s laundry!

Miracle story: We had another person approach us and ask US to learn about the church. God is always preparing people to receive the gospel—we just have to be willing to testify! Nuther one miracle: we had 14 investigators and 16 less active people come to church this Sunday. That´s almost double the active members of the church. The room was FULL. It was incredible! We see lots of miracles every day, but one really cool thing was during an intercambio. I wasn´t there, but Hermana Colton went with a member to visit a different member´s wife. She has a reputation for being really mean and rude and just having the worst attitude ever. She often gets mad when missionaries or members try to visit her. But Hermana Colton and the member approached her very kindly and she let them in AND just completely opened up to them. It was totally unexpected! We hope that she will continue to be receptive and that we can help her start coming to church.

Dominican thing: They are very generous people and they love it when you visit them! This is great! EXCEPT every time when we are closing a lesson and indicating that we need to get to our next appointment they´re always like WAIT I HAVE REFRESHMENTS FOR YOU which is awesome. But then we´re twenty minutes late to the next thing haha. This doesn´t happen every time because not everyone gives you juice or soda or whatever, so you can´t even plan in advance to avoid it. I have determined that it is the secret Dominican way of extending the visit because they love company so much. Like in the states, someone shows up and we offer them water. But here someone shows up and you try to keep them as loooong as possible by luring them in with some delicious fruit nectar and galletas.

This Sunday we went to a branch in Los Quemados which is really close to the mountains. It. Is. Gorgeous. Check out the pictures! They have a campsite sort of thing there and that´s where they host EFY all summer. It´s super cool! Like wilderness EFY . Definitely beats out Provo EFY for sure!

I love you all, and hope you have a great week.

ALSO:  I have homework for you all. 1) read The Power of Everyday Missionaries by Clayton M. Christensen and then 2) apply it to your lives!!!! It is seriously the most powerful book members can read to help spread the gospel! READ IT NOW!

Okay bye!

This week´s pictures:

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0ByRUZeow-VaVaXBQTnBBZXdEZ2s&usp=sharing

Last week´s pictures:

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0ByRUZeow-VaVUkMxSlE4SV83ejQ&usp=sharing