¡HOLA!  

ok first things first... something went down in messopotamia (an area with elders in San Juan) and so they had to get a replacement mini missionary... well we walked into the internet center like 5 minutes ago and the mini was there and it´s RONA!  from Sabana Yegua!!!  I was pretty stoked to see him, obviously.  And we chatted it up about Sabana Yegua for a bit.  Ah man, I miss that place.  

But things here in San Juan are pretty awesome as well!

So... last tuesday for our district meeting elder manubay made us all enchiladas!  I was quite impressed because they were dang good.  Hermana Ortiz also made salsa picante to go with the enchiladas and the night before when she was making it, she asked to to test it out.  I took a spoonfull and she just smiled up at me as I put it all in my mouth.... well I couldn´t breath for about 30 minutes despues... seriously. she just laughed and asked if it was hot.  ¨pica MUCHO you monster!!¨  she doesn´t know what monster means so we´re good.  

We contaced A LOT.  I actually don´t mind contacting, but then the results of contacting are always iffy and frustrating when no one is in their houses for return appointments or they are busy cooking or excuses excuses.  BUT you never know if you´re going to find someone legit and someone who God has prepared.  So you just contact anyways and pray for the best.

Wednesday night we went to this fancy grocery and bought groceries for the week and then were like ¨oh shoot, now we have to carry these 30 minutes home...¨ BUT NO!  because this grocery store has a great mini van that drove us and our groceries home for free!!  YEAH. So we´re definitey going to buy groceries there more often.  Especially because Wander, the van driver, is now our friend and promised to come to church.

That night we used the baygon we bought and fumigated our house (we had a cucuracha problem) and by the end of the night hermana santana and I had sprayed 27!!!  ¨la cucuracha! la cucuracha! Ya no pueden caminar. ay ay ay!¨  to clarify, we killed 27 BIG ones, and about 200 babies.  gross huh?

Thursday morning the Clawsons came for house checks and said our house was the cleanest in the whole mission. booyah.  They rate every house with all these different tally´s and our house got a 97.5%.  So mom, don´t worry, when I come home my room won´t be a ¨pig stie¨ anymore.  I´ve learned a lot of dominican cleaning techniques, and let me tell you, dominicans are DEEP CLEANERS.  Mopping is now my new hobbie.  I sprint to the laundrey closet to beat hermana ortiz there soI can mop in the mornings. true story. 

Ok, did I tell you about Nicole?  no se.  pero, Nicole is the granddaughter of hermana Anna Mesa.  She is 10 and wants to get baptized.  Her dad, Henri, is a menos activo.  SO! we´re working really hard with Henri so he can baptize Nicole.  Hna. Anna and Domingo are faithfull church goers once again so we´ve got a lot going for us!  Henri is definitely going to be more difficult, but we´re excited to work with them!  We gave Nicole a book of mormon and invited them to read and pray together, so we´ll see how they do!

speaking of the book of mormon.... I FINISHED READING EL LIBRO DE MORMON IN SPANISH ON TUESDAY!!! HALLELUJA! good, good feeling.  

on friday hermana cuca recieved another boche about not coming to church.  She gave us a long list of reasons why she couldn´t because of health and stuff but reminded us that she is ¨faithful to the lord¨ and I had to frankly tell her that she´s not faithful if she´s not renewing her covenants with him.  She might have health problems for the rest of her life, and does that mean she wont go to church for the rest of her life then?  obviously she took it well because she gave me a pair of her old glasses after.  The lenses are SUPER blurry for me, but when I took them off she said that I had to wear them so I stumbled out her door wearing her glasses.  haha cuca. 

we shared the family´: a proclamation to the world, with marilyn and she really loved it.  Her eyes got all big as she read and she shared her feelings without being asked.  We hope it helps her decision to get married. 

Hermano Marco cleaned and shined my shoes on Friday. 

On Saturday we had the baptism on a ward boy who is 8 that we helped teach a little because president asked.  and EDUARDO came to the baptism!!  it was super great to see him there, dressed all nice.  after we met with him and president and a ward member and talked and it was a super great lesson!  we basically just answered his questions and talked about his doubts and to have faith and keep praying.  Eduardo is really great and he seems like he really wants it now.  He´s worried because his wife is very catholic and doesn´t want to hurt their marraige, but we just tell him to do what feels right and he says the church feels right. 

On Sunday Eduardo, Kelvin, and brenda came to church.  Along with like 5 of our menos activos!  It was really great!  We visited Familia Mesa and hermana Anna gave us these teeny tiny guineos fromtheir finca and they tasted like apples and bananas mixed!  THEY¨RE SO SWEET. 

Wilson, recent convert, is now our new lider missional.  We´re stoked to have him!  He´s excited to work hard and has really really progressed like crazy! 

Well, yeah.  This morning we cleaned.I made the hermanas chocolate pancakes. I mopped :) and we played soccer with the elders.  

well, that´s about it!  hope all is well.  

les amo!!!  

con cariño,

hermana huish 

Quick Recap

i never know how to start these things... it´s so awkward.  

ok so we ate at a member´s house last monday night for noche de hogar (unintentional) and then all tuesday we had major diarrhea... it was really awfull.  mom, you can delete this from the email if you´d like...  but really, it was the worst.  We also had district mtg tuesday morning and had to ask the elders to meet us in our capilla instead of theirs and when they asked why we just said ¨girl problems¨ (that excuse works with everything.  especially elders because they are too embarrassed and socially awkward to ask more).  

On wednesday I woke up and jump roped and got on board with my 2014 resolution to actually exercise this year... even if it means I´m the annoying jump roper in the kitchen while everyone else is trying to get a few extra minutes of sleep or write family letters... i also did 10 push ups and then thought I was about ready to die.  Elder Manubay (zone leader) always talks about the P90X work outs he does from memoria and thanks to dad I think I have abb ripper X memorized... haha so guys just wait for the day I come home with killer abbs.  new years resolution 2014! 

On wednesday we also gave cuca, menos activa, a mini boche.  ¨I have the gripe every sunday¨ and ¨I have to start cooking lunch for myself at 11¨ just aren´t legit excuses... especially to the Lord.  

We went to Christofer, a menos activo we just found.  He´s only 14 and adorable.  We shared with him and then taught his mom how to make pancakes!  She was so stoked and they all shrieked everytime the pancake flipped over in one piece (which was everytime).  Then I was casually looking at all my split ends and she shoved me into her salon chair and cut my hair!!  I cried a lot inside.  she cut off like 3 inches.  sad day.  but maybe it was needed...

We found out hermana Anna Mesa was in the hospital all day so we rushed to their house and helped her make her family dinner and comfort her.  She´s stressed and tired and so on Thursday morning we went straight to their house to help her clean and cook and let her sleep and relax while we helped her with stuff.  I de-shelled like a million green beans for her in the morning and spent like an hour doing so... and then she put them in a bag and gifted them all to us!  I was so embarrassed because I spent so DANG LONG de-shelling beans for myself...

We gave Victor a fecha... he accepted and was just super chill about it all!  but the rules here about baptisms are set high... like he has to go to church 12 times in order to get baptized... so i´ll let you know how the three month journey goes!

Well... i feel like this is the normal thing, but I have like zero time.  these internet centers are always super crowded and I was the last to get on... but it´s been a good week!  thanks everyone for the support and prayers!  I love you all and hope everything in going well!  

love hermana huish 

2014 !?!?!?!?

hmmm.... ok... where to begin??

Last monday night we went to alejandra´s house and she gave us dominican hair do´s... and then they practiced american fishtails on mine and my comps hair.  (speaking of dominican girl hair... have izze and emmy tried out their fancy hair beads yet??) 

On tuesday we had a district mtg in the elders rich area.  it still amazes me... i´m going to take pictures next time to show you because it´s really insane.  the zone leaders are in our district so they brought our packages and i got grandma and grandpas package!!  filled with baking mixes, candy bars, and philipino mangos (which was well suited seeing that my comp is philipina) thanks guys!!

There aren´t any different traditions here for the new years that I saw... other than getting really drunk new years eve and all the next week.  (which was frustrating seeing that I somehow missed a lot of alcohol bottles and there weren´t in the ocean)

once again... i can´t believe it is 2014!!!!!!!!!!  such a great time to make new years resolutions and para mehorar and stuff.  i love making resolutions and since i´ll be a missionary for just about one more year (and like 20 days more) it was cool to make goals super focused on the work.  My comp, hna. caguimbal, and i made some very specific goals for the new year and our companionship that we´re really excited about.  We are determined to be exactly obedient and work our very hardest.  We have different goals to help us with the slowness of the area right now and just this week we have seen huge improvements and we found 3 new investogators who really seem legit!  Our prayers for the past month have seemed to all get answered this week.  it was incredible.  The Lord really works miracles, but tries our faith first. 

anyways, one of our new investogators is barbara... she sounds like a gringo because she actually can´t roll her R´s (which makes me feel a lot better about not being able to...)  but she´s the cutest lady and we went back to share with her on thursday and her neighbor was there and she was just kinda grumpy and not pleased to see us.  We were talking about the purpose of life and since barbara is a mother and grandmother to over 30 people and her neighbor, ivelisse, had her three children around her, i felt impressed to read alma 56:47-48 with them about the 2 thousand soldados and oh my gosh ivelisse was loving it.  she chatted about the mothers and their faith and what not for about ten minutes and asked about this new book was (el libro de mormon) and it was awesome.  the only bummer is ivelisse is evangelica... (errrrrrr) but we are excited to see where things go!!

hermana caguimbal and I have the same time in the mission... so we celebrated our 5 month cumplemes together on new years day!!  (can´t believe it... really can´t.)  anyways, we came home from working and the other hermana´s surprized us with cake!  fiesta!

We´re working hard with Eduardo.  His fecha is 25 de enero.  Have I mentioned that he is my absolute favorite??  he is about 45 and his wife is catholic.  But boy is eduardo the best.  he is the most monotone-tranquilo person i have ever met.  the ultimate example of chill.  he is also so awkwardly hilarious.  He petted my hair on sunday and when presidente laughed and said i´m a missionary eduardo said ¨ sorry i have just doubted this whole time that it was real¨ haha

we helped out familia soler with their panaderia on saturday night.  it was super cool. 

i recieved hérmana hillary owen´s letter (FROM JULY 22!!!!)  today from the elders!!  talk about casi 6 months late!!  but it was amazing and she is incredible and wrote the cutest letter that made me laugh and cry and she said exactly what i needed to hear.  hill, love ya.

hna. santana´s papi sent her fancy sausage from spain.. SCORE.  the other hermana´s don´t like it cause it´s raw meet or whatever... so us two eat fancy dinners of bread and sausage and talk about traveling all over europe. 

On sunday we visited hno. Marco in his house and right when we got there he went and grabbed a small bottle of mouth wash, handed it to me, and walked away....   then he told us the secret to love.. is to find someone who eats, showers, and wears nice church clothes.  (this is true)

Sunday night we went to flia Mesa to tell them we were gonna pass by for a noche de hogar today.  We ended up staying late telling stories and laughing so hard with them which was aMAZING because we haven´t seen them smile or laugh since i´ve been here.  We felt god´s love for them so strong and we know we need to really help them find happiness again!

well... anyways, there´s so much more to say with so little time!  maybe next week! 

les amo!!!

hermana huish