Is this real life???

SO I AM IN MEXICO!!! I am in a little city called Cuautla in the state of Morelos. Let me tell you first, i am suffering from some culture shock. i recognize that, however, i do love it. the people here are wonderful and as my mission president said, 'in mexico, bad people only hurt bad people.' so i haven't faced any dangerous situations as of right now.

the food is to die for. i have loved every second of that part. here, if you want water they will usually bring you a colorful drink.. its called agua fresca. its water with fruit in it. like watered down fresh fruit. it is AWESOME. so if you want regular water you have to ask for agua natural, or aqua simple. the people here are seriously awful at driving. it is scaring walking in the streets or trying to cross. i am pretty sure that there aren't traffic laws except for red means stop...unless you can make it haha. when we have to take a car somewhere we take these things called combis. they are like vans cleared out and made into like these little buses. crazy!! and people generally drive like motorcycles and dirt bikes and whatnot haha.

the people are so wonderful. the members are really helpful and my companion is the sweetest.she is a native. only spanish. that gets difficult sometimes but it makes me really world. every time you pass someone you always say hola, or buenas dias/tardes/noche to each and everyone. they are a humble people. even the nicest houses here are not like america but they love it. they are grateful for what they have. every time you greet someone (woman to woman) you shake their hand and then you go in for a hug and tough cheeks and make a kiss sound. it's precious. and the little girls actually kiss you on the cheek. i just die sometimes.

oh and the kids, they get crazy after like 730 in the night. they literally just run around the streets doing whatever they please. there's a little girl and a little boy that great us almost every night. their family is inactive so we are working on getting them back to church. but every night she runs up to us and says 'hermanas!!' and hugs us like crazy. its just wonderful.

ok. so there are dogs EVERYWHERE. AND I LOVE IT!!!! oh my gosh it just makes my days. but sometimes it makes me sad because some are really sick. one of the elders told me that the people think of them like rats unless they are worth a lot of money. its insane. and they love cats here. ew. pero. its ok. there are some pit bulls that are in the house across from us that hang out on the roof tops. this is pretty common. dogs on the roof tops. and they just bark at you because they can. most of the time the dogs are really scared of you though. 

we had a little girl get baptized on saturday. i am going to leave names out from here on out because this goes on my blog and i want the people to have confidentiality. but it was wonderful. shes 10 and is just the sweetest. we are working with her mom still, so we get to see them often. we had a lesson with a man who is about 50 years old yesterday. he is inactive and we are working with him to feel that he can be forgiven of his sins. he cried with us last night, it was so spiritual. he opened up and i just loved it.

the language is tough. i can speak about gospel related stuff with my companion and i can speak it to others but often times i cant understand them. i know that i do not conjugate correctly and am not perfect. i don't talk all that often during the lessons. i just bear my testimony. something that i have seen many times though throughout this last week though is that the people will understand me, when the Lord wants them to understand me. my companion calls me 'mi compañera poderosa' which means my powerful companion. it is just the sweetest. and it helps me feel like i am doing the work of the Lord. 

this is going to be a humbling experience. i have seen that a lot this week. but what i have realized in this short time is that its not about the place, its about the people. it helps to remember that. it is very different her, much like what you see on the tv. today, i did my own laundry. literally. with my own hands and a bar of soap. they are hanging to dry as we speak. they don't really have internet in homes here. i am in a little store that rents out computers. you sit on their computer and pay for the time on it. they have little stores EVERYWHERE called aborrotias, i think that's the way you spell it. they are like little convenient stores but on every street. there are usually at least 2 on a street but my street has four. they sell, chips, candy, ice cream, Coke. OH MY GOSH: i am again addicted to coke. they love it here. they sell 1.5 liters of coke and people walk around drinking those. haha it{s crazy.

on friday we got lost on our way to interview the little girl. we were with our district leader elders and a member, the ward mission leader. we were literally lost in the middle of nowhere. i am going to try and send you the video. its pretty funny.

this has been a crazy week, but family and friends, i know that i am supposed to be here. i am doing the work of the Lord so its not about me, its about them. i am grateful for this truly humbling experience. i love these people so much.

i love and miss you ALL so much. i am so grateful for your words of encouragement. they have helped me more than you know.

con todo mi corazon

hermanaut

PS shout out to mi hermana heather, it was your birthday last week. i hope you get my letter soon. and to miss whitney alger on her engagement! congrats!!

Safe and Sound

Safe and sound in the Mexico Cuernavaca Mission.  Assigned to serve in the Hihalgo  area in Cuautla.  

FOUR DAYS UNTIL MEXICOOOO!!!

Holy moly! I will be in Mexico this time next week! I am soooo excited but way nervous as well! yikes!! FIrst off, thank you EVERYONE for the love you guys have been sending me! I am so happy to hear from each and everyone of you. I am so sorry that I can't email you all back individually every week but I do the best that I can :)

Anyway, with my traveling stuff going on I have been emailing my family and whatnot to schedule calling times so this email will be rather short but I will try to add some pictures to make up for it :)

This week has been sad and awesome all at the same time. The last district, the ones that had the awesome district leaders left on monday for Argentina mostly, then California, Utah and one is left here because he was reassigned to the Dominican Republic. It was really sad for everyone. Pretty much all of us cried at one point or other, me especially. Of course. Cry Baby Naut. But I really did love each and everyone of them. Our district was really close with the zone leaders that were in that district so that was especially hard. They are amazing missionaries and humans ha. And We loved their guts. 

We had an awesome devotional on tuesday that really emphasized loving the people that we will be teaching and I just loved that. It really touched my heart. ALSO i saw a friend from back home who entered the MTC only a week ago, Elder Christian Fisk. He was one of my first mormon friends in reno the summer after i was baptized. it was so wonderful to see a familiar face!

Yesterday we had to say goodbye to one of our teachers, hermana pullen. She was our original investigator who turned out to be our teacher. It was really hard, she is just the sweetest and loved us so much. Then last night the funniest thing in class happened.

One of the hermanas in our district got orange and green fake mustaches in a package from hiome and we have been trying to decide for weeks what to do with them. we finally had an ingenious idea to kind of prank our other teacher, hermano chatterley (the one that I went to high school with).

Here's how it goes. so the hermanas wanted to pick a time when he was facing the board to write something down for us to put the mustaches on and then he would turn around after my companion asked "hermano chatterley, i mustache you a question." hahaha

so I totally forgot about it and he was turned around writing conjugations for saber and conocer on the board and we were supposed to be copying them down. So he is turned around and I am diligently doing the work. and all of a sudden the hermanas bombarded me and were trying to get my attention to put mine on. it caught me off guard so i quickly turned to where i hid the mustached but NAILED my elbow on the drawers behind my desk. so harmano chatterley looks at me and i just kind shrugged my shoulders and laughed and told him i was sorry. so at this point i lost it, everything was so funny so i was giggling and had tears rolling down my cheeks, naturally. so we for abour 5 minutes are trying to put these mustaches on. we finally get them on and hermana tidwell finally says the words about the mustache. so hermano chatterley turns and sees me and my companion with the orange and green mustaches on. but ONLY sees the two of us. his eyes searched our souls for understanding and the only thought running through my head "we are done for. he. is. PISSED." but thennnn he saw the orange of the other girls mustaches and 45 degrees by 45 degrees and saw everyone wearing them and his mind WAS BLOWN!!! and all I hear from his mouth is "THIS IS THE BEST THING THAT HAS EVER HAPPENED TO ME" and everyone was just laughingggg!!! and then hermana corriveau peed her pants hahaha so bask in that!

I was going to write more but we just had a random person walk into the computer lab AND we schedlued a meeting to talk with him tomorrow! so excited!!

anyway, love you all!!! thank you for everything!

con todo mi corazon

hermanaut

Buenas dias!!

Hola everyone! I am so happy to hear from all of you. I am just going to repeat what I did last week because it's so much faster and I have little to no time.  

saturday March 1st:

So we found out that the sister that had the fever actually has mono.... sooo her companion has joined with me and hermana tidwell and we are now a trio. We call ourselves the dream team because we work so well together haha! So hermana corriveau is our third companion. she is from illionois and is a 5' tall fireball! i just love her!! we had our first lesson as a trio  and it went so so well!! Our investigator has an awesome AH HAH moment and it was greatly spiritual! We had another lesson with luisa (the 60 year old woman who falls asleep in the middle of the lessons) and she started falling asleep again ha. that night the 8 of us sat in one of the classrooms with couches and just talked about gospel stuff and it was just great to hear all of their opinions from everything gospel to pretty ocntroversial topics and we were all so loving and accepting. none of us argued, just talked. it was wonderful! 

sunday march 2:

it was fast sunday and on these days at church we only go up and bear our testimonies in church. IN SPANISH. needless to say i did not want to get up because i was worried about my spanish. I sat and watched everyone else and listened to them and our zone leaders got up. both of them gave such powerful testimonies, they both cried and it was just amazing. i really really love both of them. they were great elders and will do so great in the field. they hold up to their calling so incredible well and are always here for the zone. finally some of the new elders stood up with the little spanish that they knew and bore their testimonies. it really humbled me and so i got up and bore mine. i lost it because there have been so many things on my mind that i just started crying and really just expressed how I know that God and Christ have a hand in my life so strong that I know that it will all be ok. one of the zone leaders, one who isnt known for much emotion was sitting behind me and i could hear him crying and so i started crying even harder. i had a meeting with them and expressed some of my concerns so they already understoof how i felt. my spanish came out just fine and i felt foolish for being so prideful and not allowing myself to be a tool for God by being proud. There is a distrcit leaving for Argentine on Monday that our district is so incredibly close with and we are so sad for them to be leaving. There are 5 elders and 4 hermanas leaving and i love each and every one of them. we have a great bond with them and i hope that we willall keep in good contact. We had a devotional that night and my companion got to get up on the bus and do the safety talk. it was so hilarious. i was in tears. She at one point said "please keep your arms, legs, and companions in the bus at all time." she is just a crack up. i am grateful for her everyday. at the devotional hermana lakin and i were practicing our british/australian accents and we convinced some elders we were from there. when they found out that we werent they were shocked. We watched a talk given by elder uchtdorf after the devotional and it talked a lot about following prompting from the spirit because you never know where they will lead you. it was really powerful. 

monday march 3:

We taugh luisa this morning again and it went ok. I dont remember too much of it. ha i has a headache so i felt bed because the other hermanas had to kind of pick up the slack. We got ANOTHER new investigator. and she is awesome. I wont give you any details really about her because i know this goes on my blog and she is a real person living her in provo. i will call her hna N though so you know who i am talking about. The other two people we are teaching, (migual and luisa) are or teachers pretending to be people that they taught on their missions which is why i dont mind talking about them on here. ANyway, the lady who over sees our lessons gave us great comments on everything. she said our spanish was excellent and that we really taught to the needs of hna N. it was so awesome! we have a gerat connection with her. i have been struggling with the tenses on spanisha nd memorizing them and knowing when to use them. i have been working on that in my language study and getting extra help from our teacher with it. (ps i am trying so hard not to write in spanish but it is hard!! we use it so much that it's becaoming secnd nature)

tueday march 4:

we had another lesson with hna N and we wrote our testimonies of the gospel on a note and gave them to her. our lesson was way way awesome! she came with questions and we answered as many as we could. we have such a great bond with her! After our lesson we were so happy and could feel the spirit with us for the rest of the day! We had another devotional this night from an old mission president from Brazil! He was so so funny and we went over the blessings promised in the scriptures to missionaries (not just full time missionaries like myself) and that our diligence and obedience isnt just for us but others. these things directly affect the blessing given to the people we teach, our families, and our friends. it makes me want to be that much of a better missionary for all of you. 

wednesday march 5: 

WE HAVE BEEN HERE FOR A WHOLE MONTH! WHOOOOAAAA yesteday was pretty normal. we had another lesson with hna N. it went ok but nothing compared to our lesson on tuesday. i had a headache again and wasnt as involved as i wanted to be. it is very frustrating. but they are getting ebtter. the woman who sees over these lessons expressed a little disappointment to us because as much as we taught the lesson it was less to her needs and i am disappointed in myself for not pressing though to help her anyway. ALSO! instead of gym today we got to be NEW MISSIONARY HOSTS!! You all know me well enough to know that i just basked in this glory. i got a name tag for it and everything. we got to help the new hermanas get to their rooms and then their classrooms and it was just so fun! we got 58 new missionaries yesterday, 6 hermanas for our zone. it was awesome! not as much as usual but thats ok! 

SON ONLY 11 DAYS UNTIL WE HEAD TO MEXICO!! I am so so excited! this time in two weeks i will be livivng and serving officially in the mexico cuernavaca mission! I will get to call my family on monday, march 17! Yay! I will email them about that stuff :) I cant belive it, this time has FLOWN by. i am seriously going to miss these girls so so so much!!! We get our travel plans later today or tomorrow! I am so excited and nervous! hemana tidwell and i have decided to lightly and slowly start packing this and next week so that it wont be as stressful as we have seen with other missionaries! 

anyway, i just love it here in the mtc. i have enjoyed it so much and have made some life long friends and forever memories. i cant wait to get to mexico!! ahhhh!! i miss you all and love oyu all so so so much!

con todo mi corazon

hermanaut!

Buenas Dias!!!!