Loving Every Minute of it :) !

March 1, 2010

Bon Tarde to all!

I hope that you all had an amazing week this week and that you are all nice and safe and sound! It is crazy to think that February has already come and gone. Mckay told me that he is already done with mid-terms. I can't believe it! Time is just flying by but I am loving every minute of it and i just cant get enough. I know that by the end of this experience I will not want it to end so it's fun to try and suck out as much as you can in every single minute of every single day.

Curacao is great! I hope that my email last week didn't sound too negative. I love Curacao. It's almost exactly like Aruba but if you look at the sizes there is a lot of a difference. I know that it doesn't really look like it but believe me, Curacao is HUGE compared to Aruba.

The people here a great. They don't have a lot of Spanish speakers here and so we speak a ton more Papiamentu, and I have been trying really hard to get a hold of Dutch. I am sorry but those Dutch missionaries are truly blessed. That is one tough language. BUT Spanish is hard too :)

Elder Jacobson and I are getting along great. He hit his 20-month mark this week and he is making sure that he doesn't miss a minute of his mission. He's not trunky at all and I love it. We worked really hard this week and the Lord blessed us with some great success! We have a lot of solid investigators and most of them are families which I am pumped about. So hopefully we will get to be blessed with more success.

First off I will give you un update on Maedeline and Clifton. Like I said last week, we talked about faith and how we need to have faith in the Lord and His blessings that he has promised for us. They told us that it was going to take a while for them to get the papers in order to get married but that they would set the baptismal date and do all that they could to make sure that the Lord would be able to bless them with the opportunity to get married. This week we passed by and Maedeline said that her mom had talked to a friend that was a judge and he said that he would be able to help them a lot. He said he could get the papers through in about 15 days, something that they were thinking would take 4 months. I was shocked but in the end not really. I knew that God would bless us with a miracle. The only thing left for them to do is to call and get the information they need and in the next few weeks they should be married and baptized as members of Christ's true church. The date is still the 27th! I am so excited you have no idea!

We taught them the word of wisdom this week and they said that they would have a little problem with tea and coffee, but they bore their testimonies about the truth of the message to us and they knew that this is what God wants them to do. The next day they had kept the stuff away and up to this point they are doing just great! This family is just amazing and it's cool. I feel like even though I haven't been here for that long, I have known them forever and that there is a purpose for me being here to interact with them. I love it!

We also taught a family from Haiti this week! I love this family they are so awesome! Their name is really weird though and so it's hard to remember. I feel really bad about it but, oh well. It doesn't change the amazing experiences that we've had with them. We taught them with Eric the one-legged soccer player (who rocks) and the lesson was just amazing. They loved the doctrine of the restoration of the true Gospel of Jesus Christ and the restoration of the priesthood power of God. When we invited her to read Moroni's promise at the end she finished it, looked down at the book pointed and said, "this is a good book. This is a book from God!"

Me and my companion were absolutely shocked but we were eating it up! Loving every minute of it! We passed by last night to check up on them and they told us that they had read the Book of Mormon and they absolutely loved it. They handed us the book and told us what other parts can we read! My companion and I gladly gave them another reading assignment and promised that the next time we came by we would bring a Book of Mormon translated into French. Jenny and Caitlyn, I wish that I could borrow some of your French skills (hahah)! It would be nice to be able to talk to them in French but luckily they speak Papimentu too. So it's all good. This family is golden and I love it! We are going to set up a baptismal date with them this week for the end of March and they should accept it with pleasure! I LOVE IT!

I love the mission! There are so many ups and downs that you just can't get enough of it. The past week was incredible and we had so many cool stories that I just don't have time to write them all. I don't have a lot of time so I will tell you one more and then I have to go! I am sorry but just know that things are going well. Curacao rocks and the Lord is pouring out His blessings upon us here!

Because of the change in the missions (these islands going over to the Dominican Republic mission) we are focusing a lot of the work on helping less active and inactive members. This week we were looking over the list and my companion and I felt that we should go see this lady named Modesta Charles. We pulled up to the house and when she came out I was a little surprised to see this old lady. But nonetheless we sat down to visit with her. She said that she had kept having a feeling in her heart that she needed to go to church. There was somewhere that she needed to go but that she didn't know where to go. She said that the day before she had finally prayed and asked God to show her what she was missing. The very next day we showed up knocking on her door inviting back to the church. She told us that she had forgotten the name of the church but now that we had come by she remembered exactly what she was missing. I have no doubt that is where God wanted us to be, visiting Hermana Charles. She's such an amazing lady who has been through so much. She lost her family in a fire, along with a lot of other things, and yet she still has the faith to follow God and Jesus Christ because she knows they exist and that they love her. I am so thankful for this opportunity that I have to be here and to see these miracles happen every single day. We are so blessed to be a part of this gospel and I hope you realize just how much we truly are blessed by the Lord.

Well that's about all the time I have to write this week. The members here are great. They love the Lord and want the best for the mission but as always there is work yet to be done. We ate dinner at the ward mission leader's house this week and he served us mashed potatoes that were absolutely divine. They tasted exactly like mom and Grandmas. It's a taste that I've missed for some time, but luckily it comes around every now and then.

We also had lunch today with a bunch of military guys who are stationed here in Curacao. They come to the branch every Sunday and we translate for them so today they invited us out to lunch! It was cool! If any of you see anything on Facebook or hear anything about that, just tell em thanks for me. (hahah)

Mom don't worry I would love it if you wrote on my Facebook wall! :)

I love you guys so much and I hope you know how much your support means to me! Thanks for all you do and know that I am praying for you this week!

Have a great week! Go Cougars!