Nicole, Mérida, & the Plan

What does one write after their last full week as a missionary....I´m not entirely sure. I could tell you about my week:

-the Bishop bought us food every night in a last ditch effort to send me home fat

-for the anniversary of the Relief Society there was a stake activity and every ward danced a jarana. #IloveMexico #lajaranaeselbailedeYucatan 

Relief Society Anniversary: Barrio Quintero

Con mi terno.....just kidding it´s not mine.

-Nicole got baptized. And it was beautiful. I love that family that is on its way to being eternal. 

-I hit 18 months.

-The Bishop made me speak in sacrament meeting. #Ididn´tcry #maybeIwantedto

-Flaviano and his sister Lucía came to church again. #he´sgonesixtimes

-We taught a man named Alfredo. He came to church. And now he wants to get baptized as soon as possible. 

Zona Brisas

It was a great week. And it made me realize exactly how much I am going to miss this beautiful, hard, crazy, amazing experience that is the mission. I learned so much and I feel like I have lived a thousand lives beneath the Mérida sun. I can´t even begin to explain it all, but this is what I know:

I know that God lives. I know He is our Father, and that He loves us and knows us personally. I know that He has a plan for each one of us, and that His plan is perfect. I know that He can do more with us than we could ever do on our own. I know that Christ is our Savior and that His Atonement can rescue us from both the obscurity of sin and the darkness of trials and sorrows. I know that this Church is true. I know it was restored through a prophet of God, and that we have the fulness of the gospel of Christ. I know that I needed to come to Mérida to find the God´s plan for me, and I´m just begining to understand it. And I plan on searching out this plan for the rest of my life. 

I know these things to be true. I don´t know everything but I know enough. 

¡Vale la pena!

Hermana Wilson

Obispo Parra

Our daughter

My super cute daughters.

White, Temples, & Mexico

¡Que tal!

This week was one of those crazy, not normal weeks again (I feel like I say that a lot-anyone besides me feel like crazy has become the new normal??). And it was so crazy that I´m going to bullet-point this letter:

-We had 8 Principios which is like a multi-zone training meeting every morning for like a week. The best part was getting up at 4 in the morning to go make pancakes for everyone with the zone leaders. Just so you all know, elders eat a lot of pancakes. And don´t have all that great hygiene skills if they aren´t reminded. 

Foto Zona Campeche

-President showed up and anounced that we were going to have BAPTISMS (that´s literally what we said "vamos a bautizar gente"), and that meant we spent the rest of the week tracking down every possibility and getting them interviewed. Then we had a giant Tarde Blanca and a lot of people got baptized. One of our part member family investigators named America got baptized. She´s a doll. (Also check out the gringas baptizing America, my comp even wore red, white, and blue...jajaja) It was so cool to see all kinds of people from all walks of life decide to follow Christ and get baptized. We literally had people there from 9 to 95. It was pretty awesome. 

Baptism of America!...which in real English would be America´s Baptism...

-We had divisions and I was staying in the area with Hna Vega...but my comp took the phone with her...and we figured it out when President took us home...that was embarrassing. But on the plus side, he then decided to take us out for ice cream. He´s a great person. 

-My companion got a zit on her eye...(I think it´s actually called a stye??) and I totally did surgery on it and a bunch of green gunk came out. She also lost her voice which makes singing hymns a lot more entertaining. 

-I discovered that I could have a future in hege trimming. Although I recommend wearing long sleeves because plants make you itchy. 

-The Mexico City Temple got rededicated and it was just amazing. We got to go to the cultural celebration Saturday night (I officially have decided I want to be Mexican), and then the dedication Sunday (which took the place of normal services. (Oh and Mexico has its independence day tomorrow woo for Mexico!!)

-And then we got to go the Temple today!!!! (Hence why I´m writing on a Tuesday...) And it was as great as ever. I LOVE LOVE LOVE the temple. 

Misión México Mérida

Reunited and it feels so good! 

She bought me a little baby cake...and a candle... I love her

I am loving life. The mission is the hardest thing I have ever done, but also the best, I see miracles and I am so so so happy. What else could I ask for?? 

¡Vale la pena!

Hermana Wilson

Mi mama Campechana Hna Fatima

We´re basically pirates...

Transfer 5: Chuburná 2

Best Things...

-I hit 6 months! And still feel like a mission baby. haha. 

-Having people argue with you about Joseph Smith, teaching the First Vision, and then they don´t say anything else. :) #winning

Worst Things...

-Sweat. Waking up sweating. Going to sleep sweating. Sweat in your eyeballs. Sweat. 

-I got bit by a dog! Luckily it wasn´t bad. 

-Shopping as a missionary. Why is it so much work to find modest, cheap, shirts that don´t boil me alive???

Things that are working for me...
-Slides. All of my comps have flip-flops for shower shoes and they all break really fast.

I wish I would have known...

-Find images/demonstrations/visuals/teaching tools stuff. Sometimes people really just don´t get a concept so I have to explain 5 billion ways. And visual things always work out better. 

Food...

-I finally tried a marquesita which is kind of like a crepe only they put this cheese in it and deep fry it. :) 

-I ate a fish eye!! 

Fun Facts about Mexico...

-We went shopping, and there are a surprising number of modest swimsuits here. So I would say if you´re coming here on vacation buy a suit here...Not that that helps much for missionaries...hah.

Weather...

-It´s hot. And it´s still only spring.

-It´s a lot more humid at night. So even though it´s not as hot I still feel sticky.

Mayan...

-p´o a nook: laundry (I think.....) 

-papa: comida

-zules: de los caballeros

(papazules is a type of food) 

-ab: ser (to be)

-may: the correct way to live; justice, integrity, and peace

I learned...

-So very many things...haha. 

-How to love an hija

.How to avoid the drunks

-How to really be patient.

Cambios, Heuvos, & Intrepidez

Querida Familia,

Oh what a week. It was Semana 6! I don´t know how the time is passing so quickly, but it is flying. A lot of things happened this week actually:

We had an Easter Egg Hunt! And it was the bomb!! haha The members were all a little skeptical at first, but they came around pretty quick. I knew they liked it when they came back with like 20 eggs after we told them they could only find 5 apiece. Now I´m just hoping that they found all of them because we could´t count them after because everyone started to eat them... haha Also, if anyone can tell me why the Easter Bunny brings eggs that would be great because I could not explain it to the people here...haha

For the record, it is a lot of work to cook 120 eggs. Also I recommend spoons and not fingers to remove eggs from nearly boiling water. #don´taskmehowIlearnedthat

After, the ward had a little farewell for H´ Ludlam. She finished her mission this transfer and is headed home this week!!! 

I´m an orphan.

Haha but seriously, I just got to Mexico like 2 days ago and she had like 6 months left, and now she´s leaving. It´s madness I tell you.

Family Photo

Mi hija

We had a stake activity with the youth this week (it was a like a day-in-the-mission thing) and so at one point we had 7 youth in a lesson with us. Haha poderoso. You can bet Carlos learned his commandments from them. :) 

Cambios were today! Or as I like to call them, stay-the-sames. Yep, I will be in Chuburná 2 for at least one more cambio. Haha who would have thought I would be in the same area for Christmas and Mother´s day? haha My companion is Hermana Torres. She´s from Guatemala, has 10 months in the mission, is one of the smallest people I know, and we´re going to be the sister training leaders for our zone.....

Yo & Hermana Torres. Told you she was tiny.

...I don´t know what Presidente and los asistentes were thinking either....

Anyway, same area but new adventure. I´m excited to get to work with the other hermanas and continue learning and growing as a missionary. It´s pretty funny that I´m staying because the whole ward basically sent me off yesterday…

Still here. :)

And I am really excited to be here. There´s a lot of potencial in this area. We just have to find it. :) 

Presidente has talked a lot lately about being BOLD. That we have an important message and so even if people are sleeping or eating that we need to insist on teaching them. And as awkward and uncomfortable as it can be it is SO true. I don´t want to show up at judgment day and have a group of people ask me why I didn´t insist on telling them the truth. And so that´s what I´ve decided to do. 

Hna Delfina, 70 years old and the best missionary out there

I can´t make up their minds for them, but I can tell them the truth. And the best part is, something miraculous happens when we do that. They may not accept what we´re telling them, but they can feel that it is true. And they can´t argue with it. 

I know that this gospel is the truth. I know it´s the only way to find true happiness and direction in this life. I know my Savior lives and that this is His Church. 

I love you all. I love being a missionary. 

¡Vale la pena!

Hermana Wilson

Lace suburn...I promise I used sunscreen.

Hermana Castro accidentally hit me with a branch...that had spines...

Canas, Semana Santa, & Conferencia

Buenas Tardes,

So it was Semana Santa, or Holy Week here in Merida. Fun fact, the members here don´t really celebrate Easter because the catholics REALLY celebrate Easter. Which led to all kinds of adventures this week, the highlights:

-Hermana Castro has found like 3 gray hairs. I told her it´s from the stress of having a daughter. Hah. But really, her training ends this week and I´m kinda sad about it. Also I´m kind of sad about having gray hairs. 

-Tracking down a reference in the more sketchy part of our area Friday afternoon, we passed some drunks in the street, didn´t feel comfortable and turned down a side street to get away from the them...and ran into another group of drunks who proceeded to call after us and started to follow us. So we turned down another street to get away (Hna Castro saying "Corra, corra" every five seconds), and ran into the Via cruces, which is where they reenact the processional to Calvary, so we turned down another street to avoid that, and ended up all the way at the limit of our area.

Lesson learned: don´t go to Felipe Carrillo Puerto on a holiday. 

-Friday was interesting because all of our investigators were either drunk or in Church. hah. It makes life difficult for a missionary. 

-But can we talk about CONFERENCE! And how much I loved it?! And how excited I am about the gospel. How amazing it is that we have prophets in our day to lead us in this troubled world. I hope you all had the chance to listen because it was the BOMB. Of course, that may have been because all the talks were written for me, but I´m sure you can learn something too. 

-Sunday in between sessions we ate with the Araujo Family (who we baptized in January), and it made me incredibly happy to sit at their table outside their house and just enjoy this family on its way to eternity. It was incredible to see the traces of their former life in their home, but here them talk about Priesthood and prophets and conference and how much the gospel has changed their lives. It doesn´t get much better than that. 

Hna Chamorro y Yo

Also they fed us fish that was amazing, Oh, and I totes ate its eyeball.

Hermano Dionisio frying us some fish. :) 

Me with my fish. It was like the best thing ever.

Fish. It was delicious. I ate that whole thing.

Because that´s what they do in the Yucatan. :) 

Happy Easter everyone. I am so very very grateful for the sacrifice of my Savior so that I can live with my Heavenly Father in an eternal family someday. And never, ever forget that He lives. Even now. And that if we look for Him, He can be PRESENT and ACTIVE in our lives.

I love you all. I love my Savior. And I love the children of God I get to serve here in Chuburná. 

¡Vale la pena!

Hermana Wilson

Familia Araujo & Las Misioneras

Easter, Women, & A Funeral

¡Buenas días!

It was a really good week. :) Here are the highlights:

Carlos (who we´ve been teaching for a few weeks) finally accepted a baptismal date!!!! We´ve been asking and asking for weeks but it took him....a long time....to finally understand what the Book of Mormon is. I may have used fairy tales, drawings, the dictionary, and every scripture I could think of to explain it to him. And then one day we showed him the video of Gracias a que Èl Vive and after he was just like, "Yeah I´ll get baptized." Like it was no big deal. Hahaha It just shows that it doesn´t matter what we say, it´s what they feel.

And when you know you know, you know?

We went to contact a reference we got from a investigator.....and showed up at her funeral. Woops. #Badtiming On the plus side, I bet she´s listening to missionaries in the spirit world right now.

Also, can we talk about the Women´s Meeting. I LOVED it. Even though I watched it in Spanish (everyone should be able to talk in their own language. I don´t like voice-overs for anything). I loved how Pres. Eyring talked about how WE can be the ones who help make other people´s burdens light. That´s what we promise when we get baptized, to lift others up. I realized that´s really what I´m doing here: lifting others. Whether that means inviting them to get baptized, talking them into coming to church for the first time in weeks, listening to a member unload her burdens to us, singing a hymn in the calle, or just saying "Buenas tardes" with a smile to someone in the street. I am here to lift and build.

And I´m determined to leave this area better than I found it. :)

As we approach Easter, I´ve thought a lot about the Atonement, and what Christ suffered, but also those four words that mean so much to me:

He is not here.

He was not in the tomb. He rose the third day. He lives today. He was not in the tomb, but He can be present EVERY SINGLE DAY of our lives. So many people here remember Christ on the cross, and that´s important, but I am here to testify of a Living Christ.
  D&C 68:6 Wherefore, be of good cheer, and do not fear, for I the Lord am with you, and will stand by you; and ye shall bear  record of me, even Jesus Christ, that I am the Son of the living God, that I was, that I am, and that I am to come.

He lives. And because He lives we will too. And I just want the whole world to know. I love being a missionary. I love you all!!!!

¡Vale la pena!

Hermana Wilson

Dedication, Losses, & Little Victories

My Peeps,

Well, this week was an interesting one. We had some really great things happen, and some really not so great things. A *brief* summary:

-Hna Oaxaca (hija de Hna Ludlam) went home, it was really sudden, and really sad. It made me think a lot about why I´m here in the mission...more on that later. But that meant we lost a day of work in our area because we were in a trio for a day waiting for a new comp for Hna Ludlam. On the plus side I got to see a little bit more of the world....or at least Chuburná. hah

-Our one progressing investigator, that was about to get baptized, that we've been teaching for 2 months....MOVED! And didn't tell us, he just kind of mentioned it in passing one day during the lesson. He had been living with his mom and then just kept showing up for the lessons there. On the plus side, someone is going to get a reference of gold. (golden reference?? How does that work in English??)

-Speaking of golden references, one of our investigators got baptized Saturday!
He´s technically not ours, but we taught him all the lessons since he didn´t have time in his house, but he works for some members so we taught him there. His name is Eduardo and the whole time we taught him we were PRAYING that his family could accept the gospel too because his wife was super opposed to it, and she´s finally taking the lessons too! His whole family!!!! Heavenly Father answers prayers people. And it was super sad because we couldn't go because it was like an hour from our area, but incredibly happy all at the same time.

Priorities when teaching english classes

-One of our investigators who we´ve been teaching for a while finally accepted a baptismal date!!!!! We taught her about the yoke of Christ (Matt 11:28-30) and she was just like...okay. Like no big deal, while I was happy dancing on the inside. I love when people make the right decision.

-It´s getting hotter. I carry a towel and deodorant all the time because I literally sweat buckets just walking down the street. Woop woop. #sooooattractive

-Also we went to a training about self-sufficiency and had a little mini-reunion with Hna Rhondeau. Hah. We found out we both sneak-eat the food our hijas don´t want. We´re good moms. haha (It helps that the thing Hna Castro doesn't like is flan.)

-I went to the temple today. Which like made my life. I got to finish the work for one of Dad´s family names and that also made my life. Can we talk about how perfect Heavenly Father´s plan is???

Templo at 4 in the morning

This week I officially hit 6 months and I've thought a lot about why I´m out here, and I realized (AGAIN) that it´s sooo not about me. There are people here who I can help, and we´re changing peoples´ lives. As much as I miss home, and my people, and English :)  my whole self just rejects the thought of leaving here. There is so much to be done and so little time. So very many people who need the gospel. And I have it.

6 months to the day

I love you all! I love the gospel. I love being a missionary!!!

¡Vale la pena!

Hermana Wilson

We are easily entertained!

Marquesitas

English manual they give to the Latinos...I want to know who gave this to our investigators.haha

Black Sheep, Mermaids, & Dogs (Still Hate Them)

FAMILY & FRIENDS! People I love!!!

This was a good week. It was a little slower teaching wise, but we´ve been finding new people almost every day and have a couple of good progressing investigators. We´re going to have baptisms this transfer!!!! (Fingers crossed. You all should pray for that. Pretty please.)

It was ward conference this week and it was like the best day. Somehow, last minute (like 20 minutes before) I got talked into singing a solo during the prelude, and Hna Castro & I got sucked into the choir. I was totes the black sheep, everyone wore white shirts and I had a black one.... #didnotknowtherewasadresscode And we had 122 people in the capilla, including 21 less active members!!!!!!!!! Hno Arturo (less active) finally cut his hair and came to church! (This man and his hair. It´s been a project for at least 3 months now.) And we had 2 invesigators come all by themselves, and everyone was just happy, and it was just a beautiful day in the capilla.

Half the ward was in the ward choir.

In other news: 

I got bit by a dog this week. But I was walking fast so it couldn´t actually bite me, just kind of pinched the back of my leg. (No reason to worry Mom.) For the record, I did nothing to provoke it. #totesstillhatethedogshere 

Dog Bite. Not bad. :) 

This was the week of weird older men hitting on me. One gentlemen asked what color my eyes are then proceeded to recite a poem he wrote (I didn´t understand everything and neither did Hna Castro, but he said something about green eyes and mermaids), and told me I was too pretty to be walking around in the calle all day. The next day our investigator told us that if he was younger he would wait for us after the mission.... -_-.... yeah. Hermana Castro thinks it´s hilarious.

I do not. 

It rains almost every day. But I bring my rainjacket everywhere now. I´m learing. :) And when it doesn´t rain it is HOT. But it´s still winter.....wish me luck.

Casa de la familia Molina

Hermana Castro says I sound less like a gringa right before bed when I´m exhausted. I don´t know how that works either. 

We had the best lesson with a less active gentleman. He stopped going to church like 35 years ago...or more. But when we gave him a Book of Mormon he just kind of lit up and hugged it to his chest and it made me incredibly happy. I love the Book of Mormon and I love it when other people love it too. 

I love this work. I love the gospel. I love being able to help people every single day. I love being a missionary.

And I love you all.

¡Vale la pena!

Hermana Wilson

PS Be on the lookout for a cool new iniciative. #GraciasaqueÉlvive #BecauseofHim

 

   

guanavana