Mexico 1/27/14

Well. What a week. To say the least. When I arrived at the Tampico airport, I smiled at one of the workers. In his best English he tld me I had a beautiful smile. :D After our whole day of flying, we ate tacos at the mission home and then went to bed. That was nice. The next day we had a really long meeting and that night we got our companions! Hermana H. is my companion. She is super nice and speaks a little bit of English. What a blessing. I pretty much understand nothing which makes things quite lonely and difficult.


Um, on Thursday, for lunch we went to a members house and I wasn´t feeling very well. She had made this pasta/fish/mayo thing and with every bite I felt like vomiting. My gag reflex was going off like crazy. So, HH had me call Hermana J. I described my symptoms and she said I have a parasite. Yup. Less than a week in and I already got one. Lucky me. So, thats been fun.


Feeling super awful and not knowing the language... The next day Hermana J. called again to seee if i was feeling any better. I wasn´t, so we went to the doctor. Most of the time spent there was us teaching a lesson and giving him a Book of Mormon. God works in mysterious ways my friends.


Sunday we had church. In relief society, they had us introduce ourselves. After I finished talking, the Relief Society president told everyone that I was sick and could speak much Spanish. I was so embarrassed I wanted to run out of the room crying, but I didn't. I have cried way too much the past week. I don't like it.


We have 3 new investigators! They are all great. I love doing the Lords work even though I can´t say a whole bunch. The church is true!

Also, our apartment is tiny but cute. The bathroom is super small and the sink is IN the shower. So, that's exciting. And I was so excited so say I haven't seen any spiders, and then this morning happened. A GIANT SPIDER was in the corner. It was probably about the size of my palm. I haven´t screamed like I did in a very long time.


Her new address:



mision mexico tampico
ave. ejercito mexicano 501 local 17
colonia lomas del gallo
madero, tamaulipas 89470


***She also added "Pray for the gift of tongues for me" on the end of an email to me. I can't even imagine being in her situation right now!

Also, by way of information, there were 6 sisters serving in Tampico. With the batch of sisters coming down with Mary, there are now 12. So they each got a native Spanish speaking companion. In March, they are supposed to have 32 sisters total. Mary probably is feeling the pressure to be "broken in" by then because it's almost guaranteed she'll be training by then!

1/20/14

She's on her way!! We got a wake up call from Hermana Stanger this morning from the airport! Thanks to technology, I was able to call my dad and sister at the same time. Family chat! We even got Bubby out of bed to talk to his Aunt Mary!

Apparently she woke up at 1:30 this morning to get ready, packed, apartment cleaned, etc to head to the airport. By 8am, she was already in Denver. She had a leg to Houston and then to Mexico!

There was a little catching up, but for the most part, we just enjoyed the time chatting. We got a whole hour in with her! I didn't want to hang up!

She seems a little nervous not being fluent in Spanish yet, but can you blame her?! Hehe. But she kept trying to sneak some Spanish in there... but since she woke all of us lazies up (and we don't speak the language), it sounded like mumbo-jumob.

1/14/14

Hermana Stanger's last letter from the MTC! She leaves to Mexico on Monday!!


Hello! Thursday we got to teach a REAL investigator. IT.WAS.AMAZING. It started off a little rough because it was in Spanish, obviously. The poor girl couldn't explain to us very well because we weren't understanding. So, she decided to just talk in English. Then our lesson started going well. We were about to wrap it up when I had this major prompting to talk about mom and my testimony of the plan of salvation. I cried, she cried, the spirit was soooo strong. (Her dad is really close to dying we found out) We then asked if she would pray. She didn't know how and asked if one of the other sisters would do it. While she was praying, I again was prompted to ask her to pray after we ended. She said she would!! It was one of thee most heartfelt prayers I have every heard. It was absoultely amazing. She was crying and so were we. It was amazing. I didnt want to leave.

The next day I flew to Las Vegas to get my visa! I got up at 3:30 am. A very unholy time of the day if you ask me. We then rode out to the airport and sat, forever waiting for our plane to come at 8:30. Then we flew to Vegas! And then we went and listened to this really grumpy old man talk about random things for a few hours. My favorite quote of his, "Sometimes old people forget how to swallow, so they die." What a cheery man. :) Then we went to the Mexican Consulate. It took about 20 minutes to get our visa. So, around 1:30 or so, we were taken back to the airport. Our flight was scheduled for 6:30 Vegas time. 5 hours in the Vegas airport with 10 other missionaries.It was a party. we made it back to the Mtc around10:30. I was soooooo tired. But it was actually a pretty fun trip.

My birthday was pretty much a normal day. I got sang to twice. That was fun. I got 1 birthday card ON my birthday and it was full of my favorite magical object; GLITTER!!! :D It was a good day. :)

This is the true church. I am so grateful for the gospel in my life. I love the Lord and I love doing his work! Love you all!!

1/7/14

Hola! P-day has been changed to Tuesday because they changed the schedule around. Its pretty exciting and so far I like the new set up. God loves me. The temple has been closed the whole time we have been here, and it finally opened this week. Since I'm going to Vegas Friday, I was really sad to be missing the temple, BUT! Now p-day is Tuesday, SOOOOO I GOT TO GO TO THE TEMPLE!!!! It was just what I needed this morning. It was so wonderful.

Sunday was an amazing Sunday. Probably one of my favorites ever. We had a 2 hour mission conference. There were some amazing talks about faith. It was wonderful. Then we had sacrament meeting. Well, normally the testimonies are done in Spanish, but none of us had been there for a testimony meeting before, and the branch counselor bore his in English, so we all followed suit. It was one of the absolute best testimony meetings ever. The spirit was so strong you could pretty much literally touch it. I even got up and wasn't the slightest scared. A miracle if you ask me. You know how you try and plan what you're going to say before hand, and then you get up there and you go blank? Yup, that happened like usual, but, words just started coming out of my mouth. The spirit is amazing. It is the best teacher and public speaker. ;) Then we had our usual sunday night devotional. It was good. It was the Mt. Timpanogus temple Pres. and Matron. They were cool. After they have sunday night movies. We didn't end up going to the one we planned to go to. We ended up going to Legacy. That movie brings me to tears every time. To think of all the things the pioneers went through. They had so many trials all the time, but they also got to witness so many miracles. It reminds me that I can do anything with Gods help and I will see miracles. It was a spiritual feast that day. Dinner was a feast too, chicken cordon blu.... haha anyways...

Life is great. I love this gospel and the Lord. When we have faith in him, we can do anything. He is so willing to give us all that we need. He has blessed me so much and I know he's blessed you guys. I challenge you to think of some of the blessings he has given to you. Pray. God will answer you. It may not be the way you want, but he will. I know it. Remember he loves you and so do I.

1/3/14

I don't really know what to talk about from this week. Next Friday I am flying to Las Vegas for the day to get my visa. I had some awesome spiritual experiences. My spanish is moving along. Im getting along better with my companion. I extremely enjoy getting letters and packages from people. I am almost 20 and that is scary...... Um..... yeah