Hola familia! Gracias por todos!

September 2, 2014

Hello family!!!

I am so sorry I do not have much time to write today. Since yesterday was a holiday, we only have 1 hour to email here! I am stressed out of my mind right now haha! First... THANK YOU SO MUCH for the birthday emails! I won't have time to respond to anyone but THANK YOU SO MUCH! It was awesome to read them all! :) Thank you so much for the videos of my birthday party you had for me. I cried. I love you so much. Thanks for being the best family ever. Seriously. Bawled. Thanks for being awesome and birthing me on August 31,1994 TWENTY years ago mom! Let's celebrate you because I was a tough one ;)

 

 

Happy 20th Birthday!

SO this week was GREAT! As you know I got transferred and I am serving in Montrose in the San Juan BRANCH!!! It is awesome and my comp is Sister Noakes! She is 20 also and is from Kennewick, Washington and went to BYU before her mission. We get along great!! She got switched from english to spanish about 6 months into her mission and her spanish is AWESOME for only speaking for 8 months. I love her so much already and we have so much fun :) The branch is great and it is so nice to get to use my spanish more often- especially with the members. 

 

Beautiful Ouray Perimeter

The area is awesome. We have a few awesome investigators and had a good week teaching. I am SO PUMPED for this area and am loving being a missionary! Our zone is AMAZING and our ZL's and DL are soooo great. They are so active in what we are doing and are such great leaders!!! I don't have much time to fill you in on it but I will at least tell you about my birthday so you have a little info about that.

 

On Saturday night we started a Zone-wide fast for our investigators. So I started off my birthday Sunday morning fasting. I have gotten a lot better at fasting since being on my mission BUT we all know how I do without food. Haha so that was a rad start to the birthday. BUT alas, we went to church and the branch is GREAT! It is small but good members that are really really kind. No one knew it was my birthday, of course, so before we left for church I made myself an ice cream cake to eat that night haha. We had dinner scheduled with the Sandoval's right after church. They are an awesome family from Mexico with like 10 kids haha. it's awesome. So we get there for dinner after proselyting for like an hour and the elders were there finishing eating before us. The family had already eaten with the elders so we sit down and start and the elders leave. They had really interesting looks on their faces. So we are sitting there, waiting for our food to be served to us (mexican's do everything for you- you have no choice haha) and their son Mormon (yes his name is mormon hahaha) starts gesturing at his face and tells us to suck on a lime (you suck on a lime before your meal if you are about to eat something super crazy to settle your stomach). So Hno. Sandoval hands us two little tacos with some sort of meat, a ton of cilantro and salsa verde and salt. We find out the tacos are called... TACOS DE LA CABEZA... which is meat from the... FACE OF A PIG. Sooooo we were starving obviously because we had fasted for the past 24 hours so I started to eat. It was so disgusting I thought I was going to barf. We had two on our plate and obviously you have to finish it so you aren't disrespectful and so they will feed you in the future. Basically it tastes like you are eating fat and cartilage, and there are bones and whatever else in there. So while you are trying to chew what is mostly cartilage, you may happen to get a bone in there. Thank goodness we were fasting all day because if not, I would have thrown up. Tender mercies haha. BUT... yeah... that was my birthday dinner. The other elders that are serving in San Juan with us that are spanish also said it was disgusting for them... and one of them is even Mexican!!! So... it was definitely rough and after shoving down the two the best I could... I thought I was going to die I couldn't eat it anymore so I said I was full and that I liked it (of course you say that) and they bugged me about how I didn't and how the elders ate like 10 tacos... blah blah blah. Both of our stomachs hurt the rest of the day haha.

 

 

Tacos de la cabeza (meat from the face of a PIG!)

THEN... we leave the Sandoval's house to go visit an investiagtor before the firseside and sister noake's is driving. We turn left out of the neighborhood and she turns into the inside lane and then starts going into the outside lane and a guy comes at about 50 mph out of our blindspot and hits our car. SOOOOO for the next hour we talk with him and call the cops and we walk away with a $110 ticket (since it was her fault for going into his lane) and a scratched up front right bumber. Only about $1000 worth of damage between the two cars... BUT a ticket to say the least. We are supposed to split it (holler at me comp unity) but she said she wasn't going to make me pay since it was totally her fault... so I am hoping that still stands haha. So that was wayyyyy awesome. Haha. Definitely not the kind of way you want to spend your birthday. haha. She just wasn't thinking I guess and started going into the other lane... idk. It was all so fast. Noone was hurt- the guy just barely skidded into our car but to say the least... My luck with cars isn't much better in the mission field.

 

 

Our car after the accident

 

SOOOOO with all of that being said, we tried to go and visit investigators and no one was home. At the end of the night all I wanted to do was go home and eat the cake I made for myself. So we went home and the members we live with sang me happy birthday and I shared my cake with everyone. It was not anything I had planned and was a super tough day... BUT that's what makes a mission interesting!!! Haha! BUT, I enjoyed your birthday emails and the party you threw for me haha :) Maybe my birthday next year will be better... FINGERS CROSSED ;)

 

 

Birthday ice cream cake I made for myself

​However, yesterday was great! We went and shopped for groceries in the morning and then all afternoon the Toblers (members we live with) took us on a hike to the Ouray Perimeter hike. It was BEAUTIFUL and was about a 4.5 mile hike. I loved it and then they took us to this awesome chocolate shop after and got me an ice cream sunday for my birthday :) That was nice and we had dinner with them afterwards. So yesterday was waaay better and the hike was AMAZING. It felt so good to get outside and be active in the sun for about 3 hours. Don't worry mom... I put on your R+F sunscreen ;)

 

 

Sister Noakes and I

Not too shabby!

Well that's about all the time I have today... even tho my birthday was slightly sub par here... thanks for making it awesome back home! I seriousl​y loved the videos and pictures. I will have more time next week to write I think but thanks for everything and being the best family ever! MUAH!!!!

xoxo

Hermana Pierce

My new address is c/o Toblers, 1421 Dover, Montrose, CO 81401