Week 2 in San Juan

September 8, 2014

This week was great!!! I love Sister Noakes sooo much and we have so much fun together! This is going to be a great transfer and we are being exactly obedient and working as hard as we possibly can to receive a miracle! <3

 

 

This week we just worked... A LOT. Our zone is doing something every tuesday/thursday called the "Hour of Power" where we go out and FIND for an hour straight. We begin the hour with a conference call as a zone and open in prayer and then we go out and do it! It is amazing and so uplifting! In our mission we have something called the "survey approach." It is unique to our mission and basically it is just a start up to sharing the gospel. It asks them questions about their beliefs in family, god, etc. Well... we did 29 surveys this week and knocked over 100 doors! We are definitely working hard! Sister Noakes and I decided to step it up a notch and do an hour of power EVERY DAY this week. So we started yesterday. We are excited for the miracles we will see this week :) It is hard and it's hot during the day... but we know that through our finding efforts, we will gain even more new investigators and find more people to bring unto Christ! This really is the best work in the world!

One of the members that comes out with us all of the time is Hermano. Barrientos. He is amazing and writes down all of our appts. in his planner so he can be there and he is studying Preach My Gospel. He is so cute and we love him :) It's funny because the other night we texted him and asked him to come to a lesson with us the next day and he said "como no angelitas hermanas de cristo!" which means why not little angel sisters of christ hahah! We love him :)

Lets see... one of our investigators Maria Ramirez we taught this week. We taught her about the Book Of Mormon and she said she has been reading it and that she feels EUPHORIC when reading it... WHAT?! Okay Maria.... I see you! We were so excited to hear that from her haha! We extended the soft baptismal challenge and she accepted! So that was amazing.

That's about all I have as far as teaching goes... We are always working on our spanish. It is coming along nicely and we speak quite a bit here! The branch is wonderful and yesterday in testimony meeting I bore my testimony in spanish! It doesn't seem like that would be a big deal since I do it all the time in lessons but it is different when you get up in front of the whole congregation on the spot! So it went super well and I got a lot of compliments on my spanish afterwards :) Hno. Sandoval told me my accent is a 9!!! Woohoo! It's so good to get affirmation sometimes haha! So that was good and then Presidente Osorio came up to me afterwards and asked me to give a talk next week in sacrament meeting! Woo... that will be interesting :) but I'm excited to study and prepare for that... Faith is an essential thing here lol :)

 

So we walk out to the car after a dinner appt and this skeleton is sitting on our windshield??? HAHA! It was hilarious and turns out the elders wanted to put it in our car to freak us out but it was locked lol :) 

 

 

The skeleton the Elders tried to scare us with!

 

 

Let's see... we are getting fed by the members alot, surprisingly better than Steamboat even tho we have half the amount of people (or less). They are so generous to missionaries here and are so willing to help us! Our branch is small (yesterday we only had 29 people there... including the 10 kids that were present and 2 investigators) but they are pretty much all Return Missionaries and love us. We serve with a set of elders too (they are in a trio Elder Penuelas, Smith [who came out with me] and Lechemenant [who came out this transfer]). They are great elders. Super solid and obedient. It's interesting to have to serve in the same area... It's kind of like a battle to find the hispanics. Since we have so many missionaries here pretty much everywhere has been knocked before... so it's awesome when we find somewhere new!

Oh... funny experience from this week... So thursday we got a referral from the Zone Leaders to go tract during HOP in this apartment complex. They said it was "swarming with hispanics" SOOO we get over there and the name of the complex is in spanish so it's looking pretty promising. Well... we start knocking and LITERALLY EVERY SINGLE PERSON IS FROM THAILAND. I kid you not. They don't speak english and their houses all smell like nasty thai weird food haha. It was soooo funny. We stopped counting the number of doors we knocked... over 25. Sister N and I were DYINGGG laughing hahahaha. It was hilarious. One of the doors we knocked that we thought might be hispanic we heard thai ppl talking... YELLING after we knocked... So i started straight up running away and sister n was like "what the heck, sister pierce?!" Then they answered the door (didn't speak english of course...) so we just handed them our card and walked away. Hahaha it was a good laugh for sure.

​Last night we went over to the Sandoval's (ppl that fed us pig face) and ​taught them a member lesson. Afterwards we finished and they said they had something for us. It was covered by a cloth so the kids took it off and it was a birthday cake for me!!! It was so sweet and kind of them :) They didn't know it was my bday last week so they gave it to me today. We know they don't have a lot of money so to buy us a cake was so kind. They sang happy birthday to me and when they finished they started chanting for me to bite into the cake (mexican tradition). So I did and of course... they shoved my face into the cake! Hahah it was a good laugh and I have a video that I will have to figure out some way to send it to you :) such kind members!

 

 

Birthday cake from the Sandoval family

 

The Sandoval Family

 

Well... I'm about out of time for now but I love you all so much! Thanks again for the birthday wishes and for the love and support :) I love you all so much! Thanks for everything and for loving me. Yo se que este evangelio es un gran bendicione en nuestras vidas. Yo amo mi salvador con todo mi corazon y estoy muy agradecida a servir el senor a este tiempo!

Las quiero mucho!!!

Con amor,

Hermana Pierce