Love Our Missionaries: Viva Mexico!

Written by Sister Hannah Avery, currently training in the Mexico Missionary Training Center of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In two weeks, Sister Avery will report to the Chile Vina del Mar Mission, speaking Spanish.

Hola familia y amigos! (Hello family and friends!)

Can you believe it?! It has been a MONTH already! Time has gone by so fast for me. Not a ton has happened this week, but I do have a couple of funny things, along with a couple of normal things. Here it goes!

For starters, we FINALLY learned how to conjugate command words, and then past and future tenses. So my vocabulary just expanded a whole lot! It is still really slow speaking though, since my mind still hears things in English and I have to translate it back out into Spanish. It is a slow process, but soon enough I will have no issues and will be speaking super fast with the Chileans :)

So this week we did a practice lesson with a guy named Ricardo. It was pretty funny actually! Our whole district was teaching him, and it was just our teacher pretending to be him. Anyways, at one point in the lesson, the teacher asked, "So why has Ricardo not been baptized?".... well, two seconds later, I yelled, "Because, he never got around to it, ALRIGHT?" HAHAHA! My entire district was literally in tears! Nacho Libre quotes are very common in our district, but the timing of that was basically perfect! I have been waiting to use that Nacho Libre quote this whole time! That was probably the best thing that has happened to me (as far as the humor goes) at the MTC (Missionary Training Center).

So, I got beyond page 100 in my translation of the Spanish Book of Mormon! Hooray! It is taking SO long. I for sure won't finish it before I leave the MTC like I was hoping. We just don't have enough time for me to do it! But, it definitely is helping me learn new vocabulary since they repeat a lot of the same words and phrases. Slowly but surely, I am getting to the point of not having to use a dictionary very much while I read it in Spanish!

I started something new this week with my English scriptures. We saw a devotional broadcast with Elder Holland from January 15th of this year, and I noticed that his scriptures are SUPER marked up! He is an apostle, I know, but I never really noticed it! Anyways, I made it a goal to do that with my English scriptures while I am gone. I am marking them with the colors of the Young Women values, and relating them to my life as a missionary. That way, I can go back to read them later in life and see the things that stuck out most to me while I served as a missionary. So I am at about 1 Nephi 14 on those. And in my regular scripture reading, I got past Mosiah. I was hoping to be able to do more than I have so far with these things, but there just isn't enough time, sadly!

So, I am starting to feel naked when I am not wearing a name tag now! It is a weird feeling. I get up at 6:30 every morning, say my prayers, make my bed, brush my teeth, and then get dressed. I usually put on my name tag on the way out the door, but I leave it sometimes and feel like I am forgetting something...It is like a comfort thing now, and I love wearing Christ's name next to mine, all day, everyday :)

We finally got our practice investigators (Jonatan and Lenina) to commit to baptism! That was at the beginning of last week, but we are still teaching them the lessons. It is good practice, but I am just ready to do the real thing now!

This week, our district did the tower challenge. If you don't know what that is, basically, they have these huge "towers" of cereal out in dispenser things in the cafeteria. The point of the challenge is for your whole district to try and clear out an entire tower of cereal in one meal. We heard it is a pretty common thing at the Provo MTC, but no one had done it here yet! So, we accepted the challenge haha! We put down about 55 bowls of Fruit Loops between the 11 of us (one of the Elders was sick, so he didnt help haha!) Let's just say that we accomplished the challenge, but everyone felt really sick after that! And I will probably never eat Fruit Loops again...ever.

Everyone at the MTC is getting sick with either the flu or a stomach virus. So far, I haven't gotten either, and I really hope that I don't. I take vitamins everyday and try to eat well (ok, except for the Fruit Loops...), so that is probably keeping me healthy. We had an Elder and one of our Hermanas in our district stay home for about three days because they were so miserably sick. On Sunday, Hermana Garett (the one who was sick) had to stay home, and her companion wanted to go to all of the meetings without her. So, I stayed with her and made sure that she was okay. I figured that if I were sick, I wouldn't want my companion to ditch me. I made the most of the time that I had at home and studied like crazy! I got to read a ton of scriptures, and still got to take the sacrament at least. So overall, it was a good day, and even though I was sad to miss most of my Sunday meetings, I felt spiritually rejuvenated anyway :)

I forget what day it was, but they served us wings and calzones for dinner! Oh my goodness, it was SOOOO good! I hadn't had anything that good since I got here! It felt like everyone in the MTC was going up for their 10th serving haha! It was a good meal for sure, and it was nice to not have cockroach beans again... which speaking of cockroaches.....

.... we got new Hermanas (Sister missionaries) in our casa (house) this week, so we have a full house now. And they eat in our casa (which you aren't supposed to do), so now we are starting to get baby cockroaches in there, and it makes me a little bit HEATED haha! I left a note on the mirror that said to please not eat in the casa and to make sure to get ready in their own bathrooms (yes, they use ours all the time... ugh!). That leaves us without enough time to get ready in the mornings. I have left the note twice, and someone keeps taking it down, and well, things haven't changed. So I guess they want to do things their way... oh well, ha! The joys of living with 16 girls in one house.... oh please, this is a nightmare.....way too much estrogen in one place....!!

Oh! They just put out the most incredible thing at meals this week... NUTELLA!! People literally hoard that stuff, it is so ridiculous! I really, honestly never liked it before the mission, but that stuff tastes like heaven when you eat stuff like I do every week :P Jared would sure like it here, just because of that!!

This Friday is Mexican Independence Day (that is what I heard anyways), so they are decorating everything with Mexico colors, flags, and banners that say, "Viva Mexico!" It is pretty funny :) I wanted to wear one of their hats, but they won't let us. Darn. So they said that Friday night we probably will not sleep very much because, first of all, we get to party all night in our enclosed area at the MTC haha!, and secondly, they said that people outside our walls will literally party all night long and into the next day... and they drink a lot and will probably do stupid things that will keep us awake all night :) LOL! So we will see how Friday goes.

One of the main things that we were taught this week is to "teach people, not lessons." When we teach people according to their needs, it helps them relate the gospel to their lives, instead of just giving them the lessons in order and calling it good. I honestly can't think of a time that I have ever taught the "Preach My Gospel" lessons in order! We always start with whatever the Spirit tells us to teach them first, and then we try to incorporate other things they need to learn in a way that they will understand and be able to apply to their lives. It seems to be a lot more efficient that way :) So, for all of you missionaries out in the field, or that are getting ready to go, make sure that you are always teaching with the Spirit! Follow every prompting that you get. I can not tell you how many times I have planned a lesson with my companion, and we end up teaching something completely different because the Spirit tells us what the investigator needs. Use that companionship of the Holy Ghost, and you will change lives for the better! I promise you that!!

One more quick thing! I got a really good tip from a letter that I was reading from Mom-Mom, which said that if you are thinking about yourself, and getting homesick, etc., that you are thinking TOO MUCH about yourself and not enough about the work and your purpose as a missionary! I loved that! It really helps me get through the rough days. It is totally okay to be homesick, and it happens to EVERYONE, so don't feel bad about it. But, if you are constantly thinking about you, you, you, then you need to take a deep breath, step back and pray to the Lord to help you overcome that. You are not out on your mission for you, you are out to serve the Lord! The sacrifice that we make by leaving our families for 18 months or 2 years is extremely hard. For an 18, 19, 20 year old (or how ever old you are), it is truly incredible to know that you are sacrificing everything that you had at home to give everything that you have and are to the building of the Lord's kingdom in all parts of the world! The fact that you put off dating, working, going to school, leave family/friends behind... it takes a lot of courage and shows your immense faith in our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, that everything will be okay while you are gone.

I always remember something Mom told me many, many times before I left for this mission, and she's even tells me now that I'm here .... Faith and Fear CANNOT co-exist. So have faith, and you will find that you don't worry so much about what could go wrong. Focus on what can go RIGHT in your life. Every day has some good in it, even if it feels like the worst day in the world. Push through, pray to the Lord for strength, and move on! Don't dwell on the bad stuff. It is SO not worth your time or effort!

An amazing scripture that I found this week that I LOVE is in Doctrine & Covenants 84:88. It reads, "And whoso recieveth you, there I will be also, for I will go before your face. I will be on your right hand and on your left, and my Spirit shall be in your hearts, and mine angels round about you, to bear you up." I have read that scripture almost everyday since, and I practically have it memorized! It helps me to remember that no matter what, I am never alone out here. The Lord is always with me, and sends angels to watch over and guide me always. What a comfort it is to know that!! I know for a surety that it goes for you guys too, missionaries or not :)

Well, I hope that you have an incredible week! Never forget who you are, and always strive to have the Spirit with you. It will teach you things that you need at the time that you need them. And always remember to pray for answers, help, or what ever you need. The Lord is always waiting for us to ask for help, we just have to be willing and humble enough to do so! I love you all so very much and look forward to hearing from you every week! Thank you again for all of your sweet letters and emails. You are all the best! I love you more than you know, and miss you like crazy! Talk to you in a week!

Con mucho amor,

Hermana Avery

PS! If you want to write me letters in Chile, my address is:

Hermana Hannah Avery
Chile Viña del Mar Mission
4 Norte 1112
Viña del Mar, Valparaiso- V Region
CHILE

Home Away from Home (September 3, 2013)

BIG NEWS from Hermana Avery (September 16, 2013)