Hi everyone!! It was SOOO nice hearing from you all! You have no idea how much it means to me to have so much support at home! It is still really hard here but I am starting to pick the language up a lot better...we have two investigators now and I am starting to be able to hold a conversation with them and teach them in spanish without refering to notes. You should see my notes they are crazy. Our schedule is crazy. We don´t sleep very well at night from stress and then we wake up early for 30 min of personal study. The ENTIRE day is full of classes - mostly spanish. My head hurts, and yes Dad it would be so easy to just teach the gospel in English! We were teaching our investigator -
hermana Lucia, and we read a scripture in the Bible that said ¨"Lamb of God," in it, and she asked what the "lamb" was, and I didn´t bring my english scriptures only the spanish ones, and I could not figure out what the word was - I can´t even remember what that spanish word for lamb is right now because my brain is shot. So that was awkward. But oh well the lessons are going really well with our investigators, I do most of the teaching and basically all of the talking and answer basically all the questions and
hermana colo says the prayers and occasionally bears her testimony but it´s ok. She is doing a lot better because we figured out her problem is that she´s not eating enough protein. The food all grosses her out so she´s not been eating much so now they make her up a smoothie protein shake and it´s helping her a lot (so jealous, miss my vitamix smoothies). Some of the food´s pretty weird. They serve beans for breakfast occasionally and then this seaweed stuff I can´t figure out, but sunday they gave us spaghetti! I was soooo happy!! there is an elder who I can´t even remember his name (I told you, my brain is shot), but he is the zone leader and apparently 2 weeks ago they went out on pday and got food and now he has a parasite - e. coli! Pretty crazy. but they said that it should be fine so he´s still up and about it working. We are going to the market today later and we get to buy pastries and stuff! I am soooo excited. I needed today, when you have spanish all day every day with only 45 min of exercise it really wears on you. There really isn´t too much else to report right now ....it´s just spanish and teaching all day every day, with the occasional devotional - oh but Sunday they let us watch the Testaments! in English!!! Oh so today we lost like 2 whole districts who left for the mission field. We had people going to El Salvador, Tegucigalpa, Guatemala (Quetzaltenango and Ritelileu) - they go from this MTC all over Central America. It´s going to be lonely here for a while, we hardly have any missionaries and they are only getting two new missionaries coming in over the next 4 weeks or so. Apparently when I leave I´ll be going with three other elders (there aren´t any hermanas going to my mission) and we have to fly to Honduras at 3 AM. Four more weeks left! Soo nervous but excited.
Hermana Lowery the nurse has to schedule in some nursing training, so there goes some of my time for learning spanish! Me and
hermana colo go and walk outside when we have 5 min breaks whenever we can. I miss the sun! we sit inside all day without it! And it´s actually kind of chilly here in guatemala city. Humid but chilly. Weird. But honduras will be sticky hot. Oh and I found out that in Honduras their spanish dialect is a little weird, like they don´t pronounce their S´s, they just kind of lisp. So that will be weird to get used to. You should see the CCM, we have a huge gate around this place and at least 5 armed guards on duty around the place 24/7. And we are even in the nice part of the city - major upper class place with huge nice buildings and expensive houses up on the mountains to the east. Oh I wanted to tell you - you remember that I didn´t get the flu vaccine - well
hermana Lowery confronted me and tried to give it to me but I told her exactly why I didn´t want it and that I´d talked to church headquarters and they had told me I didn´t have to get it. She tried to argue that church headquarters had mandated it and that if I didn´t get it I´d have to serve state-side. But i told her I´d talked to one of the doctors at church headquarters and got President Cox to call them, and guess what? Apparently they had recently changed policy and now it isn´t required to receive the flu shot! So I didn´t have to get it - oh I wasn´t backing down after all through nursing school and work I had been able to get around it with the Lord´s help. But I prayed and I know the Lord came through for that. Mom can you please send me some more peppermint beadlets? I love those things, and I have been taking vit D a lot and it´s been helping me not get this cold that has been threatening for a while. I really wish I could email every day because I forget things! And they hardly give us any time for this!
President and Hermana Cox gave a devotional Sunday night and it was so good. THey talked about restoring priesthood keys through Moses, Elijah, and Elias, and they talked about how we were forordained to our callings in the pre-existence and it was so neat to be able to sit in that room with all those missionaries - I feel lucky to be with such amazing people because none of us have to be here and I kind of feel like I don´t deserve to be here. but I could just see while I was sitting there how special everyone around me was. And I could picture us after this life looking back on that day when we were just beginning our missions. It was pretty neat. "It´s not what we gain in this life, it´s what we give.¨
I really love this scripture: ¨Therefore, dearly beloved brethren, let us cheerfully do all things that lie within our power; and then may we stand still, with the utmost assurance, to see the salvation of God , and for His arm to be revealed.¨
I just love you guys so much and I really wish I could respond to everyone´s emails! I am SOOO sorry I can´t send pictures, but after ward don´t worry I´ll send them. I already have a few!
Hermana Erickson
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