OOPPSS....

Well, I know that a lot happened this week, but to be honest, my mind just went blank and I can't remember a whole lot...haha

I am grateful that I got to spend some cool, out of the ordinary, time with President and Hermana Corbitt. This is their last week...President and Hermana Smith get here on Friday! But on Tuesday the Corbitt's hosted a dinner for the office staff at their house. Hna Corbitt made homemade mac and cheese with salmon and veggies. SOOO GOOD. a lot different from the food I have been eating haha We talked about the Fe Exceptional with them. I don't think I will ever completely understand it, nor will I ever get tired of talking about it. We also helped Hna Corbitt Friday night with an open house (to say good bye) at their apartment. We helped prepare the food (cooking with Hermana Corbitt is the best :)) and then served it.  We had some down time so we decided to take advantage of our time and we had our weekly planning session on the Corbitt's balcony that overlooks the temple. It was pretty dang cool :) (I'll send pictures pronto! 

We had some good lessons with Myson and some other investigators. 

I love you all! Hope you have the best week ever!

Hermana Lawrence

Missionaries are busy!

Good, Busy week! :) I love being a missionary!

On Tuesday we said goodbye to 26 missionaries and welcomed in 2. Yeah. A lot of areas had to be closed, but they'll be opened back up PRONTO and we are not going to fear even though we are a smaller number. We're still going to bring all the Dominicans into the waters of baptism :)

On Thursday we had an activity planned for recent convert families. The people who could be sealed as a family in 2017 were invited to come to the Temple and do baptisms for the dead and then a program by President Corbitt and lunch. It turned out really well! We had about 10 families show up! One of the couples there actually got sealed on Saturday! I love that through our knowledge of the gospel, we know that we can be sealed and with our families FOREVER! I am grateful that we can hope and find joy in sadness because of this! I also got to see a high school friend (Elder Sheffield) on his last day of his mission! He was at the temple going through for the last time on his mission! Haha

Hna Ferrer and I received a reference from some elders about a week ago. We tried calling, we tried going to his house (or where we thought he lived) and we kept trying to get in contact with him, but it never worked. Sunday we were planning and I thought, man, we need to get a hold of this guy. He had gone to church a couple of times in a different ward. So I called and he ANSWERED! We had a cita with him two hours later. His name is Myson, he's haitian (but was born in the Netherlands....haha) he's about 31 years old. He told us he was SO excited to hear from us finally. We had a SUPER long lesson with him, he understood everything and kept telling us that "wow, this is so true" and then reasons from the bible why everything we were telling him was true. Things I've never even thought of! At the end, we invited him to be baptized and before I could even finish, he yelled out YES! He wanted to be baptized that same day! We put the fecha for July 1st, and he was like, "but that's so far away!" He is so nice and is truly a man prepared to be baptized. I can already see him being a bishop! haha. But he's going to be baptized JULY 1. (One of the crazy things about that is it's in 11 days and it will be JULY. What is happening with time?!)

Well, I love you all! Have the greatest and happiest week ever! :)

Hermana Lawrence

Bautismo y Boda

Wow! It is crazy how much can change in just one week! It was one of the craziest, busiest, and mostexciting weeks of my mission. Manuela has been an investigator of Gazcue for a LOT of time. Her whole family got baptized about a year and a half ago, but she couldn't get baptized because she had her boyfriend and wasn't married to him. He never wanted to get married, but they stayed together. On Tuesday we went to go visit her and she told us the GOOD NEWS! Her and Fabio (her boyfriend) had finally decided to get married! We decided we needed to get them married before either of them

Fabio and Manuela's wedding

changed their mind...haha so we talked to the assistants immediately and started getting everything together for them to get married. We put the appointment for Saturday morning and the baptism for saturday night! The whole week we were preparing for the wedding and baptism (we bought rings for them, talked to members, EVERYTHING. IT WAS CRAZYYYY) Saturday morning came and the appointment was for 10 am. They were going to meet us at the church and then go to the junta (I don't know what to call it in english. the place to get married) together. We got there at like 9 and waited for them. It got to be like 9:30 and they still hadn't showed up! We called

and they said they were on their way. So we waited some more. 10:00 came and we were freaking out. We called the assistants and asked if there was any way we could call the junta and put the cita for 11:00. The lawyer guy said he would wait until 11, but if we weren't there, he was going to leave. We walked to Manuela's house and they were outside the house just waiting for her friend. We were like, no, we need to go. So we started walking and luckily we met up with her friend. We got into a guagua that told us that they were passing by the metro station (because we had to take the metro to get there). The guagua then went the the OPOSITE direction....it did pass by a metro station, which then we found out that it was the wrong line of metro. So long story short, we finally got onto the metro at like 10:45 and we were DYING. Freaking out because we could not be late! (i forgot to mention that we had Hna Steed with us because her companion was going home, so it was me and hna ferrer and hna steed with the family) Things happened and then it ended up being hna steed and i RUNNING to the junta, because it was like 11:15. We got there at 11:30ish sweating, panting, and really gross. They were all leaving, so we got there JUST IN TIME. Then we got them to preform the marriage, but Manuela forgot her ID, which

you CANNOT get married without it. Ugh. We begged and he did us a BIG favor and married them! I did not even explain a half of the crazy that happened and the miracle after miracle (Heavenly

Father was really watching over us) that we saw. I was asked to be one of the witnesses for the

Manuela's baptism

wedding, which was really cool! Then Manuela called me the Godmother...haha! Then later in the night, Manuela got baptized! We called this story a different version of 17 miracles :)  

Estela still needs a little more time to really make the decision to be baptized. But she's doing really well! She brought mangoes to church for us! YUM! 

Well, Love you ALL! Hope you all had the best week ever!

Hermana Lawrence

More adventures!

So this week was so good! We had zone conference (last one with the Corbitt's) which was

Hermana Lawrence translating

AMAZING. It was separated into 3 days to accomadate all of the missionaries. The first day I translated for Hna Corbitt. It was my first time translating, and lets just say translating is harder than it looks. Having to keep up with everything is difficult, but we survived! haha It got better when I translated a different day. Its really a talent that some people have! We saw a video that Presidnet and Hermana Smith made for all of us. There were people crying, just a lot of really mixed feelings because we all love the Corbitts, but we are all praying and already love the Smith's. In the zone conferences, We talked about la Fe Exceptional (president corbitt's favorite topic, and mine as well!) We talked about how we need to see our investigators already dressed in white, which now is a daily thing for me. It's funny because Sunday we got to church a little early and only one lady was there. We didn't know her so we went to go talk to her and she told us it was her first time at church. Later I

leaned over to Hna Ferrer and told her that Santa Julia (the woman) was already baptized in my mind.

Later we came to find out that, yes, she actually already is baptized. She is a menos activo that just moved into our area and a friend from work invited her to come back to church. She cried all through sacrament meeting and then later that night we went to go visit her and she cried all through that as well. She has wanted to come back to church for so long and she finally did and felt the spirit so stongly. It was fast and testimony meeting, but the majority of the testimonies given were 70's and really prestigious people (apparently in Gazcue we get a lot of visitors like that....) so the meeting was super great!

We've been working with an investigator named Estela. She's the mom of a member and she accepted to be baptized this week! She only has a couple of doubts about how she sells coffee. She doesn't drink any, but she wants to be completely clean of this before she gets baptized, which we understand. It's good to see that she really wants to change and leave behind everything. I love her so much! And her daughter, Dulce :)

We went to the Acuarium for P-Day! My favorite part was seeing the Sea! haha I still cannot believe that I live in such a beautiful place!

I also decided to de-frost the freezer this week, which then turned into a snowball fight....It's been a while since that has happened in my life and I really didn't think it would happen in Republica Dominicana! haha

I love you all so much! (sorry my email is tuesday, pero ya ustedes sabe que la officina es loca) haha. Hope you all have the best, BEST week ever!

Hermana Lawrence

Estoy en Officina y Garzcue

Hermana Lawrence y Hermana Ferrer (front)

Hermana Silva Y Hermana Morales (back)

Wow! Lets just say a LOT has changed in this past week. I currently have 3 companions: Hermana Ferrer is my main companion. She is part Puerto Rican and part Chilean, but she speaks english perfectly! Hermana Silva is from Brasil and Hermana Morales is from Nicaragua. The two of them have health problems, so they can't proselyte but they are training Hna Ferrer and I in the office. They are ending their mission in two weeks and then it will just be hermana ferrer and I as hnas in the office. We work in the office 9am-5pm and then we proselyte from 5-9. We have been SUPER busy in the office this week! The whole mission is getting new phones and the phone companies messed up so we've been figuring that all out! So I'm not in the real jungle right now, but everyone is calling the office "the jungle" so you could say that I am still in one! haha 

Hna Ferrer and I have been  a little stressed because we're white washing the area, it's a super difficult area, we're both new hermana leaders, we're both new to the office and everything. Balancing between proselyting (we're still expected to have a normal amount of baptisms) and the office is still taking an adjustment. But all is good! I am excited to be here, and we are still able to see miracles. But it's true, being in Gazcue is a lot different than Yamasa! But I am still going to enjoy it!

I love you all! I love being a missionary and being able to share the wonderful message of the restoration with everyone! You all can be missionaries too!

Hermana Lawrence