A week full of rain, animals, and miracles

It has been raining one whole week straight.....Hna Jones and I are wondering how the clouds have so much wáter! To get to a couple of our investigators we have to cross a river (with a bridge of couse..) and when we went the river was FLOODED. See the picture. We couldn't cross to go teach her! Satan Works in weird ways, right? I also left my umbrela on the guagua the other day...so that's good haha

But other than continually being soaked, this was a very, very, good week! Yesterday we had 8 investigators in church and 8 menos activos and then a bunch of recent converts! We are being sooo blessed here in Yamasa. We are working with really good investigators right now, a lot with fecha bautismales. It is really good to see some miracles :)

Franchesca's Dad is going to sign her Registro Bautismal!!! When she told us yesterday I literally shouted and started jumping for joy! Her mom still hasn't given her permission, but her dad is going to sign it, and she dosn't even live with her mom...So she can get baptized this week, but she wants to get baptized with Jenny on the 13th of May because they've become really good friends!

Jenny is progressing very well! She's going to seminary, Reading her Libro de Mormon and always shares with us what she read and learned!

Fraili is being a Little punk. The other day we had a cita with him and he didn't want to go because it was raining. I gave him my umbrela (this was before I lost it) and stood out in the rain until he came. Maybe that was bad of me, but you got to do what you got to do.

One night we were cutting it close to being home on time, so we were running back to the house in the rain with the echos of all the frecos yelling "gringas! Wait for us!" haha

Well, sooooo goood. Love this work and love this place. These are the best people in the world.

Love you alll!

Hermana Lawrence

Feliz Semana Santa! (Happy Easter!)

Feliz Semana Santa! It was a good week! Lots of good things happening! It's been so much fun and so great with Hna Jones! It's so crazy we're companions :)

We Invited Jenny, Alejandro's sister to be baptized this week and she said yes! We put her fecha for the 13th of May! She's so excited! Yesterday she was telling us that she wants to be a missionary! haha

So normally we have lizards, spiders and other bugs in the house, right? But this week we had a new visitor: a FROG. Yep. we chased him around the house for the longest time, but finally got him out...haha

We called Franchesca's mom yesterday to get permission for her to be baptized. Her mom rudely said no and didn't listen to anything we had to say. Franchesca started crying (so of course I started crying too). She has such a desire to be baptized, but so many things are just roadblocking us. She told us that if she has to, she'll wait until she is 18 and dosn't need permisson. I am still praying so hard, but I know that everything is in the timing of God and if it's his will, it will be done. But it's still difficult..

We had a "spiritual breakfast" on Friday. You'll all be interested to hear what the breakfast was...Two pieces of bread with butter and cheese in the middle and hot chocolate. That's a normal thing. yeah.

So a big tradition here for Semana Santa is Habichuelas con Dulce. So on Friday we had everyone giving us H. con D. It's pretty good. Kind of weird...

Hermana Jones and Hermana Lawrence

Hna Jones and I celebrated 7 months on the misión by blowing out candles in mangos :) I LOVE MANGOSSS

Well, Love all of you and hope you have the best week evveerrr!

Hermana Lawrence

Short on time....

So I have so many things I want to say...but I'm probably not going to say half of them because I'm emailing from a crappy email place, but that's nothing new...jaja

YOU WILL NOT BELIEVE WHO MY NEW COMPANION IS!!!! Technically she's not new....HERMANA JONES!!!! My companion from the CCM! We're going to be companions again!! I am like freaking out. This will be the best transfer ever! I'm going to be honest, I'm nervous about having an american companion, though...vamos a ver! We're going to baptize everyone in Yamasa.

We had intercambios this week with our hna leaders. It was all right. I went to their area and they don't have ANY investigators (they're actually closing the area after tomorrow) so we literally contacted the whole time. Always an adventure with contacting :)

Saturday Jostin (just barely found out that it's spelled with an "o") and Alejandro had their entrevistas in the morning with my district leader and they passed with "flying colors" and then later they were baptized! Then  on Sunday they were confirmed and next week they're getting the Priesthood so they can pass the sacrament and everything! They're literally the best. They're always at church before us to help set up the chairs and pass out hymn books. Literally, they show up at like 8:20 and church starts at 9. whaaa haha

I went this week to go do my visa thing. I now have a card like residents have here. Yeah. I'm Dominican. You should be pretty jealous jajaja There were so many people there! It only took us 8 hours to finish...

Love you all! Hope your week is the best!

Hermana Lawrence

Conference was the best!!!

I learned sooooo many things from conference. IT WAS THE BESTTT. First of all, it was my first time watching it in Spanish...and that was diffrent. I understood everything, but I miss hearing the voices of the people that are actually speaking! Some of the speakers actually did their own translations. Like Elder Christofferson, he knows spanish so I assume beforehand he recorded his talk. So it was actually him speaking, but still. But IT WAS SO GREAATT. I think the thing I learned the most from this confrence is that we are so blessed to have a living prophet. Every time that any one of the speakers talked about President Monson, I was brought to tears. I don't know what was with me. I know that President Monson is a prophet! I loved Ronald A. Rasband's talk. He spoke about the spirit and how "the spirit" is a language. So really, right now...I'm learning two different languages: Spanish and The Spirit. jaja 

This past week was pretty good. Alejandro and Justin are very ready for their baptism on Saturday! I'm so excited! We went and taught Alejandro's sister, Jenny, and when we asked her to say the last prayer, she told us that Alejandro had been teaching her how to say a prayer. You could say that I'm proud. The two of them are reading in their Books of Mormon and they are asking questions when they don't understand something. Justin this past week asked us why Nephi killed someone if he was supposed to be a good guy. We explained and shared the scripture

in Nephi. Fraili won't be getting baptized with them, though. I think he was just telling us he wanted to be baptized because his friends were getting baptized. We went to go teach him the Word of Wisdom and Law of Chastity (remember he's only 15 years old) and he told us that we're crazy and that he doesn't want to change his life. So he's not getting baptized this Saturday, but we're not going to give up on him! Once he starts reading the Book of Mormon and gains a testimony of the book, he'll want to change. 

A long story short...we were talking to this woman that we had taught her daughters once, her name is Aracelis. She was telling us that one of her classmates had given her a Book of Mormon a LONG time ago and she was asking us a lot of questions. When we started explaining eternal marriages and that families can be sealed forever she was VERY attentive. She started to tear up. We're going to work with her, the only thing is she's Catholic and likes the traditions of Catholics, so yeah... But she has a lot of potential!

Franchesca's mom didn't give her permisson to get baptized. It's really disheartening everytime we get passed one person saying no, just to arrive at another person saying she can't get baptized. We were talking to the President of the Rama and he told us that satan is working really hard becasue Franchesca is going to be something great in the church someday. A leader, she'll guide her family to the right and everything. SO we just have to work even harder than Satan is working. And the Lord is on our side. If he's on our side, why should we fear? Our goal is for her to be baptized this Saturday, so we have a lot of work to do!

I love you all! Have the best week everrrr!

Hermana Lawrence

Juagua

Another good week aquí en YAMASA. I can´t believe that I´m in the Dominican Republic. Every day I am here I still just can´t believe it. 

We had 6 investigators in church yesterday! SUCH A MIRACLE. Orquidia came for the very first time...she´s been investigating for a really long time and yesterday was her first time in church. SHE LOVED IT! Jairo was there too. And Alejandro and Justin and Fraili were there. In fact, Alejandro was there before we even got there helping set up chairs and pass out hymn books. It was amazing.

So Franchesca has been an investigator since January. She´s 17 years old, super cool, goes to church every week, attends seminary every day...but she´s still not baptized. Her dad hasn´t given her permisson all this time. But yesterday we went with the President of the Rama and went to go talk to him. We talked for a while and finally he told us that if her mom says yes, he´s okay with it! Her parents are separated and her mom lives far away, so we´re just waiting until Franchesca can call her mom and get permission from her mom. Then we were talking to them about how when we make the right decisions, Satan is going to try everything to make you change your mind and try to bring you down. And then walked in the Grandma. She´s really the reason why the dad wouldn´t give permisson. She´s super catholic. like, SUPER catholic. She then went on to say that Franchesca is already saved ¨gracias a Dios¨and that she´s already baptized. We explained more, talked more, and I think we´re still good, just waiting on the mom. TRUELY a miracle.

Today for Pday we went HIKING! to the Juagua. I didn´t know what the Juagua was, but we walked on this trail for 3 hours in the jungle and then finally arrived in a little town that´s called Juagua. Go figure. I can´t believe that people live there! There was a school that had just gotten out of session when we arrived and I don´t think any of those kids have ever seen a white person before haha. They were all yelling ¨YOU´RE WHITE¨and I was like haha I know! The hike was sooooooooooo pretty. The pictures don´t do it justice. I thought that the DR was all beaches and everything, but it is MUCH more. I think the jungle part is my favorite (still haven´t been to the beach, beach though...). 

Love you all. Heavenly Father loves you soooo much too!

Nos Vemos! 

Hermana Lawrence

Great week!

This week was great! Tuesday we had ELDER ANDERSEN come speaktous. I was literally in heaven! There were also a lot of other 70's and area authorities there that spoke to us as well. Spiritually amazing, and it's never bad when you have the opportunity to shake the hand of an apostle :) The meeting gave me a lot of animo to continue forth! Elder Andersen actually speaks really well in spanish. The parts where her really wanted to get his point aross, he spoke in english and had a translator, but when he was speaking in spanish, we all understood!

We went and taught Justin and Alejandro. It's really a miracle that their parents are so supportive. That's usually a difficulty here. They have baptismal dates for the 8th of April! Then, their friend Fraili came up to us and told us that he wanted to be baptized as well, so we went to go teach him and his grandma is SUPER supportive and super nice. It's literally a miracle. The three of them are going to get baptized together on the 8th :) They are golden investigators. They're literally always at the church playing basketball, helping out, hanging out.... Yesterday we took the three of them to the "Noche blanca" in the stake center so they could see the baptisms. On the drive back they were all yelling on the guagua "Soy Mormon!" Literally the best thing.

On saturday we went to Orquidia and Jairo. The hermanas have been teeaching them forever, but jairo never wanted to get married. Orquidia wanted to get baptized, but couldn't becasue they needed to get married. Finally on Saturday he told us he wanted to get married and they have a baptisml date for 15of April! We made sancocho with her (it's actually pretty easy to make) I've gotten pretty good at peeling plantains. She told us that when we come back with our families we're going to make a HUCH batch of sancocho and dance bachata to Frank Reyes. Whoo!

Well, pretty good week. We're seeing really good things happening in this area. I have really felt the Saviors love this week. I know that when we are going through trials, Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ are always there to support us and carry us. They are always mindful of what we are going through. I love being a missionary and there is nothing else I would rather be doing right now!

Love you all!

Hermana Lawrence

Miracles!

This week was pretty good. We saw some great miracles and I tried a lot of new things!

We had an activity Friday night in which we watched Meet the Mormons and had popcorn and treats. All the members were supposed to bring a non-member friend (in which we could then teach...) One of the converso recientes brought a lot of his friends! Two of them told us they wanted to get baptized....thats right. They ALREADY want to be baptized. They're both 13 years old, Alejandro and Justin. They both came to church yesterday and we have citas with them this week! They already have a lot of friends in the church, so this is going to be really good :) The activity was really good. It was supposed to start at 7, but with "dominican time" we started at 8. haha 

So you know how I said last week that we needed to have 70 people in church to stay a branch? Yeah....we HAD 77! WHOOO! Everyone could hardly fit in the room that we hold sacrament meeting! There were tons of menos activos and we had investigators too! Overall a pretty dang good sacrament meeting and church!

We had consejo de rama yesterday also, and these people are CRAZY! haha Already love all of them! They're all yelling and getting fiesty about chruch things. Its awesome! 

Everyday for breakfast this past week I've been making papaya and banana smoothies. SOOOO GOOOOD. Its papaya, banana, carnation (evaporated milk...dominicans use carnation for literally EVERYTHING), "normal" milk (no milk here is from a cow) honey, and ice. UGH. IN LOVE.

One day we brought home our "harvest" of what investigators gave us (See photo) Zapote, lechosa (papaya), and mamon. Ive never had zapote before this week and tampoco mamon. They're interesting, but really good! We were talking about all the fruit and vegetables that I haven't tried yet with one of our investigators....THERE IS A TON. wow

Hna Chamu told me that I was talking in my sleep the other night. That's nothing new because my other companions told me i talk in my sleep, but what is different is this time I was TALKING IN SPANISH. Whaaaaaa haaha

I ate the BEST sancocho yesterday made my a member. We helped her make it, but I don't think i could ever make it as good as her. ugh. love sancocho.

The pictures are us in our area! Dirt roads, JUNGLE, TONS of mosquitos...love it.

We ran into a guy that was wearing a Weber state t-shirt. I asked him if he knew where it was, he said no..haha oh well.

LOVE YOU ALL!

Hermana Lawrence

This video is right outside our house.  There are ALWAYS chickens clucking.  Its great background noise...haha!  It's kind of annoying.  I also fall asleep to the sound of chirping crickets every night.  It's awesome!