Week Numero Dos!

Days feel like eternities, but weeks pass in a blink of an eye. I can't believe it's already been another week in the Dominican Republic! I am growing spiritually and in Spanish every day! I am loving my time here!

We went to the store on Friday! It's weird that that is something I am actually excited to tell you all because going to the store back home was almost a daily occurrence. It is basically just a condensed version of Walmart. You can buy almost anything...i say almost because the only thing that was on my list (those little hair elastics) they didn't have! Luckily one of the other Hermanas gave me some :) I bought some weird coconut suckers. They're just weird. Pesos to dollars is still confusing to me, though!

Being in the same classroom all day long gets old really fast, so Hermana Jones and I like to go to the temple grounds for personal and companion study. It's super humid and my scripture pages are starting to get crinkly from the humidity, but its totally worth it :) Hermana Jones is my favorite. We are always singing together, we lay on the classroom floor to memorize things, we skip/hopscotch everywhere we go and we share the same love for colored pens!

Push-ups are a very common occurrence around here. Our teachers make us do 10 pushups every time we talk in English or when we mess up on reciting something we memorized. "Pechadas!" is heard a lot!! (The dictionary told me that pushups is actually "plancha" but our teachers say pechadas, so yeah...) I've only had to do them a couple of times, but the elders have to do SO MANY. They're always doing them.

Sunday was absolutely magnificent! We had church, which was great, and then we had a devotional by President Romney, and then we watched the Joseph Smith movie! I cried through the whole thing. We are all so blessed that Joseph Smith had the courage and perseverance to restore the church back on the earth. With all the trials he had to through, never once did he give up hope or doubt the validity of the gospel. One quote i liked from the movie was "The Lord calls us in our weakness, but he qualifies us for the work." If the day had ended there, I would have been content, but it got even better! We watched a devotional by Elder Anderson. He gave an analogy about hunting and fishing (so of course I was all ears). He said that sometimes we will go out and throw out our nets and we will catch so many fish to teach the gospel to (figuratively) and other times we will go out hunting and go long stretches with no luck. It is hard not to give up, but we have to believe that there is that one person out there that needs to hear the truthfulness and if we turn back early to camp, we will miss our opportunity. And the day got even better because....Ice cream. Enough said.

Typical dinner in the MTC

There was a lightning storm this week. No rain, no thunder, JUST lighting. It was super cool.

Hermana Jones and I usually help set up for lunch if we get down there on time, so one day we were helping and we uncovered the food....there was OCTOPUS STIR FRY for lunch. I ate it. It was nasty. Never again.

I LOVE THIS GOSPEL! It makes me so happy. I LOVE YOU ALL!

Love, Hermana Lawrence

P.S.  The pillow on the left is what I was sleeping on for the longest time, but then this past week, some of the Elders were so kind to bring Hermana Jones and I two of the fluffier pillows on the right.  There is a supply closet on their end of the hallway that we aren't allowed to go down, but I'm sleeping a lot better now :)