Mother's Day was the Best day ever! (this is Hannah's mom)

So mothers day was the best. and now I have to go. ha we went to the clinic again today. but no worries all is well and next week i PROMise to write a half decent email. So just know that i love you all so much! Yesterday feels soooooo surreal. our bishop was so cute. he was like well you can keep talking for another half hour if you want. Ha we had an awesome conference with elder waddell this week and i just love you guys so much! i love our family! have an awesome week!

 all my love.

han

 

Wearing my "best sisters" necklace given to me by my sisters before I left--wanted to show them I was wearing it.

So...

Ha, so I will keep this quick. cambios. it was a real bummer when we got that news. But now I am here with Hermana Barahona. She is shorter than hna jiménez, I know that really is possible, and she is from Honduras. She´s cool so its all good. I also found myself thinking about Adam and Eve and the idea of companions. Because Eve didn't get to choose. And what if Adam was really a total jerk, or didn't have a good sense of humor or something, and you know Eve is stuck with him for all eternity. But from what I can see I think i'm pretty lucky that I get to choose my eternal companion. As for my mission comps, its always different getting to know someone new and starting your relationship over. But I feel like we will work really well together and I'm working hard to keep an 'eternal' perspective. because that helps me have patience. which unfortunately isn't really one of my strengths.
 
And then this morning I was also studying the atonement. and I thought about how the spirit works in so many different ways. And that the Lord really trusts us. One thing I am learning still is how the spirit communicates with me. Usually when I reflect back on my week I can pick out when the spirit was prompting me to do something because of the consequences. and lets just say that I've had a fair share of moments when I didn't listen. But this morning I just felt really blessed because I feel like God really trusts me and is helping me learn this lesson on how to listen when he is talking to me, and that if I can develop the habit of always acting instead of 'being acted upon' by my circumstances my days will be a lot better and the people I talk to can recognize me as a servant from God.

 And on a funnier note, I started teaching our taxi driver the first lesson on the way home from cambios. he ended up being a preacher in another church and is like way anti'mormons. It didn't end up that fun. well okay he just used a ton of words that I didn't really understand (because they weren't very nice) and I just went with the old Madagasgar penguin deal, and smiled and waved kinda. because then he charged me double. dumb taxis. okay yeah it really was funnier that it sounds.

 so have a good week. pretty pumped for mothers day.

 also other semi funny note. it kinda got cold one night, so i got way excited and pulled out my blanket that i brought. That super thin one, oh wait the only blanket i brought with me to perú! well last night i woke up at two in the morning because i was sweating so bad. So the weather is changing really really really slowly. and hopefully i lost some weight??? probably not.

 well, i love you soooo much!

Hermana Degn

District 11 bc I love them...

I don't know. jess said that the whole bc thing is the new thing on instagram and fb. and i'm just trying to keep with the times.

 So this week we great. I hope that I get to stay here in famesa because we found so many awesome people this week. and we worked so hard and it was awesome. and then no one came to church. But it's cool. We're working on that. and we are teaching Jorge and Giovanna, (our family of oro) and everytime we leave the spirit is so strong so they better be feeling it too. Because we leave and wooah. It's pretty awesome.

Also this week the bishop's daughter came out with us. Well probably for the first and last time. Ha, we went to knock on a door, that is a reference and there are probably three dogs a little way off sleeping. So hna jimenez whispers buenas and then the dogs wake up and come after us barking up a storm. Well Jiménez and I have a lot of practice and we both just take off. and hna jiménez pushes Soila (the bishops daughter) out of her way so that she is the first one that gets away and in doing so pushes out of her hands her water and her bag hahaha Pobrecita. The good news is that she didn't get bit? but it was hilarious. We ran for a good two minutes before even looking back to see if she was behind us. Well she wasn't hahaha so we had to backtrack a bit.

Also last week we contacted a family in the street, and they said they didn't know the house number but that the door was wood. well we knocked on so many wood doors asking for Diana, whose mom is manuel. and we found three other families doing it so now we are just going to make up names and knock on doors and then ask if we can share with them. It´s got a pretty good success rate.

Oh also this week was semana santa. and I am so sick of eating fish. because even if we're mormon here we're also catholic???. not cool.

So thats a wrap.

Happy birthday to the one, the only m-swagger--sizzle the third. you know who you are.
Love,
Hermana Degn

Sunshine & Summertime...oh yeah, and sorry mom!

So #ldsconf was so dang good. I really wish I had a twitter account so I could have hashtagged stormed all my notes, ha but don't worry I did it anyway. Also I hope we realize how lucky we are to speak english. That we get to listen to the words of conference and also their VOICES. There is so much more power in listening to general conference in english. It is unreal. There is so much power there. We listened to it all in english except for the sunday morning session.  I feel super spiritually rejuvinated and loved conference. There was such a theme of the importance of families that I loved! Like families are so dang cool! and I feel like I am just so full of knowlege right now. Like everything inside of me is just bursting with all of these cool insights that I've been thinking of and studying and the gospel is just so cool. also be so proud of hna jiménez who has been working hard on her english so she could watch it with me. and I am so grateful. Because also I have just been so spoiled my whole life to watch everything in english that I get nothing out of the translations. it's just not same.

Also funny story. Saturday we show up to the church and there is literally NO ONE and nothing there. so we had a frantic half hour looking and calling people to get the projector hooked up and the computers all set up so we could even watch conference. But I did miss Holland's talk. but I feel like I saw it because everyone and their dog has written me about it.

Besides that we had some super tight lessons this week. We are really re-focusing in our lessons on testifying. Like bam testimony instead of trying to explain what things are now we just testify. and the result has been that everyone really wants to read the book of mormon and it has been awesome. And then we still have problems with the gente coming to church. But i think i need to work on my patience, and we are working on finding and teaching the people who God has chosen for us to work with and teach. Because every week we have eight new investigaors who in the end go no where because they aren't married or don't want to act. So I'm working on myself to give people a chance to repent and change and not just moving on without giving them a real chance. Although our new street contact we ask if they are married and if the answer is no, ciao chico. and our start investigator can't actually read. so that was a real problem. But live and learn. We are still having fun and working hard. and our district leader kills me. he is too funny.

this is me and hna j watching by ourselves and then with the elders. who kinda missed to photo alert. but it just makes me laugh too hard.

Also my hair. look i think its growing? #blessingseverywhere
So I love you all! Here's to a rejuvinating week after a rejuvinating weekend!
 
also mom don't worry it is still blistering hot here.

 love hna degn

 

look in perú they really do celebrate st patricks day...... just late

hahaha NOT just kidding. the streets were all just decorated because they got paved and there was like a huge celebration. #citypride.

But it does look sooo much better now. peruvians are cute. and now my shoes should hang in there better.

 

so this one time i was so stressed out to leave internet on time that i maybe forgot to press send on my email.... um cough cough. and maybe that was last week and yeah, so sorry mom. that's why there wasn't an email last week. but i think we're even because ya'll are going to disneyland this week. So whatever. i hope peter pan and space mountain are CLOSED. toma eso familia. hahaha chiste chiste. I hope you all have a really great time and cry because i am not there.

 But okay this week was seriously the BEST WEEK EVER! We found the coolest family! LIke ohmygosh I am still on cloud nine. Basically we had our district meeting and elder martinez (i´m gonna find out his first name so you can send him a postcard cause he is the best! BUUUT) he did this whole contact like president archibald bit which was super hilarious and then we went out and did it. and it was super scary. because basically we say 'did you know you could have an eternal family because joseph smith was a profet and we can teach you about it. when can we visit you´ and then we bear our testimony. well we were practicing and its stressfull. and we contacted one lady and we said oh did you know you could be with your family forever, and she said yes and we were all, ah, no you don't. ##wronganswer. because you're catholic and you don't believe this but we do. So now we try to throw in joseph smith in there more. But long story short we go back for the cita with this hermana, and she's not home but we just keep knocking and on the second floor three kids come out and hna jiménez and i are all.... ohymygoshkidswhichmeansitsafamilywehavetotalktothemwhatdowesay. and so then the mom comes out and i resort to our game plan. IN which i speak spanish as fast as i possibly can (its pretty fast) and then no one understands me and then hna jiménez says oh she's from america and translates- It's foolproof. everyone lets us in after. So the mom brings the dad out and he invites us in and we teach them lesson one and he says yeah I'm looking for peace and and hna jimenez and i try not to scream. and we keep teaching and he's like yeah no problem i'll read the book of mormon, but i can't go to church tomorrow because he´s a marine! but he can come next week so it's all good. and yeah, his wife came and it went really well. she is really excited to read the book of mormon and it has been way cool to see how the Lord guided us to find them and how they have been prepared to recieve the gospel. (even though they don't know it yet hahaa)

 so it's been a fun week. also about the weather. here's a good story. it's supposedly starting to 'cool down'. LIES. this just means that at night it's not blistering hot. But one of our investigators was like super worried and concerned because we just keep walking around in short sleeves. Because it's still so hot! Summer will never end! and this is the coat she made hna jiménez wear hahahahahahahahaha. peruvians are funny. needless to say we went to the house dropped off the coat and then left again and yeah that's all-

have fun at disneyland. i love you all.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY GRANDMA HART!!!!

 

Where are you?

No email this week...we are sad:(

#womensconference

Sooo not quite the front row seats that you had, but still women´s conference was good. only I had like a killer headache and we watched that super depressing video about growing up in whichJenYoung has a cameo appearance. So that's cool. Only it is depressing and basically I just wanted to be 8 years old again. Also one of the translaters was from Spain.... so I also didn't get too much out of it. But hey I felt the spirit, cried, and so I guess that basically is all that counts. I mean I was hoping we would get to hear from Holland buuut it's fine I love Eyring. haha it was great, we had a small turnout in case you can't tell from this picture.

Other than that this week we found a lot of new people. all of which turned out to be fornicadores. rayos. but we had some pretty cool lessons. this week we really focused on testifying. One of our biggest struggles here is that no one is actually interested in what we have to say but we just testified and as we left they were there reading the book of mormon! So that really blew us away. Testimonies are so cool! and they have so much power in them! They perfectly represent the gospel because as we give it away and share it our testimony is strengthen. Which is such a principle that totally blows me away!

Also, in other news this week we went to immigrations. (for like 40 hours) total headache. literally. I mean it's kinda funny because all of us could speak spanish but they basically just dropped us off with no instructions and hello ,that is a horrible idea!! so by the time we kinda get things figured out we are in a room waiting to get our pictures taken and there is a FAMILY from america that walks in. Well cice and are like oh dang this family needs to be mormon. well theyr're from Indiana and they are here in Perú as missionaries for some church I've never even heard of. I mean for the LOVE! why on earth would you serve a mission for a church that isn't even true??? but we still gave them a folleto, and a book of mormon. Only it was in Spanish and their spanish was terrible. But hey, maybe they will realize that they are crazy, will try to read the book of mormon, feel the spirit and get baptized. miracles happen. and then we got in a car crash and went to mcdonalds. #winning. That bigmac was good. and i'm doing pretty good with my peruvian bucket list. #woof

So that's been my week. also there was a chicken heart in my soup. so basically I think I can now say that I have literally eaten every part of chicken. and yeah, it was gross. cow heart is much better.

 love, hermana degn

 

Lost

So, this week was good-ish. ha we had stake conference. which was spiritually rejuvinating. and I learned the hard way to always be a half hour early to my meetings. It was rough. we have the WORST luck with getting places. For instance, Saturday night we went to the sesh, but it was in a capilla in another stake so we leave our area an hour before the conference starts. Right? we tried? Obviously, we did not plan well enough because we got off at the right stop and then proceeded to get soooooo lost! We were wandering around in some foreign city for 45minutes lost. and then we got a call from our dl wondering ^where the heck are you??? I don't care what you have to do just get here!^´ very Guy Patterson when he's trying to find TB player.. if you know what i mean. ha. so we took a taxi who claimed to say he knows where the capilla is. (spoiler alert he doesn't) so after asking for directions (TWICE) he takes us to the church of testigos de jehovah. well, thats awkward. like no um we're mormons. yeah this is where they meet. um no we're mormons and this is Not where we meet. Chambonaso. so and the next half stop we bailed. it was pretty intense. (there is a huge lack of stop signs and stop lights here) but yeah we got out and then took a motor taxi. which, as sketchy as the ride sometimes is, I have way more trust in them.

 And in the end we got there. very fashionably late, (like Peruvian standard time meets Mormon standard time) and this is my official apology to our whole zone who were part of the "you need to be on time lecture" from the pres. It was soo my fault. but kinda not. We have good intentions but somehow we can never make it to anything on time. no matter when we leave. hahaha But I've turned a new leaf. I'm a new person. hahaha I will now try to take the "be on time advice" in Preach My Gospel more seriously.

So, all in all, it was a good week. I think I am getting skin cancer, we stopped and contacted ten families, we are learning to not run from dogs, and have started carrying rocks in our bags. (like parent trap only on purpose. ooh the irony) ha but we are still loving our new area and our new ward. the work is coming along. every one here, okay almost everyone is okay with listening to us. good old peruvians. buut they are not that keen on the progrssing part. or reading the book of mormon part. so we're getting there.

 

Also the Book of Mormon is so cool. I'm just going to tell you all that my love and appreciation has quadroupled since being here on the mish. and that's about all I got for you for my spiritual thought. haha that the Book of Mormon is true kids. keep on reading it.

 

Also in news of investigators we have matilde. the only person we inherited from Elder Poole. Well she does not understand that she needs to get baptized. ¨but hermanitas i'm catholic.¨face in palm. you know the book of mormon is true! So yeah we're looking for newsies. hashtag story of my life hahahaha

Also I know you guys are a bit curious about my new living standards. Well you know you're living in the ghetto when you try to clean the walls and instead of washing off the dirt you wash off all the paint, you have buckets under all faucets collecting water, your ceiling is held together by tape, and the sink is slanted??? I know it's wierd. soo while it kinda has this whole jail cell cement wall look going for us now, we're still big fans. mostly because it is two seperate rooms and a hallway! and we have our own bathoroom inside. which I will never get over being thankful for. so thats whats been going on here in Perù.

Also--- hello my best friends are engaged!!!!! And I would just like my future husband to know that I want Kim's ring. yep. that's really all. Why is everyone growing up? that means you Abby.

i love you guys. have a good week.

 

love,

 

hermana degn