Transfer

I did not get Karlie's letter out last week. I have combined both weeks into this one ..

D'Anne

Hey one and all!! 

April 13, 2015

I got transferred this week, I am now serving in Little River which is right next to Old Town. So let's be honest I knew I was leaving and so did most the members. Last Monday was a teary goodbye with Jorge and Padilla.  They are actually headed to Utah right now. When I got home from saying goodbye to them, I got the call. It was the assistants to President Riggs. They called and said I was finished with my training. The next night, I got a call saying I was leaving. I am a little bummed, but so grateful for the time I served in Old Town.

It is so weird being at the centre of the political world and not knowing any of the politics.... It is probably for the best though. I told one of the members my political beliefs and he told me to get out of his house. Good thing he was kidding and we are still friends.

Wednesday was my 6 month mark, I am already 1/3 of the way done. Time has really flown by so fast, I am extremely grateful for all the new people I have met. I feel torn, I leave in a year, and I am so excited to see my family. On the other hand, I am going to miss the people here.  Getting back to Wednesday, We had a Spanish meeting for all the missionaries in the Spanish program. We decided that we are going to start speaking only Spanish. It will be interesting and super fun. I love a CHALLENGE.

Thursday was transfer meeting and now I am in the Little River Ward. Friday, there was a wedding, I was able to help with the cakes. With a new area comes new food. I am starting to eat Bolivian food which is different.... I still end up eating a lot of chicken and rice. 

My new companion is from Utah, her name is Hermana Evans. We get along

great. I am training her and she is awesome, she has such confidence and is amazing.

And her Spanish is super good....

Spring is in the air and I love it. We went to see the cherry blossoms in D.C., it was gorgeous! If you are planning a trip to D.C., You have to come this time of year. I loved every second of it. We went as a foursome, Hermana Debry, her new companion and of course my new companion. I think everyone in my mission had the same idea. we pretty much saw our whole mission. like everyone was there..... 

So yep that's how life is going for me in D.C.

Love,

Hermana Atkinson

April 20, 2014

 

We have zone conference this week, so this morning we decided to clean the car. We went shopping and spent toooo much money. We decided to buy flowers for the senior couple missionaries for Mother's Day. They are all so sweet, it just seemed like the right thing to do.

Mother's Day is just a couple of weeks away... I am so excited I get to skype my family.  I am going to ask a member tonight if we can come to her house to Skype. Only problem is, I don't remember my Skype password, but I'm sure I will figure it out.

On Tuesday we went to go eat at a member's house. She used Chile de Arbol, which is pretty much death on a stick. Does everyone remember the seed story, where I couldn't feel my tongue... same chile. Yeah it was hot, super hot. To make things worse the Elders came, she was feeding them after she was feeding us. They all got to see us struggle to eat it. Then of course they laughed at us, I wish I could of stayed long enough to see them eat. They would of been crying. I managed to eat all of mine and drink 3 glasses of water, which was more then I can say for the rest of the Hermanas. They left half of it on their plates and left the house with watery eyes. So yeah, that was my excitement of the week.

With this transfer comes new challenges. We went to go talk to the Bishop. Since we are new in the ward, we were going to see if he needed any help. He started talking soooo fast, it was kinda scary.  Actually everyone talks really fast..... yep its a struggle. We are not teaching anybody and no Baptism's lined up. Our teaching pool is shallow... it is hard because in my old area we knocked apartment buildings where as here everyone lives in houses. We pray everyday for the Lord to guide us to someone that is searching for the gospel. I know that he will answer our prayers. So for now, we are living as righteous as we can, and doing all we can to find someone to teach.

"Get on Your Knees and Pray, Then Get on Your Feet and Work."

President Hinckley

I hope all of you have a GREAT week.

Love,

Hermana Atkinson

Happy Easter !!!

HAPPY EASTER

Happy Easter Everyone! I hope you all enjoyed your Easter dinner and family fun. I ate pupusas, so if I haven’t explained a pupusa before it is like a stuffed corn tortilla, it has pork or beans or cheese or well pretty much anything inside! Then you eat it with salsa and it seems disrespectful to eat them with silverware, so yeah …. That’s a cool dinner.

I got to watch conference this week and it was great!  I watched conference in Spanish on Saturday. We went to a member’s house, it was interesting to say the least.  I felt like a little kid again trying to understand all the big words that everyone was using, but I did catch most of what was going on.I watched the Sunday morning session in English ( I insisted on watching Elder Holland in English) and half of the Sunday evening session in Spanish.  I loved Conference; it was so cool and uplifting.  I especially loved Elder Holland’s talk and also the one about songs and we can’t dance if we don’t know the music! At least that was how it went in Spanish but I am not 100 percent sure that’s how it went in English because it seemed the translations were a little off …. Or maybe I was a little bit off!  hahaha

Last week I wrote you from D.C. in the Library of Congress; while we were there we met a member who worked there. He gave us a tour of his department and then he showed us where all the books are stored  in the library. So they have like 193 miles of shelving but they still have to store SO many books on the ground. We got to see a first edition Book of Mormon that has Martin Harris’s signature... it was awesome... Sorry, I couldn’t take pictures!

Soooooo, transfer week!  I think I am being transferred so I was trying to visit everyone and get all my pictures in and I have written a ton of notes, I won’t know for sure if I am moving until Tuesday, then I will be able to tell you guys my new address on either Thursday or Friday.

This week we took our recent converts out with us to go knocking doors, which was AWESOME! They are 13 and 15; I am so excited to see them grow more in the church.

Not a whole lot more happened this week, but another food story …. We were visiting some members that pretty much just love to give us food!  They gave me some homemade juice that had papaya, lettuce, pineapple in it and beet juice.... it was UNIQUE!

Oh well, other than that my companion got her first tick, ever,  this week, so I pulled it off for her, she is still a little flipped out about it, LOL! Thank you Thor for teaching us all about ticks and thank you dogs for making me immune to pulling them off.... LOL!! Thats all this week!

I Love You all,

Hermana Atkinson