Comitan, Comitan

Okay, this week was called traveling to Comitan three times!

Comitan is about two and a half hours from here and we did exchanges with two sets of girls there which was fun. But it meant I wasn't with Van from Tuesday to Saturday, aka almost not at all. Not as fun. BUT we had MIRACLES!

First. Thursday night I got up to San Cristobal with one of the girls and we had interviews with President George--those are the best. We have cool deep talks. Well, I got out and found our investigator there waiting as we'd agreed, and Sister George and Elder Reyesleva (from California?) were talking in English, and then we realized that all of us there spoke really good English, including Hermana Fuentes and Linderman (investigator) so that was exciting and I think Sis George liked talking to people she could understand for a minute. And then we decided to teach Linder right there in the foyer with everyone and switched back to Spanish cuz who can teach in English, not me. But I will tell you. That was a power. Teaching in circle with three missionaries (the other elder was in his interview) and Sister George just brought this huge spirit, especially when we were singing. He started talking about all he'd read in the Book of Mormon--quite a lot, WOOHOO! And asked some questions and it was the greatest talk ever. He is SUCH A GOOD PERSON. 21 years old, kind of in love with a recent convert which is why he started listening, but now it's all for himself and when we taught him about fasting two weeks ago he asked if he could fast to have an answer. We were like...Yes. Yes you may. So he did and he paid an offering and everything, and then got sucked into the school whirlpool and we didn't see him til now. But he said that he likes reading the Book and is sort of just waiting for his answer. Elder Reyesleva talked about Lehi and the fruit, how he took one bite of the fruit and suddenly wanted to share it with his family. He said, we don't need to eat a whole fruit to know if it tastes good or not. We know by taking a bite if it is a good fruit. And that really made sense to Linder. He said, "You know I think I already have my answer. I'm just scared to admit it. I'm going to go home and talk to my family this week about getting baptized." And that's where he went! So we'll see in a week how that goes for him.

Another miracle was Francisco. We found him a few weeks ago singing a hymn in the door to his brother-in-law. We do that sometimes. And he heard us and came out and started asking all these questions. So we invited him to have a church tour and they did while I was in exchanges with another sister and said he felt the spirit SO strongly (even though the member accompanying was a sweet 72-year-old lady who was talking about how Lehi crossed the red sea with Moses and that she had the priesthood) and said he wanted to prepare himself for baptism. He was really hard to find afterward but this week we did and he said he'd been reading and had lots of questions, like could he take the sacrament before getting baptized because that seemed like something really sacred to him, etc. It was really cool. More news to come on him!

And of course the Lopez family. The bishop called us Tuesday morning and said he'd gone to talk with them and they are already in the process of his divorce and marriage!! Which they were all iffy about before. Our bishop is so cool. He thanked us for being patient with that family and not shoving them into the waters but instead helping them to grow their testimony and he promised we would see the fruits. He also said he's going to get a hold of a violin for me. WOO! He's so COOL. Also, he served his mission in Riverton Utah is that cool? Yeah.

Well, anyway it was a great week. I had a cool study session one day when one of the Comitan girls was sick in bed. I was reading about Peter and Andrew when they left their nets straightaway, and thought about all the things we do (or should) leave behind as missionaries. TV, families, friends, pants, etc. is all obvious, but I realized there's a lot more he's asking us to leave behind that we forget sometimes. Like our behavior. Our personal wants. Our identity. He needs servants, representatives of Him! It's so much harder to do this work with a bunch of prideful selfish people, which is why He asks us to develop these attributes. What manner of man does He want us to be? EVEN AS HE IS. That means that teaching a certain number of lessons is NOT good enough, nor is getting up every day at the right time. He needs us to be Him and there's no other way to have real success. So that became our goal this week.

I'm so grateful for this time in the mission and I am still just so ridiculously happy. I love this gospel and I love what it does to me! Love you guys and hope you have a fantastic week!!!

[Linette and I (Randy) took Sienna and had breakfast with Hermana Van Valkenburg’s mom! Kelsi said, "My companion opened an email with this picture before I did and started bouncing up and down all over and grabbing my arms. We're like, 'This is getting SERIOUS! The parents met!’”]

Is it harder to say Tzotzil or Tuxtla?

This might not be the best letter ever because I don't remember this week very well. Sometimes that happens once you get to Monday. We had a bit of a rough one at first but are doing awesome now, aside from the raging diarrhea that has taken hold of one of us (I won't mention names, but it's not me.) I figure I can say that because I'm in Mexico and here TMI doesn't exist. In fact, you can never give too much information about your personal issues or bodily functions even to a stranger in the store. It's kind of nice, cuz they're all just so friendly and personal with everyone. And at the same time, kind of disgusting and way too much sometimes. 

Our time is taken up a lot by helping the sisters, this week we did exchanges with the ward next door, Jovel. They are SO AWESOME. I learned so much from being with Hermana Alejandro.  She’s this cute little girl with deadpan sarcasm. She is one of the ONLY latinas I know that speaks fluent sarcasm. And it is so funny. She's also super diligent and a little fireball. And her companion, Sister Baker, is tall, white and from Utah and is PERFECT. She is the nicest human I have ever met, super positive, always laughing, crazy, loving and perfect. Yesterday was her birthday and today we're going to go for Pepe's Pizza (it's really called PP's Pizza but that's how it's pronounced here and since y'all are Americans I decided not to make that too weird). It is the BEST PIZZA ON THE PLANET. It's not even pizza, it's like a huge baked and buttered bread thing with carmelized pineapple and ham on top all covered in beautiful sauce. And it's FREE! I mean today it is. Because one day our district leader told us if we got 140 contacts within two days he'd buy us any pizza we want. That was taken seriously, and we actually had a lot of fun contacting and learned a lot talking to everyone. Since Baker helped with one of those days during exchanges and it's her birthday, we're celebrating our victory together.

Tomorrow we're going to Comitan about two hours away to do four or five days of exchanges with two other companionships down there. And, sadly our sick Hermana Westbrook is getting sent home because they just can't help her here :/ She's got a disc out of place in her back and we're all pretty sad, she's a good friend of mine who came with me to the mission. So they sent us a newish girl from Guatemala whose companion is also sick, and she is cute as heck!

Last night we ate dinner with the Lopez family, our perfect investigators. They told us their whole life story and it was beautiful, and we kept pushing for them to decide! They've actually already decided, they KNOW they'll get baptized, they're so faithful and ecstatic about the gospel, they're just being silly. They know neither of us have a ton of time left on the mission and have already told us we have to come back for their baptism because that would just be wrong if we weren't here. RIGHT? That's funny, GET BAPTIZED. They're just ready. We just want them to be even HAPPIER and get to the temple quick, they BELONG there! I've never seen a family who belongs there more. Man.

We do have other investigators but we're just a little obsessed with them right now and as I said, hardly in our area. We found a family of ten that is very interested and we're going to try to get them there this week, and gave a man a church tour this week and he felt the spirit so strongly and said, I want this. And accepted baptism on the spot. His name's Francisco. I wasn't actually there though. 

Tons of people speak Tzotzil  We decided to learn it, partly because one of the companionships of girls in our charge is in a Tzotzil speaking area and we thought it might help them. And partly because like, kushia bontom. That's how you say “How is your heart?" :) There's no real official way to spell anything because it's not a written language, although there is a Book of Mormon. I've been reading it which is pretty cool. I don't understand anything but am doing better with the weird gutteral pronunciation.

There are a few Tzotzil people in the ward, but all of them speak spanish too and they all get along great. This place is just pure.

Speaking of that, there is this AWESOME couple in the ward, the wife grew up speaking Tzeltal, ran away at 7 years old to not get forced into marriage, found a job and taught herself Tzotzil and Spanish and now knows some English too because she married an American who is now our mission leader, and they're both HEADED YOUR WAY today! They're going to Salt Lake for two months to see the kids and I sent a little something, so she might be calling one of these days, I said you could come pick it up or just figure it out over there, you know. But I hope you get a chance to talk to her because she is amazing. She's in Relief Society and once she realized there was no bishop's storehouse in Mexico, she started creating her own and is now on a pathway to making every sister in the ward independent with both a personal and ward food storage that increases every week. SO COOL.

I love you guys a LOT! It's been crazy, a lot different from the missionary life I've ever had. Sometimes I miss being able to teach and be a good diligent efficient obedient missionary, but it's been more like on-call babysitter, travel agent or whatever. But I love it all, it's just new.

Welp, we're off to have more adventures in other places! Love you a lot and will be praying for you! Please pray for the Lopez family, Hermana Westbrook and Francisco!!

LOVE YOU!!!

Flipping hair early in the morning. Who needs a hair dryer?

Time in Tuxtla

This week, we went to Tuxtla! That's pretty much what we did.

Monday after writing we went out to meet Sister George who had brought one of the injured girls in the mission house to shop in San Cristobal and then took us all back up since we had a leadership conference there the next morning. It might have been the funniest car ride ever, as we were all gringas and funny ones at that, and it was especially funny when Sister George would lose it. She's this super proper and often sarcastic verging-on-grumpy lady and we LOVE her. So much. Oh goodness. We helped her shop for groceries, heat up food, and went for Tapioca House. One by one the other companionships of STL's showed up from all over the mission and we had a great night catching up a little, Van (my companion) was the entertainer. There was one point where she was telling the miraculous experiences they'd had with Sister Westbrook and how everyone was in the right place at the right time when she got sick, etc and once she finished Sister George finally looks up from her cooking and says, "Oh that is just TOO MUCH!"  And we all DIED, it was so funny.

We had a pretty good council, a lot of it was talking about the Atonement and we were able to go to the temple afterwards.

We headed back and took with us Hermana Leon, Westbrook's companion, who've both been in the mission house this week as she gets better. Hna Leon came and stayed with us and went out to work with members for a couple of days. After working for a few days, we went back up to Tuxtla because Van's old companion came back to get married and a bunch of missionaries went. We had to change our P day, so we're going to work today after this. It was beautiful, they're happy, and we got to bring Westbrook home! Even though she's not all the way better, she's going crazy and needs to be here, and she's just about there. Woohoo!

In other news, this week we got to find a ton of new people which was a huge blessing! One night we had an hour left and not a lot of options, so we ran home and looked in the area book and found some old investigators that we went out to find. We had two great lessons, finding a mother of four who cried and a man who knows EVERYTHING and has a ton of knowledge about crazy things that I thought are only in Jesus the Christ and we don't know how he knows, but he also knows how we're the fifth race descended from lemurs and once we get to the seventh, the world will end. His wife also hated us and he wouldn't stop talking or let us out of his house for half an HOUR after we told him we had to leave. 

We're hoping to have a more normal week this week and work a lot and do some exchanges with more girls now that things are calming down! Meanwhile, I love you a ton and am grateful for such a great family! Today after saying something about my mom, Van said "Is there ANYTHING about your mom that's not completely awesome?"  I couldn't think of anything!

Love you!

Here are a couple of my old companions. Hermana Hickman and Coronado are companions now.

San Cristóbal: In Zion's Hills

Ohhhshoooot I keep leaving the best area ever and then finding the REAL best one, and I just found HEAVEN AND ZION ON EARTH. This place is so great. Can I just sum it up to say my companion is the funniest thing since Ned and his turtle and I haven't breathed since Tuesday. We spend most of our time in the house talking in British accents and Harry Potter or Airbender quotes. So that's happy.

This ward is ZION. I've never seen anything like it! I mean, KIND OF, at home, but everyone in the ward is either our mother or our best friend, the bishop is a fireball of young energy and profound gospel knowledge and love--He knows our investigators better than we do and just splits his face smiling and hugs them so hard when they walk into church and plays the piano professionally and gets things down every week in ward council like I've never seen in my life. HOLYCOW. AND, all the members visit our investigators without being asked and know everything about them. We could do nothing and this place would just keep elevating itself to heaven! 

Satan seems to know that and so has attacked the other sisters in our ward with health issues. One has been down most of the last two transfers, first with her hip and then I guess two days before I got here got super sick, so I arrived to find two other hermanas I knew waiting for me, and we went all over town with luggages and stuff until we could get to the hospital to pick up my real companion who was caring for the sister. Being Sister Training Leaders means when people are sick like that, we don't really work either because we spent the week passing by, covering their area, and one night when the companion was going crazy because she hadn't slept in several days I went over to cover for her and got to spend the night with Sister Westbrook, the sick one :( She is an ANGEL, she came with me and I've always loved her like CRAZY. So we had a nice time. We finally one day shipped them off to Tuxtla to get better taken care of and had more opportunities to work, though still covering two areas.

So. There's this family. OH THIS FAMILY. They're perfect. So wonderful. I can't even handle it. They were a referral from another family named the J., and have been to church three times, though I guess these past few weeks they didn't go since the J.'s didn't either. It was really interesting, S., the mom of the family of members started to get attacked by depression and a crazy neighbor upstairs who is now visiting her every day and showing her awful anti-mormon cult stuff from the internet and has really shaken up her faith. We went by one day to talk to her and started helping answering her questions. Then.  CRAZY NEIGHBOR LADY WALKS IN. Dun dun dun. Turns out she was passing by to take S., the mom, to her church, so thank goodness above we were there. S. told her she's asking questions, and crazy neighbor lady says, "Good. It's good to ask direct questions, and get--" intense glare at us "direct answers." Glare intensens (?) even more. She then pulled out her phone and decided to present us with one herself. She said "Let's use my Bible, I have 16 versions of it on my phone right here," and then proceeds to read a verse about one gospel and how you must reject all that varies from that one gospel or something like that, it wasn't even recognizable in our Bible, and  then she glares at us again and leaves. Which is probably a good thing because I was about to confusedly ask her how many gospels and HOW many bibles again were on her phone right there, but whatever. That's one she'll have to figure out. My companion was so mad. She looked at me and said, "I'm so mad." So I took control and gently told S. that it had been really interesting what her friend had said, and of her 16 bibles. I started talking a lot about confusion of doctrine and whether it sounded more right that God would give us 16 Bibles to figure out, or one prophet, one Book of Mormon, etc. She started nodding and we talked about the spirit and how to discern truth, finally kneeling down and inviting her to offer a prayer and ask HIM! And she did. And it was beautiful. She started crying and saying she didn't want to be sad anymore and please help her know if this church is true, if Joseph Smith is a prophet, etc.  Afterwards we all just looked at each other, and she said she felt peace, and joy. And we all started hugging and telling her to ask HIM, not the neighbor. Always ask Him. So special. 

Anyway, BACK to the family, her referral, they are amazing. All but one daughter have come three times, the daughter I guess used to just glare and leave the room, but we went this weekend and she was jumping up and down, so excited to learn and had her Book of Mormon in her hands. She'd decided to give it a chance and had been reading all week. And now she was so happy. The whole family. We taught the Plan of Salvation and they were SO CUTE. It's a mom, a dad, and three teenage girls who are all super peppy and happy and adorable, two are 18 and one is 14. It was so funny how they all stared at us intensely as we explained something, and when one expressed a concern they would all nod and start murmuring in agreement. And once we answered and it clicked, it was a whole roomful of "OOOOH"s and everyone smiling and looking at each other and bouncing in excitement. The dad is stellar. Sofía the member neighbor had tried to show him some of the anti-mormon videos she'd been shown and was being all weird and he got mad at her and wouldn't look and told her to stop attacking what we believe in! He even used we! And on Sunday they came alone all happy and together, it was the oldest's first time and she was smiling her face off. They're perfect.

Well, to end I'll stick in a quote from the comp. We went to buy food at the beginning of the week, at a supermarket, and after finishing realized we hadn't seen the eggs. So we made another circle and then asked a worker, and they said "oh we're out." She was like, "Oh thank you." then to me, "They're out. That explains why we didn't see them. There are none. There are no eggs. It's only a  STAPLE or something, I THOUGHT. That's like saying 'We're out of air. Sorry. Trees are on strike!' THE HENS ARE ON STRIKE FOLKS!" and I was dying. 

Welp, that's all folks! It's not too cold here. Just a lot. President George's wife came down with another gringa to go shopping in San Cristóbal so we're going to go join them because apparently it's ridiculously cool here.

Over and out, love you all!!!

WHY TO THE NORTH POLE OF COURSE!

I hope we all read that in the right Tom Hanks voice. That's right, the result of this transfer is San Cristobal! They SAY that it's the coldest place in Chiapas with the most rough traditional people, but I think they MEANT that it's beyond awesome. I'm actually super excited. It's also where they sell everything cool like traditional carvings and clothing and stuff. Also apparently I'll be Sister Training Leader or something, so there are things to learn up ahead! Woohoo! ALSO, it looks like I'll be with Sister VanValkenburg! Remind me how we're related again? Something about Aimee [Aimee is married to Kelsi’s cousin, and Sister V is Aimee’s cousin, so…cousin-in-law’s cousin]. Still haven't met her yet but super excited! We leave tomorrow at _____. But hoping they'll let us know before then.

So this week was BEYOND cool! 90% of that was because my friend Dallin H. Oaks showed up, and we had the most amazing conference. ALL the missionaries came up from all parts, and it was the first-ever general gathering of everybody spiritual party! (Spiritual party means you all sit in the same room and party without talking.)

Now I'm going to mention something I wasn't going to, but I figure it'll come up someday and it might as well be when my mother is 2,000 miles away. In getting to the meeting in the morning, we left in good time, and with mneh traffic arrived in okay time, and then suddenly NO TAXI WOULD TAKE US, and we spent 20 MINUTES going up and down the street trying to find an open one. We had never been to the stake center before and only had the address and a general idea. Finally we got one and the old (though nice I'm sure) taxi driver mixed up the "norte" and "oriente" and started taking us in the wrong direction. I had a feeling I should verify so I repeated it even though I had no idea where we were supposed to go, and he turned around. We thought, you know it'll be okay because at 9 we have to be there but it doesn't start til 10. However, the taxi arrived at the same time as the apostle, they stopped us and let him in, and once he'd entered, started to usher us in the back door but then changed their minds and pushed us into the front, where we were faced with a standing group of every missionary in the mission, President and his wife, a 70 and an apostle, all staring at us. I WAS THAT MISSIONARY. And it was awful. Mother, I'll NEVER BE LATE AGAIN. 

But, hey, if you can't make a good impression, make an impression right?

We all got to shake his hand and it was all great, and then the conference was amazing. He had a spanish translator, which was kind of funny when Elder Oaks said something funny and all the Americans laughed really loud, and then the translator repeated it in a not-quite-as-funny way and all the latins sort of "heh..!”

But I will say that there was a power in that room that was so different and so real, it was a feeling very distinct from just feeling the spirit or being happy. I know the priesthood is real, and that that man holds a sacred office! He answered so many questions in my mind. One thing I really liked that he talked about was helping the people to go to church. He said we need to help them focus on the next ordinance. Many times we think of that as baptism, or temple sealing, etc. but he told us the next ordinance is the sacrament, and we need to help people to understand better what that means.

Afterwards, we got to say hi for a minute and I saw all my old companions, my cousin, old zone leaders and such and it was super awesome! Sister Coronado is on crutches again, had knee surgery or something, and I asked her how she's feeling. She said "Swell! Get it?" I told her she was dumb. After laughing really hard. 

Well, more experiences to be told in a few months for the time is short, but that same day we were able to find a man who'd attended the church 4 months in the US and started crying and accepted baptism along with his 9 year old son and it was awesome. The Lord is listening! I love you all!!!!

And here are some people I associate with.