p-day # 9

dearest family. :)
         ah! can you believe that i will be in chile so soon! i can hardly wrap my mind around the fact that i have already been out for almost 9 weeks. but really, i am so ready and prepared to go out to the field. we had our in field orientation yesterday, and they taught us all about how to work with the members, and set goals according to the mission president's standards of excellence. and we also learned how to find people through the members and in other ways. we had the lessons like all day long, so i was super flooded with information when the day was over, but i feel like an energizer bunny all tied up in a cage. as soon as i get out there, i'm going to explode. haha. i am just so excited to start running all over chile and talking to peole. :)
         don't worry about me having iodine poisoning. haha. my filter in my own water bottle was broken, and i hadn't drunk out of it before, so even though the water tasted weird to me, i thought it was normal since it was the first time i drank from it. but the next day,i opened my water bottle up to fill it, and it about killed me because the scent was so strong. so i talked to the doctor and he said i'm
fine, there aren't any recurring effects. i'm all better and healthy, so no need to worry more. :) they gave me a new water bottle and everything. the president's wife takes good care of me. :)
        so about this week... it was such a great week. :) it went by crazy fast though. haha. so on sunday, we had a relief society lesson about how to teach families and family home evenings, and hermana nielsen and i were like all bouncy and excited because, as hermanas, we just have so
much more leeway to be all fun! i am so excited to be able to teach families and connect to mothers by talking about their kids and stuff. it was awesome. :) then on monday, we went proselyting. I actually got into a bible bash with an evangelist in spanish... haha. that was fun. i have
no idea what he was saying, but i bore real strong testimony. one of his sons is actually going to have the missionaries over sometime.haha. and we talked to a man who was just sitting on the side of the
road. we all crouched down and started talking... and seriously the spirit was crazy strong. i never thought that it would be possible to feel the spirit like that while sitting on a dirt road, but it totally
happened. and he also wanted the missionaries to come over later. he was so interested. :) i seriously testify that the gift of tongues is so real. even though our spanish is way less than par, we bore witness by desiring him to know what we did, and he felt it. it was incredible. and then my favorite experience of the day... we actually found a guy who spoke english. he spent a lot of his life in arizona, where he actually was arrested for drug dealing. haha. he learned the
missionary lessons in prison, and he told us that he loved everything about the gospel. he said that he'd wanted to be baptized, but couldn't because he was prison. and then when he got out, he was
immediately deported back to guatemala. until we stopped to talk to him on monday. :) at first, he was telling us that he has a lot of friends that don't like the church, but as he continued talking and we
directed his questions to help him think more about what he believed, he talked himself right back into the testimony that he had gained in prison. he accepted our invitation to be baptized, and told us that he wants so badly to change his life to include the teachings that the gospel entails. :) ah. it was incredible. i am so excited for the missionaries to start teaching him again!
        well my time is almost out, but i just want to close with my short testimony that i know this gospel is the truth and the way to eternal happiness. this work is so incredible. we are serving our savior in his name, and this is our only chance. i love being amissionary so much! have a fantastic week! hermana spencer

p-day # 8

dear family,

okay, real quick my week. haha. first off, i want to apologize for being so lame and unspiritual last week. i was really bored with the mtc and just ready to leave, but i decided that god has kept me here for this long for a purpose, and there had to be something that i need to learn every day while i'm here. so i prayed for a spiritual experience every day since, and i have been feeling the spirit a lot more strongly, and it has helped me to regain that fire i have for missionary work all over again. i love being here, and i love this work. i am so excited to get to the field and finally implement the things that i have learned here into actually saving souls!!

there are new pictures on the website for the mtc. i was chosen to hold the us flag in the picture of all of the countries that come here. so i'm in two different ones. they of course chose the one where i have hair in my face, but whatever. haha. everyone was way jealous.

i am going proselyting again this week, but this time it's just with my companions. all of us are white and can barely speak spanish, so it should be a challenge, and i am really nervous, but the lord will provide a way. and i have been working really hard, so i am praying for the rewards to come forth by being able to share the gospel with those who need it here in guatemala.

i am not sure when we are leaving for chile. that was actually the first i have heard of it, so i really hope you are right. they don't tell us anything here. haha. but i will let you know as soon as i do.

i am almost over my cold, and this week, my filter to my water bottle broke, so i actually drank iodine... i was not feeling good at all because i didn't realize it had broken until a whole day later. the doctor told me that i would be fine, just to drink lots of water and that it just inflamed my thyroid. i felt really crappy for a few days, but it's out of my system now, and i feel a lot better. :) from now on, i will make sure to smell my water bottle before i drink out of it. haha

we had 2 devotionals this week, and one of the was with the director of all of the mtcs in the world. he showed us pictures of all of them, and it was so cool because i saw pictures of where brayden was! :) it's so cool to be able to see things like that that just kind of connect us even when we don't hear from each other very much.

to close, i just want you all to read alma 32:27 and helaman 5 this week. they are scriptures that have strengthened me throughout the course that i have been on my mission, and they always help me to tie my work and sorrows and joys back to how much heavenly father wants to listen to us and help us. everything is possible with faith in God, and i am so grateful that i have that knowledge. i love this work!

have a wonderful week family!

hermana spencer

p-day # 7

oh family!!!
              i am so happy to get to write you today. :) i look forward to my email time every week. so... yeah. haha. just so you know, i'll be leaving for chile in about 2 weeks ish. so crazy
right?! i am so excited! not that i don't like the mtc or anything, but it is definitely time to actually get out there and do some work! i am so ready! haha. i'm trying to learn as much as i can right now so
that when i get out there my trainer will just have to fix a few things that i learned wrong, and then we can start tearin it up. :) i love missionary work so much. haha.
          on monday we said goodbye to all our latina sisters. it was really hard. :( i hate saying goodbye. because most likely, i will never see any of them again in this life. i mean thank
goodness for facebook, but it's crazy how attached we all got to each other in just 3 weeks. and i know it's only going to get worse as this mission goes on. me and hermana nielsen were talking about when we actually leave our missions... and i know i'm going to bawl my face off. awesome right? haha. but on tuesday, to cheer us up, they took us on a tour of the whlole city. it was way awesome. this place is so old! all of the buildings look like they're falling apart, and their are so many people just walking around all the time! we got dropped off at this like market place, and we got to walk around and look at all the of the fruit and clothing... it was so cool. and guess what! i talked to people in spanish and they actually understood me and i actually understood them! we ran into some sister missionaries, and they were way surprised that we were fromt he mtc because we could actually talk to them. haha. it was way fun. :)
          the next day, i was way sick. i've had a nasty cold for a few days now. luckily, the mission president's wife loves me so much that she gave me some drugs. and i am getting better every
day. :) i hope my district didn't mind me blowing my nose every five minutes all day long... but whatever. haha. we also had a half our after one of our meals, so we decided to build a fort in our room. you can tell we have lots of things to entertain us here... haha. it was way cool. we used a ton of sheets and the curtains... i can probably say that it's the coolest fort i've ever built. be excited for the camera tour after our missions, cause it's on hermana nielsen's camera. haha. we got new teachers this week, but i actually really love them a lot. hermana vasquez served with dantley rogers on his
mission, and i guess they're like best friends. i love being from utah, cause whenever i say i am, people ask me if i know someone and i usually do. haha. it's so cool! i also memorized d&c 4 this week. way hard, but i feel extrememly accomplished. :)
            i just can't believe that i'm already heading to chile in like 2 weeks! it's so insane! but it's perfect. i feel like this is what i've been raised to do my whole life, and i can't wait until i can actually start implementing what i've learned to help real people. :) i love you all so much! thank you for all of your prayers and love. i couldn't do it without you.
 love you!!! hermana spencer

p-day # 6

hola family.
           :) can you believe how fast the time is flying by? it's so crazy to me that i have been out here for over a month already. i've almost been in guatemala for as long as i was in provo. it really
is true what they say about the time on the mission. there are so many things going on that it feels like each day lasts about a month. but this month feels like a day. i have so much to learn here still and i really hope that i can get it all learned before i hit the field!  i'm trying really hard to
work my hardest here to learn everything that i possibly can while i'm here. which i know is a blessing from the lord. i am so grateful that i am here in guatemala because the opportunities i have to speak spanish with all of the latinos help my vocabulary expand every day. and i love that i can have them explain it to me when i don't understand. my understanding of fast spanish is getting better every day. :) last night, we had a prayer with all of the hermanas here, and i understood every word that the sister spoke when she prayed. such a huge blessing. :)
           anyways, i have a few things i want to tell you about, so here goes.  my teachers here are
so great. haha. hermana alvarez is my night teacher, and he is so full of energy. every time i'm having a day that drags, i know i can just wait for his class and it will instantly get better. he is hilarious. our other teacher, hermano estrada, is way cool too. haha.
          so we went proselyting this week out in the city... each of us had a latina companion and we
just went out and were told to talk to everyone, knock doors if we wanted, and get as many references as we could. :) it was so so cool. i didn't talk very much because my companion kind of took over, but in most of the conversations we had with people, i knew exactly what was going on. one of the men we contacted, he was sitting in his doorway waiting for people to come by. he works on cars, so it was his business to wait. we talked to him about god, and within 5 minutes, the spirit was so so strong and he had tears running down his face. he told us he would love the missionaries to come over and teach him more about the book of mormon and that he feels like this is somehting he
needs in his life. it was so awesome. :) i absolutely love the people here. they are just so kind and willing to listen to you, even when you can't speak their language perfectly. in 2 weeks, just my
companionship will be going out to do the same thing... without latinas. i am praying and studying really hard to know all of the things i will need to say then. it was really awesome, but i'm excited
to be more involved the next time.
          k, i'm almost out of time, but last night we taught a lesson to our "investigator" for like the 5th time. we taught him about the word of wisdom. and we made a game of pictures of good and bad things for your body. we sat on the floor and gave what would probably be considered a primary lesson. but it was so so so great. :) seriously the things that we can be prompted to do can be so strange, but if we will only follow through and do the things we are impressed to do, we can reap so many rewards. we sang scatter sunshine, but in spanish it is so much better. haha. he absolutely
loved it and he told us after that he wishes he would have done these things to his real investigators when he was teaching them. that made us all feel really good. :) i love being a missionary, and i am so grateful i am here. haha. i would rather be here than anywhere else.
love you all!

p-day # 5

dearest family,
           how are you? :) things are so crazy busy here. the days are flying by. i remember that very first week in the provo mtc seeming to last like a whole year. the days were like 3 weeks long each. now, i can't believe the day is over when it is. i feel like there's not enough time in a day to learn everything that i want to get stuck in my head by the end of it. things are really going well with the
language though. the gift of tongues is so so real here. i was talking to one of my companions about it because i came into the mtc with the false impression that when i would both hear and speak spanish that i would have to quickly translate it into english and then translate what i want to say in english into spanish to respond. but it's not that way at all. when i speak and listen in spanish, my thoughts are actually complete in spanish. everything makes sense, but i don't have to translate anything into my natural language. it's the strangest thing ever. i find myself praying in my head in spanish and have to like really focus in order to say prayers in my head in english. both languages have become super bad. haha. i can't speak either language clearly anymore. my sentences usually come out with some of both. haha. spanglish at it's best. .)
           so, about my week. we have been teaching one of our teachers as an investigator names carlos. every time we teach him, i feel like us hermanas do it very well. but this week, he decided to challenge us with a question about polygamy. he asked both of the companionships of elders and by the time they were done teachin him, he decided he was confused and didn't want to hear from the sisters that night. it was super disappointing. but that kind of stuff will happen when i'm out there. i'm happy that they are preparing us for different situations that we could be in in the mission field, but at the same time it was super frustrating because we know that it's just a role play and we need the practice. oh well. the next day we set a date for his baptism and he accepted and we smoothed over his polygamy questions with my favorite scripture about faith, alma 32:27. it worked. it's like his
theme scripture. haha. i love it though. it always makes him feel better. i feel like my motto of my mission is going to be¨'poco a poco'. little by little.
            we also got to attend the temple this week on tuesday morning. it was so incredible. the temple here is super teeny tiny though. there were like 10 seats in the celestial room, but this week is something called semana santa. holy week. all of guatemala gets the whole week off of school and work and gets to celebrate with their families. so tons of saints come to the temple to do sessions and stay in the other half of the mtc called the casa de vuespos. it's so fun to see all of the kids and teens here with their families goingto the temple. i love it. :) but it also meant that the temple was crazy busy. so in the celestial room after the session, there was like nowhere to be. and with us 13 missionaries in there, it was super crowded. still incredible though. we had headphones to listen to the session in english, but i decided to be bold and listen to the whole thing in spanish with my headphones half on turned almost all the way down. it's incredible how much i comprehend when i listen. speaking the language is a different story, but i understand almost everything when i listen. i loved it. spanish is such a beautiful language. :)
            also, i forgot to tell you last week, but the president's wife asked me to be the music coordinator while i'm here. i'm i'm charge of coordinating all of music throughout all of the mtc for sacrament meetings and devotionals. it's hard to do when i can't really get my message across fully to the latinos, but i really like it. .) it helps me put myself out there even more and get to knwo more people. all of the missionaries here are amazing. i absolutely love getting to know them. all of the sisters on our floor are like the sweetest sisters i've ever met in my life. we all talk so much at meals and laugh so hard. somehow our hand actions and broken spanish gets our jokes across. haha. seriously, these latinas are so so hilarious. :)
         on tuesday night we watched an old devotional and guess what... it was from the first week that brayden was in the mtc last year! i searched for him everywhere but i could not find him. haha. it was a super good devotional by elder christofferson. i really enjoyed learning the things he had to say.k, i don't have much more time, but there is a photo on the webite of all of the missionaries here. i think anyways. i'm not sure what it is, but you should look for it. i'm wearing purple. and i'm on the
end. haha. on monday, we're going out proselyting with some missionaries that are here. it's going to be an adventure... haha.we'll see how my spanish goes! lastly, we play soccer every sports time. it's so much fun with the latinos! hermana nielsen is like a professional. haha. they are like asking her for her autograph at every meal now. i really really enjoy it. :) all right family. i love
you so much! have a wonderful easter! adios.