Hermana Halverson in the Field: December 24, 2013

Hola familia!!

OH MY GOSH. I love your emails. I really only got on so early today so I could print them out and read them throughout the day so I would better know how to respond when I got back on. Hermana Glenn usually likes to get on around 2 o 3ish our time porque her familia is also online so they chat back and forth. I apologize for making you feel bad though!

I don’t need any shots though!! They said i won’t need it because I’m going back to the states so that is incredible news!

I am so excited for chase to go to the central capacitacion de misionero en Peru!! If it is anything at all like it is here he is going to absolutely LOVE it. Please tell him that i really miss him but i am so excited for him. He is going to make the best missionary every. I just know it. He reminds me a lot of an Elder here. Tambien he is seriously going to be so surprised at how fast he will learn Spanish. Just work hard and be obediente and SPEAK WHAT YOU KNOW! Spanglish is every missionary’s first language. Hable que usted sebir! I think. I’m pretty okay at direct translation, it’s the order that still weirds me out. Also I’m finally getting better at like futuro tense which is really obnoxious. But I bet it’s easier than those who are trying to learn English. Like really our language is retarded. We have like 10 ways to say one thing and in Spanish it’s just a single phrase. por ejemplo, esta bien is said for like anything. Yea, cool, it’s good, it is well (hint hint) so it’s pretty easy in that way.

There’s actually an hermana en nuestro casa that was originally called to Ecuador and was going to leave in January but they only had enough room for a certain amount of sister missionaries and they were at their maximum number so they changed her call to Chile and she left a month earlier. El otro cuatro hermanas en nuestro casa are TODOS going to Chile. None of them to Santiago though. But I’m a little okay with going state side because I think I’d be a little too high maintenance. Also they had to bring with them 18 months’ worth of feminine products porque they won’t be able to get good ones there.

The dias are muy repetitive but it’s also like some of the best times I’ve had. SOME. I’ve told a lot of good vacation stories. And whenever we share family stories everyone says it sounds like i have the coolest parents ever. Which is totally true but i feel bad making everyone else feel bad that my parents are so incredibly perfect.

I miss Colbie so bad! I’m so glad you are all still in love with her. I wonder if she thinks about me. I talk about her todos los dias y we have district prayers like 8 times a day and everyone once in a while someone will say, por favor bendice Hermana Halverson’s gato. It’s safe to say I have the best districto ever.

Okay, so now I will fill you in on my last week.

Starting wiiittttthhhh.... MIERCOLES!

Miercoles: that day was kind of an emotional roller coaster. I don’t remember why, but it was the first time that I have cried since I’ve been here. But it started out really good. We had a great service project where we helped put together all the book bolsas for the new missionaries and we each got our own hymnos! But it was in English. I still have to buy a Spanish one from the tienda but the smallest ones are the most expensive and the bigger ones are cheap but I can’t risk any of my bags being too heavy. So I’ve been saving up for one. But then at gym we played 4 square!! haha it started out with just us 4 hermanas and then everyone joined because let’s face it, four square is the best. But the part that got me worked up was we taught our teacher as an investigator named Daniel and as I’m trying to get our lesson plan together Hermana Dia wasn’t doing anything. So I took her to the otro room and said a prayer with her that we could both work hard together and be prepared and ready to teach the things that Daniel needed to hear and that we would have el espiritu with us while we prepared and while we taught. Then I asked her what questions she wanted to ask him and she told me she would write some down and she wanted me to plan what I wanted to say about la resturasion de jesucristo. And I found a few scriptures and asked her what we wanted to commit him to and she was like, well can you find out because I’m still working on questions. so I was like okay yea, so when it was time for us to go we said another prayer and I grabbed my notebook, scriptures and the pamphlet and she grabbed nothing! I asked her if she was forgetting anything and she said she didn’t need anything and she would just borrow my scriptures. Well first of all Hermana Dia and I have always been so good at picking up where the other leaves off and if one of us is struggling we have each other’s back. Like we are always on the same page, but with Daniel whenever I would look at her for help or for her to talk she just looked at me and said sorry I don’t have anything... so I taught Daniel all by myself and was incredibly frustrated and went we got back to the clase I put my head down and started crying. I said a prayer though because I didn’t want to have any bad feelings about my companion and I knew there must have been something wrong or something on her mind. So I took her outside and we talked it out and she said she was just really homesick and it was effecting her feeling the spirit in our lesson and she kept thinking about other things so she wasn’t following the lesson that was being taught. So I suggested we say a prayer together and we had a good talk and I read her a few scriptures about being homesick. Well they were just scriptures about how we always have the lord when we feel lonely. But it all worked out and since then every single lesson has gone above and beyond our expectations! We have really been teaching with the spirit and multiple times we haven’t even used our lesson plan because we felt like we had to talk about something else. Also that day we had more missionaries come in and 2 are going to KENNEWICK! Spanish speaking though so you probs won’t meet them. One is from Utah and the other from Canada. I see them like every day so I always tell them how much they are going to love it. Also my two favorite elders in my district are elder king and elder Christensen. King is the really tall one with glasses and Christensen is the awkward looking blonde one. But Christensen is like Steven Young’s long lost twin. It’s so funny. So we get along super well.

Jueves: okay so starting from the beginning. I passed out in the shower on Thursday. But it was because we each have a designated shower corner and mine is right underneath this metal thing that we put our razors on. So I bent down to pick up my shampoo and then nailed the back of my head on corner of it. It felt like I had just fallen asleep so when I woke up I was just sitting in the shower and I felt my head and there was a huge bump and I was bleeding a little bit but not that bad. So after my shower I took 2 Motrin and I just went to class. I didn’t have any lasting pain there was just a little scab on my head for like 2 days. Also I finally got to put my sewing kit to use!! Elder king has a little teddy bear and the ear was falling off so I sewed it back on. We treated it like it was a person getting stitches. He held the bear’s hand and we picked out a thread that "wouldn’t leave a scar" haha it was the best. Also that night we had a thing called TRC where a bunch of districts get together and all teach one investigator. I didn’t like it at all. We were grouped with a district who had been here longer and basically made us feel stupid. They were like openly correcting us and rephrasing our questions even when they were asked not to. And as I was trying to ask a question they were like, no say this. So it wasn’t helpful. We have it again this Friday so hopefully it works out.

Viernes: So Friday elder Allen ripped his shirt pocket halfway off and I sewed it up again.. it actually looks pretty decent considering I don’t have much skill.. I’ll take a picture next time he wears the shirt.

Sabado: this day was actually really boring. I don’t have anything to say.. haha

Domingo: Sunday was actually the best. Me and hermana taught the lesson for our district about teaching in councils and I think it went really well! Then in relief society the four of us sisters did a readers theater and it was so beautiful! it was about Christmas obviously... lol but I actually learned a lot about Christ’s birth that I had no idea about before. Then we had a devo and watched Mr. Krueger’s Christmas. Afterwards we went back to the clase and we all just shared cool stories about Christmas and our families and I got SOOO homesick. I loved hearing everyone’s stories but it made me miss you guys so much. I was like bawling on the walk back to our casa and then when I got home I just went to another room and said a prayer. and as weird as this might sound, the more I feel homesick, the more I feel the spirit. Like it’s the Lord telling me that it’s really okay for me to miss being at home to be able to be here and do the work for Him that we are. And in sacrament meeting one of the MTC presidency and his wife gave a talk and she said that by being here we are giving our families the best Christmas present of all. But I think she got it backwards. As much as I miss you guys and am sad that I’m not home, you have literally given me the greatest gift of all time to be supporting my mission. I know this is where I need to be. I know that while I’m preparing to invite people in Florida to come unto Christ, He is preparing them to be ready to hear it when we get there. I have too much to be grateful for and being gone for 18 months will be well worth it. I love you all but I love the people of Florida as well. And you guys already have the gospel so there’s not much I can do for you at home except eat your food and bring home kittens unannounced. haha

Lunes: Yesterday was the eve of Christmas eve and I was out playing volleyball in the sand.. like it was crazy! It didn’t feel like December at all. But it did rain and I finally got to use my boots and umbrella! I am more than satisfied with both. One of the pictures I will send is the outfit I wore to gym today because the grounds were still really wet and I didn't want to get my Nikes dirty.

Today we didn't get to go to the temple but we did have a blanco elefante gift exchange with our zone and both our teachers. It was so fun!! I gave my empty advent calendar with a piece of candy taped to the last one. haha but the elder that got it is from the other district and he’s the one that reminds me of chase so I promised him more candy. Also his birthday is on dic 26 so I told him it would also be an early Christmas present. I opened the box today porque I won’t have any time to do it tomorrow and I love it! Thank you so much!! My hermanas took a video of me opening it and I think what I’m going to do is when I get to Florida I’ll buy a thumb drive and put all my videos and pictures on it and send it to you and then you can upload them to your computer and then send it back. Because I’ve taken a ton of videos of like our campus and our casa and stuff. So yea. When I read what you guys wrote on my pillow case I started to cry.. haha I LOVED Chase’s slothstronaut! I had to explain that one to everyone one. haha

I love you and hopefully I’ll talk to you tomorrow!! (:

Hermana Halverson

PS.. I did something so funny last night. for some reason I can see chase and Whitney laughing and mom saying that’s gross and dad saying that sounds stupid.. haha but we did our own version of the gallon challenge. me and 5 people from the other district in our zone. we each ate 2 bananas and then drank as many sprites as we could til we threw up. I drank two.. then it just was too much.