Week 9 Letter

Hey y’all! How’s everything back at home? Of course I miss everyone, but know I’m doing well. This week, I have to try and make it short but I’ll try and mention the important parts.

This week was a lot better than last week, that’s for sure. I have to apologize for last week’s email bc I feel like I complained and whined the whole time. But I am doing a lot better this week. My perspective has changed quite a bit and I owe it all to my Savior. This past week I studied the atonement during my personal study time and even though I feel like I haven’t studied a whole lot (bc only 1 hr of study time is not enough! I could seriously study for like 5 hrs every day and still feel like I needed more time) my gratitude and perspective of why I am here has changed. I owe everything to my Savior, Jesucristo.

But yeah, just know that I’m doing a lot better and I did receive a blessing from my district leader this morning and that was a huge help and comfort at well.

Let’s see, no mom, I haven’t felt any earth quakes at all.

Every day it seems to rain, which is amazing and such a blessing when it does. It’s blazing hot in the morning hours, then the strangest thing happens. Like clockwork, almost every day at 4 PM the sky starts to darken and then it starts to thunder and lightning and then it’ll rain for about an hr and then it’ll stop and for the rest of the day it’ll be pretty cool and it’ll feel amazing! My comp and I get caught in the rain nearly every day and every day we look forward to it. We love walking around when its pouring outside bc it feels soo good and it’s also a good way to get into people’s houses bc they feel bad for us. hehe.

The Spanish is coming along. I’m obviously not fluent, but I’m contributing a letting bit more to the lessons every day, so that’s progress. Plus all the people here are so understanding about me not knowing the language and keep encouraging me to talk even though they don’t understand anything at all bc my speech is so broken.

Oh, one last thing that happened this week, and then I’ll be done. So we have this new investigator with a baptism date named Israel. And he’s a total Mayan hippie! We love him to death, he is so funny! He seems really interested and my comp and I have high hopes of maybe baptizing him in the future. But the interesting part about him is when we had the first lesson with him we had it up in the catholic cathedral. I don’t know if you remember but I think I mentioned in one of my first emails that in the plaza right in the middle is this huge yellow Catholic cathedral with these big stone steps leading up to this little square field and all around it is this walk way over looking Izamal. so anyways, bc I don’t speak Spanish and can hardly understand it, I don’t know how we decided to teach up there, but it was raining and we had no cover in the plaza so we decided to walk up there and teach in the walk way of a catholic cathedral. Coolest lesson ever. I’ll take pics next week and send them to you bc I didn't get to take any while we were there. But yeah, that’s it.

So that was my week. I’ll send pics here in a bit. But just remember that I love you all and cannot thank you enough for all of your prayers. I feel the strength of them every day. Remember the Savior and all that he has done for you.

We are in the business of happiness, mi amigos.

Love always

Hermana Perryman

There was a festival that went on this week and this was an investigator's daughter that was dressed up. She was so pretty!

My comp, Hermana Smith decided to take a spontaneous photo shoot of me while i was reading the B.O.M.

This is the sky right before it starts to rain. It was so pretty. I love it here.

Week 8 Letter

Okay. I’ll try and answer as many questions as I can but I don’t have a lot of time. 

So this week, was of course, really, really hard. I’m not going to lie, I’m having a really difficult time here. I can’t understand anyone. I’m barely able to understand my companion when she speaks and she’s a gringo, like me. If I can barely understand her, how in the world am in going to start to understand the people here? I honestly feel like I’m not a missionary here. All I do is follow my companion to lessons and just sit there and try to understand what the heck is going on. My companion is really, really helpful and it’s been a blessing that she speaks English, but I’m struggling really hard. I’m praying and praying and studying and studying and I guess that’s really all I can do for now. I’m trying to be patient in my learning and growth, but man this has got to be the hardest thing I’ve had to endure. I know Heavenly Father is shaping me to become the daughter he needs me to be, but it’s really hard to stay focused on the end goal when you feel like there is no end in sight. I want to think about when I can finally get on the plane to go home in a year and a couple of months, but I can’t afford to lose focus, otherwise I will lose blessings I know I can receive if I stay in tune with my purpose. So all I focus on is getting through another week. And hopefully before I know it, I will have reached my 6 month mark. 

So yeah, that’s my soap box and I’m stepping off it. Sorry for the little rant, but I feels good to at least type it to you guys. 

First off, I cannot thank you guys enough for all of your emails. They make me cry, but I couldn’t have asked for a better family and group of friends to support me. 

Let’s just say the 4th was super weird. And I hated it. My comp and I sang the Battle Hymn of the Republic in Spanish during study time and we both wore red, white, and blue all day (I’ll send pics later) but other than that, we didn’t really do anything. We couldn’t really when we had to focus on our investigators. But I kept thinking about how much I miss summer time in Indiana. I wanted to be at the parade with you all and I really wanted to see some fireworks, but sadly, we saw nada. But that’s okay. I just have to endure one more missed 4th and I’ll be home before I know it. 

So when my comp and I have to travel into Merida (which is every week) we have to get up at like 3 in the morning (which we did today and I’m exhausted which is probably why I’m crying so much) to catch a 4:45 bus to Merida which is like an hr and a half. We mostly sleep. But when we get there, we just walk the streets to the church building where we have our mtg. Today was pretty good at the mtg bc when we got there we found out there were like 3 other zones coming as well and I just prayed and prayed Hermana Kite would be in one of them and guess what, she was!!! We stuck together almost the whole time and got to catch up on these past 2 weeks. She’s struggle hard as well, but it was seriously so good to see her. Sometimes just thinking of her and hoping that we can be companions later in the mission is what keeps me going at times.

The food here is... okay. There hasn’t been anything here that has just completely blown me away. I honestly think I might just be accustomed to Americanized Mexican food bc I can say that I’d much prefer the Mexican food up there. But the food fills me up and yes, we do get fed every day. I don’t know how it is in the other areas, but in this area, the bishop’s mom is in charge of the calendar and she never fails to make sure we have someone every single day. I’m always so grateful when I get fed bc it’s obvious these people have next to nothing and here they have 2 more mouths to feed so everyday I pray that heavenly father blesses the people of the ward for their sacrifice.

I hope you are staying safe in Mexico City Dad and that would be way cool if you came to Izamal, but that’s okay. I don’t think I would let you leave if you came to visit. And if you did come, I don’t think I would be able to stay. I would have to go with you. So it’s a good thing you can’t come visit me. 

Now some of moms questions: please tell Brother Taylor I’m terribly sorry and that I’m thinking of him and praying for him. Sister Taylor will be missed a lot but she’s with her Heavenly Father now helping to continue to build the kingdom of god, of that I know for sure.

I just got done being able to chat with Richard for a little bit back and forth and that was a huge blessing bc I really needed to hear from him. 

Okay, I really do have to go now. This email is obnoxiously long, I’m sorry. Next week, I need to make it really short bc now I don’t have any time to email anyone else. So I’m sorry if you emailed me, and I didn’t get to respond! I’ll try again next week. 

I love you all and miss you tons. I’m praying this week is a little bit better.

Hermana Perryman

We had this little kitten following us around in the st. and it was so little and so sad he broke my little heart. I carried it around with me for a bit, but then had to let it go. It was the cutest thing ever!

I saw Hermana Kite this morning at a big Zone Conference!! I died of happiness when I saw her. I've missed her so much and its good to know that she's struggling as much as I am and that I'm not the only one.

A wonderful breakfast of pancakes and crunchy peanut butter. It was actually really good.

Me and my comp, Hermana Smith on the bus ride to Merida last week.

I don't have time to explain all the pics, so I'm just going to send them to you. Sorry!!

Week 7 Letter

So yeah, it’s true, I am alive. Sweaty, scratched, sore, and exhausted, but I survived. Just another 17 more months, right?

 But up, this is now my first week mark. I’ve been here (Izamal, Merida, Yucatan) (ps. I’m where all the Mayan pyramids are! I’m literally in BOM settings!) for a total of 7 days which in reality is really like 7 years. Not kidding, longest week of my life. I’ve already had two break downs. one was during estudiar idoma with my companion and I felt a little better after that but this morning we had a mtg with our zone called 8 principios and we did A LOT of role play (which i suck at even in English) and it was the second to last practice and i just broke down, IN FRONT OF MY WHOLE ZONE. It was so embarrassing for me, but everyone was really supportive and all the Latinos tried speaking to me in their broken English and all comforted me. But yeah, I know no Spanish at all! It’s been so frustrating to just sit in a lesson while my trainer (bless her heart) practically teaches ALL of our lessons. It makes me feel terrible, but I’m trying and I just think that how in the world am I supposed to talk when I can’t even understand what these ppl are saying! And when I do go to bear my testimony, it’s like my whole mind goes blank and I don’t know anything about the gospel. Like I can’t even think of anything in English! It makes me want to cry all the time. But everyone tells me that it does get better. All I’m doing is just praying and serving like crazy.

Just know that I miss you all

 I so badly want to fast forward to a year when I can actually speak to people and not feel like an idiot all of the time. And when I actually know all the other missionaries and have friends here besides my trainer. But I’m trying to live in the moment.

So yeah, that’s pretty much it. Both me and my trainer (Hermana Smith) are new to the area so this past week we’ve spent the whole time practically walking all over creation and trying to figure out all the of the investigators that the elders had before us. We are really close to just starting over but we are slowly making our way around the town and figuring it all and trying to find people is the worst! bc no one really had a specific address. It’s really hard to explain but all the streets are in a grid and the addresses go by what street the house is actually on and then the two streets in between that street. so like for me, my house address is calle (st) 17(that’s the actual street the house is built on) x (by) 26a y 26b (those are the two streets that my house is in between) so if you google map my house (idk if it’ll show up) but it’s just a little house with two wooden gate in front of it. And that’s about it. There isn’t really anything special about what the house looks like. And I just found out that mail isn’t sent to my house. it always goes to the mission office and when it gets here the zone leaders/district leaders will give it to me when they see me next which I do every Monday for district meetings. But anyways, it’s so hard to find ppl because when we finally get to the street they supposedly live on, we have to ask ppl who are sitting outside of their house if they know who they are. And most of the time they don’t know, but they just lie and tell us a random house to get rid of us. But we end up doing a lot of contacting that way. Like we got 17 new investigators this week just from doing that.

So yeah, it’s a lot of walking and if I had to guess we probably spend about 4ish hours walking everywhere. It’s hard, but honestly I don’t mind that part. It’s better than being inside. I like the 4 hrs of study time in the morning but by the time the last hr rolls around, I just want to get outside, even if it is ridiculously hot!

So my first Sunday at church was... interesting. So to start off, the bishop like avoids us, it’s really, really weird. We don’t know what’s up with that yet. And they don’t hold ward council which is a huge no-no bc as missionaries, esp when we are new to the area, WE NEED WARD COUNCIL AND HELP FROM THE BISHOP which we don’t have. But we are working on that. Then the church building has been under construction for like 2 months and the only standing part of the whole building is the chapel and so for 2 months now the ward has only been holding sacrament mtg... AND THAT’S IT! No classes. This poor ward is like dying. But it’s hard as missionaries to show what church really is like when we only go for an hr! It’s awful. But we talked to bishop and he said that hopefully he will have a building or two they are going to rent to have the rest of church in by the end of this week. Then on top of that, I had to give my first talk in SPANISH in front of all these people I didn’t know. It was awful. I’m just thankful for the MTC where they had us write talks every week on the gospel principles so I just read from that. And every church building has air conditioning... except for ours. It was so miserable. Being there in sacrament made me miss my home ward sooooo, sooo much. More than you guys know. I seriously miss seeing familiar faces and being able to communicate with people. I can’t wait to come home and say hi to everyone! Tell everyone next Sunday that I miss them all! So needless to say, we have a lot of work ahead of us these next 11 weeks.

So I’m like out of time and I’m going to try and send pics as well, but idk yet. I love you all so much!!!

Hermana Perryman

My first night in my hammock. Yes, I'm weirdly matching it. i didn't do that on purpose.that night was miserable bc i had no idea how to sleep in it, but i love my hammock now!

My last morning with Hermana Kite.

That's our bedroom. That's where the air conditioning is (best invention ever) and my hammock where I sleep every night. We don't have a closet or any shelves, so we are sadly living out of our suit cases

That's our second room which consists of our study area and kitchen which is behind me in the pic.

So that's our make shift kitchen. We haven't really gone shopping for food yet, but we mainly just have cereal and fruit. We usually eat breakfast, we always, every day no matter what at 2 have lunch with a member and we almost never eat dinner which is fine bc we are too tired to eat anyways.

And that's where we do our dishes. It's so sketchy, but I love it. Our kitchen sink is all the way outside by the front gate. So strange.

(For the next 2 pics) And that's my beautiful house. Just know that from now on out expect me looking horrible in my pics. That's whats going to happen when you sweat all day with no make up on and always have your hair up. My beautiful days on my mission were in the MTC. And those days are long gone.

My companion and trainer Hermana Smith. She's adorable! I love her and she's awsome. We had to come into Merida for our mtg and found a McDonalds and feel in love!

Me and my lovely face eating a french fry.

I finally got some ice cream! It was really good just bc it was cold. I'm not picky bc I'll take anything that is cold!

A selfie with me and Hermana Smith!

(The next 3 pics) So i got eat'en alive by mosquitoes. My legs itch so bad, but it's all still good. They don't bother me as much anymore. But I'm probably going to have scars from them, which is okay bc I've heard battle wounds are attractive.