Week 50: A very... interesting week.

So this week, to say the least, was just a little bit weird.
So to start off I went to the temple, as you all know on Tuesday, and it was amazing of course. I’m pretty sure I gave all those details to y’all last week.

After Tuesday, we were notified that our Mission President was traveling out of the mission for some conference for Mission Presidents in Mexico so we wouldn’t be able to contact or call him. But the point of me telling y’all this is that the Assistants decided to do a 4-day meeting with our zones. So there is something called 8 Principios [Beginnings] that we have as missionaries that we are to focus on in our work. Every like 3 or so months, we have these training meetings full of talks and lots of practices. So to make sure the mission kept working even though President wasn’t going to be here, they decided to tell us that we were going to have these meetings, on Wednesday, Thurs, Fri, and Sat and each day 4 hrs long, focusing on 2 of the principios each day. I’m not saying that these meetings are bad. In fact, they help us focus more on the work and how we can help our investigators, but the things is I HAVEN’T HAD ANY OF MY STUDIES ALL FREAKING WEEK. It’s killing me. I’ve read the Book of Mormon, but it’s not the same bc I can’t take my time and sit down and deeply study it with notes and everything. And we didn’t have our companionship study which was hard bc that’s the best time to receive revelation for our investigators. But oh well, I’m hoping that this week will be back to normal.

On Thursday we had a baptism!!!! Her name is Alondra Naiomi Herrera Duran. She’s the cutest thing ever and she wrote me the cutest letter the other day saying thank you for coming over and teaching her and bringing the truth to her. And she says that I’m her example and that she can’t wait to become a missionary like me when she’s older. Honestly, I never thought that a 10 yr old child could have such a strong testimony like she does, but she has defended this church even BEFORE she was baptized and she defended it against Jehovah Witnesses. That’s a cool story for when I get home to tell y’all. So yeah, I’ll send pics soon of her and her beautiful face, haha

Hermana Perryman

A kiss from Frosty!

A kiss from Frosty!

Alondra's family

My amazing Alondra :)

I learned how to make tamales this week! They were soo good!

Finished product!

Week 49: A week full of...CALOR [HEAT]!!!!!

Yeah, basically that’s all my week was. Technically I don’t really need to write anything bc that explains it all. The sun was super-hot. Like I was walking in fire all day and I was sweating every moment in every second and then I died. The end.

Naw it wasn’t really THAT bad but yeah, it’s getting wayyy hot here. And they just keeping saying that it’s going to get worse. Bleh. But hey, I have to work on that Mexican tan right? haha

This week, not a lot happened. We did do something really cool every day and that was INVITE, INVITE, INVITE to baptism, that is. And because of this we had put a date with our investigators almost every day. And we are working with one investigator named Alondra. She’s been in teaching for a while and always goes to church with a family that live next door to her. And she’s soo ready. She’s 10 yrs old. Her parents are just now in teaching, and we are working with them to get them to church and start to change. (I tell ya, sometimes its super hard being a 20 yr old missionary. I’ve never gone through more than half the stuff that some go through and are older than me. But I have to remember myself that it doesn’t matter. They may be older than me physically, but not spiritually. that I have the power and responsibility to guide them through their trials by the Spirit. A lot of times I just feel too young to deal with things and then at the same time I feel like I’m old.... if that makes any sense) but anyways the point to this is that SHE’S GETTING BAPTIZED THURSDAY!!!! You know what she told us last week? That Testigos (Jehovas Witnesses) were coming by and that she was feeling confused but she remembered the restoration pamphlet that we had given her that explains how to pray and ask to know if the message is true. She shared with us her experience of prayer and how when she finished asking that she received her answer through the Spirit bc "He spoke to me in my mind saying ´Yes, it is true´". It was a pretty cool experience that she has, and she’s only 10 years old. But bc of the circumstances that she has grown up in she acts a whole lot older than her age. It’s outstanding and sad at the same time. But I have soo much love for her. I’ll try to find a pic of her and send it to y'all

This past Saturday we had a "day in the mission" activity with the youth in the stake. Young Men of 17 yrs old and Young Women of 18 years but I say they could have just done Priest and Laurel ages but eh, I didn’t organize it, haha. But what we did was meet up in the stake church bldg at 6 am and we started off with an explanation of what the activity consists of. Then we had breakfast and then started in with "capacitaciones" which are like... ugh. I don’t know the word in English. Okay, just looked it up and it means training. And we have this book that consists of 8 principles of missionary work and different companionships we we’re chosen to talk on one subject and then we would do practices after each one. Hermana Frost and I were asked to give the one on the Role of the Holy Ghost in the Conversion. It was fun, haha and after each one of those, we were assigned a youth and she went with us back to our area and stayed with us the whole day until 6 pm when we had to go back to the stake center to close up. Afterwards, my District Leader had a baptism that night there and the youth could see "the fruit of their labors" it was pretty sweet. So they learned what it is like to be a missionary for a day. It was really fun and for you missionaries serving right now, that would be a cool activity to do. Mom and dad you can tell the missionaries in the ward about it and then they can organize to do that with the stake back home. I just thought that would’ve been fun to do before I left on the mission.

Well, that’s about it for this week. Pray that I don’t die this week from the heat. haha. But really. I’m literally drinking soo much water.

Have an amazing week everyone and know that I love and miss y’all and can’t wait for Mother’s Day!!!!

Hermana Perryman

Just so y'all can see what I deal with here in Mexico... On all of their cartons of milk is a model. It's weird I know. The thing is, it's not even real milk, bc here the expiration dates are forever in the future and they don't refrigerate it in the stores. Crazy right??!!!

The expiration dates are forever in the future and they don't refrigerate it in the stores. Crazy right??!!!

This was from Patricia's and Brissia's baptisms 2 weeks ago. Us cleaning it.

I was too lazy to stand and blow dry my hair... so i just layed in my hammock. haha

These amazing members made us hand made t-shirts to tell us how much they love us. How cute??!!!

We found someone that rents washers for only 35 Pesos [$2.25] for 3 hours!!!! Do you know what an amazing revelation this was for us??!!! For the first time last week, I didn't have to wash my cloths by hand. It was amazing and totally worth the money, bc that's super cheep. That's the weird washer...

Makin the masa.

Making the tortilla... the fast way, with the presser.

Me struggling how to cook the tortillas correctly... haha.

Patricia!!

I look totally crazy, but Patiricia, our convert that we just baptized, fed us dinner of Sabutos. They are super good, and I'm learning how to make them. I'll cook them for y'all when I get home!

The District!!!

So to walk to the our church bldg. We have to cross a free way exit thingy. Well, to explain this pic, we had a dog follow us from way before. Like 15 mins worth of walking and it even followed us up to the point that he entered into the church bldg. It was super funny, and really strange, haha. The little kids were freaking out haha.

Week 48: Una semana llena de fe en el Señor [A week full of faith in the Lord]

Okay, so to start of.... transfers were today...So we all thought that the area was going to be closed bc a lot of missionaries are leaving this week and we are only getting a small handful of newbies. Since our area is so small, we figured that we would just get put back to one area.

So the verdict is... IM STAYING!!! IN ARBOLEDA 3 WITH HERMANA FROST!!!!!!! Yeah, we are pretty stoked. They didn’t close our areas, so I’m still in this little part of Mérida, but hey, I’m loving it. The ward is really good and I just love the members soo much.

So the cool thing about Hermana Frost and I staying together is that we get to be together for our 11 and ONE YEAR mark. We’ve already started to plan the party, haha. AND if that wasn’t enough, we are together for Mother’s Day on the 10th of May which means that she gets to meet you all and I get to meet her family. We are pretty excited for that one and I’m just excited to see all of your beautiful faces and hear your voices and to see Richard again and to talk about you guys in Spanish to him in front of you all but you can’t do anything bc you can’t understand us... muuaaawwww hahahaha. chiste, chiste. haha but anyways, yeah, I’m pretty excited for that one.

So this week, was very... interesting… and crazy… and tiring... and hot… and just a bunch of things. I don’t have a lot of time to write bc I mostly spent it trying to watch the videos that dad sent me (which are the best things ever and are hilarious...take more!) and cursing Mexico and their sucky computers. Yeah, Heavenly Father decided to test my patience this past half hour. It was hard. Nothing is worse for a missionary to have technical difficulties on a Monday during their writing time. But anyways, so back to this week.

So on Monday, President decides he wants to have a last multi zone conference. Basically, it was 3 hours worth of planching. In Spanish, there is a word, planchar. Literally, it means to iron, but how we use it is to explain like a hard scolding or to chew out someone. So yeah, we had to sit through 3 hrs of that. Wasn’t too bad cause I got to see a lot of my missionary friends, but eh. Basically the end of the conf. he told us that we are to baptize by the end of the week 109 ppl. I don’t know how we did or how many we baptized this week as a mission but as for Arboleda 3 with the Dream Team (of Frosty and Perryman) we had EXITO [success]!
Remember the family Polanco that we have been teaching? Yeah, to make a long story short, PATRICIA (the mom) AND BRISSIA (the daughter) GOT BAPTIZED!!!! And we weren’t even expecting to baptize them until the 18th.

So here’s the story of them, bc is just so awesome. So we go to their house on Tuesday and we invite them to baptism for Saturday after an amazing lesson of the Atonement. And well, Patricia was shocked and told us that she wasn’t sure but that she would pray and ask bc she had already said that she felt like the 18th was HER day to get baptized. So we give her Wednesday and then we go back on Thursday (with the Zone Leaders who are the Elders in our ward as well so that they can interview her) and the first thing she tells us is that she had received a sign that she is to get baptized on Saturday. What had happened is that her sister in law (who is a member since she was a kid) called her Thurs morning and just randomly asked if she was getting baptized this weekend but the thing is that we hadn’t told anyone about her date being changed and neither had Patricia. So we don’t know how her Sister-In-Law found out about the possibility that she would get baptized on Saturday. Well, I know, bc it was the Spirit that prompted her to make that call. So yeah, that was Thursday.

Friday, we had an Easter activity with eggs which was super fun bc the members had never done an Easter egg hunt bc they don’t do those here. But yeah, pics are coming soon of that. But we did have an egg toss and we used real eggs, and that was a pain in the butt to clean up afterward and really gross...

But anyways, so Saturday, well, was just plain ole stressful. we were running around trying to get the program together, go to our appointments that we had already made, trying to find clothes to use from members (bc our ward doesn’t have baptism clothes... yeah, a pain.) and yeah. So we had called that morning and verified that a member was going to fill the Baptismal Font. But what do you know? We get there an hour before it’s supposed to start, AND THE DANG FONT WASNT FILLED! AGAIN! It happened last time with Eduardo. So we quickly cleaned it and filled it. I’m just thankful that it fills fast. And bc it's soo hot outside that it’s okay if the water is cold. But yeah, when it all came down to it, we started (well just a little later than scheduled, but hey, we were on Mormon Standard Time, haha) and it all went perfect. The cool thing about it was that EDUARDO BAPTIZED HIS WIFE AND DAUGHTER. He received the Priesthood on Friday right before the activity started. He wasn’t supposed to get it until Sunday but he had already had his interview and we asked if he could get it to baptize his family, and then he got it. He asked that we were in with him and his wife when he received it. It was pretty amazing. It’s been soo amazing to see his progress.

So yeah, we baptized 2 more of the Polanco family and we are still working on the last 2, Isabel and Israel. I’ll update y’all on them later.
But we ended this transfer strong and we are going into it even stronger.

So that was my crazy week that I had. How was y’alls?

So bc we all thought that our area was being closed, the Elders told us to stop looking for a house. And look at what we have to start with again. They planched us today for not having a house, even though they told us to not look for one. And so we have to have one by the end of this week. So I’m asking for the prayers that we will find one and that we can be in it by next week.

So some sad news... Hermana Smith, my mom and best friend here in the mission, went home today. She has ended her mission. It’s sad bc I won’t be able to see her in meetings or anything anymore, but we have plans to meet up and eat ice cream, haha

Well, have to run, but a few pics are coming soon.

Love you all and thanks for everything!!!

Hermana Perryman
(Hannah had internet problems so there aren't pictures this week)

Week 46: TEMPLO!!!!

So yeah, all I can think about right now is how cool the temple sessions are in SPANISH!! So we didn’t get to go to the 5 am session like we wanted to but we had to settle to go into the 9 am session which is why I’m writing just a little late today. But it was waaayyyy cool. All I could think about is just how awesome it will be when I go home to go to the temple with the family, with dad and mom and when Richard gets home, him as well. And I was sitting in the temple session while they were all talking Spanish, of course, and all I could think of was how one day Richard and I are totally going to a Spanish session when he gets back home. We are going to find a temple near us that does it, and we are totally going.

Well, here in Arboleda, things are going great!! We are moving forward in baptizing the Familia Polanco. Eduardo is who we baptized like 2 weeks ago and his wife, Patricia and her daughter accepted a date for the 2 of May. They are both super excited and super prepared, literally in all of the lessons we have from them, I end up tearing up and crying at some point bc they are just soo amazing, and golden!! And just soo well prepared by Heavenly Father and because of that we are for sure that they will be baptized in like 2 weeks, if not 3. But we are working with Eduardo so that he receives the Priesthood and then can baptize his family!! It’s going to be such a sweet and amazing day when they finally get baptized. But their main goal that Patricia told us last night is that they just want to get married in the temple. They’ve come to the knowledge that getting baptized will just be opening the door to bigger and better things and that all they want to do as a family is enter and be married for all eternity. AHHH.... I just can’t express how happy those words make me and as a missionary, even more happy!!! I walked out of that lesson last night feeling like I was walking on a cloud. If every investigator was like them, then the mission would be 100x easier, haha.

On Sunday we had this ward activity centered on the church. We called it Una Casa Abierta. Basically it’s just an open house that we had in the church and what we did was with the people that showed up, the members and investigators, we split up into groups and then we did like a tour around the church to different rooms where the leaders of the organizations were and they explained the purpose of their organization. Ugh. I don’t know what that word is in English, nor how to spell it. I hope y’all understand what I’m trying to say here. it was a lot of fun was a really good way to invite friends and give references to the missionaries, haha and an awesome way to help others understand how exactly our church is organized and what we do. Y’all should think about doing one with the missionaries in the home ward and then invite the neighbors and friends and family!

aaannnnnddddd..... That’s pretty much all I have for y’all this week.
It’s been super hot here and it’s only going to get worse. Just makes me thankful for air conditioned church buildings and fans. Fans. I’ll just say those are a gift sent from our Heavenly Father. haha. Oh, and cold showers. For once, I’m actually content to having to take a cold shower every morning haha

Anyways, I love you all and I hope you all have a wonderful time watching General Conference this week BC ITS GOING TO BE AMAZING!!! And I always think of y’all and I’ll be thinking of how we were all in Utah together just a year ago watching it. Wow. Time flies really fast.

Love you all soo much!!!

PS. pray I get to watch Conference in English!!! bc that would be awesome, and a lot less work on my brains part. Haha

Hermana Perryman

On the way home from the open house on Sunday. I just love everything about this pic!

Temple with Hna. Pinguelo. She's one of the other Sisters I'm living with. She's from Texas and super cool

Temple with the ward of Arboleda!! Yeah! We rock!

We gave this dollar bill as a bday present to our convert Emilio who turned 14 this past week, haha

These amazing drinks this member makes called Marchicados. It was soo good. It's shaved ice with strawberries, vanilla, lechera, cinnamon and some other stuff that I cant think of right now, but it was super good!

A nasty worm we had in our bathroom. Yuck!

This is our amazing investigator Alondra. We were matching one day haha

This is what the sun does to the weeds here. Crazy right??!! Naw, they actually burnt it down but I've seen some spots like our back weeds in the house that are burnt like that. The sun here is super strong...

This is a 92 yr old lady that I met that's super cute. Her name is Carmen and I love her stories she tells of her life. She has a pretty cool conversion story.

So this girls name is Hannah and she's crazy. Must run in the name, haha. but she decided to give us a make over and this was the result. it was a pain to get off, but it was a lot of fun playing with her.

So this girls name is Hannah and she's crazy. Must run in the name, haha. but she decided to give us a make over and this was the result. it was a pain to get off, but it was a lot of fun playing with her.

These are dogs that they make out of flowers here. Cool right?

Temple with another Sister, Hna Huff. She's from my other zone but I love her to death!!

Temple with Frosty!!