2013-10-21

Buenas mi familia y amigos! So this week´s been good, but I´m doing something a little different. I haven´t written in Spanish for a while, but I happened to give my first talk in Church since I´ve been here. This is the meat of the talk. I hope you enjoy!

Moroni 7. 45-46 

(Hablo sobre esta escritura) Me encanta esta rama y la caridad, amor y servicio que yo veo cada día de ustedes. Tenemos muchas miembros fuerte aquí. Muchas miembros con testimonios grandes y miembros que viven en una manera que otras pueden ver un luz de ustedes. Como miembros tenemos la responsabilidad y privilegio compartir esta luz y esta felicidad con las demás.

Cada una de nosotros podemos hacer la obra misional cada día en una manera que es muy fácil. No necesitamos predicar en cada momentos con nuestras palabras, pero predicamos en cada momento mediante nuestras ejemplos y acciones.

Doctrina y Convenios 121. 45

(Hablo sobre esta escritura) El acostumbre actuar con caridad impensa con nuestros pensamientos. Nuestras pensamientos necesitan ser limpio con virtud. Si tenemos pensamientos buenos vamos a ser listos para actuar con caridad en cada momento. Nosotros nunca sabemos cuando vamos a tener la oportunidad actuar con caridad por otros. Con virtud y confianza en Dios en nuestros corazones y mentes, vamos ser listos para actuar como nuestro ejemplo perfecto Jesucristo en cada tiempo, en cada lugares.

Moroni 7.47 

(Hablo sobro esta escritura) Los acciones pequeño pueden tener los consecuencias el mas grande. Yo espero que las personas de Vicente Noble y Tamayo sepan de los Santo de los Últimos Días son personas buenas que actúan como crean en una forma semejante de Cristo. Y mediante nuestros caridad el mundo va a saber que La Iglesia de Jesucristo de los Santos de los Últimos Días es en actualidad y verdaderamente una Iglesia de Cristo. 

I hope you enjoy the pictures as well! 

We have a baptism this Friday, I´ll be excited to share more about it next week!

And of course, 

¨We can so live that we can call upon the Lord for His protection and guidance. This is a first priority. We cannot expect His help if we are unwilling to keep His commandments... I have faith.. that the Lord will bless us and watch over us and assist us if we walk in obedience to His light, His gospel, and His commandments.¨ -Gordan B. Hinkley.

Hermana Safeer

Aug 19, 2013

So, I´m sitting in an internet cafe listen to the Dominican owner singing Maroon 5 at the top of his lungs. This is my life and I love it!

Things are great. My companion and I are SUPER busy. Not specific happened, but we´re just working with a lot of people.

I have so much I want to say, but so little time!

Rosie got baptized! YAHOOOO!!!! She´s so awesome and so happy! Her friend, Ashley who´s also planning to get baptized by the end of this month came to the baptism as well.

Juan Carlos came to the baptism too, and also brought 2 friends to church and now we´re teaching them too. The youth here are so awesome and are so supportive of eachother and share the good things that they´re doing. Juan Carlos is super animated about his baptism and wants us to come over to his house everyday to teach him, but we have to tell him we can´t go EVERY day, but we try to as much as we can. We also gave his mother a Book of Mormon this week and she was so happy to recieve it and is now reading it with her husband. We´ll see how they keep progressing... She´s only come to church once, but she loves to have us over and we also have great and very interactive lessons with them.

Also, we ran into a HUGE group of Americans this week very close to our house at an icecream shop. They´re here for a humanitarian type work. They were super nice and we chatted for a bit. It was awesome to speak with them and meet them. They´re all from the East Coast. Also, it made me chuckle because they seemed sooo American. I didn´t realize how different we were, until we saw the first Americans we´ve seen in a long time and just realized that somehow Americans and Dominicans are just different! Hard to explain, but it made me realize I must have been here for a while.

Well sorry I´m out of time! I´m also sorry my words are always so jumbled in my emails- I write REALLY quick. I´ll end with a quotation for this week,

¨In an extremely challenging world, this is what I see young women and women of the Chruch doing. They are an influence for good. They are virtuous and exemplary, intelligent and industrious. They are making a difference because they are different.¨ -President Elaine S. Dalton

Things are great and I hope they´re great back home! Remember, missionaries love mail!

Make good choices!

Hermana Safeer

August 25, 2014

Hey everyone! Sorry it´s been a while since I´ve sent out a big email, things have been good, but crazy. BUT today I´m going to send lots and lots of photos so be excited!

Let´s start with like 3 weeks ago, HERMANA CONFERENCE! We had such a fun Hermana Conference with all the hnas the mission! It was in Bani, down south where it´s nice and green.

We had a beautiful bus ride of greenery. 

All the heremanas coming from the capital on the bus.

We represent! I don´t know how well you can read the photo, but in our mission we have 63 heremanas. 33 from the US, 8 Dominicans, 5 Guatamalens, 5 Mexicans, 3 for Haunduras, and 1 from Argentina, Chila, Costa Rica, Karibati, Peru, the Phillipines, St. Lucia, Spain and Turks and Caicos.

Do you all see that?! CHEESECAKE! AMERICAN CHEESECAKE! It was a dream! And Hna Nuckols made home made chocolate sauce and bought us ROOTBEER! What a delight! 

These two pictures are all the girls from my group! We´ve had such fun times here together and it was so fun to see them again when I haven´t seen some of them for months!

Me and some friends that I haven´t seen in a while!

Hnas Gluaser, Linares, Hamblin, Hurlburt and Peck!

Now our super sweet P Day.

We had a final District Meeting and our dear District Leader, Elder Asenjo was finishing up his mission so for his last hurrah we had a SHREK MARATHON!!! It was great. Ya´ll know how much I love Shrek. We went to the Stake Center and the Elders had gotten a DVD player, progector and huge speakers to use. It was better than a theatre. We had a private room set up with food and everything. It was great! Even if it was in Spanish super good. I only don´t like Donkey too much in Spanish but the rest was A-OK.

So many baptisms! We had 3 baptisms last week! 2 brothers that our the children of a recent convert and they´re goal is to be sealed in the temple:) They´re 14 and 11 and super bright. Want to know something great? Their dad and the 2 sons are all named Pablo De la Cruz. But the dad goes by Pablo, the oldest by Pablito and the youngest Pabel.

Also Jose. We´ve seriously been working with him for like 5 months. He always went to church and all the activities but was slow to decide that he wanted to get baptized. He turn 18 this week and is also super great!

 Pablo (the dad and recent convert) baptized his sons and the bishop baptized Jose. It was a super baptism!

Last of all we´ve been having some CRAZY rain. It´s been storming all these last few days. I litterally took a shower on our roof. It was raing so hard I just grabbed my shampoo and stuff and went at it! It´s been fun and cool, but making work a little difficult. Dependant on how hard it´s raining sometimes we get trapped and can´t walk around so we have to just hide from the rain for a reeeeeallly long time sometimes. Since like Friday it´s pretty much been raining non stop. And last night we had a nice thunder storm! So that´s been fun too!

So that´s be quick but longish update of the last 3 weeks! 

¨And the work of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness quietness and assurance for ever.¨ - Isaiah 32:17

I LOVE BEING HERE!

Hna Safeer

September 15th, 2014: Last update ever sent

Dearest Friends and Family,

This week I was too lazy to write my own blog email. So here´s the one my companion wrote. I hope you enjoy it!

Well, next week is transfer week and I´ll be getting a new companion! Hermana Safeer is heading home, so I´ll be taking over now. This week has gone by super fast! We had a conference for the missionaries in training and their companions with President and had a little training ¨graduation¨ ceremony where we recieved a certificate of completion, which was pretty interesting. It was nice to hear from him and learn more about how to be ¨effective missionaries. We also had exchanges with the Hermanas in the Bella Vista area. It was cool to get to go to another area and work there for a day.  We´ve also found a new investigator, Willy, who´s pretty awesome. He´s a lawyer and when we first met him he had so many questions. He´s a super logical guy, which shocked us at first because we´re not used to that, but it´s awesome because we have more in-depth conversations with him. He agrees that what we´ve been saying about our Gospel makes sense logically- now we need to get him to agree that it makes sense spiritually :).

Hope everyone is doing well!

Hermana Paul

¨The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has it´s own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery everyday. Never lose a holy curiosity.¨

 

-Albert Einstein

September 8th, 2014

Buenas dias hermanos y hermanas. jajaja

OK. First of all let me tell you a little story. Like 5 minutes ago we logged on to email in this internet center and we hear think huge THUD sound. We all look outside and a giant tree fell in the middle of the road. I don´t know what happened. But here´s a photo.

Also it´s been super rainy, but we got a beautiful rainbow over the church the other day!

Now time to back track. Last week we had a temple trip! It was super great. We had a special devotional too before we started our session. In the DR Santo Domingo temple there´s a special like meeting room, it kindof looks like a conference room, but I  don´t know what the actual room is called. They told us that only 12 temples in the whole world have this room, so I thought that was pretty cool. Then we had a devotional with our group of missionaries, the mission president and his wife, and the temple president and his wife. 

This is me with my district and with Hna Linares who was also there!

Also last P day we went to Agora Mall. The only mall here with a Forever 21. And it has a lot of European stores so that was fun to see and we of course had a super fun time and it was super weird cause I´d had 17 months without being in a mall, but I felt right at home

FOOD COURT. Pizzarelli and Quiznos! What a treat!

Hna Paul trying on a shirt with her 2 favorite things, pizza and cats, at Zara.

When we left the mall we spotted this giant gorilla and took pictures by it. You can´t tell but we´re in a major downpour in these photos.

Also this week we had a great time having interviews with President. He talked to us about finding people to teach and talking to everyone and getting references, so we´ve really put our minds to it these last couple of days and already we´re finding some AWESOME people to start working with!

¨Signs and miracles were promised to ´follow them that believe´, thus confirming their faith in the power divine; but no intimation was given that such manifestations were to precede belief, as baits to catch credulous wonder-seekers.¨  -James. E Talmage from his book Jesus the Christ

Have a super awesome chevere week!

September 1st, 2014

Photos that have been found day! These are some old photos that I´m taking from Hna Mieses´ camera today so you can see some new old stuff!

First off she thinks it´s hilarious that I can´t eat a mango without making a mess. It´s so hard!

Old photos from our trip from the Botanical Gardens.

Pizza Party!

 And we had a game night in the chapel and we taught everyone how to play duck duck goose. We thought it´d be lame but the LOVED IT! They had never played before! Also, we called it hormiga hormiga cucaracha (ant, ant, cockroach) because we didn´t know how to say goose in spanish. It seems more fitting for this country anyway hahaha

English class in action.

 Playing pelota aka stick ball as they do it here in the DR. It´s rough. You don´t even hit at a ball, just at plastic water tank caps. But I still did a good job if I may say so my self.

I wanted to send more and current photos from this week but sorry I ran out of time. Look forward to it next week! Also FYI I received an email last week that I´m no longer allowed to send letters without going through this lengthy process because I´m going home so soon, so sorry if you don´t get anymore letters!

¨Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.¨ -John Wooden

A complete family!

We had a super great Saturday with the baptisms of Maria, Manuela and Kaulin this weekend! It was so great and we've been working with them for a little while. 

 The mom was a less active member, but reactivated and now is going super strong.  Her husband is a recent convert and now the 3 children have all joined the church. A complete family! We're so happy for them and now they can work on getting sealed in the temple!

" Sometimes we become the lightning rod, and we must 'take the heat' for holding fast to God's standards and doing His work. I testify that we need not be afraid if we are grounded in His doctorine. We may experience misunderstanding, criticism and even false accusation, but we are never alone. Our Savior was 'despised and rejected of men' [Isaiah 53:3] It is our sacred privilege to stand with Him!"  -Robert D. Hales

I love that quotation and it's true. It is my privilege to stand with my Savior for these 18 months and I would never trade that for anything! I hope that all of us always have the courage to stand up for what's right and stand with Him as well.

Have a wonderful week!

Hna Safeer