Lot's of Pictures from the Dominican Republic June 2013

Daviid's note: I will translate what Zoe writes in Spanish, without correcting anything. That way you can tell the progress she is making and the level that she is at. She is doing quite well, but still has a long way to go...
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Scenery

Hola! Toda esta bien aquí en La República Dominicana! (Hi! Everything is well here in the Dominican Republic.) My Spanish really has been improving, but it´s a lot easier for me to speak, than to write. But one day I will do more Spanish in my email!

I hope everything is well back in the States. Things are good here! 

I took some pictures from one of my housemate´s cameras. Here are some explanations.

This is some scenery of our area. 

 

This is some of us in a public car. Kinda sketchy, but we do what we´ve got to do. Also you can´t tell but there´s three more people in there. It´s a 5 person car. There´s public cars all over the place. It´s kinda like a mini, sketchier and cheaper version of a bus.

More scenery.  

We went to get pizza a few weeks ago. It´s was wonderful!

This is our community skirt. Everyone in our house has worn it. It´s stretchy so it´s fit a lot of people. It was my day to wear it. 

Pretty typical picture of what type of places we walk through. Except in this picture it´s abnormally tranquil. But the buildings look similar for the most part. 

Some crazy Dominican wiring

This is at the very beginning with our District. We decided to take a Dominican style picture.

Dominican´s tend to not smile in pictures. Also, it´s from a few weeks ago so I´m really white. I´m a lot tanner now. Also, it´s very unusual that we´ve had an all American District. It´s very uncommon, but the Capital tends to have more Americans rather than futher out. I think it´s because these areas tend to be safer. I´m not totally sure on that though. But we just got a new District leader and he´s from Mexico. So we finally have a Latin in our District! 

This is the front yard of our church building. It´s very pretty and green. Especially compared to the rest of our area. We live and work in a place that´s all cement. It´s nice to have grass at the church. Also, I was asked about how the church was compared to the US. Well I suppose it´s a little smaller, and it´s all tile instead of carpet, but it´s very nice and very pretty. There´s less families and more of individuals, or parts of families. We have about 125 in our ward and there´s another ward that shares our building and they probably have about the same. One fun fact is for about a week we had a guard at our church. I´m still not sure why, but he´d just chill out there and carried around a huge shotgun. He´s gone now. I´m not sure where he went.

Things are great. We had Ward Conference yesterday and worked really hard at getting people and inviting people there. We had such a good turn out! It was so exciting! Also, 2 girls came that my companion and I have been working with and now have dates to be baptized. It´s so exciting to see things grow at a fairly rapid pace and see the enthusiasm that our ward has for missionary work!

Here´s a portion of the email I sent to my Mission President this week. I know my Spanish isn´t perfect, especially my writing, but here it is.

Mi gusta el vídeo la ayer en la noche. Yo no entiendo todo, pero esta muy maravilloso porque yo se que yo tuve el don de lenguas. Yo no necesita entender todo saber que esta fue verdadera. El espíritu bendice yo y enseno me el importancia de obra misional. Esta fue un experiencia muy especial. 

(Translation: Me like the video the yesterday in the night. I do not understand everything, but it is very marvelous because I know that I had the gift of tongues. I don't need to understand everything to know that it was true. The spirit blesses I and I teach me the importance of missionary work. This was a very special experience.)

I still often have to speak very simply in Spanish, but it´s ok. That´s all that´s needed. 

Things are improving every week and it´s exciting, but there´s still so much more that can be done. I look forward to seeing how much things will grow and improve as time goes on.

Well, better go, but I´ll talk to you next week!

Hermana Safeer