June 30, 2012

Hey family!

I want to thank you for all of your letters. You are so great to write me. Please use dearelder.com when you’re writing me because I only have a half hour on the computer and I cant read your emails and write you and they wont let us print. Sorry if this makes it hard. I did see that Mom is doing better and I am so glad I read that Grandma is doing as good as can be expected. I am so sad I could not be at the funeral and hear all the stories and Jake sing. I was thinking about it and I don’t think I have heard Jake sing publicly that wasn’t in a play. I bet he did really well.

I saw that Simeon wrote me an email and I will try and read it before they kick me off, thank you all so much for writing me. I am so so very blessed to have my family and friends that are so supportive and love me so much and know why I am out here and are excited for me. There are so many natives here that are the only members in their family and their families are mad at them for going on a mission and can’t understand and don’t want to understand why... I am so blessed.

You are all so blessed with where you live, the people that love you, the opportunities you have and the knowledge of the gospel. I was wondering why I was given such a blessed life and dealt a great hand. I don’t know if it was because the Lord knew I needed the extra support and help in this life or he trusted me with his knowledge because he knew that I would want to share it. We have such a huge responsibility having the truth to share it with others.
 

Okay sorry, that was a spiel I was not planning on making hah.

Okay so life in the CCM is so great. You spend all your time trying to be a better teacher, to have the spirit with you, and to learn the language. We have two things here that are so cool. Okay three, we get to go to the Guatemala temple, that was so cool. The temple has become one of my favorite places. The second is we get to do temple walks and try and contact people that are outside the temple, sometimes they are members and sometimes they aren’t.... its scary and so cool at the same time. We also have a house we get to go to called the casa CRE. We go and teach sometimes members and sometimes its people off the street that have questions about the church. We answer them and teach them. You don’t know which one you’ll get so you have to be ready for anything. It is so scary!! ha ha. 

The Spanish is hard. I have gotten into really bad habits like saying ‘they’ when I mean ‘we’ and I get all the conjugations mixed up so pray for me that I will be able to sort everything out in my mind so that it makes sense.

Okay, so cool experience. Me and my companions were walking around the temple yesterday and we stated talking to this women that was sitting on the grass just looking at the temple. We started to talk to her she said she was there to just think. We started to get to know her and found out that she joined the church 4 years earlier and she was the only one in her family that was active. She has 3 kids and she was trying to raise them herself. She was coming to the temple to try and get strength and comfort. It was so hard cause I wanted to tell her so much and didn’t have the words. She started to cry and I started to cry as I tried to bear my testimony on what I thought she needed. It was such a great experience for me. I have no idea if she even understood me and she was talking soooo fast!! Hah. Nut it got me exited to be able to testify and teach about Christ and the church to others for the next year and be able to try and help them as much as possible. How cool is my job!?! I am so exited and terrified to get out into the field. At least now I know that I can at least bear testimony in Spanish and if I have the spirit that will be enough to start out with.  

Ok so Maren asked me to bear testimony each week and I really like the idea. So I testify that God helps us in the work he calls us to do. If we have a willing heart and try our best he will be there to do the rest. I have come to understand why we need the atonement in our lives and why we need a
savoir. The great goodness of our God to for see this and provide a way for us to get back. The Lord has comforted me as I have tried my hardest and come up short. He comforted me when I found out that grandpa had died. The spirit is real and testifies of truth. I have learned that the scriptures, like Nephi said, speak plainly of what we have to do and if you do what they say we are blessed. This gospel is amazing and it is true.

I have 30 seconds.

I love you all and want you to know that I know why I am here and am so exited to do this
work.

I love you!

Hermana Hale